As I have said many times before (and probably bored most people rigid), I’m not of the blogging generation; I am not at all sure why visitors come here, or what they are looking for. It is not true that everyone reads the latest post and then goes away, since sometimes inexplicably there is a sudden surge of interest in a much older post.
When things at work are very stressful, I sometimes go back and read a random post, and then track forward or back from there. Some of what I wrote in the distant past actually makes some kind of sense, and it is comforting to know that I survived various problems in the past.
But if someone comes here looking for information, how do they find it?
If you know what you are looking for, it is easy: just type it into the search box. But if you don’t know what is here, what do you do?
Some bloggers, like JoAnne Growney at Intersections, put up yearly lists, and it is fun to explore the “strange farrago of the grave and the gay” that she provides. But I decided at some point that a themed table of contents might help. The trouble is that, with time, even the table of contents grows infeasibly large. So I have added a “contents of the contents” at the start, which will take you straight to any given section.
I hope you find it useful. Happy reading!
I broke my usual custom and typed this directly. I noticed a couple of curious things.
First, the WordPress editor queried the spellings of “blogging” and “blogger”. A curious disconnect.
Second, Blogspot tried to persuade me that JoAnne’s blog has a .pt address. (I knew about this because Diamond Geezer has grumbled about it in the past. But I did edit it before entering it!)
Peter–
Many thanks to you for the content-organization that you provide for blog visitors. Such have been really helpful during my visits.
My own year-end lists of titles from the previous year are only a weak start at trying to make early poetry postings available to later visitors.
bloggo ergo sum
I will search your indexed index as soon as I know enough to want to know more. There is a great deal of content in the now-so-available world, and for someone like me who is easily distracted, the weight of almost-infinite chains of ideas can be overwhelming.
For now, I was wondering if you have read this paper:
http://www.ams.org/staff/jackson/fea-nelson.pdf
and whether you might have any comments. (It all sounds so unifying! Soon we will know everything!)
O time, thou must untangle this, not I.
It is too hard a knot for me t’untie.
— “Twelfth Night” • Viola, 2.3.39–40
I may get around to saying something about knots sometime. In the meantime, the article in the AMS Notices looks interesting.