The The Politburo Diktat is trying to track weblog lineages—who inspired who to start blogging—and as you might guess from the source, right now it is strongly skewed towards wingnuts (who in their right mind would admit to being inspired by Little Green Footballs? <shudder>). Since my readership skews the other way, let's send a bit of lefty information to balance it out.

The questions to answer are:

1. your blogfather, or blogmother, as the case may be. Just one please - the one blog that, more than any other, inspired you to start blogging. Please don’t name Instapundit, unless you are on his blogchildren list. Pharyngula is sort of a virgin birth—it grew out of an old phpwebsite course page that I started sending off in a more personal direction. If I had to pin it down to a single weblog source, though, I'd name Crooked Timber; at least, that's the weblog whose blogroll I plundered first to find interesting new sites. If I'd seen Instapundit then, I might have been discouraged from starting.
2. Include your blog-birth-month, the month that you started blogging, if you can. 06/06/2003 09:01 am.
3. If you are reasonably certain that you have spawned any blog-children, mention them, too. I think I am blog-spawnless. If anyone was inspired to start a weblog by Pharyngula, let me know. Please don't bother asking for child support though—I'm going to deny all paternity, and genetic testing doesn't work in virtual space.

A suggestion: it would make more sense to describe your weblogging family tree in the comments at the Commissar's site. Otherwise, he's going to have to flit all over the place to gather these things.