Labels.

Now that I've converted to New Blogger, I can add labels to my posts. I could even go back and add labels to old posts. But what's the point? It adds visual clutter. I don't like that. I guess you can click on them and get old posts with the same label to appear... Are people going to do that? I suppose I could go back and add labels to posts that would get the same label as some label I've put on a new post. Like, wouldn't you love to click on the "American Idol" label and see all the old "American Idol" posts? It might be a shameful display!

ADDED: I just realized I could go to the "Edit Posts" page, do a search for a term (such as "American Idol"), then "select all" in the results, and use the pull-down "Label Actions" menu to apply a label to all those old posts. So how many old "American Idol" posts do I have? You can click on the "American Idol" label below to see them, but I'll tell you: 206! I know, some of you are thinking: Where can I click to see the blog minus the "American Idol" posts?

AND: Here's a question for you. Now that I know how to use labels to collect a particular category of posts by searching for a recurrent term, what labels would you like me to create? Remember, it needs to be a particular word, for example, a name. I wonder which individuals I've written about the most, especially the ones I've obsessed over out of proportion to their significance in the current news.

AND: I'm doing some labels for various political characters: Kerry, Obama... It was interesting to see the first opinion I had about Barack Obama:

Now here is a speaker I can stand to listen to. He's modulating his voice and he seems to have the speech memorized, so he doesn't have that awful teleprompter stare. He places some emphasis on personal responsibility....

Obama does a great job delivering the speech, even though the words of the speech are quite banal. There are many references to hope. The speech is blessedly short.

Many references to hope, but actually quite banal...