Half Changed World

No post tonight, because I’m going to torture myself by watching the State of the Union address.

Instead, I point you to some terrific reading elsewhere:

Wampum very generously hosts the Koufax awards (e.g. blog awards for lefties).  Only a few categories are up so far, but there’s lots of interesting posts in there:

Categories include:

• Best single post.  I’ve only read a handful of the entries, but the one that I forwarded to my friends at the time it came out is the proper reverence due those who have gone before.
• Most Deserving of Wider Recognition.   I’ve been nominated, so have Geeky Mom and Echidne
• Best New Blog
• Best state and local blogs

(Has anyone done an OPML file of all the nominees?  I see a lot of people putting them in their blogrolls, but there’s no way I have the time to do that manually.)

I’d also like to point out the new BlogHer site, which is doing a great job of highlighting interesting posts from a range of different blogs, mostly by women.    Cynical Mom and Anne have already announced that they’re attending the convention this year.  I wish I could be there, but can’t justify the $$ and time to schlepp out to California.

Last week, I posted a graph, showing the impact of the NYTimes mention on my state statistics.

Now look at the graph for this week’s statistics, and guess which day Julie at a little pregnant linked to me.

Academic Coach wondered whether the NY Times story sent me much traffic.  Here’s the Statcounter graph of my hits from this month:

So yes, I’ve gotten more hits than usual, but only by maybe 10 or 20 percent, not by an order of magnitude.

Recent searches that led people to this blog include:

• This image (I linked to it back in September 2004, and I get a surprisingly regular trickle of hits from it — don’t know if it’s Library of Congress staff, or what).
• aap recomendation peanuts
• gogurt narnia
• choice feminism
• caitlin flanagan husband
• half changed world
• jonathan kozol the shame of the nation
• nova scotia bump miner
• get up grrl
• who are the real members of the book random familiy
• information on a black person who changed the world by doing something
• proof that nurture wins

bj wondered whether I’m anonymous.  The answer is "sort of."  As I’ve noted before, my full name doesn’t appear anywhere on the site, but I’ve included links that would make it possible for anyone who really wanted to find me to do so.  And my family and friends know about my blog, as do some of my coworkers.  (Check out Ann Bartow’s post on "real name bloggers," via the Carnival of the Feminists 7.)

I’m tired and don’t have the brainpower to post.

Fortunately, it’s Delurking Week, so I’ve got a good excuse for a zero-efforty post.  Everyone reading this is encouraged to post a comment to say hi.  And if you feel so inclined, post your favorite knock-knock joke.

Mine is:

Knock Knock (KK)

Who’s there?  (WT?)

Boo!

Boo who?

Don’t cry, it’s just a knock knock joke.

(As Moxie points out, If you don’t have a blog, and you don’t want your email shown to the world, post a fake URL, and your email address will be hidden to everyone but me.  If you don’t want ME to know your email address, go ahead and post a fake one.)

Greg at Daddy Types wrote last week about the silly NY Times article about parental bragging.  He noted that they cite Unequal Childhoods and was kind enough to point out my book review from last year. 

But the part that made me spit-take was "Her car probably has an "I SO blogged this before you" bumper sticker on it."

It doesn’t, but I think I might need to order one.  Anyone else want one?  It’s probably cheaper if we do a bulk order.

It is true that sometimes I don’t have the energy for real life conversations on topics that I’ve blogged heavily about.  I want to say "look, read these three posts, and then we’ll talk."  I don’t, of course, but it’s tempting.

(By the way, is it supposed to take Technorati four days to find a new link?)

I went back through the blog tonight looking for my favorite posts of the year, but had trouble deciding among them.  I liked a lot of them, but almost all of them I’d write somewhat differently if I were writing them today.

Instead, I decided to pick a few favorite themes that I returned to again and again. One of the things that I really like about this medium is the ability to develop thoughts more fully and to have true dialogue with commenters and other bloggers. Thus, these collections of posts are better than any one on its own.

Gender and domesticity

• Vacuuming
• Your mommy hates housework and your daddy hates housework
• Division of Labor
• Marriage and compromise
• The domestic glass ceiling
• Cleanliness is next to…

Race and the school decision

• What we learn at school
• The call of the surburbs
• TBR: The Failures of Integration
• Segregation and Self-Reflection
• TBR: Shame of the Nation

Gender differences in children

• Boys and Girls
• TBR: As Nature Made Him
• It’s A Boy!

