MJ, I couldn’t agree with you more. My blog exists to amuse the blog author – that’s it. I don’t have to answer for anything and I’m not controlled by people with their dumb mandates.

I don’t agree with any of these stats either. I know it is the speaker or writer pulling numbers out of thin air: one foreign journalist with a blog, one credentialed acadamic (what does that mean – and how idiotic to say it), etc.? People do write about law and business. I write about the former almost every time I post: how it’s being broken on the streets by drivers, how my constitutional rights are being violated every time I am discriminated against as a “foreigner”.

Many people write about Taiwanese history, on lots of different blogs. Blogland is a rich source for this topic, probably as rich as a bookstore or library.

1. a “conference” about English bloggers to an audience of non-English speakers, given in Chinese.

2. the event was largely un-announced.

3. only 3 English bloggers were present.

4. those bloggers chose to complain to the Taiwanese audience that the English blogging community doesn’t apparently meet up to their expectations (as opposed to simply informing the audience about the English blogosphere as it is).

anyone else feel like deleting their totally useless waste of server space they call a blog after reading this?

MJ Klein’s last blog post..Stories From My Past: The Trick

Scott, what are you talking about? what do you have to “deal with” concerning the blogging community? what the heck is this “integration” anyway? how are we supposed to be integrated? to what purpose? i found these comments disturbing. it’s as if you’re suggesting that all of us line up and get with your program. perhaps this “lack of general sentiment” is because no one gets it. please clarify.

one reason that i quit all kinds of clubs and associations back in the early 1990s is that there is always someone who comes along and wants to control others. you can’t form any kind of club without attracting those types. sooner or later someone will attain the office of club President and start trying to tell others what to do – and then the point of the club is lost. this is beginning to sound like one of those situations.

nevertheless, one way to begin might be to make sure that people know what’s going on. if i had a dollar for every time i found out about an event after it happened…. my blog has an “Events” page. i attempt to tell people about things before they happen, instead of them reading a nice article with pretty photographs of something they could have attended, but missed because they didn’t know about it.

if i could get one wish, it would be that people stop using the term “blogging” to refer to politicking. if some people want to form political unions or whatever, they are free to do so. having a website on a blogging platform doesn’t require one to get involved in politics, saving the world, or current trends, does it?

“Nobody blogs on history or art or music or literature with any regularity. Nobody blogs on law or business.”

Scott, do you write for other bloggers, or do you write with the general public in mind? with the exception of Guide to Overseas Outsourcing (which i keep totally separate), i blog on what i do and what i like, and i don’t write with other bloggers in mind as the target audience. i make no apologizes for that. here’s what it comes down to: i’ve been a professional entertainer my entire life. my blog is entertainment. blogging for me is nothing different that my national talk radio show, or recording a new album. it’s a set of creative works that i broadcast to the public in a medium that happens to have international access.

so my question is this: why does it bother you that blogs are largely entertainment? after all that is what the blog was created for.

i’ve heard this kind of whine long enough. i suggest that you come up with some plan, organization, union, whatever, with the purposes and goals and purposes clearly outlined so that the “socially conscience” among us can join it and feel better about themselves. in the meantime, the blog reading community will go on doing what they do – reading the blogs that they enjoy.

MJ Klein’s last blog post..Stories From My Past: The Trick

fiLi, your post stimulated a lot of thinking on my part. Thanks…

Michael