Are you a linker or a thinker?

That's the question that Aaron Haspel asks at God of the Machine.

Aaron argues for thinkers, "Now we non-portal types don't rightly cotton to this. I can't speak for Cowen, but I read the blogs I do precisely because they offer the author, and the author alone; "too much," Steven Den Beste possibly excepted, is never enough. Blogs are amusing because they are personal. The "cream" of a blog always means more to the regular reader, who knows the author's foibles and obsessions, than the skimmer who happens by only for that. By Cowen's logic book-readers would restrict themselves to anthologies, and music-listeners to greatest hits. Cowen himself writes an entertaining blog where he ignores his own advice. "

Bloggers do seem to enjoy ruminating on blogging, and this blogger is no exception. I'm still fairly new to blogging, but have made a bit of a commitment, at least to myself, to post something everyday, Monday to Friday, unless I'm out of town. I hope that my blog is more of a thinking blog than a portal blog, but I do find that I may not have something to say every day, that even interests me, much less a wider audience. Links can be a way to share my interests and promote bloggers I respect and enjoy. Nothing wrong with an "Elsewhere" posting, but not a daily dose of elsewhere and nothing but. At the end of the day, I blog to share my interests, my thoughts, and perhaps a bit of myself. Generating hits is a goal, but not an end in itself.

Usually it is another blogger's post that gets me to thinking on a subject. The result, as in this case, is to join the party and chime in with my thoughts on the subject. Personally I don't read portal blogs very much. When I make my daily round of blogs, I look for opinions. Whether it be culture or politics I want to gain some insight not just into what the author thinks, but why he thinks it.

And now, Rocky, some bad poetry.

Some days I link,
some days I think.
Even when I think I link.
And so I think,
then link...
Then think some more.

Mahalo

[Update: George Wallace comments]