Mathematical and Astronomical Underpinnings of the Blogosphere

- 2006.12.14

Everyone knows that the latest buzzword in the blogosphere is, of course, blogosphere.

Just what exactly is the blogosphere?

Well, in the interests of exploiting what little we know about spherical trigonometry and trendsetting in the Web Ex-Post 1.0 world, the Lite Side presents

Mathematical and Astronomical Underpinnings of the Blogosphere

Radius of the Blogosphere: This is the distance between your blog and the mainstream media. The more likely you are to be described as a "right-wing wingnut" (see "clockwise") or a "liberal nutjob" (see "counterclockwise"), the greater your Blogospheric Radius.

Surface Area of the Blogosphere: A superficial skimming of the blogosphere, only looking at the blogs that have enough hits to make money. This, of course, misses the depths to which the blogosphere can sink. Proportional to the Blogospheric Radius squared.

Volume of the Blogosphere: The total amount of cubic meters required to hold the hot air generated by bloggers reading their blogs silently to themselves while mouthing the words. Grows exponentially with time. And gets hotter with time, defying the law of entropy. Proportional to the Blogospheric Radius cubed.

Stereagian: The so-called Solidarity Angle, or the fraction of the blogosphere aligned in your direction, but not necessarily at the same Blogospheric Radius.

Inverse-Square Law of the Blogosphere: The importance that readers will assign your blog writing is inversely proportional to your Blogospheric Radius squared. That means if you are twice the wingnut of the next guy, people will only take you 1/4 as seriously.

Clockwise Rotation of the Blogosphere: When the majority of blogs tend to spin things to the right, the blogosphere is said to undergo a Right Wing Rotational Transformation.

Counterclockwise Rotation of the Blogosphere: When the majority of blogs tend to spin things to the left, the blogosphere is said to undergo a Left Wing Rotational Transformation.

Oblateness: During fast breaking news or a national crisis, the blogosphere can expand in the middle at expense of the outer rim. This creates oblateness as blogs endlessly spin in circles around the same talking points.

Flash Blogged: When it seems like every blog has to comment on the issue of the day, even when the site isn't even directly related to the topic being discussed (Do you see the irony here? Do you? I hope you do!), then all the little blogs merge their little spheres into the Big Blogosphere and, eventually, the blogosphere emits a signal which can be picked up by the Mainstream Media.

Deflating the Blogosphere: This occurs when a widely reported news story turns out to be, how shall we say, totally bogus.

Expansion Theory of the Blogosphere: The blogosphere will expand until every person on the planet has a blog. Then the blogosphere will either keep expanding, with everyone adopting multiple blogs, or the number of blogs will contract, each being absorbed into others, until nothing is left but the Huffington. Experts are divided as to which outcome is more likely. Some experts are advocates of the steady-state theory, in which attrition from dying bloggers is precisely offset by growth by noobs. Recent research shows that the blogosphere is growing at an accelerating rate, in which eventually everyone will do nothing except create blogs with no posts.

Illusion of the Central Blog: This is the commonly held misconception that your blog is the center of the blogosphere. However, the view is the same from everyone else's blog, making your blog no more or no less (well, maybe less) important than the next guy's. Or gal's.

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