LegalXXX asks:

Ok, if:

(1) Politics is like showbusiness for ugly people; and
(2) Showbusiness is like politics for stupid people;

What is blogging?

It’s Quantum politics. Which, of course, has almost nothing to do with Chris’s post, except that after reading his post the thought popped into my head. My brief layman’s understanding includes a few tidbits that apply.

Quanta are the smallest discrete unit. “The smallest amount of a physical quantity that can exist independently, especially a discrete quantity of electromagnetic radiation.

This amount of energy regarded as a unit.” Now in politics, the smallest discrete quantity is a thought in the mind of a single (potential) voter and the blog post reflects that, makes it observable.

Quantum theory has all kinds of neat things to say about the behavior of quanta.

Quantum phenomena have no fixed value until they are observed; a thought in the mind of the blogger has no fixed value until it’s published (and read – if a blogger posts in the forest and no one is there to see it, did he really blog?).

There’s a principle, occasionally almost occult in significance, that once two quanta have interacted, a permanent bond is created; trackbacks, pingbacks, comments and emails tie blogs together in a similar way and even beyond that once the idea spills out one place, it bounces around from place to place connecting more and more ideas.

A point often tied to quantum theory and chaos theory is the exponential growth from a tiny event, the common metaphor being a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil causing a tornado in Kansas; or one guy with Microsoft Word and a copy of a memo in 12 hours turning into a storm of a different sort at CBS headquarters?

Just thoughts. I just wonder how much of what is theorized about the quantum nature of energy and matter can be instructive in looking at politics and behavior.