This post will be somewhat self-referential, uneventful and sorely lacking in either depth or rant-worthiness, so if you're looking for insight, please visit someone who does that better than me, and if you're looking for edge-of-the-seat excitement, see someone who does that better than me.

If you have spent any time reading the variety of posts here, your first impression may have been the disjointed, uneven nature of the project. Well, strike that: Your first thought probably would be "Who is the IDIOT who is writing this stuff?!" and then the observation of disjointedness would have come to mind.

In fact, the whole site got off to a weird start, and the quality level sort of followed from that. I got the server space, domain name, and a few conceptual notions together, and started working on the php stuff about a year and a half ago. Literally a few days after reaching that point, something occurred that changed my leisure time situation substantially, to the tune of about negative 10-25 hours a week. In addition, some new stress factors were introduced and the server ended up sitting dormant with just a "coming soon" welcome page for over 7 months.

Prior to this I had a number of things in mind that I wanted to do, which was the reason for starting this in the first place. Finally, in November 2003, I managed to carve out enough time to start building everything. But I had lost some of the initial vision and most of the creative energy, and was still pretty limited in terms of free time.

Going with the various authors has served the purposes of:

1) not having to make up my mind about what I really wanted to do, with at least three avenues to change my mind along the way and reflecting different possible temperments. Kierkegaard said that "purity of heart is to will one thing" and this was precisely NOT my situation, so consequently my thoughts were all over the place and often rather colored by conflicting emotions.

2) providing myself a source of semi-amusement at times so if nothing else there would be that aspect to keep my interest.

But it was a slow start, to say the least, and about the only time I had to put into it was late at night, after everyone else had gone to bed, and I'd be working off the stresses of the the day often with liquid accompaniment. Little time was put into reflection and I was operating from a pretty shallow pool of ideas.

Thankfully, the situation has improved. I'm going to redo much of the main site, replacing some of the old pages, adding some better ones, and probably giving more than a few the deep six. Here in the Forum, I'm just going to leave all the old posts up so in the event I start to get too high an opinion of myself I can be quickly reminded of what boring nonsense I am capable of producing.

Angus, John and the Dr. may return periodically for specific purposes, but it'll be a relief to let some of those story lines die.

So what's the plan? Climacus has hinted at much of it but, again, without deep reflection. It's interesting to me that the opposing "tribes" in the current political conflict operate from different sets of facts, almost living in separate realities. There are a few who attempt to do apples-to-apples comparisons on different issues, but it often doesn't go very far. I spent quite a bit of time acclimating myself to the truth claims and ideology of those on the left and my appraisal is that the situation is not very encouraging - and I don't mean "for accommodation", I mean just for dialogue on the issues.

There are eruptions of level-headedness, and these are worth savoring, but the overall impression I get is that the liberal/progressive idea factory is churning out a set of facts that constitute an impenetrable bubble of insulation from reality. A major component of this consists of a war of identity politics over sources of information: There is a widespread tendency to completely filter out disagreeable information by denigrating the sources. Anything that emanates from "conservative" news sources - which mean any that don't toe the liberal line - is totally disregarded. Fox News (GOP mouthpiece), Washington Times (moonie paper), New York Post (see Fox News), neocons (enough said), Christopher Hitchens (drunk) and so on are ignored. The majority on the other side rarely address any ideas or facts from these types of sources.

This was surprising to me: Rank and file progressives seem much less well-informed than conservatives. That's not to say you can learn everything you need to know from Fox News. There are plenty of great sources of information and perspective. It seems, though, that in "our" discussions in the various forums and the blogosphere, reference to mainstream and leftist media are pretty constant. On the other side, reference to anything that touts itself as conservative or "balanced" is practically nonexistent. About as far as the progressive camp will wander from the hard left is to clobber the conservative tilt of the mainstream media. I think this is nuts, and it's a major handicap for them.

Another topical note for the future: I want Bush to win, obviously, but I am now much more bemused than angry about the entire process as it unfolds. Anger has, frankly, been one of my biggest handicaps on the Forum, and I think I've put it behind me. I can think much more clearly when I'm not totally pissed off, and I hope that will result in better contributions in the future.

Well, that's what's happening at the Forum. It's getting late and I am not drinking, so I guess it's time to call it a night or I'll have no excuse for writing something stupid. Night, all.