My new pal Lisa Williams is a double Dave3 link today. That is not the same as a double-double (Canadians only joke) but recognition of an interest in what people really want from bloging tools and, in an earlier post, a suggestion of the possibility of a principled approach to the content rather than the widgets of blogging. This is good. I may not agree with the principles or want different tools but at least we are having a discussion about an interest. No a-list. No guru. No shit. Just substance.

My use of the world "shit" is, perhaps, my first in this written medium and meant evuncularly, pal-sy. It reflects a joke shared by my univeristy pal's father, my professor, the late Yuri Glasov. He told us - a class of naive Dahousie students in 1983 - of an example of humour in Soviet Russia: Stalin decides to improve bees. He hires the best Soviet philosphers and scientists to study the problem. They report to Stalin and Stalin implements their wonderful ideas. And the bee's combs produce just shit. The class didn't laugh. He just about swallowed his tongue from gagging on the joke.