Class and Privilege

• One month on the Thrifty Food Plan (and related posts)
• Review: Unequal Childhoods
• Entitlement
• Class in America
• Rich?  Who me?
• The privilege of choice

The Julie/Julia Project was the first blog I ever read, back when I didn’t really know what a blog was.  I think someone posted a link to it on one of my email lists, several months into the project, and I read a few posts and was hooked.  In it, Julie Powell documented her attempt to cook every single recipe in Volume 1 of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the course of a year.  She wrote about the dishes that turned out great and the dishes that she tortured her friends with, the days when she was interviewed on television and the days when she didn’t get home from work until 8 pm and had to start cooking a dish that takes at least 3 hours to cook.

So, I really wanted to like Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen.  But I didn’t.  It wasn’t as funny as the blog, didn’t have the detailed information about the food and, of course, didn’t have the element of uncertainty that was in the blog.  By the very fact that I was holding the book in my hand, I knew that Julie finished the project, got a nice book contract, and was even able to quit her crappy government job.

Maybe the book would be more compelling to someone who hadn’t read the blog and so hadn’t heard many of the most interesting stories already.  But I’m not sure.  One of the recurring themes in both the blog and the book is the crappy little kitchen that Julie had to work in.  In the blog, she mentioned several times that it’s so small that she had to perch her food processor on top of the trash can.  That’s a wonderful image, bringing the scene to life.  She never uses it in the book.  What happened?

Last week, Julie was quoted in the NY Times as saying that she no longer searches for herself on blogs.  I hope that’s true, because I feel mean for saying negative things about the book when I got so much pleasure from the blog.

In case you were wondering, yes, some of my recent posts did disappear and then come back.  Typepad was down today, and for a while they were showing an old backup of all the blogs.  (If you have a Typepad blog and the new posts haven’t returned, republish your blog.)

The nominees for the Weblog Awards are up (and they’ve also fixed the flash problems that were stopping people from actually voting).

Some of my favorite bloggers have been nominated:

• Geeky Mom, for Best Parenting Blog.  Interestingly, although I feel like read zillions of parenting blogs, I haven’t heard of half of the nominees.
• Bitch, PhD and Feministe for Best Liberal Blog.  (What a dilemma!)
• Pandagon for Best Group Blog
• Talking Points Memo for Best Blog
• Trish Wilson (the Countess), for Best New Blog.

The Weblog awards have a reputation for being slanted toward conservatives (one of the reasons the Koufax awards were started.) So far, that doesn’t seem to be so much the case this year.  Yellow Dog Blog is one of the leading vote getters among Best New Blog, and Kos is leading Best Blog.

Vote early — vote often.  (Seriously, you can vote once every 24 hours per computer, until December 15.)

If you look near the top of the column to the right, you should see a little box that says BlogAds.  Right now, the only thing in it is the link to click if you want to advertise here.  In a week or so, there will be an ad for T’s video editing and transfer service.  (He edits home movies for people and records them to DVDs.  It makes a great holiday present for the grandparents.  If you’re in the DC area, he’ll even come right to your house.)  At some point, someone might even decide to pay me to advertise here.  It’s mostly an experiment at this point — I’m not desperate for the cash, but I’m interested in seeing whether this blog could even cover its costs. 

Since there’s been some controversies related to blogging and advertising, I thought I should lay my policies out for the record.

1)  There was a huge kerfluffle over the summer about an ad that TBS ran on Kos’ blog for The Real Gilligan’s Island.  Several people thought it was sexist and offensive, and complained to Kos about it; he dismissed their concerns in terms that were pretty condescending and obnoxioius.  If you ever see an ad here that ticks you off, please let me know.  I don’t promise I’ll yank it, but I do promise to take your comments seriously.

2)  More recently, Tim Kaine pulled an ad that he had run on Steve Gilliard’s blog after Gilliard portrayed Michael Steele as a minstrel (eg in blackface).  Gilliard went ballistic, and Kos backed him up, arguing that this has a "chilling effect" on bloggers’ self-expression.   I agree with Ezra Klein that they’re delusional if they think politicians (and other advertisers) aren’t going to steer clear of controversy like that.  I promise that I’m never going to censor my posts for fear of scaring advertisers, or say nice things about them because they bought an ad.  Trust me, it costs a lot more than $10 a week to buy me off.

Finally, a question about the visuals.  That right-hand column is getting awfully long, as I add more and more features to it.  Should I switch to a 3-column format, which looks a bit more cluttered, but doesn’t require as much scrolling to see all of the links?  Or are you all reading via bloglines and don’t care?