Unused and Probably Unusable

So, "Eh," if that is your *real* name, why the blawg hiatus?

Well, me, since me asks, I've been busy.

Blogging grew out of my need to get it all out, and onto the page. I had been commenting anonymously (or pseudonymously) on blogs for some time, including at my favoritest, Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground, as it was then known.

I had spare time. I had unexpressed thoughts. I was visiting blawgs that had no commentability, and that annoyed me. I felt like, if the author had something to say, and it was provocative enough (or wrong enough), that they had an obligation - a duty! - to let me comment on it.

Obviously, that's not how writing works, but it is how blogging works - or one of the ways it can work.

Blogging was a hobby, but it was also fun. I could link, I could make snarky comments, I could vent - but I could also indulge my obsessive reading of news and blogs. Suddenly, being overinformed was not a sign of weakness; it was a source of inspiration.

When life gets hectic, as it has lately, I fall behind on my blog reading. Right now my Bloglines page has over 500 posts that I haven't had a chance to pore carefully over - or even skim or skip past. I love blogs - this is the Blogroll created for me by Bloglines, and here's what I have blogrolled at del.icio.us - that is, the same sort of thing, but more haphazardly, since delicious is about impulse and saving everything, like a magpie, rather than carefully selecting only those posts, blogs, or webpages I really and truly need.

I notice that I have 39 blogs on my delicious blogroll; that includes new addition Lawyers, Guns & Money, and Conglomerate, as well as "215 words," the sorts of things I would never have added to bloglines. That's because bloglines pushes posts to you, and they look like they pile up in the aggregator unless you read them. I prefer to lay out the links for myself to peruse at leisure, no obligation to buy, no money down.

I'm about to go on vacation. I'm winding up a document review and preparing for a filing - which will occur while I'm on vacation. I have family duties pressing. I have social responsibilities calling. There's a Jim Henson / Muppet exhibition down in D.C. at the Smithsonian's museum of American history, and not just the exhibit but the museum closes on September 5th, 2006 for a good several years for renovation.

Also, I have a headache, and the water's too cold, and I don't feel like it.

***

I have less to say about the Laws of War than I'd thought - and also have written far, far more words for that post than I can usefully use. When you write a lot and have nothing to say - and does that include this post? - you know you're deep in trouble.

***

'Tis better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool, than open it and remove all doubt. Or so 'tis said by people who say 'tis and 'tain't a lot.

In that vein, I posted to del.icio.us this classic, originally run in Pl*yb*y (name munged to protect the guilty; after all, only illicit and licentious writing ever appears there, cf. this other favorite author of mine)...

The Dark Truth About Comp 101, blogged at Thus Blogged Anderson.

Say, interested in writing? See more links about it (del.icio.us/eh_nonymous/writing).

***

You know, you read a 1,600+ page opinion now and again, and people think you're obsessed. Still, sometimes a case will involve a lot of writing for a judge. See, e.g., this news story on the tobacco decision by the D.C.-based federal judge.

You know, if you like reading legal opinions, I should recommend that you check out del.icio.us/eh_nonymous/pdf for all my links to opinions (except the ones in html format, of course), as well as other PDFfy items of interest. That includes a teaser for an article by Prof. Nate Persily on Scalia's decision in the LULAC race-based gerrymander case, and advice on geting a clerkship, and a long philosophical paper by a soldier on why Don't Ask, Don't Tell violates the military's own ethical standards. Not to mention some of the Best Judicial Opinions On the Web, selected entirely by my own caprice and blind chance.

Prefer funny stuff? Or all the links that relate to law? Some categories overlap - they're tags, after all, not a filing system in the normal sense - but they're all pretty helpful.

Or if it's advice you need, I've found plenty of that too.

As with blogging, the best part about all this is: it's not just for you. It's for me, too. I get to have a flexible, endlessly interconnected set of bookmarks for myself. Oh, right, I also bookmarked some items to look over later. Hm. Must clean that out soon and add more.

***

So, while the Heinlein post (and the series as a whole, in fact) are in limbo, do like I'm doing: take a vacation from it. Get away from it all.

When I come back, I'll decide which way I'll wind it up. I might do it straight, as I've done most of the others, but I was also thinking about laying out the process of creation. Of course, that might be like explaining a joke, or dissecting a frog. It's messy, it takes a while, and in the process the frog dies.

Have a good August!

As I noted last week, the promised Heinlein Friday post on the Laws of War was delayed by the utterly predictable, yet totally unexpected unfolding of the Universe.

In the meantime, here's what's up.

I've been blogging since June of 2005, and show no particular inclination to stop thinking, reading, commenting on (er, meaning "at" - er, meaning "at the location of") other blawgs, caring about politics, or writing about law, language, science fiction, or anything else that comes within my sights. Sight? No, sights.

Blogging serves a number of functions for me. It allows me to say what I cannot say at work - or at least, cannot say at such length. Work is for work, which is to say, is not the right place for a rant about Scalia, or a scholarly review of Heinlein's fiction pertaining to sex changes (pending...), or a snarky commentary on Tom Cruise's wacky religious beliefs.

Blogging is writing - and publishing, all in one. It's not journaling, at least not if done right. People can see this - will see it, if I point it out or their browsing brings them here. It's public expression, as well as personal exposition.

