Bermudians, like everyone else these days it seems, are becoming bloggers.

No, that's not a new Bermy word for stopping your car in the middle of the street to talk to friends.

Blogs are online diaries that let people share their personal thoughts and interests through words, links and photos. Some blogs are personal, where only the founder comments.

Others are community efforts with lively comments among the members. Others have evolved into semi-news sites, where users pick up information on particular topics and publish it.

There are lots of journalists hanging out at key blogging sites, scouring for information.

As you might expect two main themes on the Bermuda blogs this week are on the revived independence debate and on gay marriage. At PondBlog (www.pondblog.com) Gavin Shorto, a columnist for The Royal Gazette, argues that the Independence debate comes down to an economic issue the "phone bill" as he calls it.

"This time, the debate will centre around whether people feel our present government, which has a reputation for being oblivious to the size of the phone bill, can be trusted to properly manage the economics of independence," he writes.

Meanwhile over at A Limey in Bermuda (www.limeyinbermuda.com), Phillip Wells confesses that he finds it a "struggle to understand the benefits of independence to Bermuda, aside from woolly-minded appeals to national pride".

Noting that Premier Alex Scott said "the [independence train is preparing to leave the station", Wells comments: "Let's debate its destination, by all means. But for Bermuda's sake, I hope we never get there."

Earlier he bemoans the comments by Family Services Minister Patrice Minors, who had spoken out against gay marriages in Bermuda.

"Such an attitude is sad, but not surprising," the Limey writes. "Bermuda is arguably more homophobic than the US, largely a result of the strong fundamentalist Christian beliefs held by many Bermudians."

At Politics.bm (www.politics.bm), Christian Dunleavy, a former United Bermuda Party candidate in the last election, gets his kicks into Scott's independence rally.

Dunleavy has put up the full text of Scott's speech on independence at what he labels "A Mostly Bermudian Blog". Dunleavy rounds out his punditry with the rhetorical question: "What does this mean for the next few years? Well, it means that the PLP are out of gas and ideas and have nothing left to offer the country in the way of improvements of quality of life. So they're appealing to an issue that actually divides, not unites, the community."

Like the Limey, Dunleavy also takes Minors' to task on gay marriage: "One of the things that continually disappoints me in Bermuda is the homophobia and downright bigotry around homosexuality."

Politics.bm gets full marks for a very nicely done site and has links to other Bermuda bloggers. For example, there's Envirotalk (www.envirotalk.org), which seems to be largely a one woman show.

"Losing our special skinks STINKS!" proclaims one article. The main contributor is "Lizardfish", the online name of Lisa Kitson, who is completing a PhD thesis on the ecology of an endangered lizard in Bermuda.

Injured Innocence, a blob by "jenjoyful" (name unknown), is an exuberant site with some nicely done drawings. See it all at www.injured-innocence.com. Nitjan's Blog (nitjanirasu.blogs.com) describes itself as "The Ongoing Adventures Of A Bermy In Pennsylvania".

Wait for it: "Well, I've just finished tonight's Astro Lab in 40 minutes (out of two hours) and am preparing to confuse my Astro Professor quite severely (the class prof., not the lab prof., yes, they're two different people)."

The site is run by "Nitjan", a first-year student at Franklin and Marshall College. "Does anyone actually read this thing? Oh well," he writes.

Other blogs of note are Bermy Adventures (www.bermyadventures.com), a blog by a group calling themselves "Pimp Nation" and Cardboardutopia (www.cardboardutopia.com) by Eric Smith.

Next week I'll discuss how to set up your own blogging. If you can't wait to get in on the action, try politics.bm, which has a good list of online blogging resources to get you started.

If you have any comments send them to Ahmed at editor@offshoreon.com.