In the immortal words of Dorothy Parker:

What fresh hell is this?

Well, the thing is, I’ve been giving an awful lot of thought to a particular idea lately, both for debate and for the DJ. It’s an idea premised on a number of assumptions, which I think are pretty true. Boiled down to the essence, my belief is that the internet is a very big place and that it is difficult to get what you need from it. If you feel that you know everything there is to know about the internet, and that you are getting all the information you need from it, you can stop reading now.

Good. That got rid of the total idiots. Nobody left but us honest folks.

There is much to be said for the long tail, an idea (and a book) that I heartily endorse. There are some amazing benefits to be gained in many places from the collaboration of users. On the other hand, there are still benefits to be gained in many places from curators/editors. As educators, we have to become, to some extent, internet curators if we wish to remain relevant (and effective). I could go on at great length about this, but something tells me most people wouldn’t disagree with it.

For the last few months I have been providing the Feed, a raw collection of articles of interest to LD and, occasionally, PF debaters. Some of the articles have been topic-related, some of them have been debate-related, some of them have been just general articles on rights and philosophy. I set myself up in the position of curator/editor of this material not only because I felt that there was a need for it but also because, well, I’m good at that sort of thing. I’ve been an editor since the Polk administration. I’m good at separating wheat from chaff; not perfect, just good.

The problem is, while I know the Feed has a few dedicated followers, it doesn’t have many. I think of it as one of the great resources that no one uses. People aren’t ignoring it out of lack of interest—debaters are, as a group, people with voracious appetites for this sort of information—but rather out of lack of familiarity with the concept of RSS and, I think, the lack of personal warmth in the resulting page if one just goes to the raw feed as a webpage on its own. I don’t blame them, at least on the latter. As for the former, I think of RSS as sliced bread and mother’s milk, but then again, some techies are already forswearing it as the lost wave of the past. Whatever. The point is, the data itself, the articles that I’ve been finding, are worthwhile. I want more people to see them. There’s just too much good stuff getting lost, good stuff that people would really like, if only I could get it to them.

So, I’ve decided to incorporate the Feed into this blog. I will continue to create the Feed (it’s the way I keep track of the articles that I like), but I will also cross-apply them here (ah, debate talk). Not just the raw article, though, because that wouldn’t be much different from the Feed as it already is. No, I will add commentary. Not a lot, but enough to give you a reason to want to read the article. What you’ll get is my commentary, a taste of the article, and then a link to the whole article in its original form. (If I had the skills, I’d simply create a webpage that does exactly what I want; I’m bending an off-the-shelf blog a bit into something it isn’t, but it’s close enough.)


I will, of course, still bloviate here as I always have. Once a day or so I will report on the life and times as usual. Those articles are always posted at 7:30 p.m. during the week. Feed-type articles, on the other hand, will arrive when they arrive. I’m trying this out during the summer because there will no doubt be a bit of fit and start as I figure out the best way to handle it, and off-season is the time to play with new strategy and tactics.

If you’re already a Feed follower, as I say, it will still be there, but you may start seeing double and decide to just follow here. I will probably figure out a way to coordinate this with Twitter as well, but one thing at a time, okay?

This will all start on Monday. In the meanwhile, enjoy these last few quiet hours while you can. The world is marching on whether any of us like it or not.