1. William Safire asks 'Who was the first blogger?' Then he writes:
In the search for the Grand Originator, bloxicographers should not limit themselves to finding the first to use the Internet. "Blogging", as it will be understood, is broader than "creating a weblog to express a personal opinion and/or to establish an information community." Although the word "blogosphere" was coined in 1999 by Brad L. Graham "as a joke" and re-minted in all seriousness in 2002 by William Quick with his Daily Pundit, we ought to dig more deeply to place blogging in the great scheme of human communication. That means we should reach back in history to find the person who first popularized the idea of influencing the world by using some medium to get across his ideas to large groups.Hmmm. I know each age reinterprets the past in the light of itself, but this broadening would turn Hobbes and Marx and Dale Carnegie into bloggers. Not all that useful.
2. Blogging stress:
[B]loggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.If they're employed to blog, they should try to negotiate some conditions of employment. Other bloggers should know what they need to do. If they don't, they could try speaking to an ordinary human being.
