When you live in the center of the universe, variously defined as New York, Washington, or some place in California, I guess you have the luxury of being born with all the knowledge that you will ever need. Those of us on the edge of civilization need to make certain that we read only what has been approved by the editors from more civilized areas which are home to the main stream media. At least that seems to be the between the lines opinion of Joseph Rago, assistant editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal, in an article, "The Blog Mob," that he wrote in today's WSJ. The article certainly isn't worth going out and buying the paper to read. It's and elitist article written by someone who has probably never gotten his hands dirty. I'm sure we'll be reading about it, since it is an inflammatory piece. I have posted a detailed reply to the article at my View from the Mountain site.

In areas that aren't covered by the main stream media, blogs and local websites provide a tremendous amount of information that fills in the gaps in our world. If you move into an area like the Southern Outer Banks, a blog with a local flavor can answer a lot of questions about the area. It is pretty easy to see if your opinion of the world syncs up with the blogger. If it does, you will probably like the same things. Actually the things which Rago went after don't even need defending. They survive because they fill a need and people use them. If no one read blogs, no one would bother writing.

The good news is that even though this was our "cold" day of the week, I think temperatures got into the mid-fifties so it wasn't too hard to take. I had my office window open until about 3:30 pm so I would rate the day as very acceptable especially since I seem to be recovering from my blogging injury.

I have posted an online album of some recent photographs of the Southern Outer Banks area. These are some of my current favorites. The pictures are located at my Picasa Web Albums site. The Picasa Web Albums site does a very nice slide show.