Long under siege for “liberal bias,” media careerists now find themselves confronted with people they see as passionate amateurs. True, fearless scrappers like my friend Joe Conason have always been around, and somebody like Paul Krugman — a world-class economist who doesn’t care what, say, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews thinks of him — can be very annoying.

But what’s really driving these jokers up the wall is economic and intellectual competition from the Internet: people with first-class minds and a passion for truth that some of them can barely remember.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/08/27/lyons/index.html?source=newsletter

60+ hour weeks plus international travel plus family commitments leave little time for anything personal, beyond the absolutes: family first, fitness second, foibles last.

It’s lucky I get energized by meetings (and martinis) and talking and work - else I would be a shambling wreck* by now…

I suppose I’ll just need to find some way to squeeze another couple of hours out of each day! (writing this in a Delta Sky team lounge, awaiting yet another international flight… if only flying were glamorous)

———————-

According to my wife I am very close to being a shambling wreck, were it not for her stalwart support and undying love! I’m tempted to agree!

And Hank, tell Mrs. H she has nothing to worry about - I’m a big chicken at heart, and probably old enough to be your mother. A cougar, I’m not.

Equally unfortunately the majority of that writing is ‘paid’ and not of my choosing - so blogging (and commenting) is my opportunity to say whatever the hell I want in whatever way pleases me at that moment.

It pleases me greatly that Hank is here writing - his style validates my everyday non-writing behavior - stream-of-consciousness. With Hank writing, I feel less need to do so.

I have an idea for invention that will be of great utility to myself and to others similarly afflicted: a stream of consciousness recorder. This simply, microscopic device will also collate, annotate, organize, cross-reference, and catalog, and will then post the gem like nuggets of thought (or boulders or mountains depending on the day) to the intertubes for the edification of the great unwashed.

I offer this idea free to the world — in the hopes that someone will create this device and set me free from the constraints of time and the keyboard.

I speak volumes - but my fingers cannot keep up. They need to be typing for my day job

I joke with my wife that when I die, instead of a wake, just bring in some wifi. If people want to know what I thought about things, just tell them to log onto DI.

I would add this - sometimes I HAVE to write or I think my brain will become so cluttered that I’ll have a migraine (I do get nasty migraines and with no idea what causes them, I’m free to blame anything). Even if it’s just an email to a friend or a short comment, it feels like something has to leave my brain via my fingers at least once a day.

So, that’s my quota for today - no energy left to inform Mindy that Mrs H has Scots blood and that staying in the States was a very wise decision

I wanted to praise you a bit because it’s deserved, and of all the voices on this blog I most enjoy reading yours (yours is a close 2nd, Erich). As I mentioned previously, you’ve helped a bit in my come-to-terms with some personal wrongheadedness over gay marriage. I oscillate between reading and commenting because I want to be validated and want to be challenged/exposed in my errors. So far, this blog has been one of the better outlets I’ve seen for that. I’ve always thought the idea of a perpetually selfish echo-chamber of one’s own thoughts and ideas as the height of pitiful (have you read “Flatland?” Pointland is sort of what I’m referring to).

In terms of interpretation, I took this post as an almost Jerry McGuire-like mission statement/manifesto/stream-of-conciousness/written-in-a-fever query into human nature.

Kudos.

BBSes differed from the Internet in very few ways. Most board only allowed one user at a time, Each connection required a phone call with any necessary charges. Connection speeds were very slow I started with a 300 baud modem and a surplus teletype machine, by the time Internet service providers became affordable, I had worked my way up to a 9600 baud modem and a PC.

What drew me to this culture was the fact that it was a great equalizer. The only way to assess a BBSer was by what they wrote. There was little chance of prejudice based on their appearance. You would decide for yourself what a person was about by their views and ideas. You could select a topic, Read all the posts or just those that had been updated since your last visit, add you opinions and move on the next thread.

