This is just a quick reference blurb in case people are interested in
some scientific research on the topic of blogs.  The December 2004
edition of Communications of ACM (Vol. 47, Number 12) has the following articles:

• "The Blogosphere" by Andrew Rosenbloom
• "The Structure and Evolution of Blogspace" by Ravi Kumar, Jasmine Novak, Prabhakar Raghavan, and Andrew Tomkins
• "Why We Blog" by Bonnie Nardi, Diane Schiano, Michelle Gumbrecht, and Luke Swartz
• "Semantic Blogging and Decentralized Knowledge Management" by Steve Cayzer
• "How Blogging Software Reshapes The Online Community" by Rebecca Blood
• "Democracy and Filtering" by Cass Sunstein