Blogging slow-down and Facebook hiatus

Recently I deactivated my Facebook account and have been very much enjoying the rest. I don't know when I will go back, though probably I will sometime.

Obviously, my blogging has slowed down, and I'm going to say outright that I no longer feel any duty to blog about current events in general. I've decided that it was unhealthy for me to feel that I had to "say something" about whatever is happening right now. That does not mean that my principles or opinions have changed; they haven't. It just means that I've decided that trying to be a pundit on current events was becoming a ball and chain and that the value I was adding to the information stream was not worth the artificially produced ADHD of trying to think of something to say all the time.

I know what it's like to be a reader and to wonder what's going on when a blogger slows way down. One wonders if there's been some crisis in their life that is taking a lot of time or if they have changed their minds.

I admit that the rise of the Trumpites has been a discouraging blow to me. I no longer feel as though I represent and speak to a large slice of normal conservatives who may be (let's say) a little farther to the right than most Republicans on matters like immigration but are basically sensible people. Too many souls are being devoured by the maw of the alt-right, the manosphere, and Trumpism, and it just makes me too sad to think about.

However, one good effect of the Facebook hiatus has been that I've been reading more over at National Review, and I've found them refreshingly sensible on a variety of issues and more strongly conservative than I had remembered from the last time I spent time there. For example, on the matter of Confederate monuments, while some have (ridiculously) called for capitulating and tearing them down, their colleagues have disagreed articulately. At this point I can usually find someone saying something I agree with on almost any current event over at NRO and don't feel a need to add my two cents at my obscure blog(s).

I'm of course home schooling and running my household, and I'm wondering how I ever had time to be on Facebook at all! In my spare time, I'm writing professional articles in probability to submit to journals for peer review, and that takes enormous effort and discipline. It's funny how one wants to do hard, enjoyable, intellectual work in one sense but at the same time the lazy part of oneself doesn't want to. Blogging little and being off Facebook allow me to force myself to do things I really want to do more.

If you have questions about things that I know about, or that you think I know about, feel free to contact me by e-mail. My name, first and last, no spaces, at gmail.com. Correspondence is a big part of what I do, and it's (IMO) more rewarding than blogging. I will update on undesigned coincidences and on new things related to Hidden in Plain View either here or at W4 and will blog occasionally.

Blog housekeeping

I'm sorry to have to announce that, for the time being, I have changed the settings for commenting here at Extra Thoughts to "registered users." This allows those with a Google account or any of several other types of accounts (Blogger, Yahoo, WordPress, and others, see list here) to comment, but it does not permit comments from those who are entirely anonymous or who do not sign in in some way.

I notice that some who commented on my "You Can Trust God" post below did not sign in with any ID, because that was not required at that time. Be assured that this change in comment policy has nothing to do with any of you and that I appreciated my interactions with all of you who commented there. I hope that all of you are able to keep on commenting here at Extra Thoughts with Google or some other type of account.

This change might or might not be permanent, but unfortunately there has been a recent uptick in particularly vile anonymous comment attempts to this blog, and I would prefer to allow Blogger to block them from the outset rather than deleting them individually at the moderation stage.

Thanks for your understanding!

Blog housekeeping--new follow by email widget added

My plethora of readers will be happy to know that I have added a "follow by e-mail" widget on the left side. Note: It won't show if you have Adblock turned on.

This addition was inspired by a reader at W4 who asked to be added to any e-mail list that provides notifications when I publish. At W4 you can subscribe to our RSS post feed as well, if you would like.

What this presumably means is that I need to post to this blog more often. I await inspiration...

Blog housekeeping--Backing up

It's only taken me about 5 1/2 years, but I finally found out how to back up this blog. An on-line friend, Michael Bauman, had the URL for one of his blogs nabbed (somehow) by cybersquatters and was looking for a way to get his content back. The fact that this could happen to him spooked me to a salutary degree, and I did some googling and found that it is possible to back up a Blogger blog such as this one fairly easily using some space on one's own hard drive and the "export" function. Settings ---> Other ---> Export blog. The content is saved in .xml format for  easy import into a new blog. Fortunately, despite the cyber-bandits, Dr. Bauman was able to grab his content in this way and move it over to his other, untouched blog, "The Right Word." 

