Compare and contrast:

Howard Dean writes his own blog entries,...

While the current Administration drives those who email the President through hoops (NYT Reg. req.)...

Who is more user friendly?

Even Sasha can help spread the word...

That's near Ifghanistan, right?

"According to the script..."

...well, I'm not sure exactly what it's like....

As a relative newbie to the blogosphere (under a year), I think I "get" the concept of finding (or at least trying to find) one's voice, one's niche, one's rhythm in this medium. I studied hard from my A-List (bottom left column) and the rest of the Top n-hundred on BlogStreet, DayPop, or wherever for what seemed months before I had the guts to get my first web site up and running, despite the fact I already had old posts and content to transfer into the archives.

And that one still doesn't run on any blog software....yet... (am I more "core" for it all? So much to do, so little time).

I see the diversity in approach and also the development of well-known Blog Brands (tm) that beget imitation -- similar to novelists riffing off of their Hemingway or Faulkner, poets their Frost or Whitman. And I realize all it takes is time and effort - learning your instrument, refining your foul shot: there are scads of analogies....

So what is the equivalent to guest-blogging by a presidential candidate? When the blog owner is actually gone for a stretch? And you've not blogged extensively to date?

Is it like having a house party, where you show up to host in the later stages: everyone knows each other, people are flirting in the corners, loose as geese....and you turn off the dance music to say "Hello, it's nice to be here"?

Is it like running a professional meeting out of your own discipline: you don't know the history and your every word makes it obvious to those who wish (or think) they run the show that they've got you cornered, despite your good intentions?

Or is it like being substitute teacher, perhaps?

Governor Dean was invited to guest-blog on Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig's blog this week, with mixed reviews about post content, but no doubt that the attempt is news in itself.

The Governor wants to listen and many have partaken in the opportunity: Fair Use, Copyright / Public Domain, Software / Business Patents, Peer 2 Peer File Sharing / Digital Rights Management, et al. may seem niche issues, but for creators and new enterprises they are at the heart of the matter.

This is the heart of the matter of possible futures for our knowledge-based economy.

....How did you treat your substitute teachers, anyway?....

Gotcha....

Political newbies....

Doonesbury's Sunday strip....