The Funny Farm
Where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats...
Adventures of a Basic Force For Good in Our TimeTM
Humpday, 1 Sweltring (Wedmath) 2005
We've been a little busy behind the scenes with a new responsibility - we're administering the Big Brass Alliance community webpage over at the Truth Laid Bear. So far, we have almost 300 of the more than 750 online sites entered into the community, and we have submitted most of the rest of them that we could find already existing within the ecosystem.
We've also been able to respond to an inquiry by one William Beutler, writing the Blogometer for the National Journal Hotline*, about the origins and reasons for the Big Brass Alliance.
Here's his request:
Hi there, I write the Blogometer for the National Journal's Hotline, and according to TTLB, you're the administrator of the Big Brass Alliance community. I'll be writing about the whole blogger community/badge phenomenon in the near future, and I'll be including BBA. I've seen the BBA page, and understand the DSM origins, but I was wondering if you could give me a little bit more informative back story on how the community came to be, who started it (if not you) etc. If there's a better person to ask, let me know, and if there's anything you don't want me to quote you on, just let me know that, too. Cheers, |
And here's my response:
Hi Bill! Yes, I am administering the Big Brass Alliance (BBA) community over at the Truth Laid Bear (TTLB). I saw the communities, asked NZBear if we could join, and I'm currently trying to find out how many of the 750+ (and growing) members of the alliance are part of the TTLB ecosystem, yet didn't get picked up by the automagic machinations available to me as community administrator. To the TTLB crew's credit, their software picked up almost 300 of our sites, and it should be relatively easy (now that I've gotten the lion's share of the analysis taken care of) to get most of the rest into the database. Only a few sites were added in error and quite a few of those not added aren't in the ecosystem in the first place. Check out the numbers again in a week or so. I'm probably not the best person to talk about the origins of the group. I believe that I heard about this from Shakespeare's Sister (ShakeSis) (http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/) - you can email her at shakespeares_sister@comcast.net. But, for my part, I think that the reason we all got together so quickly was that we all believed that the Downing Street minutes were being suppressed by the media in the Unites States. The After Downing Street group (http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/) asked the blogsphere to support its' campaign for a formal investigation into the activities of the current administration, specifically the president, in connection with the war in Iraq. We have answered that call. I wish I had more to tell you. The answers are all in the pages of the After Downing Street, Big Brass Alliance, and Big Brass Blog websites. I was hoping to maybe put a cartoon in once in a while, but they already have more than enough content to keep most anyone's mental faculties occupied. And of course ShakeSis is much closer to the middle of it all and can probably tell many more poignant tales than I. Thanks for the opportunity to represent my community. Good luck with the story - let me know how it comes out. You can quote me as long as you keep it in context. Regards, (: Tom :) |
We haven't had time for much else - we promised one of our friends that we were going to go to Caribana with them, and so we've been busy getting our ducks in a row in anticipation of a wondrous weekend in the Big Smoke.
Random guerrilla blogging may take place at the funny Farm from various locations in the North American midwest over the weekend. Beware Romulans bearing gifts!
* - we haven't linked to the actual hotline itself because it seems to be one of those sites that require remunerative outlay in order to peruse. This is the page that tells you how much incredible value you get by subscribing to their service.
Posted by (: Tom :) at July 28, 2005 11:07 PM