harpojaeger.com

Although I can’t blame my now-ending posting lapse on it, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how bloggers, or indeed any information synthesizers / analyzers remain relevant.  Especially now that there are so many smart people writing about pretty much everything, it becomes difficult to actually say anything original.  I don’t think this is a reason that one shouldn’t write (or speak, or whatever) – if you aren’t willing to try to contribute, you can’t develop your opinion, and even if you are repetitive at times, it’s worth it in the long run.  But it is a consideration.

It doesn’t seem that there’s a single ingredient that makes for always-relevant material.  Focusing solely on national or global issues certainly puts you in a pretty big pond, but getting too local makes you irrelevant to anyone outside where you live, or worse, anyone who lives differently than you do, even in the same location.  So while I intend to start focusing on local issues more frequently, I’m not planning to give up analysis of larger affairs, particularly because I think there’s a dearth of attention being paid to some of them (climate change comes to mind).

Some upcoming blog-projects: a series on drug policy, maybe a review of the upcoming Northampton Coke plant expansion (“Lane wrote that without a local property tax break, freedom from having to pay for infrastructure upgrades, state tax credits and job training funds, Coke’s investment here was no sure thing.”), and some stuff on the Northwestern DA election and the pros/cons of statutory rape prosecutions.  Also working on a new title for the site (yes, “working on.”  It’s a big decision!)

I’ve just started reading Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman’s seminal work which is in many ways the basis of modern free-market economics (Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money is next).  I’ll be writing full reviews of both works when I finish them, and eventually (after some more reading and research) comparing them using a variety of methods.  For the moment, however, I’ve decided to take notes on my reading as I go in order to make the review process easier.  The notes are in a Google Doc, and I’ve made it publicly accessible, so you can follow along with my thoughts as I go.  The document can be found here.  I expect to learn a ton from this reading, so I think the notes will be really interesting.

I’d love to get feedback, so please feel free to get in touch with me however you like: in the comments, on Twitter (@renaissanceboy), or whatever.

Just a teaser for my most recent Jewschool post.  One of these days I promise I’ll write something here.

I’ve issed a correction and a reflection on my last Jewschool post.

Here’s my newest post for Jewschool.

I wrote this post for Jewschool about a week ago.

I’ve differed with Richard Silverstein before, and I find myself doing so again today.  I joined an FB group he created, but upon further thought, I’ve decided to leave it.  This is due to a very specific grievance; the second item on the group’s manifesto reads “2. that the U.S. government condemn unequivocally the attack on a Turkish ship in international waters; and join other EU countries in withdrawing our ambassador.”

I’ve got no problem with the U.S. unequivocally condemning the attack.  While I blame the activists for not remaining nonviolent (which they clearly didn’t) from both a moral and tactical perspective (if they had stayed peaceful, this could have been an incredible way to draw attention to the cruelty of the blockade), that doesn’t excuse Israel’s actions in the first place.  All parties involved in yesterday’s events made clear that they have no interest in a peaceful resolution to the conflict.  It’s going to take a lot of work to get them there.

And this is something we already know.  Which is why I can’t support any kind of intentional deterioration in diplomatic relations right now.  Crises like this one make the moral and practical imperative for productive dialogue even more pressing.  I object to the group’s belief that we should withdraw our ambassador.

I urge Richard to remove the second part of second item of the group’s beliefs.  Only then will I feel comfortable rejoining, because only then will the group truly be advocating for peace.

It’s been a little while since I posted here, due to the end of school and associated craziness.  I’m going to be taking next year off from school to work and travel, and another one of my goals is to write much more regularly, and to start making money, or at least breaking even, on this site.  I’ve been accepted as a Project Wonderful advertiser, so you should start seeing some interesting ads on this site soon.

I’ve also finally gotten around to ditching GoDaddy.com as the host of my website and the harpojaeger.com domain name.  I’ve never particularly liked their backend and other user tools, and they have some rather sexist and objectifying advertisements that I objected to.  A while back, my dad came across a blog post regarding similar issues, which he passed on to me.  I read it at the time (3/9/09 [and it's been in my Gmail Starred items since then]) and decided to switch, and it’s now done.  I also moved renaissanceboy.org over from directNIC, for simplicity’s sake (it redirects here).  I’ve opted to use BlueHost, which is completely awesome so far.  The backend is way better than GoDaddy’s (none of that ASP-and-glitzy-web-2.0 junk) and as an added benefit they don’t rely on sex to sell their products (there’s much more where that one came from).  It’s also a completely reasonable price – slightly more than what I was paying before, but totally worth it so far.

Another project I’m hoping to take on this summer is a total redesign of this site.  I’m thinking of writing my own WordPress theme from the ground up, which should be a pretty interesting project.

I wrote an article for New Voices a few days back (and forgot to post the link again).  This is the one that prompted me to invent the term ambi-Zionism (read my Jewschool post introducing it here).

Haven’t heard of ambi-Zionism?  You’re not alone.  I just came up with it (I think).  Here’s my Jewschool post explaining.