Blogging's dirty secrets

Technology journalist Frank Catalano is shutting down his Random Bytes blog after a year. Why? The answers lie in what he calls "two dirty little secrets of blogging": it takes an awful lot of time, and odds are very few people are reading:

Sure, blogging is a new publishing mechanism (sort of). But it has more in common with wanna-bes who self-publish deathless prose through vanity presses, or pre-teens who pour their hearts out into diaries with flimsy locks, or little old ladies who write poetry with quill pens to read to their cats and store in the sock drawer, than with actual, grab-your-audience-by-the-hair (or other body parts) and get 'em to think writing.

Writing is not really writing without third-party validation and an audience. Validation comes in the form of filters. Editors who want to take a risk with your stuff in their publication. Publishers who are willing to pay you for it. Essentially, people who think it's worth their reputation and pocketbook to have others hear what you have to say.

As to the need for an audience, a writer without an audience is like the Zen tree falling in the forest. The tree may make no sound if no one is around to hear it. A writer makes no point if no one cares to read it. ...

In most cases, blogging is nothing more than a very public form of self-important self-abuse.

With this gun, I thee ...

I usually leave the world of baseball to my colleague, Mike Thompson, but I couldn't resist this item:

Giving a gun to a woman who's expecting an engagement ring instead may not be the best idea in the world. But Mariners pitcher Aaron Looper lived to tell the tale.

It's high-grade tap water

BBC News reveals the shocking -- just shocking! -- secret source of Dasani bottled water: It comes out of the tap. But, the company hastens to add, it undergoes a "highly sophisticated purification process" that makes it "pure" and "still," like the label says.

I guess it's the service that we're paying for.

Business fights back

The backlash against the backlash against outsourcing is heating up, the Wall Street Journal reports. About 200 trade groups have formed the Coalition for Economic Growth and American Jobs to fight federal legislation that would curtail offshoring by government contractors and limit visas for foreign-born tech workers.