I currently blog politically/policywise at Obsidian Wings.
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Amygdala will move to an entirely new and far better blog template ASAP, aka RSN, aka incrementally/badly punctuated evolution.
Tagging posts, posts by category, next/previous post indicators, and other post-2003 design innovations are incrementally being tweaked/kludged/melting.
Above email address currently deprecated! Use gary underscore farber at yahoodotcom, pliz! Sanely free of McCarthyite calling anyone a traitor since 2001!
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I've a long record in editorial work in book and magazine publishing, starting 1974, a variety of other work experience, but have been, since 2001, recurringly housebound with insanely painful sporadic and unpredictably variable gout and edema, and in the past, other ailments; the future? The Great Unknown: isn't it for all of us?
I'm currently house/cat-sitting, not on any government aid yet (or mostly ever), often in major chronic pain from gout and edema, which variably can leave me unable to walk, including just standing, but sometimes is better, and is freaking unpredictable at present; I also have major chronic depression and anxiety disorders; I'm currently supported mostly by your blog donations/subscriptions; you can help me. I prefer to spread out the load, and lessen it from the few who have been doing more than their fair share for too long.
Thanks for any understanding and support. I know it's difficult to understand. And things will change. They always change.
I'm sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer, editor, researcher, or proofreader. I'm sometimes available as a fill-in Guest Blogger at mid-to-high-traffic blogs that fit my knowledge set.
If you like my blog, and would like to help me continue to afford food and prescriptions, or simply enjoy my blogging and writing, and would like to support it --
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"The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson
"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule --
and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley
"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss
"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire,
the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise
the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his
expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon
"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify
the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.
They show disrespect for elders and they
love to chatter instead of exercise.
Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They
no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize
their teachers."
-- Socrates
"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook
"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect
disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest
and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the
land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion
"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him
an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages
to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess
and conform to it;[...] that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty....
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices,
intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to
improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation;
a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most
tiresome arguments against ideas is that their 'tendency' is to some dire condition --
to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri
"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke
"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology;
it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to
understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit
and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is
but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon,
but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without
being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant
"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand
"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.
"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible,
and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and
man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and
after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814
"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort,
are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true,
the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
-- Samuel Johnson, Life Of Johnson
"Very well, what did my critics say in attacking my character? I must read out their affidavit, so to speak, as though they were my legal accusers: Socrates is guilty of criminal meddling, in that he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaches others to follow his example."
-- Socrates, via Plato, The Republic
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The term, then, is obviously a relative one; my pedantry is your scholarship, his reasonable accuracy, her irreducible minimum of education, & someone else's ignorance."
-- H. W. Fowler
"Rules exist for good reasons, and in any art form the beginner must learn them and understand what they are for, then follow them for quite a while. A visual artist, pianist, dancer, fiction writer, all beginning artists are in the same boat here: learn the rules, understand them, follow them. It's called an apprenticeship. A mediocre artist never stops following the rules, slavishly follows guidelines, and seldom rises above mediocrity. An accomplished artist internalizes the rules to the point where they don't have to be consciously considered. After you've put in the time it takes to learn to swim, you never stop to think: now I move my arm, kick, raise my head, breathe. You just do it. The accomplished artist knows what the rules mean, how to use them, dodge them, ignore them altogether, or break them. This may be a wholly unconscious process of assimilation, one never articulated, but it has taken place."
-- Kate Wilhelm
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed."
-- Albert Einstein
"The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual."
-- Franz Kafka, Aphorisms
"All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
-- Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho
"First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you."
-- Nicholas Klein, May, 1919, to the Third Biennial Convention of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (misattributed to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 1914 & variants).
"Nothing would be done at all, if a man waited till he could do it so well, that no one could find fault with it."
-- Lecture IX, John Henry Cardinal Newman
“Nothing is more common than for men to think that because they are familiar with words they understand the ideas they stand for.”
-- John Henry Cardinal Newman
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
-- James Madison
"Our credulity is a part of the imperfection of our natures. It is inherent in us to desire to generalize, when we ought, on the contrary, to guard ourselves very carefully from this tendency."
-- Napoleon I of France.
"The truth is, men are very hard to know, and yet, not to be deceived, we must judge them by their present actions, but for the present only."
-- Napoleon I of France.
