Briefly...
As this is the 3100th posting to Rerum Novarum since its inception, I thought at least a brief mention of it in passing was in order. There is a lot in the archives and I inaugurated the vault flashback feature last year as a vehicle to re-present some of it for those who missed it the first time around.
In the process of tying up some loose ends format-wise, I finally tended to a post tag revision process that was more than a decade overdue. The results of that endeavour can be viewed HERE.
I will also take this moment to publicly note that I have a fairly detailed three part series that will be posted starting about five weeks from now on matters of a theological nature. The latter along with apologetics themed stuff was a far more prevalent feature of this humble website in its earliest years than it either was later on{1} or in the period since I revoked the previous indefinite suspension of this website{2} last year.{3} While hardly the first time I have delved into controversial material, I suspect that this may be the most controversial subject matter in some circles{4} that I have undertaken in over a decade. Anyway, that is all I will say as any kind of telegraphing of what is to come on that front at this time.
Notes:
{1} That is why I as a rule am tired of the apologetical dance and have been for quite a while. That is not to say that I do not do it still on occasion of course but I get tired of seeing people talk past one another and generally evincing no interest in actually listening to what their perceived "adversaries" actually say. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa July 9, 2005)]
{2} Notification of An Intended Return to Web Publishing (circa April 4, 2017)
{3} Of the 272 posts of an apologetics nature, 172 of them predate September 15, 2003 and there are there are only 22 from the period spanning April 30, 2007 through the December 19, 2009 website suspension with only 5 published since this website's relaunch on April 4, 2017. (One of which addressed a controversy and has been consigned to draft status as long as it is viewed as prudent for me to do so.) Suffice to say, I have had minimal interest in apologetics for more than fourteen years to put it mildly. The theological postings have seen a similar decrease in frequency; however, I still maintain some interest in this area having published eighteen such threads since the resumption of this website last year. I will also be releasing a good half dozen additional theological themed threads within the coming month or so.
{4} Commemorating A Controversial Anniversary (circa August 17. 2017)
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
On Spring Cleaning For 2018...
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
I have in recent days undertaken a long needed spring cleaning of this site's archives. The delineation of different postings by primary category tags is one that was quite a chore to do initially but once it was completed in initial form, it eliminated the old update format once and for all. However, there were sometimes duplicate primary tags used and some postings were miscategorized. There is also the problem of some of the posts where there were multiple fonts used to differentiate different people's words becoming skewed when the software this site was built from did some updates. And the old audiopostings back in the days of audblog no longer work and have not for a long time so I needed to tend to that as well.
After some thought on these things and because I knew it would not be possible to tend to these matters again for the indefinite future beyond this time, I went through and reclassified primary tags on many postings. The main tags are now as follows -new additions marked with an astrisk:
Expository Musings
Dialogues
Miscellaneous Threads/Brief Musings
Interesting Links
Points to Ponder
Lyrics/Poetry
Lyrics/Poetry/Musings
Guest Editorials
Excerpts From Literature/Writings
Humour/Parody/Satire
Humour/Parody/Satire/Plus Musings
Vault Flashback
Audio Musings*
Quizzes
Quizzes/Musings*
Spiritual Instruction
Archivally Obsolete/Duplicate Post/Minutiae
The most regular tag of the primary ones is the Miscellaneous Threads/Brief Musings one. If I do not know how else to categorize something, it will go there. The Expository Musings tag originally had far too many posts in it that did not fit or because of changes no longer did. As I plan to try audio blogging again if I find the right format, that called for a primary tag for that endeavour but then pondering the subject of audioblogging made me wonder what I would do with prior audio posts that no longer work. I started deleting them but then realized after I scrapped a half dozen of them that it would be more work than I wanted to undertake and besides, if somehow I figure out how to use them again, then I am purging my own archives in ways I have resolutely criticized others for doing. So to stay true to my nature of not throwing anything out{1}, I decided to create a separate primary tag titled Audio Musings and all remaining audio blogs were reclassified there.
I also found Dialogues which had been misclassifed as Expository Musings, Points to Ponder threads that had more than one primary tag on them, etc. After making these adjustments, basically nearly 200 postings previously tagged as expository musings were reclassified.{2} The original descriptions for the pertinent primary tags were covered in a 2007 expository musing and were explained as follows:
[Y]our host informed the readers of the arduous task of tagging the posts in our massive archive late last month.[...] The good news is that we figured out a couple more short cuts since writing on that matter last -mainly through finding some natural categorizations in the archives in the process. So while the weblog probably will not be close to fully and thoroughly archived until summertime but as it is, the entire weblog has been given a preliminary go-through. While still far from complete, it can now be said that nearly 100% of the posts to this weblog can be broken down into eighteen non-overlapping primary categories. These categories are as follows -with a brief explanation of each:
--Points to Ponder: Posted tidbits from various sources (including sometimes tidbits written by your host) intended to cultivate the reader's pondering capacities...
