Tranching Reality

I haven’t felt like blogging much lately, and I’m wondering if it’s because of my transitional phase. I’m probably going to start a research blog, which I’m sure will be very exciting to all of you (!). I don’t know if that will take up all of my blogging time, or if I’ll still blog here as well. I’m not sure why I didn’t blog more after I was laid off. I think that may have had something to do with the drama that ensued in the comments on my last meat post (at least half of which was surely my doing).

After it settled down, I was afraid that I’d have to write every blog entry in a way that was unambiguous to everyone on the Internet. I realize now that that’s just silly. This is my blog. It’s my opinion, and people who visit should remember that. I’m not holding myself out as some kind of expert on ethics. In fact, I stated that I wasn’t. Additionally, this is a skeptically-minded blog. If people bring arguments against what I say, I try to counter them. I’m not going to hedge my tone. I can’t cater to the entire Internet.

My mistake was probably just that; in catering to the idea that I needed to defend my tone. I spent a lot of time dancing around the issue when I should have realized that one of the commenters was shifting the burden of clarity too far over to my side. What I should have done is avoid restating what I said, and insist on direct questions. I should have forced arguments about tone out of the thread entirely (since it was an ethical discussion), and it should have been about explicit questions, claims, and statements. Instead I fed straight into the drama that was brought to my door.

To get back to blogging, I think that it’s been a good outlet for me. I’m just not sure where I’m going to do it right now. Obviously, I need to keep a lid on my emotions if I’m going to do it as part of a research setting. Blogging right after you think “what the hell do they mean by that?” is probably a bad practice. That’s one of those times where you go do something mindless for a while to clear your head.