Blogging to resume later today, after the completion of a major writing project (to be unpublished, alas).

I have been working on a much longer piece dealing with the whole autism/thimerosal/John McCain affair for another (paying) site. It will hopefully be published soon, and I will link to it when it is.

Over at the bottom of the right sidebar, you can find a link to subscribe to this site's new-fangled RSS feed.

And I am thinking of adopting the title of this post as the new tagline. Thanks, Glenn.

Hi.

It's been a while.

This blog started six years ago (give or take a few weeks). In honor of that anniversary, let's see about restarting. No guarantees, but I'll try.
I have never been able to stick to my blogging plans before. That being said, I'm not sure how much I'll focus on the daily news cycle, or even the quadrennial election cycle. I have a long-running list of topics I've been meaning to blog about, and I'll try to focus my limited energies on that list, even if the topics therein aren't in the day's headlines.

Over the years, some people have told me that I should allow more personal details to come through on the blog. For the few readers who don't know me personally, here's a minimal start: I am a lawyer in NYC, who represents funds and other actors in the investment management industry. (Yes, this does place some limits on what I can post about, notwithstanding my thin pseudonymity.) The topics I write about are summed up in this blog's tagline, though I hope to branch out a bit. (Yes, I am a recovering comics geek, in case the pseudonym didn't make it obvious.) On that note, I have a son who is severely autistic, which is - put mildly - a black hole to time and energy. And why blog? It starts with narcissism and goes downhill from there.

I actually dipped a toe back into the blogosphere last summer at the Baseball Crank, and continue to make regular appearances in the comment threads of the blogs belonging to the three real friends I have made through the blogosphere. I hope to make more (such friends). (I also may or may not have made an appearance at this super-anonymous blog over the summer - I fear being hunted down and silenced if I am any more explicit.) Also, I regularly e-mail various bloggers with ideas for posts - which they often take up. Once you go that far, it seems silly to not blog.

And who knows - this blog may eventually have some new-fangled features like an RSS feed and a sidebar that is not four years out of date. But please note that there likely is no blogger out there who is less of a techie than I. (Technology is one of the only areas in which I am not a geek.)

Thanks for coming by.

Why do I only have time to post as I'm running out the door to get home for Shabbat?

Let's try this again.

I'm back.

For now.

How does this blogging thing work, again?

In honor of my return to blogging, I'm organizing a blogger get-together.
Since I can't make the usual Friday night affairs, this one will be on Thursday, August 12th at 7:30 P.M. at "Cafe K" in Manhattan (48th St. between 5th and Madison). This will be the second (or third, depending on who's counting) kosher blogfest I've organized, and I hope it will be the best yet - I'm hoping to draw people from the politics, baseball & Jewish-blogging worlds, and get them together to see if they have anything to say to each other. I anticipate we all will.
Come one, come all. Tell your friends.

Caution: rambling and unfocused post ahead, due to blogging rustiness.

Has anything happened while I was out?

No, I don't have an annual policy to take several months off from blogging, despite what it may seem like. Life just seems to work that way.

I've been wondering how to write this post for a while now, and have finally settled on the Sam Kinison approach: "SAY IT!!! JUST SAY IT!!!!"

So I'll say it. The initial extended blogging pause was due to a combination of work pressures & home-related issues (a renovation that caused us to move twice in 3 months, but has been completed), neither of which was bad. But in the meantime, our son has been diagnosed with autism. A bit ironic, given the series of posts that brought this site some of its greatest visibility some time ago. (And nothing has happened to change my mind about thimerosal, but that's for another time.) But rich irony is a poor substitute for the son we used to know.

This development obviously reduces time for blogging, but - more importantly - it's sapped the mental energy I need to blog. I've always found not blogging to be as addictive as blogging. Combine that with the usual feelings of guilt about spending time with anything not contributing to recovering our son, and the neglect to which I have subjected you all is the result.