--Expository Musings: These are threads which are as a rule of a longer and/or more detailed nature generally. However, sometimes there are threads so categorized which are not per se that long but may have taken more time to refine into the shape in which they were blogged than other postings of a similar length or for some other reason were categorized in this format...Among the audio posts, the longer and/or more detailed of them are tagged with this label though some of the others will have to be listened to as time allows for it to see if they should be classified here or not.
--Dialogues/Mailbag Discussions: These are threads posted in a dialogual format which could be derived from various sources...
--Miscellaneous Threads/Briefer Musings: These are generally threads which contain various forms of briefer musings. Among the posts so labeled are various "miscellaneous threads" postings, the shorter or briefer audio posts[...], etc. This is basically the defacto primary category for any posting...
--Stray Links of Interest: Exactly what it says...
--Guest Editorials: These are editorials submitted by others which were posted to this weblog...
--Spiritual Instruction: These are postings dealing with facets of spirituality...
Taken together, one of the above seven categories is tagged on almost 90% of all postings to this weblog. But those are not the only primary categories we have utilized -indeed the next nine comprise roughly the remaining 10% of the weblog's postings:
--Lyrics/Poetry/Haikus: These are postings which chiefly involve one or more of the subjects in the tagline...
--Lyrics/Poetry/Haikus/Plus Musings: These are postings which involve either lyrics, poetry, or haikus but also have some brief musings by your weblog host...
--Humour/Parody/Satire: Self explanatory...
--Humour/Parody/Satire/Plus Musings: Also self-explanatory as these contain the same as the previous category but also some brief musings by your weblog host...
-- Excerpts from Literature/Writings: These are postings which contain excerpts from either literature or from various writings...
--Quizzes: Basically as a temporary diversion the occasional online "quiz" has been taken...
--Archivally Obsolete/Duplicate Post/Minutiae: Basically postings which fit one or more of the criteria noted in the tagline for some reason or another. As of today, there are 32 of them though in a testament to this weblog's focus on perennial relevance as well as quality over time, 26 of those postings were in 2002 and 5 were in the first couple months of 2003. As this latter category may appear to be an odd one to include, your host wants to explain briefly the reasons why before wrapping up this posting.
Essentially, we would be less than fully honest if we did not admit that there are some postings in the archive which we do not find to be of value anymore for a variety of reasons which we are not going to delve into at the moment[...] except to note one significant reason which went into this determination.
For you see, your host has refused to purge his archives of stuff which in retrospect he regrets posting. Part of the reason for this is principles as we have been critical of others for trying to airbrush the historical record at their own sites to avoid telling the truth about their past actions or statements in a given point of time. But another reason is that life itself is a process of growth and development across a broad continuum. This includes weblog writing and interests.
We have no problem admitting that it took a bit of time before this weblog really started to take a discernible shape and some of the features and/or principles which have become standard or typical over time were in the "finding their feet" stage early on. The posts noted in the "archivally obsolete/duplicate posting/minutiae" category may also have been a localized kind of project which either was left incomplete due to time or interest factors or which was of a limited applicability back before your host sought to as much as possible make this weblog's contents have both a timeless and general applicability and also a particular circumstantial one.[...] But that is all that this writer intends to say on the matter at the present time except to say that yes, we have even categorized the obsolete or otherwise no-longer-of-any-real-value chaff from the archives.
