During the Great Depression, there used to be a genre of New Yorker cartoons that riffed off a common sign seen on empty store fronts: “Watch this space.” The promise was that something exciting eventually occupy that watched space and, sometimes, exciting things did occur.

I’m asking you to watch this space today, because I have a post and podcast all teed up and . . . not quite ready to go. I still have a few more tweaks, but before I can publish, I have to take my dog to the vet (nothing serious).

As soon as I get back, I’ll get things up, running, and published. So please, watch this space.

Thanks so much to everyone for their feedback about Leftists who hog the bandwidth in the comments. The poll showed a strong preference for banning Sarah Waggoner entirely. However, when I read through the comments, the feedback was more nuanced. The most contented people were those who blocked her on their own initiative, putting the power in their own hands. Those who love a good debate argued in favor of keeping her on. And others wished that they could just limit the number of her posts. (Sadly, that last is impossible.)

I’ve decided that, for the time being, I’ll make sure that everyone knows how to block someone on Disqus. That way, people can take matters into their own hands. If you wish to block Sarah Waggoner, start going to one of her comments. If you move your cursor to the far right after her name, a little downward-pointing arrow will appear, indicating a pull down box. Click on the arrow and you’ll see a menu giving you the choice to block that person: [Read more…]

For a couple of weeks now, a person named “John” has been posting comments here. John strongly disagrees with the tenor of this blog. He’s called me some pretty nasty names and argued with my conclusions, but I’ve ignored him for the most part. I didn’t feel his facts, analyzes, or conclusions were compelling enough to merit my attention. Many of you, however, have been engaging with John, whether for fun (I know who you guys and gals are), or to try to make substantive points about what he’s said. I’ve enjoyed very much what you all have written.

Once other people engaged, John expanded the scope of his abusive language and his obscenities. I’ve turned a blind eye to a lot of it, because I do believe in having a free and open forum for ideas.

However, even I have limits. This was my limit:

That goes beyond the rhetorical pale. There is no place whatsoever in the civilized exchange of ideas to advocate drowning children. That’s not an argument, that’s vile abuse. I’ve therefore banned John from this blog. If I did the ban correctly, his past comments will remain, but he will no longer be allowed any future comments.

I’m heading back East(ish) to my Little Bookworm’s Obscenely Expensive Liberal Arts College. I’ll try to blog, but I really can’t promise anything.

Please don’t ignore the Bookworm, though. Even if I can’t blog, Wolf Howling will try to step in. Those of you familiar with my blog know that his posts are much better than mine and always worth reading.

[I’m sticking this post to the top of my blog for a little while because . . . well, because it worked.  Several people were kind enough, after reading this post, to donate.  Even I can see the takeaway lesson, which is to expose a few more victims . . . uh, readers to this post. You can scroll down for new content.]

I wasn’t reading Ace of Spades back in 2004, so I missed Ace’s Fall fundraising request.  Maetenloch, who presides over that website’s excellent weeknight “Overnight Threads,” was feeling a bit tired last night so, rather than write his own post, he reprinted Ace’s 2004 plea for a little support for the resident bloggers.  If you feel inspired, my PayPal tab is in the upper right side of this blog.  If you don’t, no worries.  I love blogging, I’m delighted when people take the time to visit the site, and no one has any obligation whatsoever to fund my passion. But money is nice too, so I’m not going to be too shy about passing on Ace’s suggestion and useful information:

I figure that just about everyone who reads this site would be willing to donate $1 — one buck — four times a year. I figure there are four reason most don’t:

1) Fear about using PayPal. All I can say is that the transactions are secure, meaning coded, the same sort of deal that Amazon and other on-line stores use. I never see your credit card number. Is there a risk? Well, is there a risk when you sign your name on your credit-card receipt and give it all to a perfect stranger when you buy Urban Culottes at Banana Republic?

2) But I don’t have a PayPal account! You don’t need one. Only the recipient needs an account. You just need a credit card, and the will to succeed in selling distress-sale real-estate. It’s what I call “Money Motivation.”

Seriously. PayPal is just how the money is collected. Donors just need to click on the PayPal button and enter their digits as if they were buying books from Amazon or, more likely, Japanese pornography.

And, actually, you don’t even need a credit card. You can send them a e-check, and then they credit me once that clears.

3) It’s a pain in the ass. Well, it’s a minor pain in the ass, but honestly, the entire process takes two minutes. I’ve donated myself, so I know.

4) It’s almost insulting to just give someone $1; it’s better to not donate at all. This is just totally wrong. I have a good number of regular readers, and if half of them — just half — gave me four bucks a year, I’d end up with a pretty sweet haul. Not an Andrew Sullivan gilt-edged bandwidth haul or anything, but enough that I could get my creditors off my back and finally have a good answer when my family asks me why I spend so much time screwing around on the Internet.

The big point is that it’s not really the size of the donation, it’s how big the donation pool is. And if all of my regular readers who haven’t donated before (anyone who has donated — your subscription is in good standing) donated, it would be– well, it would totally, utterly sweet.

Like I said, it’s a buck. About the cost of a cup of coffee at 7-11, and 133% of the cost of a single copy of the New York Times.

Of course, not everyone is going to donate– I think probably 1% of my readers donate at most — so if you felt like giving $3 or $5 or $10 or $20 or even $50, that would be pretty darn cool too.

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