Plenty of bloggers have opined that blogging should only be done for fun, and should stop as soon as it begins to feel like work. Well, blogging is fun. But it's also always been work as well; I can't do it any other way. That attitude contributes to the intermittent posting pattern that has always been a feature of this site, but I'd rather have that - even if it means a permanent consignment to the blogosphere's minor leagues - than not being able to look at myself in the monitor's mirror.

And that's why I'm not giving up the site just yet. I'm not going to surrender to the pressures of practicalities in dealing with the demands of my job and my son's condition, or to the voice of despair that tells me I shouldn't be spending time on things like this. I may need to surrender to rationality at some point, but not yet. Blogging is work, and has therefore become a life-affirming act. Blogito, ergo sum.

I hope my son will appreciate it some day.

Blogging on this site may be sparse for a while.

"What else is new?" you probably ask. Well, this time I'm giving some notice.

Nothing bad - just a combination of personal and professional pressures may make it difficult to blog much for a while, and my entries will probably be shorter than usual when they do come.

A good Yom Kippur and Sukkot to all.

And go Yanks!

P.S. No, I am not being deployed to Iraq.

You should have known not to believe my promises of widespread blogging. The culprit this time? A renewed attack of assorted worms on my antivirus-neglected home computer. An infected computer plus a dial-up connection is not a good combination. I'm counting the minutes till we can get DSL.
Also, I've been on vacation this week. Blogging will pick up at its "regular" schedule later in the week.

RATIONALIZATIONS, PART XLVI - THIS TIME, IT'S PERSONAL: In my absence, Steven Den Beste posted a couple of attacks on pseudonymous blogging.
Obviously, I'm a self-interested party to the discussion. In my heart, I agree with much of what Den Beste said; you should not be afraid to own up to your opinions, and an observer is certainly entitled to give more credence to the blogger using an (alleged) real name, rather than the name of a superhero from a somewhat-dated but still classic comic series. I agree with Glenn Reynolds: "If you want to blog anonymously, fine. That's your privilege. Responding to your anonymity differently than they would respond to your True Name is other people's privilege. You pays your money, and you takes your choice."
I do think that Den Beste is still too harsh on the phenomenon. Would I lose my job if I used my real name on the blog? Probably not. But I felt that I could be freer with my opinions if I didn't, and blogging is meant to enable people to freely express and elucidate their opinions. (At least that's the way I see it.) There are some bloggers whose jobs may truly prevent them from using their names, and the blogosphere would be much poorer if the option of pesudonymnous blogging was not viable. See, for example, "Mindles H. Dreck," "Robert Musil" and "Max Power," all of whom blog pseudonymously for what I believe are work-related reasons.
I would not be presumptuous enough to compare my far-too-irregular posts with those of the aforementioned bloggers, but pseudonymous blogging allows quality contributions to the debate which would otherwise be blocked.
I'll agree that blogging in your own name is the ideal. But pseudonymous blogging should be actively encouraged as a second-best solution. Whatever increases contribution to the marketplace of ideas is good.

RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL BLOGGER: This has been my longest and most inexcusable absence, due to a combination of personal and work-related reasons. I will try to make it up to you all.

HACK, HACK: No, I was not on vacation for July 4. I was (and still am) under the influence of an energy-and-thought-sapping bug with lovely side effects, such as coughs louder than John Entwistle's bass. (No audio link available.) I will try to catch up ASAP. As always, I apologize for the absence.

PLEASE BEAR WITH ME: I'm working on a couple of major (read: long) posts for the site. The first will hopefully be up at some point today.

SORRY, VOL.II: A still-crushing work schedule and the second phase of Passover has resulted in another absence from the site. Certain "lost posts" are below, and I will resume posting more regularly.

SORRY: Thanks to Passover and a crushing work schedule, I haven't posted in a long time. I intend for that to change.

SORRY: Blogger has been down every time I tried posting over the last two days. I will try to make up for it this evening.

WELCOME: A special welcome to all those who have arrived through the referral of Mickey Kaus. I hope you'll enjoy your stay and come back occasionally. Thanks, Mickey!