The potential costs of blogging

John Dowdell talks about
the potential costs of blogging.  I'm finding this discussion particularly timely,
as I'm following an internal discussion alias email thread about blogging at
MS. Me, I'm not likely to blog about anything controversial because, well frankly,
I'm not privy to much. But I do wonder on occasion "Should I blog about this?" 
Like my posts about my Treo, for example.  There's a hard-to-see edge between
okay, and not okay, and it's hard to see because it changes based on context.

John also quotes Andrew Sullivan: "Blogging is, indeed, a high-wire act.
Looking back, I write about a quarter of a million words a year. The notion that I
will not write something dumb, offensive or simply foolish from time to time is absurd.
Of course I will. Writing is about being human. And blogging is perhaps one of the
least protected, most human forms of writing we have yet discovered. It's like speaking
on air, live. Yes, bloggers should take criticism. But they should be judged on the
totality of their work, not their occasional screw-ups."

May we all be judged by the entirety of our words.