"The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know."
-- On the subject of torture, in a letter to Louis Alexandre Berthier (11 November 1798), published in Correspondance Napoleon edited by Henri Plon (1861), Vol. V, No. 3606, p. 128
"All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible."
-- George Santayana, Dialogues in Limbo (1926)
"American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism."
-- George Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States, (1920)
"If you should put even a little on a little, and should do this often, soon this too would become big."
-- Hesiod, Work And Days
"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
-- Eugene V. Debs
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
"All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written "al-Qaida," in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies."
-- Osama bin Laden
"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman
Gary Farber is now a licensed Quintuple Super-Sekrit Multi-dimensional Master Pundit.
He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
He is presently single.
The gefilte fish is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left or I'll shoot this cutepanda. Don't you lovepandas?
Current Total # of Donations Since 2002: 1181
Subscribers to date at $5/month: 100 sign-ups; 91 cancellations; Total= 9
Supporter subscribers to date at $25/month: 16 sign-ups; 10 cancellation; Total= 6
Patron subscribers to date at $50/month: 20 sign-ups; 13 cancellations; Total= 7
...writer[s] I find myself checking out repeatedly when I'm in the mood to play follow-the-links. They're not all people I agree with all the time, or even most of the time, but I've found them all to be thoughtful writers, and that's the important thing, or should be.
-- Tom Tomorrow
"Gary Farber is a gentleman, a scholar and one of the gems of the blogosphere."
-- Steve Hynd, Newshoggers.com
"Well argued, Gary. I hadn't seen anything that went into as much detail as I found in your blog."
-- Gareth Porter
Gary Farber is your one-man internet as always, with posts on every article there is.
-- Fafnir
Guessing that Gary is ignorant of anything that has ever been written down is, in my experience, unwise.
Just saying.
-- Hilzoy
I read Amygdala...with regularity, as do all sensible websurfers.
-- Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings
Okay, he is annoying, but he still posts a lot of good stuff.
-- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow
Amygdala - So much stuff it reminds Unqualified Offerings that UO sometimes thinks of Gary Farber as "the liberal Instapundit." -- Jim Henley
...the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... My first reaction was that I definitely need to appease Gary Farber of Amygdala, one of the geniuses of our age.
-- Brad deLong
Gary is a perceptive, intelligent, nice guy. Some of the stuff he comes up with is insightful, witty, and stimulating. And sometimes he manages to make me groan.
-- Charlie Stross
I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend.
-- Ted Barlow, Crooked Timber
Favorite.... [...] ...all great stuff. [...] Gary Farber should never be without readers.
-- Ogged
I usually read you and Patrick several times a day, and I always get something from them. You've got great links, intellectually honest commentary, and a sense of humor. What's not to like?
-- Ted Barlow
One of my issues with many poli-blogs is the dickhead tone so many bloggers affect to express their sense of righteous indignation. Gary Farber's thoughtful leftie takes on the world stand in sharp contrast with the usual rhetorical bullying. Plus, he likes "Pogo," which clearly attests to his unassaultable good taste.
-- oakhaus.com
The only trouble with reading Amygdala is that it makes me feel like such a slacker. That Man Farber's a linking, posting, commenting machine, I tell you!
-- John Robinson, Sore Eyes
Jaysus. I saw him do something like this before, on a thread about Israel. It was pretty brutal. It's like watching one of those old WWF wrestlers grab an opponent's
face and grind away until the guy starts crying. I mean that in a nice & admiring way, you know.
-- Fontana Labs, Unfogged
We read you Gary Farber! We read you all the time! Its just that we are lazy with our blogroll. We are so very very lazy. We are always the last ones to the party but we always have snazzy bow ties.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber you are a genius of mad scientist proportions. I will bet there are like huge brains growin in jars all over your house.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber is the hardest working man in show blog business. He's like a young Gene Hackman blogging with his hair on fire, or something.
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Gary Farber only has two blogging modes: not at all, and 20 billion interesting posts a day [...] someone on the interweb whose opinions I can trust....
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Isn't Gary a cracking blogger, apropos of nothing in particular?
-- Alison Scott
Gary Farber takes me to task, in a way befitting the gentleman he is.
-- Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
My friend Gary Farber at Amygdala is the sort of liberal for whom I happily give three cheers. [...] Damned incisive blogging....
