Where are they now? A few blogs and bloggers mentioned in the last year:

• “Dear God” – A nondenominational website where desperate or struggling people could post often disturbing ‘letters to God’ with a prayer and a description of their travails. Readers offer words of hope and encouragement. “Dear God” was put up for sale just before Thanksgiving.

• “Hal786″ – A blog by a Muslim girl, one of several Muslim children bloggers mentioned on the site. ‘Hal’ most recently blogged about her hopes for the Copenhagen climate change conference. “I can’t wait to see what’s going to be done by the world leaders to help save our planet!”

• “malekat_el7oriya” – A blog by a Muslim teen girl who was most recently blogging about racial profiling of men wearing the ghutra and agal (the red and white scarf that men wear on their head and the black band that holds it on).

• “Mahaguru58″ – Zainol Abideen is writing about his own made-up word: ‘Blogodementia.’ “Isn’t it quite absurd to see some of our fellow bloggers resort to abusing the blogosphere…to spread slander and ill will through their blogs and websites on an almost daily basis?”

Mr. Abideen, the ‘pro-tem president’ of the Muslim Bloggers Alliance in Malaysia, first came to attention for “abusing the blogosphere” with his racist rantings against the Royhinga and for his odd takfiring of poor Muslims. He has never retracted his comments nor apologized.

• “The Arabist” – A blogger who proudly wears the title ‘State Department Arabist,’ a term used derisively and that became widespread in Washington DC when the neocons took over under the administration of George W Bush.

The implication is that anyone who takes such interest in the region is inherently suspicious and must have “gone native.”

He also defends the word from leftists who try to conflate it with Orientalism. The Arabist drew attention for his review of the book, “What’s Really Wrong With The Middle East.”

More blog updates later…