On August 16, 2008, a small plane carrying a young married couple and their flight instructor crashed in the Arizona desert. Doug Kinneard, the instructor, was killed in the crash; Stephanie and Christian Nielson survived, both severely burned. Prior to the crash, Stephanie's weblog, the NieNie Dialogues, "had attracted a small but ardent following, thanks to its upbeat dispatches about marriage, home décor, entertaining and the art of raising four children ages 6 and younger." After the crash, with burns on over 80% of her body, she spent two months in a medically induced coma. One month later, she was released from the hospital (link to Stephanie's sister's blog); one month after that, she began blogging again. Stephanie's posts since then have chronicled her gradual recovery, her re-integration into her family, her love and gratitude for her husband, and, finally, on the one-year anniversary of the plane crash, herself. [more inside]
posted by granted on Aug 16, 2009 - 61 comments

The OMB has a blog (feed) -- Peter Orszag started one at CBO (still going under Douglas Elmendorf née Bob Sunshine) and carried blogging over to the White House. The Atlanta Fed has one too (not to be confused with Macro Man). David Altig unofficially began it as an economist at the Cleveland Fed and then, when he became research director in Atlanta, made it official (altho still hosted on TypePad). Are there any other (federal/state/local/non-US) worthwhile government blogs (wikis sure) out there from our shiny new iPod gov't? cf. DoD live (check out the other service blogs, e.g.)/air force live & USAgov on twitter
posted by kliuless on Feb 28, 2009 - 5 comments

How to blog, or counter-blog, for the US Air force, in handy flow chart form.
posted by Artw on Jan 6, 2009 - 40 comments

A Lone Tibetan Voice, Intent on Speaking Out. Woeser (previously mentioned here) is a Tibetan writer and poet living under house arrest in Beijing, from where she blogs about the recent unrest in Tibet (there are English translations of her posts at China Digital Times). Last year she was awarded the Norwegian Authors Union Freedom of Expression Prize, but she was not allowed to travel to Oslo to collect the prize.
posted by homunculus on May 6, 2008 - 15 comments

Post a controversial comment, get arrested. "Some were disturbed by the post police say James Buss left on a conservative blog, but other observers said it was a sarcastic attempt to discredit critics of education spending."
posted by mathowie on Dec 4, 2007 - 121 comments

Blog a Penguin Classic.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Sep 21, 2007 - 58 comments

Happy Vinyl Record Day, everyone. On this date in 1877, Edison invented the phonograph. To commemorate the date, a blogswarm of 22 of the best vinyl sharity blogs out there have come together to celebrate the legacy of the dominant recorded music format of the 20th century, led by jb of The Hits Just Keep On Comin' and featuring Flea Market Funk, Echoes in the Wind, Funky 16 Corners, Davewillieradio, Good Rockin' Tonight, Py Korry, It's Great Shakes, (bonus!), Ickmusic, Jefitoblog, FuFu (bonus!), Lost in the 80's, Three-Sixty-Five 45s, Underground Vault of Records, AM then FM, The "B" Side, In Dangerous Rythm (bonus 1, bonus 2), You Must Be From Away, Got The Fever, Retro Remixes, Bloggerythms and finally The Stepfather of Soul.
posted by jonson on Aug 12, 2007 - 34 comments

A Nashville blogger decided to tackle to the project of consuming and reviewing all 51 sandwiches on the Which Wich menu. The local Which Wich caught on, and despite some negative critiques, decided to promote the blogger's URL on every sandwich bag leaving their store.
posted by brittney on Jun 15, 2007 - 20 comments

On Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling's blog, Curt responds to commenter questions, reviews his starts pitch-by-pitch, discusses his various charities, engages ex-teammate Kevin Millar in conversation, and responds to the recent controversy over his bloody sock from the 2004 postseason. Love him or hate him (or defend his blogging, at least), it's a new way for athletes to engage the public, and any baseball fan can learn a lot from his analysis of his starts.
posted by ibmcginty on Apr 28, 2007 - 23 comments

Time magazine recently launched a new politics blog, Swampland. The blog is, to this point, most interesting for its confrontations between the commenters and the bloggers. [m.i.]
posted by ibmcginty on Jan 26, 2007 - 26 comments

"Bloggers are nihilists because they are 'good for nothing'. They post into Nirvana and have turned their futility into a productive force." "Blogging, the nihilist impulse," based on a lecture by Geert Lovink.
posted by the_bone on Jan 10, 2007 - 66 comments

