Introducing Daran

Thanks to ampersand and the others for the invite, though in Amp’s case I suspect that it’s part of a cunning plan to get rid of me from Alas…

About me? Ho, hum, well I’m 41 years old. I was born in England, but moved to Scotland sixteen years ago. Politically I’m a liberal, which means different things on different sides of the Atlantic, but both hats fit. My interests are eclectic, but I am particularly interested in gender issues, where I often find myself opposed to both feminist and antifeminist schools of thought.

My hobbies are drumming, juggling, and riding the unicyle. I don’t do any of them very well.

Nomination – SmartBlkWoman

Although I know it, I'm not listing her name because I don't know whether she's "out" as a blogger. However, I nominate SmartBlkWoman, who blogs at A Day In The Life, for membership. She is witty, intelligent, Christian, and feminist – a most intriguing combination. Adam, consider the usual threats of bodily harm issued on my part.

Introducing Mythago!

Everyone welcome our latest assimulation into the collective, Mythago!

Mythago has already contributed a fair amount to the discussion here in the comments section, and Bob, Tuomas, and Ampersand threatened me with physical harm if I did not send an invitation.  Fortunately, that invitation was accepted, and so I will live to see another day, and now we are eight bloggers strong!

Make yourself at home 🙂  

About Ampersand

I (Ampersand, a.k.a. Barry Deutsch) was born to a queen in 1968. Well, not really, but I was born in Queens, which is even better.

New recruit arrives

First blog post ever. Thanks to Adam for letting me in, and to Robert for inviting. I get the feeling that this is going to be real addictive…

Okay, on to the introductions:

I am 25 year old, a citizen of Finland (born and raised here), somewhat patriotic, but an unabashed anglophile all the same.I have a wide array of interests beyond my field of study: politics, both here and in America (altough I have zero interest in actually becoming a politician), Sci-fi and fantasy, science generally, sports,and lots of more.

Personality-wise, I’m stubborn and blunt, and very argumentative, altough I try to stay away from the personal stuff (feel free to call me on it).

Politically, I’m somewhat of an ex-leftist, with libertarian leanings. Religiously, I’m nominally a Christian, but a deist is probably closer.

Why does this always happen in pairs?

Not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth.

introducing Barry, of Amptoons!  A sharp mind and a good sense of humor, CD will certainly be better for his contributions 🙂

Creative Destruction has had a good week, I think it's safe to say. 

New Recruit!

Everyone say hello to Tuomas!  Invited over by Bob, he swells our ranks here to an army of six.

I'll let him introduce himself.

Bob, your helpfulness has been dually noted by the Party's inner circle.  While we can't promise you won't be purged, you definately won't be the first to be purged.

Just Ask For Directions

Well, seeing as how Brutus has introduced himself, I find it time to make my presence known.

I had considered starting off a blog for about five months before I broke down and, in a fit of insomnia-induced insanity, started my home blog of Left Off Colfax. Ever since then, I’ve pretty much toiled on in obscurity, with the occasional big set of hits and visitors. Or at least so I thought. Suddenly, here comes this invitation to join a groupblog…

After picking my jaw up from the floor (before the cats decided to use it as their new toy, of course), I simply started grinning. Here comes a whole new toy to play with! But I also consider it to be very much a compliment.

Now, here’s what you can expect from me.

First off, I’m intensely moderate and centrist, albeit still a part of the Democratic Party. There are times when I regret that choice, but then I simply have to look at the other parties and remember exactly why they couldn’t keep my vote. Over the years, I’ve also voted for and/or worked for: the Reform Party, the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Natural Law Party, and the Republican Party. Yet I keep coming back to being a Democrat. And one of these days, I’ll actually put the reason why in print.

Secondly, I feel no shame in turning up the heat on those that pull a world-class whoopsie, particularly when they are politicians or pundits. Because face it, simply by being politically-centered bloggers, we have become a part of the punditry. The only difference is that we don’t get fancy suits and calls from Meet The Press. Sometimes, folks here in “teh blogospherez on teh intarwebs” forget that.

Third, you can expect me to have an opinion on just about everything. Why? I drove a taxi for two years. That should explain things enough, particularly if you’ve seen a certain Mel Gibson movie. If that doesn’t do it for you, then get in a cab in any major city and start chatting with the driver. (The cabbies in Las Vegas are infamous for this one, particularly while listening to the Coast To Coast radio show.) If you don’t happen to live in a major city, just imagine your bartender or waitress and that will be close enough. However, you should find yourself fortunate that I often have difficulty putting said opinions into coherent text and, as such, you will only get the good ones.

