Hi all, this is Old Toby, finally posting here, more than a year after this space was created, and I want to start by thanking my brother, Abe, for giving me this blog.
This blog will feature general musings on a wide range of issues, including politics, cultural issues, philosophy, architecture and urbanism, demographics, science fiction, and geek identity. But I'll start by explaining why I've come to start this blog.
I'd long had an interest in blogging. I have lots of big ideas and I would like them to be known (and to get some credit for them). I also spend a lot of time thinking about current events, writing commentaries in my head. So blogging seems like something that should come naturally to me.
So why haven't I? Mostly it's lazyness. Starting the blog is just another one of those things that "I'll get around to it sometime". But beyond that is an issue of confidence: while my inner megalomaniac fancies that my sparkling prose and uniquely brilliant ideas will propel me to internet fame and glory, my inner cynic says that anything I say has probably already been said better someplace else, and that nobody will read my blog anyway.
But this election has shaken that cynicism. Not by assuring me that it was wrong, but by challenging my right to worry about it. Whether-or-not saying all the things I was thinking (but not hearing said) would have made any difference whatsoever in the election, the fact is that I didn't say them, I didn't try, I didn't give myself a chance. So, better to try and fail, than never to try at all (or, at least, that's what I'll think before the Bush Stormtroopers smash down my door and take me away for sedition against God's Anointed Leader).
So, hopefully, I'll be following up with some actual commentary vis How the Left Lost The Culture War and The Blue Left: A New Agenda of Liberalism (that's two seperate topics, although they may have some overlap). But for now, my message is IF YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY, SAY IT!
PS: There doesn't seem to be a spell check on this thing, maybe I should write these things up in Appleworks before I post 'em.
Posted by Old Toby at November 7, 2004 03:03 PM | TrackBack'Tis neither here nor there. chuck A plague o' both your houses!
Posted by: chuck at December 1, 2004 01:36 PMYour face is a book, where men may read strange matters. martha Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?Polonius: By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel. Polonius: It is backed like a weasel. Hamlet: Or like a whale? Polonius: Very like a whale.
Posted by: martha at December 1, 2004 01:36 PMNeither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend; And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry [economy]. trevor There is a tide in the affairs of men Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
Posted by: trevor at December 1, 2004 01:37 PM