BBSes were similar to the Internet in most ways. They held a vast amount of information and most of it was from not reputable sources. A large sampling of this information can be found through the TextFiles website.

A couple of the BBSes in my area would occasionally have gatherings where some of the BBSers could meet face to face. It was always interesting to meet in person, as often the BBSers would project an online persona that was completely different from the reality.Two guys who acted very childish and immature on the BBS turned out to be graduate students. One fellow, wrote with a clear eloquent style on the boards, in person had a thick Finnish accent that made him difficult to understand. To top it off, one particularly intelligent writer was a fifteen year old boy.

The there was one guy whose online persona mimicked that of a Hell Fire and Brimstone evangelist. In person he was a quiet shy fellow.

I do love your ode to blogging!

I think Frederick Nietzsche sums up my gut feeling for why we write. It’s often a compulsion, if not a need.

But why do you write?-
A: I am not one of those who think with an inky pen in their hand, much less one of those who in front of an open inkwell abandon themselves to their passions while they sit in a chair and stare at the paper. I am annoyed by and ashamed of my writing; writing is for me a pressing and embarrassing need, and to speak of it even in a parable disgusts me.
B: But why, then, do you write?
A: We, my friend, to be quite frank: so far, I have not discovered any other way of getting rid of my thoughts.
B: And why do you want to get rid of them?–
B: Enough! Enough!

–GS 93

According to evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, writing is also an opportunity to display, to woo (hence, Mindy’s recent episode with the vapors).

I’ve often wondered why I feel compelled to write so often at this site. Various “reasons” occurred to me. First of all, this site serves as a repository of ideas that I would like to have handy for other purposes on other days. In other words, it’s my scrapbook (albeit a scrapbook that I share with others). Even if the audience were to shrink to only a few people, I would think that I would still write seriously and often, because writing helps me know what I think, and it helps clarify my thoughts so that I can express them better orally or in other writings.

But it would be disingenuous to ignore the fact that there is a significant audience here. In fact, for the month of June, this site averaged 6,000 visitors per day. It is exciting to think that others might read my thoughts and find something of value in them. Most people don’t comment, so we are left with an impression that most people think like those who do comment (do most people think like Karl?). I will not pretend as though the size of the audience is irrelevant. I love it when more people visit this blog. It makes me feel like our group of writers is producing ideas that don’t simply die here. In fact, on days when no one else is posting and I really don’t have anything prepared, I force myself to search through the Internet (I visit various social sites or some of my favorites) and publish something; I want to let people know that we’re still “here,” meaning “please don’t give up on us even though there’s nothing much new today . . . after all, tomorrow we might weigh-in with a piece of writing that is substantial and original. But why is that important? After all, as long as somebody is saying X on the Internet, must this site become part of that vast echo chamber, or is my compulsion to publish so often a not very well disguised exercise in narcissism?

This blog was established as a multi-author blog for yet another reason. The multi-author design allows the many people who contribute here to have a place to ask questions, tell a story or vent 24/7. There is great value in having a community for the types of ideas that we toss around at this site. Not everybody in the world is interested in these sorts of topics or this sort of treatment of these topics. No, knowing that others might feel similarly about similar topics doesn’t make them any more true, but it does allow us to push off of each other in pursuit of what makes the most sense. I must admit, though, it’s a funny sort of community where most of the authors have never met most of the other authors in person. Incidentally, next week several of the writers here will be meeting over pizza for the first time. It should prove interesting. Maybe after meeting each other in person, we’ll decide that we don’t like each other!

Why do we blog? Maybe the best answer is that we don’t know why we feel compelled to write, or to write so often, or to write in the way that we write, employing the terminology that we use, and bolstering our thoughts with citations to original sources. Perhaps it’s deep in our bones that we must connect up with other people and to share bits and pieces of who we are, as well as sharing ideas that are sometimes bigger.

Now that I’ve rambled on, I’m wondering whether this comment the world’s longest version of “I don’t know”?