This whole blogging thing has been going on for a while now, it is interesting to look back a year ago to an article in the Economist: The Trees Fight Back.  The theme was whether big media would discover and embrace blogging.  I don't think it has, but the Iraq War sure showed the power of individual publishing.  All the best reporting during the War came from bloggers.  Glenn Reynolds has the money quote, even more valid today than a year ago: "the threat to big media is not to its pocketbook but to its self-importance. "

The whole "will Google separate blogs" debate seems to have subsided, but the ability to search blogs for information is now widely available.  My favorite RSS search engine is Feedster.  If you want to find something in the blogosphere, this is consistently better than Google.  Check it out...

BBC News: Behold the Pentaquark.  I don't know about you, but this whole "particle zoo" thing doesn't seem, well, right.  It is kind of like the way there were all these complicated theories to explain electricity and magnetism before Maxwell.  Someday it will all be clear...

Rafe Needleman points out a fascinating new product: Final Scratch.  This lets you play digital music "analogly", using turntables.  "The product, Final Scratch, consists of software, a sound-processing box that plugs into a laptop, and the three records, which contain time codes, not music.  When the records are played on a turntable and routed through the processing box and software, they allow any digital track to be spun, controlled, and scratched like a traditional LP.  DJs typically use a rig with two turntables and a mixing board that lets them change the record on one turntable while a track is playing on the other."  Sounds really cool...  [ via Andrew Anker ]

I like Rafe Needleman and I read Business 2.0, but this is the last time I ever link to them.  Despite their name, B2 just does not "get" the web.  They have their articles behind a paywall - clicking on the link above will not give you the article unless you're a registered subscriber - and they never link off site.  So for example although they wrote this article about Final Scratch, they don't link to the website (like I did).  I really dislike this.  Like people won't Google to find it anyway.

Do you like loud music?  Then perhaps you would enjoy Disaster Area.  "Regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage."  Once upon a time I had a mini-truck like that, blasting Van Halen...