Last weekend saw the TOD’s first birthday and, celebrations aside, I figured this was a good time to reflect on the future of this project, ie. whether I will continue working on it and if so in what format.
The basic problem I am facing is that I just don’t have the time to put as much effort into this site that I’d like to. I spend a good 20 hours a week doing research/reading/etc, and it would take at least as long to post everything I’d like to post. That pretty much adds up to a full time job and unfortunately I already have one of those. Currently I only end up posting perhaps a quarter of what I attempt to line up for posting in one form or another, which is an endless source of frustration. We’re also entering a particularly busy time at work. Something’s got to give.
So, I am going to put this project, at least in its current form, on the back burner for now. What I would like to continue doing is post occasional longer essays/posts, without trying to keep up my regular posting schedule (which is currently about 10 posts over 4 days a week, if you’re curious). Then perhaps when things clear up (or more likely when I get sucked into a shit fight I just can’t stay out of) I’ll be back.
This hasn’t been an easy decision because I have really enjoyed blogging and things have been steadily picking up around here. But its getting to a point where other areas of my life are suffering… which is kind of lame really. This blogging business is addictive!
So goodbye for now, but not really. I’ll now have more time to drop by other people’s blogs and rant and fisk and jibe on in the comments and perhaps even write some occasional longer posts of quality, rather than churn out surf-by quotathons and dive into self-indulgent fiski-cuffs.
Filed under Life, Blogging by Popovich at 6:32 pm EST (GMT+10)
The Blogpower team, of which I recently became a member, is running the first ever Blogpower Awards and nominations are closing soon (very soon - Tuesday 5th of June 21:00, London time… yes, I should have posted about this earlier).
Things are getting a little complicated, but you can read all about how the nominations work here. Basically in the various categories the blogs that get more than the required number of nominations will go through to the voting phase. So multiple nominations is what we’re looking for!
Below is the list of categories, of which there are 20. To nominate anyone (or even yourself), email the name of the category as it appears below, and include the name of the blog you’d like to nominate and its URL, to jameshigham-AT-mail.com (don’t forget that URL now!).
You can nominate as many blogs as you like in as many or few categories as you like. Here are the categories:
Nominations close Tuesday evening, June 5th, at 21:00
Please copy and paste category from here, then include name of blog as you’d like to see it appear [short] plus url [not in brackets].
1 Best Britblog or Column
2 Best North American Blog or Column
3 Best Blog or Column outside North America and the U.K.
4 Best Fisker
5 Best Ranter
6 Best Political Blog or Column
7 Best Blogpower Blog or Column
8 Best Layout and Style
9 Best Blog Name
10 Best Little Blogger [i.e. under 100 uniques a day]
11 Most Articulate Wordsmith
12 Most Under-rated Blog or Column
13 Most Over-rated Blog or Column
14 Most Politically Incorrect Blog or Column
15 Most Sadly Missed Blog or Column
16 Most Consistently Entertaining Blog or Column
17 Prettiest or Tastiest Blog or Column [refers to food or domestic bloggers]
18 Award for Services to Blogging
19 Best Post of All Time
To nominate in any of these categories, e-mail jameshighamatmaildotcom
Filed under News, Blogging by Popovich at 12:47 pm EST (GMT+10)
Thomas Sowell writing on “The Anger of the Left”:
That people on the political left have a certain set of opinions, just as people do in other parts of the ideological spectrum, is not surprising. What is surprising, however, is how often the opinions of those on the left are accompanied by hostility and even hatred.
Particular issues can arouse passions here and there for anyone with any political views. But, for many on the left, indignation is not a sometime thing. It is a way of life.
How often have you seen conservatives or libertarians take to the streets, shouting angry slogans? How often have conservative students on campus shouted down a visiting speaker or rioted to prevent the visitor from speaking at all?
Or beat their teacher to death with sticks, for that matter. Here’s an example from China’s Cultural Revolution of what results when that anger is taken to its pathological conclusion and made into state policy:
“What is your name?” the Great Helmsman asked a young student as she pinned a Red Guard armband on him in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace. “Song Binbin,” she responded enthusiastically. The name her parents chose meant “properly raised” and “polite,” qualities that Mao Zedong found unappealing. “Be violent!” he ordered the girl. A short time later she changed her first name to Yaowu, or “Be Violent.”
It was Aug. 18, 1966 and the 72-year-old Chinese leader had called male and female students to assemble on Beijing’s Square of Heavenly Peace to launch his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Hundreds of thousands waved Mao’s little red book and cheered the old man.
Mao’s call to violence fell on willing ears among many young people. Thirteen days earlier Song, 19 at the time, was presumably present when the female students at her school, which was part of the Beijing Teachers University, killed their teacher, Bian Zhongyun. The girls brutally beat the 50-year-old woman to death using wooden sticks spiked with nails. On the day before the killing, members of the Red Guard had already maltreated the teacher, who was the party leader at the school — they suddenly viewed her as a “counter-revolutionary revisionist” who they believed had gambled away her life.
Bian went down in history as the first victim of the Cultural Revolution — the bloody mass movement Mao used to eliminate his enemies within the party. The teacher’s murder was followed by the killings of millions of Chinese people. The ten-year campaign destroyed entire families, irreplaceable cultural treasures and centuries-old traditions. In August 1966 alone, about 100 teachers were murdered by their own students in the western section of Beijing.
Thomas Sowell sums up his point:
If it is hard to find a principle behind what angers the left, it is not equally hard to find an attitude.
Their greatest anger seems to be directed at people and things that thwart or undermine the social vision of the left, the political melodrama starring the left as saviors of the poor, the environment, and other busybody tasks that they have taken on.