And finally (In case you couldn’t have guessed…) I have a fondness for truly parenthetical comments. This is where the me-behind-the-keyboard starts to interject various comments and random opinions, completely oblivious to the fact that I’m revealing my inner geek. I’ve been trying to break myself of the habit (Fat chance, bozo. I’m here for the long term.), but it has become more addictive than the nicotine/caffeine combination. So if you find them awkward, just skip over them, as there rarely will be something of direct substance within them. That and they are rarely funny. (I’m gonna kill that guy for saying that about me.)

So pull up a large pot of coffee, kids. Your road trip begins soon. In the meantime, here’s something to think about:

It is by coffee alone I set my mind in motion.

It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed.

The hands acquire shaking.

The shaking becomes a warning.

It is by coffee alone I set my mind in motion.

Thus Saeth Brutus

Others on this group blog introduced themselves and their
perspectives, so it’s reasonable for me to add a few lines about myself.

Associating with others who don’t necessarily believe as I do is the
point of my being here and offering a perspective. That’s all the
motivation it takes.

Because I don’t crave any particular notoriety for my ideas and
think the “look mom, no hands!” approach to functioning in a public
forum is rather tasteless and jejeune, I’ve decided to remain
anonymous. The focus should stay off of me. I’m not trying to become a
personality. So this is the only time a post of mine will be littered
with references to myself, as distinguished from my opinions.

As political labels go, I consider myself a progressive. If there is
no generally understood meaning behind that label, all the better. I’m
disinclined to subordinate myself to any dogma and prefer to take
issues individually. The only overriding idea is that we should
progress — that is, improve — rather than regress.

That said, diatribes and scenarios about how it’s all going to ruin
and we all had it better back in those halcyon days tend to be right up
my alley. I recognize the fallacy of relying on a golden past that
wasn’t, after a bit of inspection, so golden after all. It’s a seductive
narrative frame, just as the opening scenes of movies tend to enter the
story at a point of calm and composure only to introduce conflict and
drama. Still, the cultural critic in me can’t escape the gnawing sense
that we’re poised on the brink of a new paradigm, and that the shift
from one way of life to another won’t be a pretty sight.

My values of civilized discourse boil down to two things: clarity and
respect. To respect one’s reader means to take the time necessary to
craft written English suffiently free of errors and elegantly enough
stated that one’s ideas have clarity and purpose. Few writers are truly
good at this; I’m learning just like everyone else. But I have little
patience for sloppiness in expression and will not hesitate to take
anyone to task over it. Respect is also something one affords one’s
interlocutors. I’ve grown out of the adolescent belief that opinions
contrary to or different from mine are by definition inferior. There is
a wide range of legitimate and good faith perspective out there, though
I must admit a good portion of it makes little or no sense to me.
Attitudes borne out of ignorance and intolerance won’t find any safe
haven with me, however. I’m not at all above swatting a few flies.

When it rains, it pours

Just as we get a new author, a fifth author gets his WordPress account and e-mails me.

Presenting Off Colfax, of Left Off Colfax.  He is long on opinions and blogging credentials, and CD is the better for his presence here.

And then there were four

Everyone welcome aboard Brutus, our latest CD contributor!

Just don't give him any knives, or meet him outside the Senate, and you should get along just fine. 

Bazzer’s inaugural post

When Adam first approached me about starting a group blog, I thought it was a great idea. I’d had the thought myself for some time, but unlike Adam, I was too lazy to get off my ass and do something about it.

Building such a blog can be a challenge, but well worth it if successful. I’ve been fortunate enough to belong to some discussion groups in the past in which an array of sane, intelligent people with diverse opinions met to debate the issues of the day in an environment that was relatively free of partisan knife fights and namecalling. The board ultimately proved too unstable to endure over time, alas, but was much more stimulating and thought-provoking than the partisan echo chambers of the left and right.

I’ll be blogging here quasi-anonymously under the name “Bazzer.” When I began blogging a few years back, I did so under my own full name, because, well, why not? I figured I had nothing to hide. But then something unexpected and inexplicable happened — people started reading it. Consequently, I found myself subconsciously engaging in self-censorship. There were issues that I wished to discuss but did not feel free to do so as my blog became an open secret at my place of employment. I don’t wish to be hampered in that way when posting here.

So I guess I’ll follow Bob’s lead (nice to meet ya, BTW!) and say a few words about myself. (Now that I’ve established the need for anonymity, I’ll ruin it all by revealing enough information about myself so that anyone who knows me will recognize me. Ah well….)

I grew up in the South, lived abroad for a few years, and currently reside in the New York City area. I studied physics in college and received my Ph.D. in 1993 through what was no doubt a clerical error. I later left the field in favor of software development, which I’ve done for a living ever since. After five years in New York City, I now live across the river in Hudson County, New Jersey, with my wife and black lab. One of my many side ventures is developing computerized stock trading systems. Politically, I’m a small-l libertarian, liberal on social issues, but fairly conservative on the other stuff.

That’s it! My life in a nutshell. Thanks to Adam for inviting me here. Let’s get started.