-- Midwest Conservative Journal
If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the foreign affairs column, Layne handles the city beat, Welch has the roving-reporter job, Tom Tomorrow runs the comic section (which carries Treacher, of course). MediaMinded runs the slots - that's the type of editor I want as the last line of defense. InstantMan runs the edit page - and you can forget about your Ivins and Wills and Friedmans and Teepens on the edit page - it's all Blair, VodkaP, C. Johnson, Aspara, Farber, Galt, and a dozen other worthies, with Justin 'I am smoking in such a provocative fashion' Raimondo tossed in for balance and comic relief.
Who wouldn't buy that paper? Who wouldn't want to read it? Who wouldn't climb over their mother to be in it?
-- James Lileks
I do appreciate your role and the role of Amygdala as a pioneering effort in the integration of fanwriters with social conscience into the larger blogosphere of social conscience.
-- Lenny Bailes
Every single post in that part of Amygdala visible on my screen is either funny or bracing or important. Is it always like this? -- Natalie Solent
People I've known and still miss include Isaac Asimov, rich brown, Charles Burbee, F. M. "Buzz" Busby, Terry Carr, A. Vincent Clarke, Bob Doyle, George Alec Effinger, Abi Frost,
Bill & Sherry Fesselmeyer, George Flynn, John Milo "Mike" Ford. John Foyster, Mike Glicksohn, Jay Haldeman, Neith Hammond (Asenath Katrina Hammond)/DominEditrix , Chuch Harris, Mike Hinge, Lee Hoffman, Terry Hughes, Damon Knight, Ross Pavlac, Bruce Pelz, Elmer Perdue, Tom Perry,
Larry Propp, Bill Rotsler, Art Saha, Bob Shaw, Martin Smith, Harry Stubbs, Bob Tucker, Harry Warner, Jr., Jack Williamson, Walter A. Willis, Susan Wood, Kate Worley, and Roger Zelazny.
It's just a start, it only gets longer, many are unintentionally left out.
And She of whom I must write someday.
WHY, WHY, WHY is it that, just to pick three off the top of my head, this fine blog, this fine blog, and this fine blog, all get zillions of comments on most posts, and I rarely get any comments at all?
I've been blogging considerably longer than all three. I generally blog more frequently and prolifically than all three. I cover plenty of the same topics, and often link to the same items, as all three (though, of course, there's only partial overlap between all of us).
I could extend the question to most of the blogs on my (now dating) blogroll which host comments. The majority get lots of comments.
Of course, one factor is that, so far as I'm aware, each of the three blogs I've just mentioned, and plenty more that came after me, have acquired a heck of a lot more readers than me. Needless to say, they all deserve lots of readers, but:
Am I just boring? Quote too much and people don't like to scroll? I'm obnoxious? Do I frighten readers and commenters with my mastery of Snark?
Mmmm... would it be rude to say that I think it's the intimidating thing? I'm a steady reader (if you read me commenting on Unfogged about hating bloggers who don't update regularly, you and the Neilsen Haydens are the bloggers I will overlook my sense of entitlement for) but I have a tendency to read your stuff and think "Well, that was clearly right. I'm not going to add anything useful here."
If you want more comments, I'd suggest posts asking for information or opinions -- people will comment if the post specificially requests it, and once people post a couple of times, they get used to it.
I should add in response to Scott that I'm not surprised that some folks would find me obnoxious, whether from time to time or all the time. I plead guilty to plenty of stylistic flaws, and plenty of social flaws, and the number of times I look back at something I wrote and think "oh, god, was I a jerk there," would require a great many hands and feet to count on, indeed.
So some of that I regret, but am unsurprised by. What does confuse me a little is finding me obnoxious and "Love reading your stuff." Is it just that you like, more or less, my choice of links and excerpts, but not the voice I comment in? Or how does that work?
LizardBreath says: "Mmmm... would it be rude to say that I think it's the intimidating thing?"
No, not at all, given my solicitation of opinions (which I do simply by having a blog with comments, let alone my specific whine here). Besides, since I brought it up, it's obviously a theory I've pondered, particularly when taken with the fact that an awful lot of times I seem to wind up making the last comment on a comment thread on other blogs, which frustrates me only moderately less than the lack of comments I tend to get here.
The reason you give, which is one I've wondered about, is really terribly flattering, but it's also frustrating. If I wanted to just talk to a wall, I have plenty available right here in my apartment.
