Two heads are better than one.......err I guess?

 I am happy to report that we will be having some new contributors soon as I have sent out several invitations to authors both old and new. Some of your old favorites and a few new authors that I can't wait to read. If two heads are better than one then I bet seven or eight are as good as it gets.

I just want to apologize for the delay in getting to some of my email as I don't check it everyday. So don't worry if I don't answer right away.

I find it amusing that the guy who is the biggest trouble maker and problem is running this clown car but hey waddayagonnado?

So get on that hobbyhorse and start riding guys!

Off to the races.

Dive in the waters fine!

I hope all of the contributors continue to post here. I would love to get some new blood too.  I now I post a lot and sometimes get lazy and fall into my old bag of tricks. We need new stuff. Different stuff.

I see that Sixty has already jumped in.

Viewpoints are up to you. It is a free speech zone. So let your freak flag fly.

Please email me at trooperyork@gmail.com if you have any questions or suggestions.

Thanks.

The Left's War on Comments Sections....Been There Done That.

Breibart News.com October 28, 2015 by Allum Bokhari

The internet was born open but is becoming closed everywhere. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the rush to shutter readers’ comments sections at major news organisations. Cheered on by intolerant, snobbish cultural elites, news organisations from The Verge to The Daily Beast have, in recent months, informed their readers to take their opinions elsewhere.

Dozens of progressive blogs and news outlets are following suit, citing “abuse” and “harassment” as the primary reasons they no longer want to hear the opinions of their readers. But that’s not what is really going on.

There was a time when comments sections were seen as the next step in a golden age of democratised communication, particularly by the political Left. “For the first time ever, we are thinking aloud, unfiltered by mass media gatekeepers,” wrote a former Hillary Clinton advisor in 2008. “Never before has the global discourse been so accessible, recursive, and durable.”

In 2009, the former online editor for the Washington Post wrote that despite their problems, readers’ comments allowed readers to “complain about what they see as unfairness or inaccuracy” and remind editors that they “do not always agree with journalists about what is important.”

House Keeping... Internal Affairs

Do to recent events, and, after mauling it over with fellow contributors, I have updated the comment warning underneath the "Leave your comment" sign.

When a comment thread starts to derail into personalities squabbles, the comment thread will be summarily shut down without a warning.

All contributors have the power to shut the comments belonging to their own post. They also have the power to delete comments, on their own posts, as they see fit.

I don't want to go to comment moderation, I would rather hand the blog over to someone else, or shut it down entirely.  Now, let me be clear, I don't want to do that either, I don't want to have to shut the blog down and all of the contributors have urged me to continue. And I intend to continue.

Please, lets try to beguine anew.

And one more thing... I deleted some of Meade's comments yesterday, in case anybody was wondering. I understand it caused problems. I don't want to go into detail, other than to apologize to Meade for my mistake.
Please, do not take this mention as an opportunity to rehash that event. Let's move on.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

Guest Posts Welcome

Yesterday. in my "I like This Idea for a Post This Morning" (still going strong today) I asked yous guys (a little Trooper lingo there) to suggest topics, that may have gone "neglected", for us to post, discuss, chew over, kick around etc... And, the never disappointing, always obliging, Bagoh20, (Bags, as I call him) shared something I thought I make into a "guest post".

I think something that is very important to a huge number of real people, yet is rarely covered is the subject of opportunity. How can people young and old find, develop, and exploit opportunities to succeed, grow, and build things outside of the standard and over-used one of go to school, go to more school, succeed at school, and then when you are already grown up, go figure out how to make a living by talking someone into hiring you to do what THEY want you to do.

It's not a plan for happiness or self-fulfillment for many people. It's a path based on maintaining the security of doing what you are supposed to for as long as you can pull it off. It's avoiding risk, avoiding challenge, and missing your calling as an individual. It delays for as long as possible your contributing to the people around you, which is how you become self-sufficient - by people needing your work.

The only place I see this stuff addressed is in the work of Mike Rowe. We need more discussion about how people can become valuable assets to their community through self-development that starts out very quickly paying off, and keeps building that throughout a life.

Our education system is a shambles of narrow political experimentation and pet projects of a few philosophies which are antagonistic toward diversity and unconcerned with results. They are experiments insistent on proving their hypothesis with no interest in real results for individuals. Failure is ignored and success is manufactured, and failure is what a great many are getting.

We need more discussion, exploration and experimentation with teaching trades, commerce, business building, how to work in a way where you parlay your minor successes into big ones over a lifetime.

Many immigrants are learning these things, and leaving natives behind in the area of personal development and growth because they arrive without the standard plan as an option, blocking their view of their real opportunities. The reason that immigrants take so many jobs is that they take the damned job. Then, they run with it, advance, start businesses. They don't see their parents' couch as the only alternative to college or a cushy job.

