1-3-15 Hodgepodge

Suggestions Welcome

In the upcoming year, I plan to make some changes to my blogging routine, particularly to my Saturday "Hodgepodge" posts. I have two general, possibly irreconcilable objectives in mind for the post: (1) Spend less time writing it; and (2) Make it more interesting to general readers. Among the ideas I am toying with are:

• Be less structured, making the post more like a regular post.
• Occasionally hosting guest posts.
• Keeping some elements of the current format, like "Weekend Reading" (the list of Objectivist commentary that appears in popular media), but adding a variety of other rotating types of sub-posts, such as, say, a link to a blog post of the week, or mention of the best reader comment of the week here.
• Link dumps (i.e., Items I encountered during the week that were interesting, but didn't interest me enough to inspire their own posts.)
• Simply reducing the Saturday post to "Weekend Reading".

I'd hoped to have spent more time thinking about this during my holiday break, but various unexpected demands on my time basically wiped out writing time. But even so, I draw quite a few perspicacious readers, if I say so myself, so why not delegate some of the brain-storming?

If you have an idea, feel free to leave a comment or email me.

Weekend Reading

"You can't resolve to do something just because it happens to be January 1 -- or any date, for that matter." -- Michael Hurd, in "Why New Year’s Resolutions Crash & Burn" at The Delaware Wave

"Rational judgment empowers us to acknowledge reality, accept our feelings and then get on with our lives." -- Michael Hurd, in "Can Forgiveness Ever Be Unhealthy?" at The Delaware Wave

"I'd never sacrifice my personal space to mindless platitudes like, 'Waste not; want not.'" -- Michael Hurd, in "The Joy of 'Regifting'" at The Delaware Coast Press

"In my experience, three factors generate respect: (1) following through on what you say you’re going to do, (2) being the same way to a person’s face as you would behind his/her back, and, (3) facing reality rather than avoiding it." -- Michael Hurd, in "To Like/Love Someone, You Have to Respect Them" at The Delaware Coast Press

"As far back as the 1970s [experts] predicted that if we did not dramatically reduce fossil fuel use then, and use renewables instead, we would be experiencing catastrophe today -- catastrophic resource depletion, catastrophic pollution and catastrophic climate change." -- Alex Epstein, in "Making the World a Better Place -- by Using More Fossil Fuels" at The National Post

"My greatest moments of clarity came whenever I discovered an author or speaker who, instead of giving his particular answer to the question of global warming, would try to clarify the questions." -- Alex Epstein, in "Wrapping Our Minds Around Climate Change" at The National Post

"Resources are not taken from nature, but created from nature." -- Alex Epstein, in "The Sustainability Myth" at The National Post

"The good news is that there is no shortage of good alternative plans to ObamaCare that Congress could rally behind." -- Paul Hsieh, in "The New Congress Should Propose Free-Market Health Care Reforms" at Forbes

"So buy yourself that new suit, get those presents for your family, exchange cards with your friends, convey goodwill to people you meet -- and celebrate Christmas as an occasion for affirming, not sacrificing, all that makes life enjoyable." -- Peter Schwartz, in "Objecting to the ‘Season of Giving’" at The Washington Post

"What must be operating in the minds of those who hold this view is a premise that too much success, too much acumen, and too much foresight with the goal of maximizing revenue and minimizing costs must be wrong." -- Amesh Adalja, in "Too Big to Profit?" at Forbes

My Two Cents

There is lots of great commentary linked above, but if I had to read only one article, it would definitely be the Schwartz piece on Christmas. I think Peter Schwartz did a superlative job of showing the reader the importance and humanity of selfishness.

How They Crank 'Em Out

A writer confronted with the new task of writing scripts for a comedy series tells us what he learned from his initial research:

This structure is so formulaic that you’d think it would suck the fun out of writing and watching such shows, but it does nothing of the sort. While knowing the code it changes the way I watch TV, it only increases my admiration for the good writers who do so much within relatively strict confines.

Just as interesting is how Noah Charney reached his conclusion,

-- CAV