Of course, you're just one of many folks who regularly leaves sage and interesting comments at a number of blogs we both read, and whom I've wondered in frustation at why they never, or almost never, converse at my blog. I know it's kinda tacky and unbecoming for me to post one of these whiny sorts of posts, but, honestly, I'm intensely frustrated every single time I read comments at any number of admirable blogs, which is to say, all the time, so my saying something is only doing so less than once for every thousand times or so that I think it, I'm afraid.
Maybe I should post a bunch of illos of fluffy animals and balloons and kittens, to encourage the notion that I won't bite people's heads off if they disagree with me, or something. It's one thing to enjoy a reputation as a good debater, but another to actually make people afraid to converse with me. The latter is not a goal of mine.
(That people who have -- I assume -- no idea whatever of the vast and tangled history the Nielsen Haydens and I have together, going back thirty years, continue to frequently spontaneously bring us up in the same breath, is also fascinating, but not something I can really talk about with great awkwardness, alas; although I'll mutter that it was Patrick who decided a couple of years ago to stop acknowledging my existence, not vice versa, and to my great pain.)
Uhh I DID add a comment to one of your blog entries recently. But you seemed to take no notice of it. http://amygdalagf.blogspot.com/2005/03/coming-election.html
Also, there the little matter that the software used for your comments doesn't seem to want to work with my preferred choice of brower.
I think maybe it has to do with the mix of posts that you do. Many are "hey look at this thing I found," Boing-Boing type posts which are great fun for me to see, but for which my only comment would be "how about that" or "cool."
I see that your recent post about Michele Catalano's change of heart on Bush has a fair number of comments. You want more comments, you need to do more posts like that one: you take a position on something that readers have a position on as well, and about which some readers will have a different position than yours.
To me, your traffic is enviable. Your hiatus has had the inevitable effect, people go elsewhere. Your worst days, even in the last month, beat my best ones -- and I'm trending up.
There's a couple of reasons that I don't leave as many comments as you probably deserve. First and foremost, Blogger's commenting interface regularly loses things, refuses to let me post a comment, or demands a Blogger login. It now lets me post as myself without requiring a Blogger account, which is much better. Most comments are off-the-cuff things, and most people won't bother leaving one if it takes much (or any) effort. (I run a weblog as well, and I know what a pain in the ass comment spam can be, so I understand the impulse to make commenting more difficult, but I treasure my comments, and I'm willing to take on the Augean task of maintaining them and cleaning out the spam.)
(While I'm on software issues, your front page takes longer to load than any other weblog I read, including ones with much more complicated layouts. Maybe it's Blogger again, maybe it's all the little weblog rings and links to other sites that have to load.)
Second, you don't have a critical mass of commenters. That's the biggest thing -- if you have some comments, you get more. People are more likely to join an ongoing conversation.
I really enjoy reading your posts, but I admit that I quit reading for a while after your hiatus. That's not in any way your fault -- it's just that most weblogs are "out of sight, out of mind". I update my weblog all too infrequently, even though I know it makes my readership decline. When I post often, I get more comments. People besides my friends read it. It's good to see you posting again.
Blogger has certainly been a right Royal pain in the arris.
I'm not much of a regular commentor anywhere, though, so not sure how useful my advice is.
Suspect what Scott Chaffin meant was he thinks your style is obnoxious, but that's you being obnoxious to other people, and he feels he wouldn't like engaging with that style himself, in case he became the target.
Another thing is that of the three blogs you link, in each case the bloggers are also heavy commenters. On the Michelle Catalano post, e.g., you got a fair amount of disagreement -- I think a comment from you engaging with it would have resulted in more comments. Without that, the thread didn't take off as a conversation.
(And I had no idea you were acquainted with the NH's -- my apologies if it's a sore subject in any regard.)
I have some suspicions. I think red meat bloggers tend to attract more commenters. Bloggers who are an active presence in their own comments sections probably attract more commenters.
Part of it you might take as a compliment. Perhaps your readers find your posts so authoritative they don't feel the need to comment.
The last time I looked into it, I got the impression that Blogger required you to register with them to comment. Since I'm an infrequent commenter at the best of times, I decided it wasn't worth signing up for a Blogger account just to post the odd comment on the smallish number of Blogger-driven sites I frequent.
