BlogWanderings

I'm working three "blog traffic exchanges" this morning -- BlogExplosion, BlogXChange and BlogaZoo. I don't use them as much as I used to (barely at all, actually). Sure the credits and referrals (hint, hint) are nice, but not that important. I do like to run through them occasionally to find other worthwhile blogs that I might not happen across on my own. Might as well share:

General observations concerning the Blogosphere

The profusion of "I am the single mother of three atavistic monsters and am obsessed with lovingly recording every diaper change and temper tantrum" blogs continues, as do the various chroniclings of Survivor, American Idol and other television shows that I'd watch myself if I was interested. I'm also seeing more "gadget blogs" -- mini-reviews of the latest laser pointer, mini-sub, what have you. That's cool. And a lot more blogs which are transparent marketing vehicles for the latest multi-level marketing schemes. That's not cool, but it's to be expected. Surprisingly, some of them do seem to offer a reasonable amount of generic/general advice on marketing in general, so they're at least offering value for the time wasted on loading their pitches.

I also notice that a lot of the personal blogs written by angst-ridden late-teen-or-early-twenties females are featuring photo or graphic logos that show considerably more skin than, say, a year ago. Nice.

On the political side, the Busheviks seem to be losing steam. Fewer right-wing blogs with fewer posts, and they're taking on a whinier, less pompous tone. The lefties seem to smell blood in the water, though. More "progressive" blogs, more posts, more confident tone.

Points of interest

This looks like it might be an interesting writers' blog.

Come to think of it, I don't recall that I've seen very many blogs by Objectivists. Here's one.

For some reason, stuff about the "paranormal" always grabs my attention, even though I'm a compleat skeptic.

The Wide Awakes might be scary if they weren't so damn pathetic. The original Wide-Awakes were gangs of torchbearing thugs who conducted street demonstrations in support of Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election -- the political ancestors of the Ku Klux Klan and the Sturmabteilung. Their modern namesakes just tie themselves in blogknots, desperately trying to find correlations between GOP rhetoric and the real world.

I've seen this Cost of War Counter on a number of blogs. Seems linked to a conventional state leftist outfit, but wotthehell, it's still neat.

Also came across some interesting St. Louis-based blogs, athough I don't recall whether or not I reached them via the exchanges or not: Arch City Chronicle (this is also a print tabloid which I've seen around), STL Syndicate and stlbloggers.com.

More later.