I watched with interest the fracas at Ann Althouse's blog over men's rights, women's rights, abortion, child support, etc., wherein Althouse was at odds with Instapundit blogger Glenn Reynolds. This contentiousness was largely, albeit implicitly, over Reynolds' wife Helen Smith's book Men on Strike, which I reviewed here. Althouse's decision to suspend comments on her blog, after some incivilities, is understandable. On the other hand, it has the disadvantage that there's now no instantaneous mechanism for readers to alert Althouse that her euphoria about the House blocking lamp efficiency standards will be short-lived, as the legislation is sure to die in the Senate, as Kevin Drum notes here.
The lamp issue (having married into the lighting design world, I'll use the pro terminology, which avoids "bulbs" especially for things not bulb-shaped) has some similarity to the men/women debate, in that there's an incredible amount of "heat" relative to the amount of "light" or accurate information, and one can find deviations from reality and good sense on both sides of many flareups. One good thing about having a relatively obscure blog is that when you do get comments, you have more time to figure out if they're coming from crazy people.
Readers will note that my blog has been relatively inactive lately. That's partly because I've been particularly busy with other projects, and partly because--maybe it's the summer heat--my appetite for political debate, by which I mean rancorous political acrimony, is a bit diminished lately. That will probably change, but the good news in the meantime is that more speculative illustrations of alien life are coming soon.
