It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of
a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into
privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing
algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the
planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.
These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times. Over at Daily Kos, Jumbo offers this definition: Chickenblogger: n. Anybody who puts up a website that claims to have a "blog" but doesn't allow public comments. According to this definition, George W. Bush is definitely a chickenblogger. The problem with this definition is that it attributes motivation to an observed trait when other factors may be in play. For those that are new to blogging, or who haven't found commenting tools on the 'net, it's not so much a matter of not "allowing" comments as it is a matter of not knowing how to set such a blog system set up. We didn't figure out how to let others add comments until last month. For bloggers like this, the label "Chickenblogger" is unfair. On the other hand, for sites like George W. Bush's that have multi-million dollar budgets and huge staffs, there's a choice: do you let the people's voices in on your blog, or is their role simply that of listeners? George W. Bush and his circle have decided that the job of the people is to listen -- and that's an important indication of the quality of his presidency. Return to the Irregular Times Main Page
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