Housekeeping Notes -- May 2007

The blog is two months old today. I continue to get random visits from around the globe, amusingly enough often following the foreign visitor’s search for information on Foley catheters which I once mentioned in a piece about House MD. There must be some cosmic symbolism to that. Thanks to links from such sites as Reason’s Hit & Run, memeorandum and Unqualified Offerings (to name but a few) the site has moved from invisible to merely obscure.

There have been many big stories I have, for various reasons, not written about, and I continue to intersperse the political and current events topics with human interest stories, odd news, movie reviews and assorted nonsense, occasionally of a somewhat personal nature. Purely political blogs probably gain more credibility more rapidly, but if life is not a business (and it isn’t) neither is it a campaign. Besides, not even my ego is yet so vast as to presume I have something worth saying about every breaking story.

The freedom to write whatever one wants whenever one wants is both addictive and dangerous. I don’t believe that whatever one posts on the internet is really preserved for all time (witness the loss of my earlier writing at Inactivist and many extensive comments at Left2Right), but there is little doubt future historians will have a field day poring over the various eccentricities of our contemporary computer assisted logorrhea. If there is one thing bloggers suffer from it is the absence of sane, objective editing. Not only would it be an advantage to have some other eyes proofread for composition and other mechanical errors, it would be lovely to have someone one trusted who could say “Fergawdsakes, Ridgely, you can’t seriously intend to publish that, can you?” before hitting the Post key. On the other hand, the blogger is free to ignore or override his inner editor as the professional journalist is not free to override the real version.

I’m basically a wordsmith, or at least fancy myself as such, so I’ve tended to keep the blog text oriented, using pictures sparingly. For the time being, I am refraining from the popular trend of posting video clips on the blog for the same reason, although I will link to such clips as appropriate. I have a Quine-like preference for desert landscapes, not only in my ontology but in my web design, so I intend to retain the sparsely furnished look here. I am, however, modifying the current page to include two weeks of postings, as I have found stories remain relevant at least that long and people do not like searching back pages and archives any more than necessary.

My thanks to those slowly growing numbers of you who have supported this blog with your readership. Questions and comments are, as always, most welcome.

-- DAR

* * * * * * * * * *

Retired Header ‘Quotes’:

March 2007 – “Pay no attention to that man behind the veil!” – the Wizard of Rawls
April 2007 – “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one may still post on the internet.” – Ludwig Blogenstein