Taken together, the eighteen categories above comprise by our count 100% of all posts to this weblog as primary categorizations. [Excerpts from Rerum Novarum (circa May 15, 2007)]
I was originally going to post an excerpt in full which contained material later changed but decided to just omit the former and only use the pertinent excerpts above. Because of tag character limits, some of those original tags had to be shortened a bit and others were changed or merged into other primary categories over time. (After experience showed that the schema I first went with was too complicated.) As of this moment, there are 3099 postings to this website since its inception which can be broken down after some recent reclassifyings as follows:
Expository Musings: 300
Dialogues: 365
Miscellaneous Threads/Brief Musings: 1355
Points to Ponder: 486
Interesting Links: 235
---
Excerpts from Literature/Writings: 19
Guest Editorials: 28
Humour/Parody/Satire: 22
Humour/Parody/Satire/Plus Musings: 19
Lyrics/Poetry: 62
Lyrics/Poetry/Musings: 30
Quizzes: 11
Quizzes/Musings: 35
Spiritual Instruction: 39
Vault Flashback: 10
Audio Musings: 61
Archivally Obsolete/Duplicate Post/Minutiae: 31
It is possible the above totals may tally a bit higher than 3098 because some are postings that are completed and tagged already but have not yet been published. In giving the primary tags a thorough go-through, I also in delineating with greater precision which postings were properly classified as Expository Musings took the nearly unprecedented{3} step of revising archive postings by appending nearly all of those classified as Expository Musings with the subtitle Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum.{4} In situations where those postings had other subtitles, I retitled them incorporating the prior subtitles into a new descriptive title. On others where I used either no title or some variation of Miscellaneous Musings, I retitled them On Miscellaneous Matters. That is the extent to which anything in those postings was revised except in a few cases where there were spelling, grammar, or colour formatting issues. And while I may make colour formatting adjustments on additional postings under the Dialogues category where warranted in the coming weeks{5}, what is noted here is the extent to which I foresee anything being further revised in the archives of this humble website in perpetuity.
All things to the contrary notwithstanding.
Notes:
{1} And with the exception of seven posts (six of which were currently defunct audio postings), I have stayed true to this principle. (The seventh posting was a two sentence gibberish post from early 2005 that was in the archivally obsolete category. It was originally slated as a placeholder to highlight a planned series I never remotely got around to working on and now never will so it got the axe when the aforementioned six audios were similarly deleted.) I have no plans to deviate from this longstanding principle anymore -indeed I do not even like to make changes to past postings apart from fixing spelling, grammar, or colour formatting schemes when warranted: a far cry from how not a few folks handle these matters.
{2} Including 88 as Miscellaneous Threads/Brief Musings and 61 as Audio Musings. I also reclassified prior quizzes which were under the miscellaneous threads/brief musings tag with a new category titled Quizzes/Musings. There were also 7 or 8 Interesting Links entries that contained musings in them beyond an ultra brief description and they were reclassified as Miscellaneous Threads/Brief Musings. I also in nearly all cases with postings that involved updates in the old format classified them either as Miscellaneous Threads/Brief Musings or Expository Musings where applicable and abrogated the prior tags used for that material.
{3} I say "nearly unprecedented" because back in 2013 when this website was still suspended, I took the opportunity in an attempt to both let bygones be bygones as well as heal a long simmering rift which had perpetuated at that point for more than eight years. See last year's posting titled Commemorating a Controversial Anniversary for more details on this if interested.
{4} This tagline serves as a kind of marker to indicate the character of the post in question. Most expository musings had been adorned with that subtitle since roughly May of 2003 but the uniformity on this matter was one that took time to develop to the way things are currently.
{5} I realized when perusing the archives for prior dialogue material for use in other publishing mediums that software formatting changes has messed up the formatting of some of those postings from their original colour schemes. As a result, they will have to be fixed. I will however only correct these issues in piecemeal fashion as I have the time or inclination to do so.
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
I have in recent days undertaken a long needed spring cleaning of this site's archives. The delineation of different postings by primary category tags is one that was quite a chore to do initially but once it was completed in initial form, it eliminated the old update format once and for all. However, there were sometimes duplicate primary tags used and some postings were miscategorized. There is also the problem of some of the posts where there were multiple fonts used to differentiate different people's words becoming skewed when the software this site was built from did some updates. And the old audiopostings back in the days of audblog no longer work and have not for a long time so I needed to tend to that as well.
