It's been almost a year since my last post! I've written more than a few mini-essays in the interim ... not to mention all of the "content" I'd written prior to (somewhat) overcoming my feeling that blogging feels more than a wee bit self-indulgent and self-important.
BUT, belief in the wisdom of a marketplace of ideas was one of the notions that animated the founding of our Republic. Thus, constructively contributing to that marketplace is a civic-minded act. Given my life experiences, (over-)abundance of formal education, and decades-long love of truth-seeking via self-guided research projects focusing on social and policy issues, I probably have some thoughts worth sharing now and then. So I'm going to post some more things here.
I'll continue to seek to make contributions that will hopefully provide value-added, in that they're meant to raise issues (or takes on issues) that I'm not already hearing from myriad other sources. I will also generally seek to do my due diligence before formulating and posting a piece - which is sometimes a lengthy, labor-intensive process resulting in a given piece not getting finished for weeks or months - and to provide citations/links to expert or otherwise reliable source material.
But I'm also going to relax my perfectionism-driven standards somewhat, and let a blog be a blog sometimes. No, I'm not going to formulate a "thought piece" every time something becomes a trending topic on twitter. I'm not that ambitious, and I don't think an echo chamber of hundreds of hastily-written, largely unresearched, devoid-of-greater-context op/eds really make a meaningful contribution to public discussion. But I will try to go ahead and put ideas out there, even if there's a risk that I've missed something significant or there are related subtopics or questions raised that seem absolutely necessary to look into and incorporate into the analysis. I'll try to figure out a way to at least "publish" *something* when in the midst of a lengthy work in progress. And I'll even try to just post random, not-yet-fully-formed thoughts if I think it's possible that someone, somewhere, may find it interesting or thought-provoking.
Dang, that was a lot of "I" statements. So enough about me. Let's talk about what I think ... =P ;) =)
BUT, belief in the wisdom of a marketplace of ideas was one of the notions that animated the founding of our Republic. Thus, constructively contributing to that marketplace is a civic-minded act. Given my life experiences, (over-)abundance of formal education, and decades-long love of truth-seeking via self-guided research projects focusing on social and policy issues, I probably have some thoughts worth sharing now and then. So I'm going to post some more things here.
I'll continue to seek to make contributions that will hopefully provide value-added, in that they're meant to raise issues (or takes on issues) that I'm not already hearing from myriad other sources. I will also generally seek to do my due diligence before formulating and posting a piece - which is sometimes a lengthy, labor-intensive process resulting in a given piece not getting finished for weeks or months - and to provide citations/links to expert or otherwise reliable source material.
But I'm also going to relax my perfectionism-driven standards somewhat, and let a blog be a blog sometimes. No, I'm not going to formulate a "thought piece" every time something becomes a trending topic on twitter. I'm not that ambitious, and I don't think an echo chamber of hundreds of hastily-written, largely unresearched, devoid-of-greater-context op/eds really make a meaningful contribution to public discussion. But I will try to go ahead and put ideas out there, even if there's a risk that I've missed something significant or there are related subtopics or questions raised that seem absolutely necessary to look into and incorporate into the analysis. I'll try to figure out a way to at least "publish" *something* when in the midst of a lengthy work in progress. And I'll even try to just post random, not-yet-fully-formed thoughts if I think it's possible that someone, somewhere, may find it interesting or thought-provoking.
Dang, that was a lot of "I" statements. So enough about me. Let's talk about what I think ... =P ;) =)
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