The Rants of Issachar

It seems my blogging always gets a little spotty in the summer, but I'm back now. Actually it seems like I'm not the only one who takes summer breaks. A lot of the blogs I read seem a little sparse over the summer.


So what's been happening in my life? I'm still looking for a house, although the process is becoming slightly easier. I've found a church, (or rather two churches), and I've got a ski pass for the winter. I'm enjoying my new job, although I do miss my former students. Speaking of which, I hope you're not defacing my yearbook too much Simon... :)

I'm also considering a name change for the site. In retrospect, the "rants" of Issachar doesn't really describe what I do here. (If you've got any suggestions, I'd love to hear them).

For the most part, I try to avoid ranting altogether. I try to write clear, (and I hope intelligent), points of view of any subject that comes up. But why post them publicly? Someone asked me this a while back and they couldn't see any reason why you'd post your thoughts online. This was after we'd found out that someone who should know better had been half-reading my old blog post on abortion and come to the ridiculous conclusion that I was some sort of sexist pig. I say half-reading, because if they'd been paying attention, they'd have noticed that I was talking about the stupid gut-reactions I had as a teenager. (Hands up anyone who didn't have stupid opinions when they were 13 years old).

Still, I don't really see this as a reason not to post my opinions online. Obviously I can't stop people from making incorrect judgements about me, but I can write as honestly as possible. I don't really have opinions that I'm not prepared to defend and I like dialogue. The two best things about posting on the net is that the scope of the dialogue is a lot greater, and we can link to original sources. Discussions don't always come back to "studies have shown" or "experts say". We can link directly to the experts or studies we're talking about.

Discussion of the recent curfuffle over Pope Benedict's comments in a speech doesn't have to be vague consist of references to short quotes. We can get the whole text, (and thus the whole context). (I may comment on the Pope's speech later, but maybe not).


In a way, I almost want to go "on record" with my thoughts. Someone told me once that if I ever wanted to seek any political office that this blog would come back to haunt me. Again, I'm not terribly concerned. People who hide their opinions to make themselves more electable, really shouldn't be elected. I wouldn't want to be one of those.

Posted by:  Marco

"Rants" is good. You could go with "thoughts", "musings", etc., all of which are already too frequent in blog titles.

Yeah, blogging is a little bit of a dilemma, isn't it? Mine sometimes resembles a public journal, and I sometimes hesitate to put in things that are important to me but may lose value if I throw them out wantonly to the anonymity of the internet. If ever the phrase "pearls before swine" had any meaning, it's in the blogging world.

That next-to-last sentence of yours makes me scratch my head. I think you mean "shouldn't" ? Or am I mistaking your grammar?

Posted by:  issachar

ouch... Thanks Marco. Error corrected. :)

I always feel strange correcting the error. Sort of like I'm changing the past. In some ways I like the wiki method of keeping track of all past versions.