12/25/2001 7:56PM
HOT STUFF: Tim Blair reports on fires raging in the Sidney, AU area. In these times, any sort of disaster has to get a second look, especially these blazes, many of which authorities say were set by arsonists on Christmas Day. Arson is a quintessential asymmetric attack: a few matches can tie up thousands of firefighters, cause millions or billions in damage, raise insurance rates by millions more, and the firebugs are very hard to catch.
Is this familiar to you?
No reason it should be, I suppose. I suspect that at the time it appeared, it was noted by a vast readership of one – me.
It’s the first post that ever appeared on Daily Pundit, which I started on Christmas Day of 2001. As you may note, the subject is one that has become a major and continuing theme: the depredations of the barbarian savages who make up a significant segment of the Muslim faith/ideology.
So today marks Daily Pundit’s tenth anniversary. It’s been a hell of a ride. I’m looking forward to another hundred years of it, and hope you are, too. I just wonder how I’ll be delivering the free ice cream a century from now, though.
Congrats and happy blogiversary, Bill.
But the date presents me with a conundrum. I’d planned on giving you an extra special present, one that would leave you puking up your spleen. But it’s Christmas Day, and doing such a extra special thing on such an extra special day would be gauche. (Not by my own standards, of course, but in the eyes of many. And we all know what a slave I am to the opinion of the mob.)
The problem is, I’m going to be out all tomorrow and extremely busy the rest of the week. What to do, what to do…
Congrats, Bill!
And today Melbourne was hit by a heavy hailstorm and a mini-tornado or two. Coincidence?
Merry Christmas Bill. Few are chosen. Fewer still rise to the challenge.
Happy Blogiversary Bill and many, many more to come (we hope)!
Btw did they ever identify those Australian arsonists? We haven’t heard about wildfires there lately either. I wonder when they stopped? Hmmm.
…and even fewer are still up ‘n at it a decade on -
Persistence pays, it just takes a really long time to start cashing the checks, right?…
A very Happy Bloggaversary, indeed, as well as a Happy Christmas and a Very Merry New Year to come, hopefully.
Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » HAPPY 10TH ANNIVERSARY to Bill Quick’s DailyPundit. How many of us blogging back in 2001 thought we…
Congratulations on the tenth! I feel lucky to have stumbled across DP however many years ago…
I appreciate what you do. May you have many years more.
I too feel lucky and blessed to have come across Daily Pundit several years ago, and I now read your postings first thing every day, and several times during each day. Here’s hoping you have several additional decades…
Congrats on the Bloggiversary. I came here on link from Dawson back in early 2002 and been a regular reader since. You must be doing something right. Cheers!
Dawson was the first “big” blogger to link me back then….
Congrats, Bill! I’ve been reading you a long time, though probably not from the very beginning since I think I followed a link from Insty to get here. Been coming around daily since then.
Hearty belated congratulations, Bill; I was kind of busy yesterday with the kids and all. In any event, I look forward to celebrating the end of decade #2 in 2021.
Oh, the heady days of 2002. My regular reading list (besides Daily Pundit, found about mid year):
Instapundit (of course)
USS Clueless
Andrew Sullivan (before Andy lost his mind)
Free Republic (still pretty good in 2002 despite the creationists, anti-libertarians, and anti-free-traders, and before the better writers such as Iowahawk went on to found their own sites)
Eject! Eject! Eject! (Started in late 2002, if I recall correctly)
Armed and Dangerous (Eric Raymond)
Mark Steyn (wherever I could find him)
SatireWire
DrudgeReport (naturally)
… and probably some others if my memory were tickled. All discovered in a span of only a year or so. Finding a wide variety of interesting writers caused my ten magazine subscriptions to dwindle down to one in only a year or so, and weaned me from the local liberal rag newspaper (Nashville Tennessean) permanently.
There were also columns by Thomas Sowell, Jonah Goldberg, Charles Krauthammer, Victor Davis Hanson, and plenty of others, some of which I knew about but had never been able to read on a regular basis. The sites above also ensured that I didn’t miss their really good stuff.
I didn’t always agree with the columnists and the various sites I read, but wow – finally some decent new writing just about every day to sink my teeth into. Heady times indeed.
Thanks, Bill, for being one of the prime movers in that tectonic shift.
Happy Blogoversary!
I take a couple of days off, and somebody important has an anniversary! Congratulations, and all that.
Usually when an Old School blogger has one of these, I check my blog list to see when he was added. That doesn’t work here. I built the list early in 2002 (the file’s creation date is lost with past computers), and Daily Pundit was one of the original occupants, hence no “add date.”
FWIW, some of the other “no add date” blogs in my list:
Instapundit (naturally!)
Rantburg
Bjøern Stærk (still around but not blogging much)
Little Green Footballs (pre-”Madness of King Charles” version)
Pejman Yousefzadeh
Sargent Stryker
Steven Den Beste / USS Clueless
Jeff Jarvis
Kathy Kinsley
Tim Blair
Iain Murray
Damian Penny
Ira Stoll’s “Smarter Times”
Matt Welch / L.A. Examiner
Joanne Jacobs
Mickey Kaus
Man Without Qualities (silent since 2007)
John Weidner / Random Jottings
Andrea Harris (four… or was it five blogs ago!)
Rand Simburg
Laurence Simon
Libertarian Samizdata
More Than Zero (first home of “Mindles H. Dreck”)
What a long, strange trip it’s been!
Yeah, strange as it seems, there was a time when you could fit the blogosphere into a holiday banquet room. I should ransack my files and dig up the pics from some of the early blog get-togethers I went to.
Pingback: Great News! Will Warren Collection Available! | Daily Pundit