First post!
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Jan 5, 2007 - 58 comments

Blogs by Phone - for when your family and friends have trouble keeping up with your blog posts. (YouTube video from SixApart)
posted by divabat on Dec 22, 2006 - 23 comments

A tribute to the 75-minute period where Tom DeLay actually received feedback from America. Tom DeLay drops unrestricted comments almost immediately on his first disastrous day as a blogger.
posted by jonp72 on Dec 11, 2006 - 60 comments

One Day in History is a national blogging event organised by the History Matters campaign in the UK. They want UK citizens (or anyone with UK ties) to blog a diary entry about their day today (17 October). The entries will be archived at the British Library, creating a snapshot of everyday life in 2006 for the bemusement of future generations.
posted by chrismear on Oct 17, 2006 - 7 comments

CBC Blogging Manifesto Tired of waiting for CBC, Canada’s national public broadcaster, to come up with a blogging policy, CBC bloggers – including the infamous pseudonymous blogger A. Ouimet – charge ahead and write one themselves.
posted by joeclark on Aug 13, 2006 - 12 comments

I just escaped from prison - and I'm blogging about it! Farah Damiji, 39, a former magazine editor from the UK, megawealthy scion of a real estate dynasty and "international conwoman", was given a 3.5 year sentence last year for credit card fraud and identity theft. She was given a day pass from Downview Prison in Surrey to attend an educational event and never returned. That's when an English magazine found out that Ms. Damiji was blogging about her jailbreak on her Myspace page. Her Majesty's Home Office is not amused.
posted by huskerdont on Jul 27, 2006 - 38 comments

A blog for everyone in Davos. "Every participant of the Annual Meeting – ranging from business leaders to political leaders, heads of NGOs, religious leaders academics and journalists – will be asked to join the Forum blog...All of the more than 2,000 participants, including presidents and prime ministers, will be asked to provide at least one posting for the blog."
posted by nyterrant on Jan 6, 2006 - 13 comments

Remember Blogpoly? You can now play it online at Kurnik. Still no Metafilter though. (via Blogger Buzz)
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 1, 2005 - 2 comments

If you watch television news stations, you've probably already heard that the latest missing white girl has been found. Naturally, the media is now obsessed with figuring out what led to the murder of the girl's parents. In the unending quest for information, TV news stations have shown the myspace pages of the two teens. And like many other teenagers, the two have xanga journals as well. But several sources, both blogs and mainstream news sites, have publicized the location of these pages. Is this responsible journalism?
Previously on MeFi: Blogging from prison; diary of a killer?
posted by kyleg on Nov 14, 2005 - 74 comments

"House to Vote on Political Blogging Rules" How is this to be interpreted? What's yhe motivation behind this? Who would it help more, MoveOn , or Blogs for Bush, or whom else?
posted by celerystick on Nov 2, 2005 - 25 comments

"Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo."

A frothing rant on bloggers and blogging by Forbes [bugmenot]. Don't miss their advice on how businesses can fight back!
posted by nyterrant on Oct 27, 2005 - 61 comments

Memeorandum goes live "offers a set of pages, each page highlighting the best contributions from a different community of writers, recognizing new sources as soon as the community does, and in a form conveying ongoing conversations." There is also tech.memeorandum. Via Read/Write and Scoble...also, previously noted here as a previous version...
posted by tpl1212 on Sep 13, 2005 - 5 comments

A nonist public service pamphlet. Here you will find a 6 page pamphlet meant as a public service to help educate bloggers about the growing problem of blog depression. ;)
posted by FunkyHelix on Jul 28, 2005 - 14 comments

Blogger gets fired. An NYC nanny was fired because of her blog. The twist? she worked for an Helaine Olen, an NY times style-section writer who wrote an article that started like this "OUR former nanny, ... liked to touch her breasts while reading The New Yorker ... She took sleeping pills, joked about offbeat erotic fantasies involving Tucker Carlson and determined she'd had more female sexual partners than her boyfriend." The nanny, saving money to get a PhD in english, chose to respond
posted by delmoi on Jul 17, 2005 - 210 comments

