Housekeeping

"It’s an inescapable truth that for some people, the most interesting way to participate in online discourse is to kick holes in the conversation. Others — many of them young, but some, alas, old enough to know better — have a sense of entitlement that leads them to believe that their having an opinion means the rest of us are obliged to listen to it. Still others plainly get off on verbally abusing others, and seek out conversations that will offer them opportunities to do so."

— from Teresa Nielsen Hayden's "Some things I know about moderating conversations in virtual space"

OK, so, haven't done this before and not thrilled to have to do it now, but asking nicely didn't work and asking not so nicely didn't work, so I'm done asking. I prefer dialogue and a freewheeling conversation to censorship and comment-blocking, but dialogue and conversation require good faith and a willingness to listen.

Josh: I'm blocking your comments. An alternative you may prefer: public restrooms have lots of tile and great reverb — they're an even better forum for someone so enamored of his own voice. My e-mail still works, so if you want to continue to ignore everything I write here while pretending to "pick my brains," you can do so one-on-one, in a forum in which you only get to call me, and not the other visitors here, a Klansman/Nazi for failing to live up to Martin Luther King Jr.'s clarion call for pre-emptive war.

Everybody else: If you look past his oceans of supercilious, faux-dim/real-dim sarcasm, past his sneering, and past his smug presumption of malice, you'll see that Josh is a guy who realizes that the world, as it is, is intolerable and earnestly believes that somebody (the church? the army?) ought to do something to change it as soon as possible. That much is admirable. So is the ambitious CPT-splinter effort he's hoping to organize. You can read all about that, along with all the Josh-a-riffic 'tude you know and love from his comments here, at his site: Generosity Without Borders.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled blogging.