[Dean's World] Scott Kirwin: The Razor Turned 6

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Posted by Scott Kirwin:
The Razor Turned 6
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1191770690.shtml


   My blog [1]William of Ockham's The Razor turned six years old this
   past Friday. Prior to September 11, 2001, I wasn't familiar with blogs
   per se, although I did post (and tussle) at [2]Free Republic some, as
   well as a New York Times site that has since gone extinct. The term
   "blog" or even "web log" wasn't in my vocabulary then. To me what I
   did as a Freeper wasn't much different from what I had done at the
   local BBS's I posted at back in the late 1980's.

   What I read I didn't take seriously, and since I posted using various
   pseudonyms, I didn't take what I wrote seriously either.

   All that changed on 9-11. In the days afterward I felt a bottled up
   rage mixed with a deep, intense sadness, the latter which I still feel
   today. I literally felt like the title in Harlan Ellison's short
   story, [3]I have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. However for a month the
   mixture of emotions was simply too raw, too incoherent to put down on
   any medium - let alone one that was public.

   It was then that I discovered the bloggers like Andrew Sullivan, James
   Lileks, Glenn Reynolds, and of course, Steven Den Beste. Reading their
   thoughts about the attacks, and what the future held gradually calmed
   me down, and slowly my sanity was restored. I've always been an
   [4]Information Freak, and the Blogosphere provided vast streams of
   information that hastened my recovery.

   With the help of my real life buddy [5]Chad, The Pirate-King, I bought
   a domain and set it up on his server. I chose the theme of [6]Occam's
   Razor because it is a critical tool now more than ever as we must
   decide quickly what is true and what is not. [7]My first post is still
   my sentimental favorite even though it reads like a college essay.

     The motives of the attackers are still unclear â a problem which
     allows the imaginations to run wild on the Left, blaming the attack
     for American aggression against North Vietnam (a state currently
     seeking better ties with the USA), North Korea (a Stalinist regime
     known for its rattling of sabers while food bowls go empty), and
     the all-encompassing term, âAmerican Imperialismâ.

     Such attempts at ascribing motives to the attackers simply show
     that the attackers didnât have any. The attacks become a kind of
     Rohrschach Test for those bearing a grudge against the US
     government in which they see the motive they want to see. Such
     attempts have everything to do with the mindset of the explainer
     and nothing whatsoever to do with the true motives of the
     attackers.

   Mind you that was written before al-Qaeda opened its video production
   facility in a goat shed in Pakistan's Northwest Territories, so there
   were no claims of responsibility. Even [8]no less an authority than
   Nelson Mandela doubted Bin Laden's hand in the attacks. The videos and
   responsibility claims came months later. In the interim the attacks
   became a kind of inkblot whereby the motives seen by the viewer had
   more to do with the viewer himself than with the actual motives behind
   the attacks.

   [9]The Razor doesn't get that much traffic - about 1,500 visits a
   month. However I've found that after 6 years of posts and links, its
   content has become an online information repository for me to reread
   and cite. In a way, it is a external memory to me - albeit one that I
   share with whomever stops by. Plus, it has become a kind of [10]web
   authority for the care of gerbils. I'm really not sure how that
   happened.

   [11]So stop on by and say hi. Oh, and you might want to click on the
   names listed on the left to visit the blogs of the other contributors
   as well. Not all of our best stuff gets posted here, and if it's a
   slow news day, you might find an interesting tidbit or two that you
   might not have found otherwise.

References

   1. http://www.therazor.org/
   2. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/browse
   3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream
   4. http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/jesus+jones/info+freako_20070887.html
   5. http://www.pirate-king.com/
   6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
   7. http://www.therazor.org/oldroot/Winter02/hrights.html
   8. http://www.therazor.org/oldroot/Winter02/mandela1.htm
   9. http://www.therazor.org/
  10. http://www.therazor.org/?p=525#comments
  11. http://www.therazor.org/