Blogging Update

Besides the blogs listed on the right, I've discovered a few others that I think are interesting.

Chapomatic.

This blog had a discussion going on in the comments section a while ago that caught my attention and now I check back most days to see what other quirky subjects the author's got on his mind.

Not long ago it was 'women in submarines'. Today it's the intentions of the terrorists who tried to blow up the journalists' hotel in Baghdad the other day. I thought at the time it might be a bid to kidnap more journalists to trade for ransom or whatever it is that was gained from Rory Carroll's kidnapping.

Some guy at Time magazine seems to think it had nothing to do with the fact that it's a well know hotel for journalists:

"...staged the joint operation in order to attack and kill members of one of the security firms stationed in the Palestine."

While the blogger thinks:

"...attacking the Palestine is an excellent way to get into the news again after other stories drove them off."

More here.

Oxblog.

Three things from this blog interested me today.

1. Paddy Power is offering 12-1 on Dr. Rice.

I'll have to check my local Ladbroke's, see what they're offering. I got 4/7 on Bush last November but betting on the favourite is never very lucrative.

2. A link to the 'Times Literary Supplement' review of Charles Townshend's book on the Easter 1916 Rebellion, read the whole thing here.

Before Peter Hart started writing books on the subject, the best statistics on the activities during the Irish War of Independence came from Townshend's book 'The British Campaign in Ireland 1919-1921.' The review makes his new book sound wonderful:

"One of the strengths of the book lies in the author's ability to take on the 'romantic glamour' of the Rising's protagonists, while keeping a weather eye to the realities which surrounded them..."

"...the viability of present-day parallels...establishing what actually happened, gives full due to the achievement of the rebels as well as their bravery. But his book should also be required reading for the implications of what Yeats called "their bewilderment", and the often unintended outcomes of heroic imagination."

3. One of the bloggers attended a "focus group", read the whole thing here.

"In the final analysis, there was no answer to this question. Even a table full of Ivy League-educated Democratic activists couldn't come up with an answer to the question of what the Democrats want to offer America as a whole, and not just the disadvantaged."

Ranting profs

This post is interesting, read the whole thing here.

"I am still waiting for the press to explicitly acknowledge that terrorism as a strategy is communicative, that there is method to the madness, that it is centered on gaining, yes, media attention."

Spell checking:

My blog uses the google blog software which includes a spell check button. Why doesn't it recognise the word blog? These are the suggestions:

Blog - bloc
Blogger - blocker
blogging - flogging (18th century v. 21st century?)

Just wondering.