As Jeremy recently noted, blogging is (also, or especially) a way to get inside people's heads. He gets to eavesdrop on the thoughts and feelings of others, observe their mental processes. See his commentary at Powell's Book Blog. To the same effect, see architecture columnist Inga Saffron's thoughts on her recent BlogDay (anniversary of blogging). Her comments are thoughtful and, to me, quite interesting. They are the opposite of the fear that journalism will be killed by blogging:

I started the blog without knowing what I was getting into. I saw it as a place to channel odd bits of information that didn't quite measure up as column material, and to try out oddball ideas. It's been a dream situation for a journalist: No deadlines. No limitations on story length. No dumb headlines. No annoying editors. No plodding bureaucracy. What you see is what I write, flaws and all. I never expected that getting rid of the middleman would be so liberating. I also never expected the kind of feedback I see in the comments. Until recently, journalists could never be quite sure of how their work was being read. No more. I've learned a lot just by eavesdropping.

In her view, journalists are liberated by being bloggers. In Jeremy's view, a writer can (finally) connect with his audience, not just letter by letter or one at a time, but in a wave of two-way communication and reaction and reply.

As I am (purposely) a low-profile blogger, I don't have quite the same experience.

I've been asked why I bother blogging at all if I don't keep track of my number of hits, my blog traffic, my ranking, how well I'm linked, who links me, etc. etc. ad nauseam. Frankly, I don't care. I write because I need to, and the fact that I can get feedback (and, indeed, accountability for what I write) is a bonus. The icing on the compulsion cake.

I don't do this to change the world. I do this because it helps me out.

Blogging lets me:

- get things off my chest
- store my thoughts in their most coherent (sometimes) or cogent form
- try out various writing styles, from the most formal to the least
- store my links in one useful location

So expect more of the same, to my second Blogaversary, and on into the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, thanks for reading, to those who do, and thanks for commenting - you know who you are. You help convert this from meaningless self-referential solo gymnastics into an exercise (literally) for the reader - and the blogger.

And now, to get back to work on this overdue (and still imposing) HF post. Maybe if I can find a better way to break it into pieces...

To my disappointment, the Heinlein Friday for this Friday wasn't done yet - not even half done yet, which would have let me post Part 1, to be followed next Friday by part 2.

So, mea culpa, and let me just leave a few good links here as a taste of what I'm going for. The real HF will be posted... but not before midnight. Maybe not even before next Wednesday. :)

• Wikipedia "Laws of War"


• Fred (Slacktivist) on "You're Not Allowed to Kill Civilians"
  
  
  
  • the Title post
  
  
  • YNATKC continued (for those who didn't get the message after part 1)
  
  
  • Nagasaki - for those still unclear on the concept
  
  
  • Perverse Arithmetic - for those who eagerly look for permission from the prohibition
  
  
  • Terrorists are Bad - for those eager to hide behind labels, particularly when they are unfamiliar with history, war, or both
  
  


• Some links at my del.icio.us page on the Global War on Terror, starting at p.2, which includes some goodies. Of note: Neat Katyal's plea to finally start where we should have, and try courts-martialing detainees; Fafblog's biting satirical comment on the coordinated suicide of three Guantanamo detainees "6/10 changed everything!"; a guest post at Concurring Opinions about how a law clerk grew up, got appointed to the Supreme Court, and turned his former judge's great dissent into the law of the land, eviscerating a terrible precedent, in "Who's the Greatest Law Clerk Ever?" (referring to the recent Hamdan decision).


• The first page of same, which includes the intriguing comment by Prof. Gerber at Intel Dump that perhaps not trying detainees at all would be the right way to go. Why go with kangaroo courts, when you can just decline to try (or punish) them at all? I need to review this, see what he's basing his argument on.

There's lots to say - including about ongoing events, including political ones such as the defeat in Connecticut of a certain formerly Democratic Senator by Democratic nominee Ned Lamont, a rich progressive liberal who won because the primary voters were sick and tired of the incumbent's refusal to vote or talk like a Democrat on a wide range of issues. The first and foremost being the need to show skepticism towards whether the Administration should be credited with competence and good will in the war in Iraq, neither of which it has actually demonstrated. And, of course, the War In Iraq (is it Civil yet? Is it Accomplished yet?) is not really a front in the GWOT - until our leaders turned it into one. "Come on," he taunted.

The Vice President talks as if Iraq were part of the War on Terror. The Senator (soon to be former Senator) talks as if "terrorists" (meaning guerilla warriors, or meaning terrorists? Does he even know?) will take heart if we stop fighting the wrong war and begin fighting the right ones. Both ignore the reality that Saddam was not behind 9/11. Saddam cheered when Americans bled, but that's not enough; many of our enemies did. Anarchist fanatical theocrats have remarkably little in common with westernized despotic secular tyrants. And just where did Saddam purchase that poison gas he used on the Kurds?

Much, much more when I get around to it.

This week's Heinlein Friday may be a bit delayed by the unavoidable, inevitable, ineffable unfolding of the Universe. Current ETA is this coming Friday, August 11th.

However, I can tell you that the next HF will involve

- discussion of Heinlein
- discussion of the laws governing the military, and their conduct in warfare
- " of the Geneva conventions
- " of war crimes
- " of detaining combatants
- " of detaining civilians
- " of killing civilians (hint: don't)

There's already been some mention of the above, particularly when I mentioned law and justice in the military, like in Starship Troopers.

It will also, I warn you in advance, be very quoteful. Quotatious, I'm calling it.

More soon.

Also, I always in these preview posts take the opportunity to plug my del.icio.us page - check it out for the latest links, breaking news, rare resources, and surprising facts that make blogging so interesting. But instead of having to embed them in a post, with the inevitable wondering about how unique or "post-worthy" the link is, I can just post the link itself, and let you the reader decide what’s interesting enough to click on. I promise, there’s something for everyone.

Just browse to http://del.icio.us/eh_nonymous - and enjoy.

Or don't, see if I mind. :)