A Spike In Traffic

I've been reading a lot of popular blogs lately and all of them have noticed a spike in traffic. Instapundit had 200,000 hits the other day. Donald Sensing and Andrew Sullivan each noted a big increase in traffic. Now, I'm not even remotely close to that level, but my meter has been getting 4-5 hits each time I update something, which is more than I'm used to. So, first, thanks! But second, and more interestingly, people seem to reach out to blogs during certain times....

Blogs blew up after 9/11. Absolutely exploded in popularity - especially political blogs. This is when I started reading blogs. I couldn't get what I wanted from ordinary news coverage, I started reading foreign policy magazines and blogs, all of it trying to make sense of a world that all of a sudden felt a lot more menacing and troublesome and frankly, scary. Blogging became both a way of getting information, but also connecting to people, reading there thoughts and opinions, to help shape my own.

Now, a sudden increase in blogging as a result of the prison photos and Nick Berg. What to make of this? One, people are looking for answers again, because of the wariness about how we feel about the actions of our own army and the actions of our sworn enemy. It's freaking scary, folks, and we're all just trying to figure out what the hell is going on, why it is, and what to do about it. Plus, it's summer vacation.