I'm sure anyone who reads this has known for a long time how to back up a Blogger blog. (Wordpress has a similarly easy function, I hear, though it doesn't grab uploaded images.) Just in case you haven't done this for a free personal blog: Take my word for it; it's extremely easy, takes about a minute, can be repeated as needed, and will provide extra security against various mishaps.

Extra Thoughts--Now with Google Chrome

I have to say that the new Blogger behind-the-scenes look isn't just overly appealing, but I suppose I'll get used to it. More urgent was the fact that Blogger recently decided that IE7 is just too, too ancient and no longer supports it, so I could only blog from Firefox on this site. Do-able (especially after FF fixed the bug whereby links would not go in the proper places on Blogger), but Firefox and my somewhat elderly computer (I've finally decided it is seven or eight years old) don't always get along. Various other IE7 problems were coming up, and I have finally given in and bought a new desktop with Windows 7 and IE9. (In the course of that I lost access to Adblock Pro, which is great for IE 7 but apparently doesn't work with IE9. Rats.) The transition will be somewhat painful, but one compensation: Unlike XP, which often (always?) didn't support Chrome, Windows 7 does. I like it. Super-intuitive, lovely ad blocking software. And Blogger likes it. (Of course.) Not that this means I'll be posting on here particularly more often. But at least I can do it from software that is fully compatible with the blog. Hurrah! Now if I can just get this dad-gummed New Blogger dashboard figured out...

Comment testing

This will sound like a shameless ploy to get more comments, but I've decided to post it anyway: I've recently learned of a person who tried to comment on one of my posts but whose comment was mysteriously eaten twice by Blogger. I couldn't find it either time, even in Blogger's spam filter, and am baffled as to why this problem arose. During approximately this same period of time no one else has happened to comment here either. Not that things are usually hopping, but that's exactly what makes it difficult to know if Blogger suddenly has some general problem with accepting comments to the blog.

I've been able to sign out and post test comments anonymously, but as this is still from my own IP I'm not sure that it is a good test.

So if you are not a member of my household and should feel the Spirit (or spirit) moving you to comment on a post, especially a recent post, this would be a good time, as it would let me see that Blogger isn't just eating all my readers' comments.

Blog housekeeping

To commentators:

I've noticed recently that a number of you have been reposting your comments by breaking them up into two or more parts.

This is to let you know that the "requested URL too large" message you sometimes get from Google when you write a long comment is misleading. I am getting these longer comments and could simply moderate them as they are. Give it a try and see whether your long comments come through without your having to go to the trouble to break them up and re-post. As it stands, I'm simply deleting the duplicates, but it does worry me sometimes that I might accidentally delete some part of what you have to say.

I've learned to ignore that "too large" message. The comment is always there anyway. Of course, that's easy for me to do, because my comments are unmoderated, since I'm the blog administrator. So I can simply go and look to see whether it posted. I'm sorry that this isn't as easy for you, my valued readers, to do. Unfortunately I have reason to believe that it's still a good idea to keep comments moderation turned on.

The only message I've ever gotten that really meant that my comment didn't post was something like, "We were unable to fulfill your request" or words to that effect. In that case, the comment was really simply lost, and I could not even use the back button to recover the content and break it up.

But the white screen with the "requested URL too large" message appears, so far, to be functionally meaningless. So you can save yourselves some time by just waiting to see if your long comment appears before trying again. Thanks!

Apologies!

I apologize for not moderating comments in a timely fashion. I had thought that blogger would be sending me e-mail notifications when they were awaiting moderation, but evidently not. I've now entered the e-mail address in a second place on settings, and we'll see if that works as planned.

Apologies again.

Comments moderation enabled

Dear friends,

I'm sorry to have to do this, but I am getting sufficiently fed up with the steady trickle of spam (and nothing but spam) and have enabled comments moderation. Those of you who do post substantive comments, please do not be put off by this. I will be quite quick at moderating.

Thanks!

Change in posting protocols

Dear friends,

I'm trying a change to registered user only comments. I think that this does not require you to have a blogger ID. It says "including OpenID." What I am attempting to cut out is anonymous commentators. If you are a friend, a regular reader, or indeed anyone but a troll, feel free to make contact with me (you will know how to find my e-mail address or will already have it) if you have trouble commenting under the registration protocol, and we will work something out. I'm making this change because of the anonymous troll--whom I believe I have identified--who stopped by on the previous thread.

