The Weblog Review

David serves in the U.S. Air Force, which he sees as a “great way to express commitment to American principles.” David also expresses his commitment to American principles in his weblog, but not as much as I originally guessed. Other topics, such as his upcoming move to Montana (which will be the sixteenth place that he will have lived), his weblog, and other people’s weblogs, all get their fair share of writing space in David’s rather lengthy archive.



Like news blogs, David’s writings are filled with links to other places. However, each post is interesting and understandable without clicking on the links themselves. Never expect to be left in the dark about what any post means, if you need to, you can click on the links and read what David is writing about! This is definately a good feature.



I would say that the weblog’s main audience would be people that know David (there are a few posts designed just for a certain person, but not many), and people who are interested in the political side of current news. Assuming you’re in the target audience, the weblog is well written and a good choice for reading. Between the archives and the links in each post, you’d be hard pressed to run out of things to read.davidmsc.com

I always go to sites hosted by “free hosts” with a little apprehension. One never knows quite what to expect. I pretty much expected another boring log started because blogging is cool. I was wrong. This weblog is like a beautiful painting hung in a plain picture frame.

The author writes on various political topics and appears to be quite educated in each of those topics. I am not one to follow the news and appreciated the fact that she gave enough background information on the topic to follow what she’s talking about as well as news links. I found it hard not to agree with much of what she had to say. Even if one doesn’t agree with her opinions, you have to admire the fact that she doesn’t give off a “my opinion is superior because it is what I believe” attitude. She presents facts to back-up her feelings instead of saying “it’s just bad because I said so.” Her writing had good flow to it and was not boring to read, and at times, had a touch of humor to it.

I’m guessing that the design itself is basically a default template of some sort offered by Blogspot. Not really much to comment on there. All of the text was a good size and color, making reading a lot of text fairly comfortable. Links were clearly visible and the archives (well worth reading) are easy to find.

I quite enjoyed reading all of her entries and have added her site to my small, but growing list of gems on the web. I highly recommend reading her site if you are like me and don’t follow the news and would like to know more about the news that’s on everyone’s mind. Even if you do follow the news, it might be a refreshing change to hear someone else’s thought out opinions.The Serenity

I wondered into Spacemonk and was greeted by an orange, yellow and white blog, neatly presented in a format that I found easy to read. There’s nothing totally distinguishing about the blog on first glance, but its there, its in your face, and that’s pretty much what you’d expect these days.

The content of the blog is wide and broad and totally all over the place, it doesn’t focus just on one topic, one person or one idea, it’s a platter of assorted goodness bundled up quite nicely. Its common every day stuff that’s light to read and whilst you may not be interested in one section you’re sure likely to find a post that you will. Issues range from general news, the authors weight progress, to music festivals, it well and truly has it all and I found most, if not all posts, pleasurable to read.

One glaring omission is any information about the author (or that I could find). I had no background to work with and a little of the post could be rather confusing to those who have never been there before. The tagboard is a nice feature, but it makes the links section look rather cluttered and I think any opinions made by readers should be left in the comments section not the tagboard which a lot of the readers seem to be doing. A heaps of links to other blogs probably is a little over an overkill, there’s a lot and again it just adds to the clutter and probably should be sorted in either a smaller area or somewhere else entirely.

Design wise I can’t find too much wrong with it, a lack of colour is one thing I found rather taxing on the eyes over a period of time, but that’s just personal preference. It’s also interesting to note that headings are smaller then the normal text font, does make it hard to separate different posts and has a feel of one big long running post. All that said, its easy to read, nice font size, colours are simple and no overly taxing graphics either.

All up I give Spacemonk a 2.5 out of 5 and a single thumb up. It might not be the most glamorous blog out there but its certainly filled with some interesting reading that will keep most reading for a fair while.
spacemonk

Read Nonfiction is an unassuming, perhaps even slightly obscure site, providing a slower-paced alternative to the cacophony of the warblogging / antiwarblogging side of the political blogosphere.

The site is devoted, simply, to quoting and referencing media items with light commentary, placing it solidly in the media-link-and-commentary subspecies of weblogs. Recent topics have ranged from Oscar Wilde on socialism to an assessment of Zionism, and the site generally focuses less on the news-of-the-day than on more thoughtful analysis pieces found in publications such as The New York Observer and The Atlantic.

