On blogging.

"Everyone should have a blog. It's the most democratic thing ever."

I liked Butterworth's distinction between "the pornography of opinion" on blogs and the "eroticism of fact" of good writing. (In that vein, I suppose GP teaches you how to be seductive.)

But you might think, as Karl Marx has thought, c’est magnifique, mais c’est ne pas la guerre. Yes, writing essays about world issues does not eventually solve them; but before you do anything, talking about, in the spirit of open debate, tends to minimize risk of stupid mistakes.

(One should not, however, dignify "flaming" with the label of "open debate".)