Bobby from the sadly defunct (although via its comments section, finding a new role as a paradise for discount Viagra salesmen) PolitX has a fairly new blog called Blast!. Worth a read.

Other interesting new-ish people for you to click on the right hand side of the blog are Damian Counsell, whose Pootergeek blog has a rubbish name, and who looks like Dr Evil, but is well worth reading, and grumpy right-wing American John Cole. Based on the well-known principle of always balancing one’s Coles, I’ve also added a link to Famous Middle East Expert (TM) Juan Cole. Finally, with a horrible template, a name-pun almost as bad as Ed Thomas’s, and a lot of WoT extremism (with which I disagree, but which is well-expressed and very un-gung-ho), comes Eric the Unread.

I’d also like to pelt Matt Yglesias with rotten tomatoes for disabling his comments section. And for being younger than me, more respected as a writer, and having a better job. I bet I can outdrink him, though.

Finally, it seems one can’t even give Gmail addresses away these days. But I’m going to try – so let me know if you want one.