I might have tried to characterize the author’s politics, but handily, he’s already done so himself by taking a little online quiz. He reports his results as “leftist and somewhat libertarian.” Judge for yourself, however, from this sample of his commentary from his review of Wilde and socialism:

“It has always been my belief that if one attains more than what one really needs, sharing this surplus becomes a moral imperative. This is not about forcing a reduction in the divide between classes (which is a side-effect, no doubt), but about improving the quality of life for the lower classes. Surely, a better distribution of wealth will result in more members of society existing more comfortably than they are now. The flaw in this, of course, is that no man will voluntarily admit to having a surplus of private property.”

The site layout is a clean, simple Moveable Type template, and is fairly easy on the eyes. My only quibble would be the choice of fonts for the body text — the site appears to be using Garamond or something close to it for both the quoted passages and commentary, which is not the world’s most readable font. And distinguishing more clearly between quoted passages and the author’s commentary wouldn’t hurt either.

Update frequency is fairly low for a straight link-and-commentary site; averaging a post every few days. (May 2002 had entries on 5/1, 5/3, 5/10, and 5/28). While for some weblog forms infrequent updates should not be viewed as a negative, a site so totally devoted to following the media might benefit from a more frequent publishing schedule.

Overall, I’d recommend Read Nonfiction as an occasional stop for those who want to ensure no interesting media stone remains unturned in their reading universe, and as a supplement to a more regular diet of the more frenetic and compulsively updated news sites.

read nonfiction

Grrrrrr. I’ve just spent some time at Global News Watch, and goddamn it if it hasn’t got me riled up and ready to go kill me some terrorists.

Looking for “objective” news reporting? Emotionless assessments of current events? Well look somewhere else, ’cause you ain’t going to find them here. But what you will find is impassioned — but well reasoned — argument and opinion, complete with much link-and-commentary, on the news of the day, and in particular, the war against terror. But don’t believe me, here’s the author, Howard Owens, in his own words:

“Blogging appeals to me because I can put things in a real world context. Of course, it’s a totally subjective exercise, but I think the news is both more entertaining and more informative when it is given that kind of context. If the reader knows your context, your biases, right up front, he can judge your words accordingly.”

Owens spent time as a newspaperman, according to the bio on his site, and describes his political thinking as follows:

“My political odyssey over the last five years has carried me through Russell Kirk, George F. Will (whom I actually started reading in high school), Edmund Burke, more Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, Bill Kristol and to myself — a thoroughly conservative, non-aligned voter. I belong to no political party and have no allegiance to any political agenda. I believe fiercely in the values of American conservatism, though I do not always agree with prevailing conservative opinion. It is from this perspective that I present my blog.”

On a recent day (6/12/02), GNW’s covered recent statements by al Qaeda and a dissection of liberal claims that believe terrorists do not “hate us because we are free”; the details of what occurred when Richard Reid was subdued by passengers in his shoe-bombing attempt; the arrest of Jose Padilla; a long essay on “liberals” and “convervatives”; Lou Dobbs statement declaring our war to be one “against Islamists”; and the meeting of several baseball players with President Bush.

Content-wise, clearly, there’s damned little to complain about at GNW, if you are looking for a frequently updated, war-focused news & commentary blog. Owens is a skilled writer, and presents his opinions forcefully, but also takes pains to recognize the validity of opposing thoughts. He is a conservative thinker and clear about it, which might be off-putting to those who disagree with his views, but is definitely not a ranting-caveman type – so I’d recommend hearing him out even if you don’t expect to agree with him. Update frequency is heavy: posts are made most days, it seems, and generally posting-days have many items as opposed to just one.

The layout is straightforward, but chock full o’ riches. Left and right navigation bars hold links to current news articles, Owens’ blogroll, and references to recommended books & music, with the main content in the center pane. The top nav bar, however, is where the real action is at: there, you can select from various regions of the world to filter the main pages content: allowing you select, for example, “Middle East” to see only those posts Owens has made regarding that region. This is an outstanding feature, and one that I’d love to see more weblogs implement – heck, I want it for mine.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for solid news-roundup blogs with insightful commentary, particularly those focusing on the war, GNW is a solid win. Highly recommended.
Global News Watch