From an interview with Clive Thompson:

Martha Henry:...Does Collision Detection help alleviate your frustration about not having the time to write about things that you find cool and interesting?

Clive Thompson: Yes, it does. I've seen so many writers get frozen because they become attracted to a story and they can't move on until they get that story out there. Either it's too weird, or it's too kooky, or the time peg is off, whatever. Nobody wants to take it. They will lose months of work, pitching and repitching and repitching.

That happened to me when I first started writing. But the blog helps me get past that. So now when I get an idea about something as I'm walking down the street, I think, "Okay, is The New York Times Magazine going to want that? No. Wired? No. Wired News? No. Details? No. Discover? No. New Scientist? No." And I think, "Okay, then I'm going to blog that." Five minutes of writing. Four hundred words. It gets it out there and it's out of my system. And it feels wonderful!

I liked that; I'm going to use this space in that way more frequently. But as I was wrapping up my earlier post about Google, I thought: You know, I should clean this up, make the argument stronger, and put it somewhere. Its shiny new version will appear on Design Observer probably on Sunday.
My blog: where things stick first.