Free Weblog Service and a Vampire, Too
By David F. Gallagher
August 26, 2002

Blogger.com signed a deal with Brazilian company to have soap stars characters post their own blogs.

Xian wondered some time ago, "Does the Times run a blog article every day now?" From the look of it, the answer is a resounding yes, but on the matter of what kind of article they run... well, consider this one: Brazilian media conglomerate Organizações Globo, partnered with Blogger creators Pyra Labs, began a free weblog service and decided to use it to push their own product by creating weblogs for characters from its soap opera "O Beijo do Vampiro" ("Kiss of the Vampire"). One such character is Boris, "an 800-year-old vampire who wears armor and a horned helmet."

The Times meets the National Enquirer.

The State Quarters
Why are they so ugly? A slide show.
By Carol Vinzant
August 27, 2002

Slate examines the designs of 9 quarters with state-designed seals and finds them lacking: "Most of the designs, usually chosen by a state commission appointed by the governor, are boring, timid, and cluttered—evidence of all that can go wrong when art is created by committee."

Gay Old Times
The New York Times begins printing same-sex wedding announcements.
by Rebecca Mead
September 2, 2002

Regarding the Times' recent decision to report gay unions on its "Weddings" pages, the house of Eustace Tilley files this brief history of the nuptials section, which "[serves] as an unofficial cultural index: once chronicling only the inbreeding of the Wasp aristocracy... the pages have increasingly come to cover the weddings of formerly overlooked demographics, like Jews and blacks, sometimes even showing them marrying each other." Ms. Mead recounts how the paper began publishing small romantic narratives, retelling how the happy couples met cute and grew a relationship, which  "like a Jane Austen novel" end with wedding bells, and ponders how these days, when non-married couples are commonly accepted, nuptials have  become a celebration of individualism, "detached from society's strictures."