If the LiveJournal and Xanga and numerous other journaling sites are the digital devolution of the ancient diary which writers and young girls the world over used to keep under their pillows at night, then what are weblogs descended from? Apparently, blogs devolve from the once common commonplace. Only now, our family doesn’t have to wait until we’re dead to come leafing through our thoughts on various topics. Naturally, the commonplace only worked well if you chose good categories. If you were uncomfortable with categorizing data, you could, like some people, use an alphabetical index or, like others, enter notes by date. A few bloggers picked up on this long before me, but I thought it was interesting enough to file.