After some thought on these things and because I knew it would not be possible to tend to these matters again for the indefinite future beyond this time, I went through and reclassified primary tags on many postings. The main tags are now as follows -new additions marked with an astrisk:
Expository Musings
Dialogues
Miscellaneous Threads/Brief Musings
Interesting Links
Points to Ponder
Lyrics/Poetry
Lyrics/Poetry/Musings
Guest Editorials
Excerpts From Literature/Writings
Humour/Parody/Satire
Humour/Parody/Satire/Plus Musings
Vault Flashback
Audio Musings*
Quizzes
Quizzes/Musings*
Spiritual Instruction
Archivally Obsolete/Duplicate Post/Minutiae
The most regular tag of the primary ones is the Miscellaneous Threads/Brief Musings one. If I do not know how else to categorize something, it will go there. The Expository Musings tag originally had far too many posts in it that did not fit or because of changes no longer did. As I plan to try audio blogging again if I find the right format, that called for a primary tag for that endeavour but then pondering the subject of audioblogging made me wonder what I would do with prior audio posts that no longer work. I started deleting them but then realized after I scrapped a half dozen of them that it would be more work than I wanted to undertake and besides, if somehow I figure out how to use them again, then I am purging my own archives in ways I have resolutely criticized others for doing. So to stay true to my nature of not throwing anything out{1}, I decided to create a separate primary tag titled Audio Musings and all remaining audio blogs were reclassified there.
I also found Dialogues which had been misclassifed as Expository Musings, Points to Ponder threads that had more than one primary tag on them, etc. After making these adjustments, basically nearly 200 postings previously tagged as expository musings were reclassified.{2} The original descriptions for the pertinent primary tags were covered in a 2007 expository musing and were explained as follows:
[Y]our host informed the readers of the arduous task of tagging the posts in our massive archive late last month.[...] The good news is that we figured out a couple more short cuts since writing on that matter last -mainly through finding some natural categorizations in the archives in the process. So while the weblog probably will not be close to fully and thoroughly archived until summertime but as it is, the entire weblog has been given a preliminary go-through. While still far from complete, it can now be said that nearly 100% of the posts to this weblog can be broken down into eighteen non-overlapping primary categories. These categories are as follows -with a brief explanation of each:
--Points to Ponder: Posted tidbits from various sources (including sometimes tidbits written by your host) intended to cultivate the reader's pondering capacities...
--Expository Musings: These are threads which are as a rule of a longer and/or more detailed nature generally. However, sometimes there are threads so categorized which are not per se that long but may have taken more time to refine into the shape in which they were blogged than other postings of a similar length or for some other reason were categorized in this format...Among the audio posts, the longer and/or more detailed of them are tagged with this label though some of the others will have to be listened to as time allows for it to see if they should be classified here or not.
--Dialogues/Mailbag Discussions: These are threads posted in a dialogual format which could be derived from various sources...
--Miscellaneous Threads/Briefer Musings: These are generally threads which contain various forms of briefer musings. Among the posts so labeled are various "miscellaneous threads" postings, the shorter or briefer audio posts[...], etc. This is basically the defacto primary category for any posting...
--Stray Links of Interest: Exactly what it says...
--Guest Editorials: These are editorials submitted by others which were posted to this weblog...
--Spiritual Instruction: These are postings dealing with facets of spirituality...
Taken together, one of the above seven categories is tagged on almost 90% of all postings to this weblog. But those are not the only primary categories we have utilized -indeed the next nine comprise roughly the remaining 10% of the weblog's postings:
--Lyrics/Poetry/Haikus: These are postings which chiefly involve one or more of the subjects in the tagline...
--Lyrics/Poetry/Haikus/Plus Musings: These are postings which involve either lyrics, poetry, or haikus but also have some brief musings by your weblog host...
--Humour/Parody/Satire: Self explanatory...
--Humour/Parody/Satire/Plus Musings: Also self-explanatory as these contain the same as the previous category but also some brief musings by your weblog host...
-- Excerpts from Literature/Writings: These are postings which contain excerpts from either literature or from various writings...
--Quizzes: Basically as a temporary diversion the occasional online "quiz" has been taken...
--Archivally Obsolete/Duplicate Post/Minutiae: Basically postings which fit one or more of the criteria noted in the tagline for some reason or another. As of today, there are 32 of them though in a testament to this weblog's focus on perennial relevance as well as quality over time, 26 of those postings were in 2002 and 5 were in the first couple months of 2003. As this latter category may appear to be an odd one to include, your host wants to explain briefly the reasons why before wrapping up this posting.
Essentially, we would be less than fully honest if we did not admit that there are some postings in the archive which we do not find to be of value anymore for a variety of reasons which we are not going to delve into at the moment[...] except to note one significant reason which went into this determination.
For you see, your host has refused to purge his archives of stuff which in retrospect he regrets posting. Part of the reason for this is principles as we have been critical of others for trying to airbrush the historical record at their own sites to avoid telling the truth about their past actions or statements in a given point of time. But another reason is that life itself is a process of growth and development across a broad continuum. This includes weblog writing and interests.
