Dropping...

...a long-standing blog from the daily read.

Saddens me to do it, but it's been a long time since I've derived anything but irritation from reading it.

I think the fundamental problem is that it, for a long time, has had a relatively small group of commentators, who all agreed with the author.  As more commentators have come in, some biases which previously were not obvious have become increasingly apparent, and there's been some moves lately which individually have been kind of... this is kind of weird, but not too bad - but the sum total of individual moves reeks of closing the ranks, of excluding outsiders and people who aren't already in agreement.  There's a word for that:  Stagnancy.  And it's a blog primarily revolving around topics which themselves have been stagnant for running on forty years now, so it's doubly unappealing.

Debating which blog to replace it with, I have a few to pick from.  I'm inclined to start reading Billy Beck on a regular basis, but the absence of comments there turns me off for probably the same reason; it smells of excluding outside opinions, of stagnancy.  Also, Billy Beck's here-is-a-news-column-and-what-I-think-of-it approach to blogging isn't my cup of tea.  I prefer to talk about issues and principles; minor current events taking place in some city in Utah today, some village in Spain tomorrow, less so.  It's too easy to find a "current event" which appeals to whatever perspective you want to isolate to make it meaningful.

I'll probably pick up one of the myriad blogs which irritate me with their constant "gun porn."  I'm all for second amendment rights, but my attitude towards guns is the same as my attitude towards cars; do they work?  Right, that's all I care to know.