Now that I've discovered that it's possible to post comments without registration I'll certainly be posting the odd comment in these parts.
Much to respond to. I'll note that Angela had previously sent me much the same message in e-mail, and I responded that way, and that, sure, I've never promised or intended to reply to every comment, or even most comments, or, to be clear, any comment other than that I felt like I had something substantive to say to and felt like saying it; I don't know any bloggers who do otherwise, but obviously I don't follow most bloggers, so all I'll say is that that's the way I'm going to be.
Responding to some points generally, rather than specifically, I blog on what I want to blog, not on what I think is going to be popular, or for any other motive. I have no intentions of changing that. And although I certainly wouldn't argue with anyone who characterized me as, in at least a limited sort of way, an argumentative person (ha!), when I make an argument on my blog, I'm generally not very interested in engaging in a prolonged back and forth, unless I am. If other people agree, great, if they disagree, fine, and if I feel moved to argue further, fine, but I feel no obligation to argue further, and don't intend to take on any such obligation, whether it's to argue further in comments, or in a post, or elsewhere.
And, yup, much of what I post is in the "look, isn't this neat!?" category. On the other hand, since feedback is nice and feeling like I'm only talking to myself isn't -- I can do that with much less effort without a blog -- it's pleasing to get responses even if they're only "yeah, that's neat!," although certainly amplification by the commenter as to what and how and why is more desirable, and stimulating any spin-off tangential thoughts or anecdotes is also great.
Generally speaking, I'd like to stimulate discussion between you guys, and see it have a life of its own here, as is normal on most popular blogs. That would let me know I'm not just talking to a wall or myself, and help me feel like I'm accomplishing something more than that. That would help a lot in encouraging my enthusiasm for blogging, in comparison to, frankly, often feeling day after day that I'm not sure why I'm doing this if hardly anyone is paying attention. And if I'm not seeing feedback, I have to assume that no one gives a damn.
And, frankly, more comments bring more hits, too.
But I'm really not interested, as a rule, in beating people up verbally until they say they agree with me. I reserve that for very special occasions. :-) ;-) ;-)
(Really, though, how often do you see me start inter-blog fights? I reserve most of my disagreements with other bloggers for their comments, which is probably dumb of me, but there I am: Mr. Super-Generous, so pat me on the back for my wonderfulness.)
My page has loaded a bit slowly since I started, when there were no add-ons beyond the stripped-down plain format. I've never understood why -- neither has anyone who has looked at the source code and talked to me about it; adding more stuff to load or taking it away seems to make no difference whatever -- honest, I've experimented a lot, and if I knew anything that would help, short of starting over again from scratch, which I'm very reluctant to do, but think about a fair amount anyway, I'd do it. I'm sorry about that. Suggestions welcomed, though not necessarily responded to.
On the more positive side, I'd like to assume that the current Blogger problems will be cured soon, again, and there will be no delays with anyone's ability to comment; certainly all the previous commenting systems I tried were no less problematic.
Registration to comment isn't a factor any more, since Blogger eliminated that necessity. (I still hate it when people comment only as "anonymous," though, and I reserve the right to delete such messages, or any messages, as I see fit.)
As regards the need for a critical mass of commenters, well, I doubt whining about the lack of comments is the best approach I can make on that, but that is my desire, yes. So, hey, anyone who does their part, I thank you. Are there any rewards I could give, or something? Gold stars?
PZ's characterizations are very flattering, and much appreciated, and I'll try not to let them go to my head (no promises!) Regarding "Maybe your problem is that you don't attract enough idiots," well, I didn't say I wanted any commenters at any price. :-)
But there is a optimal midrange between "hardly any" and the amount a blog such as Washington Monthly or any of the blogs that commonly get over a hundred comments per post gets. 30 or so comments per entry would be just fine. :-)
So if you're used to commenting on other blogs, please bring it over here; if you're a blogger with lots of commenters, feel free to send some my way! (And, obviously, all you bloggers should feel duty-bound to link to me like crazy, while I, of course, continue to only rarely link to you, because I'm at the center of my universe, don't you know, so that's how it should be; let's get with the program, people!)
