Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Empty Chairs at Empty Tables
One thing that can be depressing in the Blogosphere (drat, I thought I could hold out against using that word!) is when good blogs end. There have been numerous ones I've read from time to time which are no more, but three which really stick with me were Louder Fenn, Fearsome Pirate, and USS Clueless (Steven Den Beste). Louder Fenn was run by a practicing Roman Catholic and had very interesting and insightful commentary on the world at large and also some nice pieces on theology. His work up until early 2002 can be found here, but his replacement site at www.louderfenn.com is now just advertising. He unwittingly revealed his actual name to me once, and there's someone with the same name publishing online, but I don't think that it's him. Fearsome Pirate was run by Josh S, an ornery Lutheran about my age who can still be seen from time to time in people's comment boxes. His theology posts were extremely complicated, and had a tendency to tick off a lot of people. I think this eventually got to him, and now there's nothing left at what was once www.fearsomepirate.blogspot.com. Finally is USS Clueless, which helped establish the "treatise" style of blogging. His posts tended to be on geopolitics and drew on his background as an engineer, but he received so much nitpicky email that he eventually quit (he was having to take some sort of medication to be able to concentrate long enough to write his brilliant pieces, and decided it was no longer worth it). I didn't always agree with what he wrote, but he definitely had my respect. He also was one of the very first sites to link to HokiePundit, which was very kind of him. He now has a site about anime at Chizumatic, though he doesn't seem to have seen Trigun or Cowboy Bebop, which are the only ones I've seen.
Ben Domenech was also a great read, though he seems to have moved on to Red State, which is a good fit for him. Mark Butterworth was gone for about a year and a half, but thankfully he's back. Mark Shea is briefly on hiatus, though I don't think he'll be gone all that long. I'm not very good at finding new blogs, and tend to stick with the same ones for a very long time. There are about six which I read on a daily basis, and dozens more which I read perhaps twice a week or so. It's not that some are more important, but some have formats which are more suitable for reading less frequently. In any case, I hope to be updating this more often, though there may be a period of two or three months this summer where it will lie fallow, as I hope to be a counselor at a camp in the Midwest. In any case, be sure to check back, and thanks for reading!
One thing that can be depressing in the Blogosphere (drat, I thought I could hold out against using that word!) is when good blogs end. There have been numerous ones I've read from time to time which are no more, but three which really stick with me were Louder Fenn, Fearsome Pirate, and USS Clueless (Steven Den Beste). Louder Fenn was run by a practicing Roman Catholic and had very interesting and insightful commentary on the world at large and also some nice pieces on theology. His work up until early 2002 can be found here, but his replacement site at www.louderfenn.com is now just advertising. He unwittingly revealed his actual name to me once, and there's someone with the same name publishing online, but I don't think that it's him. Fearsome Pirate was run by Josh S, an ornery Lutheran about my age who can still be seen from time to time in people's comment boxes. His theology posts were extremely complicated, and had a tendency to tick off a lot of people. I think this eventually got to him, and now there's nothing left at what was once www.fearsomepirate.blogspot.com. Finally is USS Clueless, which helped establish the "treatise" style of blogging. His posts tended to be on geopolitics and drew on his background as an engineer, but he received so much nitpicky email that he eventually quit (he was having to take some sort of medication to be able to concentrate long enough to write his brilliant pieces, and decided it was no longer worth it). I didn't always agree with what he wrote, but he definitely had my respect. He also was one of the very first sites to link to HokiePundit, which was very kind of him. He now has a site about anime at Chizumatic, though he doesn't seem to have seen Trigun or Cowboy Bebop, which are the only ones I've seen.
Ben Domenech was also a great read, though he seems to have moved on to Red State, which is a good fit for him. Mark Butterworth was gone for about a year and a half, but thankfully he's back. Mark Shea is briefly on hiatus, though I don't think he'll be gone all that long. I'm not very good at finding new blogs, and tend to stick with the same ones for a very long time. There are about six which I read on a daily basis, and dozens more which I read perhaps twice a week or so. It's not that some are more important, but some have formats which are more suitable for reading less frequently. In any case, I hope to be updating this more often, though there may be a period of two or three months this summer where it will lie fallow, as I hope to be a counselor at a camp in the Midwest. In any case, be sure to check back, and thanks for reading!