Many millionaires and highly successful, self-actualized individuals and families living great lives owe little or nothing to the standard plan.

I'm not against education - I still work on it every day for myself - but the way it is being done and sold is mostly a scam - a high end version of the stuff sold on late night TV as get-rich-quick lies. They take your money, waste you valuable time, and in the end, leave you to your own devices anyway, but wounded and broke.

That's a lot of rant against what isn't working, but I see the successful people all around me, including myself, and many found a different ways, which people don't really see anymore. They are there. They should be better known.

Thanks Bags. This post also gave me the opportunity to plum the tags bar. (mix metaphors, too late)

Seven traits that make a good blogger

Some say blogging is dead.

That's not quite true, not at all.  More like blogging has found its equilibrium point.

Places like Livejournal or Xanga, former major players, are losing ground (except, apparently in Russia). Other platforms like Facebook then Twitter then -- whatever it is the kids are using these days -- replaced most of the blogs.  And that allowed blogs to really become a focused form in their own right.

Most of us around here have been veterans of the world wide web since its beginnings and many of us were following blogs before they had that name.  I'm one of the former but not the latter.  It took me a while before I warmed to blogs, mostly because I was reading so much other stuff that I didn't want to get caught up in online rants and raves.

I started peeking into blogs around 2003, starting my own later in the year, but only followed a couple of friends.  Then Gore, oops, Kerry ran against Bush in 2004.  That's what got me, well, addicted to blog reading.  Instapundit among them, and from Instapundit to Althouse. Then, five or six or seven or more everyday.

After the election, I fasted blogs, finding the frenzy too much.  But slowly came back.   So, I've been around blogging for a while, and I've blogged myself since 2003, though rather inconsistently.

I'm not a good blogger, I'll admit that.  But what makes a good blogger?

Here are my suggestions:

1. prolific (a few posts a day or more)
2. consistent (every day or so for a long stretch of time)
3. insightful (bringing something new to the table either in ideas or phrasing that help others understand a situation or issue)
4. succinct (able to say much in a short amount of space)
5. communal (involving others through either links or comments or both)
6. specialist in something (provides an initial hook for new readers and a place to show expertise to regular readers).
7. right place, right time (clear voice in the midst of a crisis, key expert in a niche that needs an expert, early on the stage with a new approach, happens to get the notice of a gatekeeper)

Instapundit and Althouse, I suggest, model all of these and that's why they've been popular.  A lot of others do as well, and why they're popular. 

There's probably more than seven, and these seven can be parsed a fair amount. But seven is a good number -- a perfect number! -- so that's my list.

What do you think makes a good blogger?  

People Get Ready

Nearly all of the old avatars are here. Hooray for that. And hooray for Lem!

Lem's made the place, but it's an awful lot of work to fill the space, so you'll now be seeing posts from time to time by guest bloggers. Hope you enjoy it.

-- Freeman Hunt

Rod Stewart - People Get Ready

Who Am I, Why Am I Here?

Like I have been saying in the comments, I'm a commenter who is trying to blog. I'm making this a place available for displaced Althouse commenters, like myself, to come and comment. In that spirit I'm going to link to blogs I used to read at Althouse, when those blogs posts things I'd Imagine we might want to read. Please feel free to make suggestions and make this place worth the effort.

IS POLITICO GOING THE WAY OF MSNBC? Conservative news site Daily Caller passes Politico in web traffic. 

My own politics, as many of you may already know, is staunchly conservative. Stemming from an intuited notion that we need to preserve the ways and means, sources and methods, continue to do the things that made us what Ronald Reagan called the shining city on a hill.

Maybe you want to discuss that. 

Your Butt is Wide, Well Mine Is Too

Professor Althouse ask's Did Zimmerman gain all that weight to aid in his post-acquittal disguise?

"So how does he change that face? One way is to drop the packed-on poundage, which bloated and puffed up his face. He can grow his hair and beard, wear glasses, adopt an alias, and relocate to some part of the country where people don't expect to see him. But by packing on over 100 pounds before the trial, he created a face that he now has the power to radically modify. That weight, because it was rapidly gained, should be relatively easy to drop. And, remember, there was evidence at trial that Zimmerman had previously worked hard at weight loss and his success was impressive."

Am I blogging off the fat ... how can I put this?

 

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Fat  

ADDED : Pollo has sent me an e-mail alerting me to an apparent problem with blogger.

"Lem, there seems to be a problem with comments disappearing, particularly in longer threads. Please address it or fix it. It's not fair to people who take the time to compose thoughts addressing specific questions." 

I don't know how to fix that. What I could suggest is to perhaps move the conversation to a newer post. I don't have concrete rules about commenting, except to ask that anonymous commenters please self identify so as to make it easer for other commenters to respond.  Thanks Pollo, Freman Hunt and Icepick for contributing your suggestions.