Dave, you're right, of course, about red meat, and although I've certainly given plenty of vent to my sarcastic partisan side in the run up to the elections adn thereafter, whereas I used to be a lot more restrained by largely showing my fair-and-balanced side, I do possess both sides, and I'm certainly completely uninterested in throwing red meat to anyone just to be popular. Rest assured that when I'm waxing sarcastic, I'm both in possession of strong opinions on the one hand, and the knowledge that I'm consciously not writing a sober and calm balanced analysis right now, on the other. I'll write either as I feel moved, and people can like it, or not, and I'll suffer the results.
Scott, thanks for your clarification; I did take your original comment as indicating a much harsher attitude than your subsequent comment suggests. It was nice of you to say nice things. No, that's not quite right: I appreciate your apparently giving your honest opinions, which I take with more pleasure than pain. I hope that while being a bit rambly here, I've clarified at least slightly what my interest in comments are: not to get slavish agreement, and not to find people to attack for being stupid, and neither because I'm indifferent to the opinions of others nor interested in simply changing mine to suit theirs -- or simply changing theirs to suit mine -- but to have some idea of how what I'm saying is going over, to see some of what people might think, to learn if there are things I've not thought of in regard to what I've said, to see a good case that I might be wrong, to learn things I didn't know about the topic I've hit on, and to have some sense that there are people out there actually reading, not just a lot of odd Google hits.
Why does anyone talk to anyone?
"That's part of being unique and different and challenging. I think I'm obnoxious at times, too, but that's preferable to being bland."
Yes, I do hate blandness. I know that no one else is going to share all, or even most, of my interests, and have no problem with anyone finding certain of my pet topics snoozeworthy; I just hope they'll scroll past to another few posts, though, rather than quit because some posts don't interest them (and are, I know, long; I do wish for the MT ability to put things behind a fold, and that's one reason I contemplate switching sooner or later). "Bored? Scroll down to the next!" is a slogan here, or should be, if the design weren't already too busy.
And I largely chose to, and don't worry about, giving strong opinions when I hold them, because a) if I can't do that here, then where?; and b) why the hell not? Inevitably, any opinion is going to offend someone, so I might as well at least be condemned or ignored for my own opinions, not some tasteless, water-down, let's-offend-no-one, soup.
"...and that you won't bite my head off."
No promises, though. I can be as much of a reactive, ill-tempered, thoughtless, jerk, as the next guy or gal, and I'm perfectly human and susceptible to flying off the handle, and occasionally saying idiotic, deeply stupid, wrongheaded, and quite offensive, things. I'm a moody guy, no doubt about it. All I can promise is that when I recognize that I've done that, I'll try to subsequently apologize. Naturally, I won't always agree with someone that I've been in that mode, and sometimes I'll be right and sometimes I'll be wrong.
But my intention with this blog is not to use it to mouse-trap people so I can yell at them about how stupid their comments are.
Unless they really, really, deserve it.
And sometimes I'll be wrong.
But sometimes so will you.
And my last word for the moment is something I've said a million times, in a million variants, starting decades before the word "blog" was invented: I'd far rather engage in conversation with, or read, someone disagreeing smartly and interestingly, than someone who agrees with me in an embarrassing or dumb-assed way. Life is too short.
Responding to some points generally, rather than specifically, I blog on what I want to blog, not on what I think is going to be popular, or for any other motive. I have no intentions of changing that.
If you (1) were responding to my point about "hey look at this" posts, and (2) were for some reason annoyed by it:
I had no intentions of urging you to blog on what is "popular," or on stuff other than what you want to. I enjoy and expect your "hey look" posts. However, I also don't expect to comment on them, unless the stars align and I happen to have something to say on, say, Japanese supersubs of WW2 (quite interesting, but no). I suspect I'm like many other readers on both counts.
If you really want more comments, though, you may need more "opinion" posts -- which you obviously also do, e.g., the Catalano post. If that's so, but conflicts with the spirit of the blog you want, well, then maybe you've got a choice to make, and you'll probably decide you don't want to get more comments that way.
At any rate, I wasn't presuming to tell you what to do, just suggesting what you might do if increasing comments was the goal.
Naturally, now that I made that post, things are working fine again. Sigh.
Thomas, when I said "Responding to some points generally, rather than specifically," I meant what I said. No, I wasn't responding to anything you said. (I have no problem with most folks having nothing to say about Japanese subs, but I hope you gave the Tom Paine memoir at least a skim; I found the stories absolutely fascinating, as well as often hilarious.)
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