When did John C. Dvorak start blogging? It was only a small time ago that he spoke out against them and brought about quite a response. But timed passed and now he too has a blog. So was he ever really against blogs or was it no more truthful than his infamous april fools? Does he just write whatever gets people talking? If so, what is he going to attack next?
posted by TwelveTwo on Jun 17, 2005 - 19 comments

Blogs are bad, essays good. Yet another priesthood is taking defensive action, this time essayists. In this piece, the author argues, without much thought or precision, that the throughtful, precise essay is much, much better than those dirty blogs. With apologies to Bill Maher, NEW RULE: If you think Matt Drudge is a blogger and cite him as such, you've already lost the argument.
posted by baltimore on May 15, 2005 - 20 comments

National Review's Heather McDonald responds to columnist Steven Levy's question: Does the blogosphere have a diversity problem? "Could it be that the premise of the 'diversity' crusade is wrong—that there are not in fact hordes of unknown, competitively talented non-white-male journalists held back by prejudice? Don’t even entertain the thought. Steven Levy certainly doesn’t. 'It appears that some clubbiness is involved'—that is, that white male bloggers only link to other white male bloggers." Do we need a race-based quota for web journalism? As racial identity is often anonymous, where would we start?
posted by jenleigh on Mar 30, 2005 - 59 comments

Remember this? It has won recognition as "Best Interactive Viral" in the Viral Awards. With all the viral¹ and stealth² marketing campaigns, comment spam, astroturfing³, and other tools that marketeers are using to infiltrate the Brave New(ish) World of blog, we sometimes forget that we also have the power to do good, so "you know, like, reclaim the streets, or re-frame the conversation, or some damn thing". Words of wisdom from our not-so-subservient chicken. [and, a bit more...]
posted by taz on Mar 26, 2005 - 20 comments

Are Blogs to Blame? Tom Regan, Associate Editor of the Christian Science monitor wrote an interesting piece referencing the latest findings of the Feb 2005 Harris Poll showing that more and more Americans (64%) *still* think that Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al-Qaida. Tom's piece proposes that too many Americans are getting their "news" from sources -- including blogs -- that are tainted with right-wing opinion. Tom proposes that blogs share a large responsibility for confusing readers and blurring the lines between news and opinion. On this same topic, last week Editorial Cartoonist Ted Rall wrote an Op/Ed piece last week on blogs that primarily talks about the dangers of the right-wing blogger "lynch mob." Does the sphere of right-wing blogs far outweigh the sphere of influence of left-wing blogs? And is this something that is worrisome? Are blogs a danger to further polarizing public opinion? What do you think?
posted by popvulture on Mar 4, 2005 - 52 comments

I often say that blogs are currently where the web was in 1998, with history repeating itself only this time with blogs. The latest sign: spyware and viruses are now being transmitted via blogs, specifically, random blogs on blogspot.com, found via the "Next Blog" button. Remember, just because a delightful purple gorilla wants to read blog entries to you doesn't mean you should click on him.
posted by mathowie on Feb 21, 2005 - 29 comments

In a recent broadcast on PBS archived here 4 popular bloggers, Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, and Joe Trippi had a pretty interesting session with veteran interviewer Charlie Rose. Three tiny but complete QuickTime segments...
posted by indices on Feb 21, 2005 - 15 comments

Grandfather of the personal blog freaks out at age 30, after spending 11 years writing about the most intimate details of his life. From the beginning, he was always brutally honest in a time long before it became so commonplace, before any of us knew where this internet business would take us. Naturally he recorded said freakout on video for the world to see, and more or less shut down his storied site. Can we take this kind of display at face value? Is it a bad case of someone substituting net life for the real thing? Is it all just effete whining? Or is this a genuine case of two loves colliding, and a man forced to make a difficult choice?
posted by drpynchon on Feb 7, 2005 - 42 comments

Letters To Martha. A blog novel (a blovel? a nog?) about an unemployed man who writes to Martha in jail. Updated every Tues and Thurs.
posted by braun_richard on Jan 18, 2005 - 14 comments

Roland Piquepaille, author of the excellent Technology Trends blog and frequent contributor to Slashdot, is accused of using plagirism, Slashdot and his own blog to pump up his Blogads revenue. Long quotes and summarization of sources are staples of the blogging culture. When revenue is involved, some infer that the blogger owes more than just credit to their sources. [via Eyebeam Reblog].
posted by tomharpel on Dec 29, 2004 - 27 comments

