The LA Times had to explain blogs all over again while reviewing a new anthology of the web's best blog-writing, Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks From the Wild Web. "It's clear that, to come up with these gems, [editor Sarah] Boxer must have combed through thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of blogs." Sounds hellish, but Boxer was the NYT's first "web critic," so perhaps she's used to it. The reviewer has a bit of a problem with the format of this book, however. It is a book, not a blog; as such, it does not include links. This proves to be a problem.

Bloggers typically link to other stories, by way of commenting, informing or complicating their own writing. (As you've guessed, this is where the link from above would have led.) Segments that rely on these links to make sense have been largely purged from these excerpts. "You cannot click on a link in a printed book" Boxer writes, adding: "So no links here, folks." But, stripped of its links, is a blog post really a blog post?

Good question! If a blog falls in a forest and no one is around to read it, does it still make a sound?

If you remove coral from a reef, it's still a piece of coral — but dried out and dusty on your shelf, it's not doing the same work it did when it was feeding on algae and sheltering marine life... but to those who want to see it really do something, to shift in the currents of its natural habitat, there's nothing like adding the blogs here to your RSS feed.

Also: did you know?

Most blogs allow comments — people who read the blog can respond to a post in real-time, right there, and those comments frequently refer to both the original post and the preceding comments. A commenter may leave a link to her own blog, adding a detour to the road map of connected online conversation. [La Times]

In short: blog blog bloggity blog.