Well, I have to say that it has been a hard week. No, you misunderstand me. I don’t mean “It’s been a hard week and that is why I have not done any posts for a week”, but instread “It’s been a hard week because I have not done any posts for a week”. Ok, let me explain.
I decided last Sunday that I should back off from posting for a little while, and give my co-bloggers some air. My feeling was that I was posting way too much, you probably were a bit tired of my voice, and that I should let some other voices be heard a bit more. Seems that everyone else was a bit busy for most of the week so that did not seem to work very well for a while there. So I set out with good intentions. Then the Seed magazine arrived on Monday and I simply could not help doing a post about it. So that ruined my plan, but I started again.
But every day it got harder. There’s so much going on, and so much to tell you about, and so it is hard to not do so. (Even when I’m not deliberately laying low there’s a ton of stuff I just have to let fall by the wayside, many of you will be happy to hear.) So every day I missed some great stuff, from sightings of live giant squid (via boing boing) to the annual conversion of Southern California into Mordor, with thousands of acres burning, giant palls of smoke in the sky, and ash raining from the sky looking so much like snow (a process which started early this year) – oh and spectacularly red sunsets and sunrises (nothing to do with “blood being spilled the night before”, Legolas, it’s just physics – Rayleigh scattering: blue light being scattered much more than red, especially with all those extra smoke particles about). All stuff you’ve heard about now, and no doubt discussed elsewhere.
So after a week of not telling you stuff, I’ve given up. Pointless posts have returned! Hurrah!
-cvj
October 2nd, 2005 at 2:27 am
Welcome back Clifford, if people were (hypothetically speaking) getting tired of your voice, they could (theoretically) decide not to read, seems pretty harmless. Anyways, your enthusiasm with Seed is infectious, I will try to get over my glossyphobia and get myself to a bookstore.
October 2nd, 2005 at 3:04 am
Hmmm. Moshe, I find that people have trouble using scroll bars to full effect. It was worth the experiment.
-cvj
October 2nd, 2005 at 6:45 am
Dear cvj: please don’ try this experiment again! Things got seriously boring without you.
October 2nd, 2005 at 7:44 am
Hurrah indeed! By the by, you are painting a great Gollum-like caricature of yourself. I cite:
1. your addiction to precious, precious blogging, and
2. your attempts to steal yourself away from it
one Blog to rule them all…
Best wishes,
Paul
October 2nd, 2005 at 4:47 pm
Amanda: Thanks. To be fair, I think that my colleagues were quite busy…their terms have just started, while my semester started back at August 22nd, or something like that….
PPCook: Thanks. Given my sub-field of research, and the common perception (not correct) that this blog is some sort of hotbed of string theory indoctrination, Peter Woit would probably agree about the dangers of the next couple of lines after “one Blog to rule them all”…
Peter?…
-cvj
October 4th, 2005 at 8:57 pm
Clifford, sorry I’m a little late, but I just wanted to say that I’m glad that you’re back! Please don’t go away again, I missed your posts (unless duty calls and you really, really have to).
Remember the random slogan generator’s wise words? “A Day Without Clifford is Like a Day Without Sunshine.”
October 4th, 2005 at 9:51 pm
Athena, thank you so much. That’s a very nice thing to say indeed.
-cvj