Take a Nobel economist who has devoted his career to studying the effect of social and political change on microeconomic theory. Combine with the most prolific legal scholar of the past half-century and federal judge with immeasurable influence on American jurisprudence. Add Moveable Type and a bit of technical help from our fearless leader, and you've got the Becker-Posner Blog, which debuts today.
posted by PrinceValium on Dec 5, 2004 - 14 comments

Blogs Illustrated: Webring of illustrated blogs. Very, very cool - via Michael Nobbs.
posted by taz on Nov 16, 2004 - 6 comments

Web of Influence Every day, millions of online diarists, or “bloggers,” share their opinions with a global audience. Drawing upon the content of the international media and the World Wide Web, they weave together an elaborate network with agenda-setting power on issues ranging from human rights in China to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. What began as a hobby is evolving into a new medium that is changing the landscape for journalists and policymakers alike. Hmm. Big Talk or should I get a clue & with the program ? Decisions, decisions....
posted by y2karl on Nov 4, 2004 - 15 comments

The Bloggers on the Bus: The New York Times Magazine on bloggers on the campaign trail, and what effect they may or may not have.
posted by mrbula on Sep 26, 2004 - 35 comments

Dan Rather: : "If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story. Any time I'm wrong, I want to be right out front and say, 'Folks, this is what went wrong and how it went wrong.'" (reg. req.)

Andrew Sullivan: "Memo to Rather: you can't break that story, because someone else in pajamas already did. Check the frequency, Kenneth. You are so far from being out front on this, you are leagues behind in the dust. Have you heard of the Internet? You can find it on that weird machine in your office they call a computer."

Me: Is anyone else astonished as I am at how far CBS seems to have its head up its ass WRT news media in the 21st century?
posted by ericost on Sep 16, 2004 - 128 comments

Fired from Friendster.com • Scott Sassa, CEO of Friendster, has canned a programmer named TroutGirl for blogging about her job in what appears to be a generally positive and non-specific manner. Some are suggesting we cancel our accounts in protest.
posted by dhoyt on Aug 31, 2004 - 52 comments

Swimming Suits, Motor Boats, Sheet Music, Auto Parts, Movies and Music, Online Maps. Looks like the Butterfly Guy has a plan.
posted by strangeleftydoublethink on Aug 27, 2004 - 5 comments

While much of the blogging world has been ga-ga over getting into the Democratic National Convention, it's tough to find anything interesting going on among the convention bloggers (to their credit, go turn on CSPAN today and see for yourself how boring it is). While our own Jessamyn is there (here are profiles of everyone going), I've found the strange CNN/Technorati partnership to be the most useful thing. Technorati founder David Sifry is basically doing a metafilter of all convention blogs over on CNN as the daily blog roundup, highlighting the posts worth reading among the participants.
posted by mathowie on Jul 27, 2004 - 36 comments

High school students in Israel are harnessing the community-building power of weblogs to locate survivors of the Holocaust.
posted by arco on Jul 8, 2004 - 21 comments

Salam Pax gets a movie deal. The Baghdad Blogger has previously taken his posts to the book format and a company has just bought the rights to make a movie out of it. I can't say there are many blogs that would ever work as a movie, but this is certainly a new milestone for blogging.
posted by mathowie on May 13, 2004 - 11 comments

Iranian vice-president's blog now has an English section
posted by hoder on Apr 6, 2004 - 7 comments

MIT's blog survey results are in. Some highlights: 55% of respondents use their real names on their blog, 63% of respondents are male, 36% of respondents have gotten in trouble because of things they've written, and almost no one has a good idea of who's reading their blog.
posted by Vidiot on Mar 18, 2004 - 5 comments

Clothes by bloggers, for bloggers. Two blogger girls make blogger-related stuff. Stock up in time for the next Juliana Theory concert. Some of their stuff is pretty funny.
posted by AVandalay on Mar 1, 2004 - 19 comments

reBlog -- A web site republishing the best blog posts on art, technology and culture from around the web. Brought to you by Eyebeam, a multimedia atelier here in NYC, and run by a rotating cast of reBloggers.
posted by amberglow on Feb 29, 2004 - 6 comments

Furl is an elegant application that acts as your web filing cabinet. Store, rate and categorize web clippings with the click of a bookmarklet. Once collected, search, share or publish your links via email or RSS. (via Inter-Alia.)
posted by ajr on Jan 26, 2004 - 12 comments