We have no problem admitting that it took a bit of time before this weblog really started to take a discernible shape and some of the features and/or principles which have become standard or typical over time were in the "finding their feet" stage early on. The posts noted in the "archivally obsolete/duplicate posting/minutiae" category may also have been a localized kind of project which either was left incomplete due to time or interest factors or which was of a limited applicability back before your host sought to as much as possible make this weblog's contents have both a timeless and general applicability and also a particular circumstantial one.[...] But that is all that this writer intends to say on the matter at the present time except to say that yes, we have even categorized the obsolete or otherwise no-longer-of-any-real-value chaff from the archives.
Taken together, the eighteen categories above comprise by our count 100% of all posts to this weblog as primary categorizations. [Excerpts from Rerum Novarum (circa May 15, 2007)]
I was originally going to post an excerpt in full which contained material later changed but decided to just omit the former and only use the pertinent excerpts above. Because of tag character limits, some of those original tags had to be shortened a bit and others were changed or merged into other primary categories over time. (After experience showed that the schema I first went with was too complicated.) As of this moment, there are 3099 postings to this website since its inception which can be broken down after some recent reclassifyings as follows:
Expository Musings: 300
Dialogues: 365
Miscellaneous Threads/Brief Musings: 1355
Points to Ponder: 486
Interesting Links: 235
---
Excerpts from Literature/Writings: 19
Guest Editorials: 28
Humour/Parody/Satire: 22
Humour/Parody/Satire/Plus Musings: 19
Lyrics/Poetry: 62
Lyrics/Poetry/Musings: 30
Quizzes: 11
Quizzes/Musings: 35
Spiritual Instruction: 39
Vault Flashback: 10
Audio Musings: 61
Archivally Obsolete/Duplicate Post/Minutiae: 31
It is possible the above totals may tally a bit higher than 3098 because some are postings that are completed and tagged already but have not yet been published. In giving the primary tags a thorough go-through, I also in delineating with greater precision which postings were properly classified as Expository Musings took the nearly unprecedented{3} step of revising archive postings by appending nearly all of those classified as Expository Musings with the subtitle Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum.{4} In situations where those postings had other subtitles, I retitled them incorporating the prior subtitles into a new descriptive title. On others where I used either no title or some variation of Miscellaneous Musings, I retitled them On Miscellaneous Matters. That is the extent to which anything in those postings was revised except in a few cases where there were spelling, grammar, or colour formatting issues. And while I may make colour formatting adjustments on additional postings under the Dialogues category where warranted in the coming weeks{5}, what is noted here is the extent to which I foresee anything being further revised in the archives of this humble website in perpetuity.
All things to the contrary notwithstanding.
Notes:
{1} And with the exception of seven posts (six of which were currently defunct audio postings), I have stayed true to this principle. (The seventh posting was a two sentence gibberish post from early 2005 that was in the archivally obsolete category. It was originally slated as a placeholder to highlight a planned series I never remotely got around to working on and now never will so it got the axe when the aforementioned six audios were similarly deleted.) I have no plans to deviate from this longstanding principle anymore -indeed I do not even like to make changes to past postings apart from fixing spelling, grammar, or colour formatting schemes when warranted: a far cry from how not a few folks handle these matters.
{2} Including 88 as Miscellaneous Threads/Brief Musings and 61 as Audio Musings. I also reclassified prior quizzes which were under the miscellaneous threads/brief musings tag with a new category titled Quizzes/Musings. There were also 7 or 8 Interesting Links entries that contained musings in them beyond an ultra brief description and they were reclassified as Miscellaneous Threads/Brief Musings. I also in nearly all cases with postings that involved updates in the old format classified them either as Miscellaneous Threads/Brief Musings or Expository Musings where applicable and abrogated the prior tags used for that material.
{4} This tagline serves as a kind of marker to indicate the character of the post in question. Most expository musings had been adorned with that subtitle since roughly May of 2003 but the uniformity on this matter was one that took time to develop to the way things are currently.
{5} I realized when perusing the archives for prior dialogue material for use in other publishing mediums that software formatting changes has messed up the formatting of some of those postings from their original colour schemes. As a result, they will have to be fixed. I will however only correct these issues in piecemeal fashion as I have the time or inclination to do so.
Monday, May 28, 2018
On this Memorial Day I do not have the time to post anything new so I will re-post at this time as a vault flashback the link to an expository musing I wrote on the subject ten years ago. Without further ado...
On Memorial Day (circa May 28, 2008)
On Memorial Day (circa May 28, 2008)
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