There are surviving archive.org copies of my site from 2001. (There are no earlier archive.org copies because the servers it was on before this blocked spiders.) Here is my section on Islam before 9/11.
Is it a bad idea to put my political/religious ideas online for the world to see? Maybe. Maybe not. You only live once.
If you're the kind of person who is going to be upset by other people's political and religious ideas, then go away. Please do not read any further. Just take it as read that Humphrys has political and religious ideas you don't agree with, and go away. Because so does everybody, if you really get to know them.
As a result, these are the areas of human thought where humans are the most irrational, emotional and violent.
If you're not interested in my opinions on these matters, feel free to leave. On the other hand, if you like robust debate with your opponents, and you want to construct a logical argument, go ahead and engage.
The major disadvantage of blogs is it is hard to find similar material grouped together by topic. Once it has scrolled off the front page, it tends to be gone and forgotten, like last year's newspaper articles. Compare trying to understand, say, the Israeli conflict by going through articles for 20 years in the archives of a newspaper, versus reading a book with all the important material in one place.
I prefer to build up a "book" rather than a "newspaper". So, like Wikipedia, this is more a topic-sorted library than a date-sorted blog. This site is however similar to a blog in the sense that:
The Blog is as close as this site comes to the date-sorted blog format. It lists the sections I have done major work on recently. However note:
And permanent copies will be at the
Internet Archive.
This entire site
is being archived there:
"General comment on arguing (with anyone about anything)
- you almost never get the pleasure of seeing that you won the argument in real time. People just don't like to publicly change their minds. They change their minds in private."
- Sam Harris
on
why the Internet is great for politics and religion
and all those topics that are unpleasant and uncomfortable
to discuss in person.