Ben Sullivan is a keen observer of office sociology. He e-mails: “Have you noticed, the nomenclature of Gulf War 2 is starting to emerge. Where GW1 had ‘Mother of all,’ and ‘sorties,’ in GW2 ‘Shock and awe,’ and ‘Coalition of the Willing’ are early favorites. As in, ‘I’m putting together a Coalition of the Willing for lunch today’ or ‘Mike’s Powerpoint presentation left us in Shock & Awe.'”

Equipped with big screen CNN, laptop and Wifi, Glenn Reyonds indulges in some barstool punditry.

Andrew Odlyzko: “Back in 1850, spending on telecommunications (primarily the postal service, with a pinch of the electric telegraph thrown in) in the U. S. was about 0.2 percent of the gross domestic product. By 2000, that had grown to perhaps 4 percent (including the traditional voice telephony, Internet, cellular, and parts of the postal system). Thus over the last 150 years, telecom spending has been growing about 2 percent per year faster than the economy as a whole. That is a nice growth rate, but it is too moderate for the New Economy expectations.”

And anti-war friend in London reads his Rabbi’s earnest plea for peace and e-mails that it “raised in me the frequent suspicion I… and almost everybody else I like and spend my life with, are taking a sort of humanitarian free ride ‘ playing the folk songs and feeling moved at the modern art exhibitions, and secretly glad that the Donald Rumsfelds out there are willing (eager?) to take the responsibility on themselves and kill whoever needs to be killed for our safety and everyday luxuries.”

Jeff Chan: “Unlike Amazon, eBay is not an innovative company. Amazon has constantly improved the shopping experience by introducing useful features like collaborative filtering, personalization, book browsing, and web services. eBay, on the other hand, appears to be coasting on its monopoly position, and not too smoothly either. The reputation system is not robust. There is no scaling of ratings by dollar amount of transactions nor any use of network flow algorithms, or even a two-level system that Amazon uses to rate reviews.”

Rick Bruner offers a cogent summation of the reasons Bush is right on Iraq.

A few months ago, folks worried that Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit blog had peaked. They shrugged off suggestions that the dip in traffic might be due to the holiday funk most sites experience.

Yesterday, Reynolds had , nearly triple what he was averaging in December. He’s on track to [url=http://www.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=stats&site=s11instapundit&report=33]double December’s visitor count.

The stampede of visitors is obviously fueled by the pending war with Iraq. But will peace (next week or next month we hope) erode Instapundit’s traffic?

My bet is no. Although Instapundit has been covered in dozens of general interest print and online articles, most people outside the blogosphere still haven’t heard of him. (None of my local friends remember hearing about the Knoxville blogging avatar, even though I mention him once a week.)

There’s lots of room to grow, both for Reynolds and other bloggers. I remember talking to some honcho at CNN.com in 1998, who explained that CNN.com traffic always hit new highs during big news events and then held that new level until more news came along to boost the site further. Other successful online publishers report the same ratchet effect.

To see this from another angle, Reynolds’ traffic seemed huge when he did 640,000 page views last June. Now, Instapundit is on track to do that number on a good day sometime this year.

This post from September 2002 offers a theory about some of the unique mechanics, beyond sharp thinking and swift writing, of blog traffic growth.

Living by the “own the niche and link like a banshee” rule, a slew of blogs — ranging from BoingBoing to Obscure Store to ScienceBlog to Gawker to Blogcritics — are riding the same sharp steady growth curve.

And, unlike traditional media like NYtimes.com and CNN.com and ersatz blogs like Always On, they are doing it part-time and/or with almost no overhead.

In reply to my critique of his business plan, former magazine editor and new blog entrepreneur Tony Perkins lashes back: “AO now has over 10,000 registered members, and we have only been up for a little more than a month.”

“You didn’t like my interview with sony’s idei? well, over 40,000 people did, and so did dozens of media outlets and blog sites around the world.”

“you think nick denton’s opinion counts? well, it’s nice that you put your faith in cowards. i used to hang out with that guy when he was a nobody, he then called me ‘unimpressive’ years later on his blog, then refuses to respond to my emails.”

(Yep, I do think Denton’s opinion counts. He’s one of the smartest people I know.)

Perkins continued: “i billed over $65,000 in my first month, against less than half of that much in expenses, so please don’t lose any sleep worrying about my business plan.”

“finally, if you don’t like AO v.5 (there IS a reason we call it that), wait for v.75 to be out soon, and brace yourself for v1.0 due this summer before you get too bitchy.”

Did my critique strike a nerve? Blogging offers a wonderful arena for testing your business idea against 100s or 1000s of other astute (and/or passionate) minds. I get the impression that Tony, apparently better at boasting and bashing than listening and learning, isn’t yet fully acclimated to blogdom’s give and take.

Tony, if you can take a break from interviewing some prospective advertiser, I’ve got one quick question: why wait to v1.0 to revise your allegiance to pompous and vapid headlines and untimely posts? You can disagree with everything else I’ve said, but please don’t tell me you are proud of these things.

Check out this flatulence at the top of today’s page: “Michael Dell’s 21st Century Vision: AlwaysOn’s Tony Perkins asked Michael Dell to tell us about Dell’s past, future, and present, and how he thinks technology will transform the world in the next ten years.” Posted last Wednesday, the article has been read 2507 times.

Gawker has been running photos of a mock Puma shoe ad that is sexually provacative.

Now Puma has sent Gawker a cease and desist letter. Elsewhere, Puma reps are arguing that a blog is “not a media outlet” and so not protected by the First Amendment. (Regardless of whether blogs are media, I’m sad to hear that someone from Puma thinks only the media that has a right to free speach.)

Gawker is sticking to its story.

James Lileks writes, “The newspaper where I work has one copy of every paper it’s published. One copy. It’s on microfilm, and it’s a fragile medium; half of the rolls are badly scratched, and the older ones are brittle. Most people consult them for the stories, but that’s only half the joy. The real news of the day, as it pertains to the lives of the people who bought the papers, were the ads. When I’m looking at the microfilm and I see an ad I like, I hit PRINT. These are some of the old curious ads, rescued from the dark coils.” (Via the inimitable BoingBoing.)

So on his site, Lileks has posted ads for sanitary cigars, wombat coats, the New All-Electric Freshman Equiphase radio, overalls for “short and fat” farmers, fresh cigarettes, the Whoopee Cap, Norge Rollator Refrigeration, Women’s Nonrationed Winter Boots… the list goes on and on and on.

“The real news of the day, as it pertains to the lives of the people who bought the papers, were the ads.” That’s a beautiful and almost-always-overlooked thought. Ads tell a vital story, narrating and nurturing our material life.

These vacuous banners and buttons we spend our todays avoiding don’t tell a story, they don’t engage. And they won’t last.

If you are buying Blogads, please feel free to upload an image, but please don’t forget to use some words too. Tell a story. Have some fun. And we’ll keep your ad for Lileks’ granddaughter to chuckle over.

(Speaking of telling stories with ads, check out the ad on Blogcritics.org for Half Mast, which is teasing readers with successive text snippets from the novel.)