Happenings in the PJM Wars have been slow lately, and we had been planning to post soon jesting about starting a PJM Death Pool Death Pool, but to our surprise several new postings (about PJM ads) have actually appeared.

Meanwhile, Ann Althouse has not laid aside her wrath. NYM’s author inclines to the opinion that Roger L. Simon would be well advised to send flowers, and apologize to the nice lady for hanging up on her. The role of Ms. Althouse in the Blogosphere is not unlike that of one of the female Olympians in the Homeric epics, and Mr. Simon, at the moment, looks a lot like Odysseus who managed to get more than one of the wrong gods and goddesses annoyed with him, and consequently had a very rough trip home.

Anechoic Room believes that Rick Moran of Rightwing Nuthouse has sold his soul to the forces of darkness. So recognizable is the instantaneous taint of corruption, in AR’s eyes at least, that AR is striking RN from his blogroll, and is telling readers that he henceforward looks upon that blog as dead. AR is consequently (with somewhat hypertrophied rhetoric) accusing PJM of “killing a blog.” Ms. Althouse, with a graceful air of detachment, did manage to link this one.

Riehl World View also takes a poke at the afore-mentioned lackey of the nefarious Si Fan, predicting censorship, and rhetorically disbelieving RWNH’s owner’s statement that he’s gone with PJM even though he could make more from other advertising.

Steve of Hog on Ice promises to be fair:

I’ll try to speak up if they ever do anything right. In its current incarnation, PJM is a dumb idea conceived by the greedy and clueless, but a fair person, while watching a lifeboat sink, will be honest enough to say something when he sees an occupant bailing particularly well.

But then, he immediately proceeds to machine-gun the imaginary life-boat, agreeing with the just-a-bit-exaggerated thesis that PJM has “killed” RWNH, and –reaching even further into fantasyland– asserts that “it killed Instapundit, too.” We’d say ourselves that rumors of Instapundit‘s death are greatly exaggerated.

Jim Hu of Blogs for Industry identifies a geographical mistake by Gateway Pundit, and faults some of PJM links’ coverage of the Dongzhou story, to which he brings special interest and expertise. Interestingly, it seems that somebody at PJM read his criticisms and did effect some corrections.

Sortapundit, speaking from the left, finds the current state of affairs wanting, too:

Based on nothing more than a cursory glance at the site I’m left wondering if I’m missing the point. What are they trying to be, apart from a fairly poor right-leaning facsimile of the Huffington Post? Why should I, the reader, visit a disappointingly dull, soulless blog whose posts are written by someone named Compiled by Pajamas Media Staff in Los Angeles? I can get the same information, presented in a much more entertaining format, on any number of blogs in my favourites list. Hell, I can get this information from a freakin’ newspaper. At least they usually tell me who’s writing the articles. And I get the sports.

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That the OSM, soon PJM, launch proved an anticlimax seems to be established history at this point. As Horace used to say: Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus [the mountain laboured, and a ridiculous mouse was born], but it is still early days.

Sometime about a week ago, we dropped by PJM, and actually found a useful link. We looked around startled. The world was changing, the PJM site, still no thing of beauty, was recognizably becoming actually useful, and we realized with some surprise that a subtle watershed of performance had been reached.

It may be that corporate influence will actually someday impact, and adversely influence, bloggers involved with the PJM project, but get real, guys, the time to start blogging about it is when something of the sort actually happens. Obviously, the corrupting influence of corporate gelt has nothing to do with any perceived deficiencies of format or content to-date, and bloggers who carry on hysterically about PJM, or who wage irrational vendettas (not actually personally having been hung up on by Roger Simon) are merely going to convince the rest of us that they are prone to premature judgements, and –in extreme cases– that they are complete whackjobs.