And then there were three!

And just when Bob’s very presence was threatening to overstimulate all (none) of you who are reading this, Bazzer from Cynical Nation has decided to swell our ranks, which are already threatening to burst from the endless legions (3) of us.

Bazzer is a good man, and you should listen to what he has to say.  But anything he tells you about me is a damned, dirty lie.

It’s All About Me, Baby!

I’m very pleased to have been invited to blog here. Thanks, Adam! I look forward to having stimulating and civil conversations with a number of people of varying views. One of the things I enjoy most about writing online is the exposure to new ideas and new people – ideas and people that I might not meet in my ordinary life.

A few words about myself. (Me me me me me me!) My name is Robert Hayes. I’m 38 years old, married, raising a three-year-old toddler monkey in Colorado Springs. After dropping out of Oberlin College (a course of action I highly recommend), I moved to Washington State and pretended to go to the Evergreen State College, but mainly I was just fooling around. I moved up to Seattle to work for Microsoft, where I was a software design engineer and a software test engineer. I eventually wound up in Colorado, where I continued to work in the commercial software biz, putting in stints at Optika (now Stellent) and Quark. When the dot-com crash came, I was not able to find continued work in the field – ten years of saying “ha, the technical boom will never end so I don’t need to develop good work habits!” came back to bite me, there. So I moved with my family to Colorado Springs and enrolled at the University of Colorado, where I (finally) earned a degree in Business Administration.

I now own a small writing and editing services company called DocRocket, which specializes in quality web content development. I have found that having a payroll to meet adds a certain immediacy and focus to my working life, which has been professionally helpful. I don’t intend on returning to the computer software field; the reasons why are a set of long essays of very little general interest. As part of my work with DocRocket, I have written books on management for entrepreneurial small businesses, futures trading, and franchise management. (It turns out that business degrees have a certain degree of use, after all.)
My politics have arced from center-right during my Oklahoma boyhood, to fairly hard left during my early college days, veering over to the very hard right for a while, and now settling back in around the center-right mark. These labels are of course inadequate, and depending on the issue, you might see my politics vary widely. I am a strong supporter of the war on terror, I believe America is the last best hope of mankind, and I think that people who want to die for their God ought to be given the opportunity. Spiritually, I am a Catholic of honest conviction and poor performance. Ethically, I try to be honest and of good character – mainly because it is not in my nature to be so. Like all of us, I am a fallen man – and thus, “do what comes naturally” and “let it all hang out” are not philosophies which lead to good outcomes for me.

My interests are very eclectic. I am a follower of the partisan slugfest that is American politics. I enjoy history, particularly the history of the classical Mediterranean civilizations and their predecessors. I am a big fan of cryptoarcheology and cryptohistory, and I’ll read any non-mystical book on Atlantis I can get my hands on. (I’m not a “Atlantis had spaceships and grav rays!” fan, I’m a “Atlantis may have been an advanced ancient civilization with navigational and mathematical knowledge that were lost and not rediscovered until the Middle Ages” fan.) I enjoy computer games of the strategic/cerebral variety and board and role playing games of the old school. Most of my free time, however, is spent with my family, or doing blogging.

In addition to blogging here, I have my own site, The Argument Clinic, which is mainly links, pictures of puppies, idle personal thoughts, and amusing things I find online – mixed in with tendentiously unreadable essays about abortion and tax policy, because if there’s one thing that people want to see, it’s novel-length maunderings about abortion. I also run the Blogger News Network, a news-oriented blog site with a number of contributors. I comment regularly at Alas!, Ann Althouse, Protein Wisdom, Feministe, and a few other sites.

In my writing, as in my daily life, I strive to be respectful to other people. This is not an easy or natural direction for me to travel; my basic nature is more along the lines of “I am the king, worship me, and bring me a sandwich.” So if in the course of a discussion, you find that I am not living up to this ideal – and you will – please ding me for it, and I will try to do better. However, I also believe there are limits to civility; people who aggressively don’t want to converse (but instead, to yell, or to evangelize, or to dictate the terms of a conversation) are of very little interest to me, because they don’t advance the dialog, and I won’t continue turning the other cheek indefinitely. (I secretly think there’s a codicil to that Gospel, where Jesus is asked what to do if the adversary hits the newly-turned cheek, and He responded “oh, in that case, kick the **** out of them.”)
I am really looking forward to being a part of this exciting new blog, and I hope that you find what I have to say of interest or of use.

First contributor!

Introducing Mr. Robert Hayes of the Argument Clinic.  Creative Destruction can only be better for his presence here.

And now we actually have more than just me.  Hopefully, this trend of people who aren’t me coming here will continue.  Otherwise, I fear the overall quality may suffer for it.

Mr. Hayes is free to post about anything he likes, whenever he likes–so I look forward to seeing how he takes to this place!