Important note: The following post has been superseded since it was written for the earlier version of this site powered by Blogger.

As I said, this is new. (It's so new I'm still playing with the bubble wrap packaging for my web hosting, the new haloscan.com premium account, etc.) Changes and adjustments should be expected ahead, but since most of the technical stuff are currently handled by me, the contributors should be able to concentrate on content. Let me worry about all the "under construction" notices that still litter the site. A few announcements:

1. I've just adjusted the commenting system so that anonymous comments are no longer possible (name and email address are mandatory). But since there is no need to "register and sign in", I trust that this will not make it overly onerous for those who would otherwise leave comments.

2. The images ("gavatars") that are associated with some of the comments are from gravatar.com. Feel free to register there and upload your own--it's free of charge. I set the haloscan comment system to display them at 80x80 pixels, and only "PG" and "G" rated gravatars are displayed.

I'm sure most readers around here already know the next two points, so please don't feel as if they are directed at you specifically (they are now). I included them because they bear repeating, and so as to be up-front about things.

3. Everyone is welcome to leave comments, to disagree, to dispute, to say that something that someone said is wrong about something, even that someone has been wrongheaded or misguided to think in a certain way. But do it politely--you are more likely to get people's sympathetic attention this way. And do it with arguments rather than harangues, and respond to other people's arguments, rather than ignore them--you are more likely to get people to rethink their positions that way.

4. Related to the previous point, let me be completely frank and say up-front that I went with haloscan rather than the commenting system native to blogger because it allows me to delete, edit, look at the poster's ip address, block specific ip addresses, use a spam filter, and then some. I believe (and I hope) that I will not get to use most of these functions, but I will take action--delete, and if necessary, block--if unlawful content (of the seditious, defamatory or other varieties) are posted.

Ok, announcement over.