Changing course...maybe

As I think about all the posts I've written thus far, I'm beginning to think that most of are following the same line: I use some aspect of a random event or debate I recently had to have a more meta discussion about debating itself and about what I believed constituted a rational position.

Which is fine in some ways. It's more or less what I wanted to do with blogging in the first place, actually; I gave up on my first attempt at blogging because explicitly spelling out that I was criticizing other people's decision making processes made me too afraid of making mistakes with my own to actually post anything. This blog's focus on commentary is the result of a conscious decision on my part to try something which I can (at least theoretically) do (and one for which a mistake is something to correct instead of evidence of arrogant hypocrisy).

With that said, I really would like to try and get back to that whole commentary thing - actually discussing issues instead of using them as excuses to go on random tangents. I may have ended up where I originally wanted to go, but where I wanted to go is looking less interesting than it did when I came up with the idea. It seems to be just as well that I came up with the focus for this blog, since finding issues I'm legitimately interested in and discussing them is looking interesting now.

Of course, the first half of that last sentence is harder than I thought it would be. The number of daily blog posts on Freethought Blogs and the number of WIGO entries on RationalWiki's pages both indicate that there's plenty going on in the world... whether I'm interested enough to come up with something to add to the discussion is another matter. And while my weekly schedule provides at least some consistency for readers, it's also harder to keep than I thought it was going to be. I don't expect to abandon it, but as I have in the past, I may miss a week or two (and I hope my one or two current readers won't mind those hiccups).

So, in summary: going to try to talk about more actual issues instead of going off on tangents. And announcing my intent to do so conveniently accounts for this week's post.

Oh, by the way: I actually do like the "x and y" conceit for the title... I hope no one minds if today is only a temporary break, because I intend to do it until (and maybe even if) I start repeating titles.