Blog housekeeping--starting to label

I was just at a friend's blog and realized how useful his post labels are when I'm coming new to a blog. So I've decided gradually to start going back through my posts and labeling them. Should have done that to begin with, of course. What this means is that for the time being, the labels won't show you complete lists. So if you go to "hymns," you'll probably be thinking, "I know she has way more posts than that on hymns." Hopefully I'll get them all in there eventually, unless this fiddly project falls by the wayside.

Comments moderation removed

Dear readers,

I have removed comments moderation and the requirement for blogger ID for the time being. You will have to do one of those things where you type the word you see. I hope that this will work well.

Comments moderation enabled

Dear Readers,

I have reluctantly decided to enable comments moderation for a time, even on such a low-traffic blog as this one. This action is in response to continued traffic from one particular undesired reader whom I picked up quite by accident by writing a negative post about someone he evidently admires and who has ignored un-subtle hints to take himself off. This is not the first time that I have picked up oddball readers by putting the name of a fanatically admired kook into the heading of a post. Google alerts appears to be my bane, and I shall have to learn to give my posts less obvious titles. Since this is my personal blog, I do not feel obligated to interact with comments from people who give me the creeps (either by their handles or by their opinions) or who fanatically admire people who give me the creeps. So that's that.

To all the rest of you, please do not be discouraged by moderation from posting your comments. I am on my e-mail many times a day and will receive alerts and post your comments very quickly. And I hope that this change will not be permanent.

I wanna be like Zippy

My hordes of readers will notice the blog's new look. And just in case anyone doesn't get the allusion, it is to Zippy Catholic's blog, the look of which I have always liked better than my own. The content's pretty darned good, too!

The really good news is that now I can put up links to other people's blogs without fearing that warning that "all your changes will be lost if you change your format." I had to do a little html stuff to put up the three links that have always been there, and retaining as I do a bit of the technophobe, this was fiddly and annoying. I also believed that when it said that all my changes would be lost, it meant the links too, and I'd have to redo them, so I've kept it to just three against the day (today) when I would get that seagoing look I really wanted.

But the worry was for nothing. As it turns out, the links all survived the transition to the new lighthouse-y look, and now I don't have to think about it. So I can start adding a few more links. Now, if only they have some new user-friendly way to do that...

Update: Thanks entirely to Zippy for the recent comments feature. This should encourage y'all to comment frequently just to see yourself up there on top of the list!

Update to the non-blog

A friend just told me that some people have actually left comments on my non-blog blog page. I apologize to all of you (if you check back) for not having discovered this for myself. As you can imagine, I've discovered that my resident expert was wrong and that there is no way to post technical papers and a curriculum vitae to a blogger blog page. What I really wanted was a home page, and I got that with yahoo. It is here. That page is not a blog either but gets updated on an on-going basis, which this does not.

I blog from time to time at Right Reason, the weblog for philosophical conservatism. I did blog at a page called Enchiridion Militis, run by Josh Trevino, the Internet maven of Redstate fame. Its focus was on the threats to Christendom from Islam and from liberalism. But Josh consolidated some web projects and partly withdrew from blogging, and EM was a casualty in that process. Some of the old EM folks are working on a successor site, hopefully to be up by May of 07. I'll try to remember to update here on that, but in any event, I will certainly link it on my simple home page.

Thanks, Lifeethics, for the citation. I'm glad you liked the phrase. I enjoy interacting with you guys on Wesley Smith's Secondhand Smoke, too.

This is (really) not a blog

I've signed up for my own blog page in the hopes that this will provide me a place to post my curriculum vitae on-line and also some papers. The idea is that right now it's very hard to find "me" on the Internet. It was drawn to my attention last year that someone on a blog referred to me as a "bad-ass epistemologist." (No, I don't have his URL but will eventually look it up.) I can't to this day figure out how he had heard of me, because nearly all of my publications are buried in paper journals. This is good for the look of the vitae but bad for anyone who is trying to find out who the heck I am. I post on Right Reason, the blog for Conservative Philosophers (google it), and even there I have no place for a vitae. As a non-academic, I have no personal web page. So last night I asked my resident expert (my husband), "How can I get a web page of my very own to which to post papers?" His answer was to get a blog page and post papers there. I still feel skeptical about whether this will work. I really don't want to post my papers as verrry long blog entries. So I may need his expertise. For the moment, I'm just trying to get this page to show up--when I type in its supposed URL, I get a message that it doesn't exist. So maybe it requires an initial entry to prime the pump. Here goes!