Here's Principal Skinner, channeling McLuhan: "To be honest, I'm surprised and saddened. Eeh -- no, not saddened -- what's the word? Ah, yes, delighted!"

The sudden outpouring of inside details in books about the Bush administration is all the more remarkable because of the administration's previous success at controlling the flow of information to the press about its workings. It is a phenomenon that is creating an unusual reversal in which books -- the musty vessels traditionally used to convey patient reflection into the archives -- are superceding newspapers as the first draft of history, leaving the press corps to cover the books themselves as news.

Books offer greater prestige or more favorable context. Convention accords hardbound volumes a greater authority than even the most meticulously prepared newspaper or magazine articles. And changes in the media landscape enable the contents of a book to reverberate widely and persistently, even if no one reads it.

Your weblog is just another cog in the machine. If LiveJournal and Blogger are the coal mines and steel mills of the 21st century, then what is MemeStreams? The IMI logo is ambiguous, but it's clearly polluting the atmosphere.

Tina's mom: "I love your weblog!"

Why Books Are the Hot Medium