Paynter, Locke, Lennon

Earlier today Blogger was moribund, but I meant to say:.

Frank Paynter, who has previously empedestaled aspects of blogging and bloggeurs, asked certain people why they blog. Mindful of the possibly more interesting question why certain people do not blog, it was well done of Frank to remember Fishrush.

I had already decided to quote La Sessum's response before discovering that she quoted mine. Must be that Italian/East european sympathetic magic thing:

When I stuck my flag in blogland three years ago, I wasn’t looking to “mitigate risk,” I was looking to accelerate it. I wasn’t trying to connect with the influential, I was trying to undo them. I wasn’t trying to attract eyeballs, I was trying to squeeze tears from them.
...
Anyway, I blog because I can. Because it’s the best place to inform and be informed by the hearts of the best bunch of people I’ve never met.

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Christopher Locke has a new gig as Chief Blogging Officer, a showcase for the quantum interface betwixt Mr. Locke and Highbeam, a research tool.

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And Sheila Lennon offers mere sanity on post election weirdness:

Vote-rigging is as old as voting itself, but it's especially easy now in this window of time where so few politicians grew up knowledgeable about computers and the new ways they could be used to stealthily rig the vote. Once, upon a time, locking up the machines was enough. Now, a modem call to the central vote-counting server can deliver an election. We might never know, because the software is a trade secret that no one may examine.

I wanted to hear [Ohio Secretary of State] Mr. Blackwell, in his capacity as a public official charged with ensuring a clean and fair election in his state, vigorously support the right of every voter to know for sure that his or her vote was accurately counted -- as Rev. Jackson and Councilman Rude did -- rather than whine about the cost, inconvenience, or futility of this fundamental rite of democracy, the vote recount.

Anyone who's at all computer-savvy -- especially including elected public officials in charge of voting -- should applaud tests to make sure that the private software that counts the votes is not also shuffling votes in strange ways.