nourishing obscurity

Another from Willis Eschenbach in WUWT, via Chuckles and a darn good yarn too.

But this story is not about coral atolls, it’s a morality tale about justice and crime and humanity, playing out in one of the world’s most lovely settings  …  “This-fella man, him got’m rifle. Him say you-me must go long office.” I looked, and indeed the man had a rifle, it looked like we [you-me] would indeed be going “long” (the all purpose pidgin preposition that means from, in, at, near, on, many more, and in this case “to”), the office.

You don’t need me to double up by reprinting it here so follow the link for a good read.   What I’d like to look at is the comments below it:

What does this have to do with warming or anything associated. Willis, take a break for god’s sake and let us get to the purpose of WUWT.

And against that:

Another wonderfully perceptive story of the South Seas–I’m getting a real feel for their sense of time there. Looking forward to the book.

With this perhaps as arbiter:

Read the WUWT mission statement on the mast head. This story fits it fine.

WUWT is indeed a climate site but it also says it’s about the puzzling things in life.   Now the editor gets someone like Willis to drop a first rate narrative in his lap which is not necessarily a climate science thingy with charts and angst and what should WUWT do?

Given our mission statement here, that piece fits right in so I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the first commenter above.

Which brings me to the point of narrow interest and broad interest.  This blog, NO, covers a wide range of topics.   Now if a person  has a narrow range of interest, then when posts on climate science, say, which are few and far between here, go up, that would render this blog in that person’s eyes as a rubbish blog with occasional interest.   Ditto with someone who likes only jazz or only tango or only punk.

So by definition, the blog must permanently be rubbish because you are only interested in about 5-10% of the posts.   A smoky-drinky site would be rated by fellow smoky-drinkies as first rate.    So what is the definition of a good site?

Well, in the case of Leg-iron, the operative thing is that he’s a bloody good writer.   Now I agree with the smoky-drinky thing but as you can see from my site, the range is broader and more prolific, meaning there’ll be good and not so good but generally not badly written.   The overwhelming criterion, it seems to me, is whether it’s a good read or not and perhaps that it has its head screwed on right.

And that’s why I go there.   He’s a nice guy and a good read.   Ditto with AKH and, say … well, a hell of a lot of bloggers on the rolls.   Macheath springs to mind but if I start down this road, I’ll have to name them all.

So I suppose I do have trouble understanding a person, such as that first commenter, who asks what something clearly of quality has to do with something else.

Filed under: Blogging