Josh Sargent, who has been blogging for several months says good bye to the blogosphere. I enjoyed his blog and wish him well. It looks like his wife Beth is blogging on.

Snort!
Redwood Dragon is a dog lover. However, he manages to drum up a bit of sympathy for this poor cat. LoL. I’m a dog person and I’ll be fine when I stop laughing at this poor cat.

Living-Room does a fun follow-up to the enneagram-blogeagram survey he did.
I’m not startled at the results, the vast majority of bloggers are quite individualistic and that makes sense. Blogging is not a mainstream activity, and requires self-starting and self-initiative skills.
Nor am I surprised that all 9 types are covered. I wasn’t surprised there were only 2 type 8’s. We tend to be catalysts, and most groups don’t enjoy or want our personality type around them.
I was a bit surprised to see only 2 type 9’s.
Anyway, thanks to everyone that took part, hopefully we learned some of our strengths and weakness in our communication skills that will help us in real life and on our blogs. I know I learned.

Power Law Distribution
Why do some blogs get more links than others? Clay Shirky does a sociological analysis of the blogosphere.

Though there are more new bloggers and more new readers every day, most of the new readers are adding to the traffic of the top few blogs, while most new blogs are getting below average traffic, a gap that will grow as the weblog world does. It’s not impossible to launch a good new blog and become widely read, but it’s harder than it was last year, and it will be harder still next year.

Big C little c
Owl Among Ruins takes a sociological look at the Church, er, church.

China
A high profile Chinese dissident has been sentenced to life in China after a one day trial. Wang Bingzhang has been challenging the communist government for over 20 years.

China said in December it had arrested Wang in the south of the country - he had disappeared in Vietnam six months earlier.

His is one of the first major political trials to be held since a new party leadership took over in China last year, and the BBC correspondent in Shanghai, Francis Markus, says the sentence is one of the tightest against a dissident in recent years.

He was sent to Canada to study medicine and moved to the States where he published a magazine called China Spring and formed a exiles group called the China Alliance for Democracy.

Philippines
22,000 people have fled the the municipality of Pikit in anticipation of renewed fighting between troops and MILF guerrillas who continute to campaign for independence for the Muslim minority in the south of this mainly Christian country.

The Philippines defence minister says his forces are preparing to attack a stronghold of Muslim separatist guerrillas in the south of the country, in spite of a ceasefire agreement.
The armed forces say hundreds of troops have been deployed to pursue armed kidnappers who have taken refuge in an area frequented by guerrillas of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Leprosy
Canadian medical researchers working with the World Health organization will publish findings today on a disease that is older then the bible.
Leprosy is rare in industrialized countries, but is high in countries like India, Vietnam and Brazil.

An international team led by scientists from Montreal’s McGill University are homing in on a gene that makes certain people susceptible to leprosy, the disfiguring disease triggered by a bacterial infection.

The Canadian team believes that there are also genes that protect people from developing leprosy, but allow them to carry the m. leprae bacteria and pass it on to others.

War Bloggers
Right Wing News held a first annual Warblogging Award. There are 16 categories.
Go have a look…some god-bloggers made the cut.

Europe
Europe has decided that farmers have to label eggs. Yes, for real. King’s Kid links up to a great post egging on the hen-pecking bureaucrats. (blogger archive bug - post Feb 10: 9:30 am)

Minister Bloggers
Ok. Every one of you that is a minister-blogger, head over to looking back…looking forward, and give some encourgement eh?

Looks like Blogdex got spammed again. Discount hotels in 28 states, and several cities? Don’t think so.

It’s all about me! ireneQ takes a look at blogging and asks for help from other bloggers about focus. Meditatio takes a similar approach on a side page of the blog, asking Who do you say I am?

blended perspectives has an interesting set of stats from The Shifted Librarian.
Did you know that 21% of American computer owners have their own website or know a family member that has their own website?
I wonder what the percentages are in other westernized countries?

Grumble-Rant
Shalom has a great grumble on some of the political views in her family, and some bible-thumping nonsense about left-right-sheep-goats. Scroll down to the February 9th entry. Sad, funny and all too true….what fools we mortals be….

Cre8d-design has done it again. DashHouse, is another Canadian blogger who hired this talented New Zealand web designer. Looks great. Cudos Cre8d!

Quotes Blog:

“There are occasions when it is undoubtedly better to incur loss than to make gain.” — Titus Maccius Plautus