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“A Blog a Day, a Book a Month and Poetry on the Side”

January 7^th, 2010

As I wrote yesterday, at some point in the future when I am an internationally famous blogger and pundit (no, I have no special qualifications – which puts me in exactly the same boat with all the other bloggers and pundits) I will start editing comments for intelligence.  Here are some more signs of low intelligence that I would use as criteria when deciding which comments to chuck out:

1. Writing could of, would of or should of instead of could’ve, would’ve or should’ve.  It indicates that you learned English phonetically only, and haven’t read a book in years.  It also indicates that you aren’t really paying attention to the meaning of the words you write.
2. Non-native speakers of English will get a lot of leeway.  However, there is a big difference between the mistakes in English made by a foreigner and the mistakes made by an undereducated, Limbaugh listening, tea bagging red-white and blue American.  I teach English as a foreign language.  I can spot that difference at a glance.
3. ALL CAPS.  I might let you get away with a 4 or 5 word phrase, but not the whole damned post.  What all caps say to me is “I think everybody should pay more attention to my post than the others, regardless of the validity of its point or the eloquence of its expression.”  In that sense, indeed, it is the textual equivalent of shouting.   It is boorishness, which is a variety of stupidity sometimes employed even by intelligent people.

That brings me to a further point.  I am not calling anybody stupid.  You might be Stephen goddamned Hawking, for all I know.  The only way I know you, and the only way I can relate to you, is via the words that you type into your comments.  If your comment is stupid, I will delete it, whether you have a Ph.D. after your name or not.

The whole point of this is that I would like to have, eventually, a forum for intelligent discussion of the problems we have in our human community and possible solutions to them, the meaning of life, love and art and the role of the individual in society.

Even if we are tempted down into the gutter because, hey, I’m as interested in Tiger Woods’ love life as anybody, I would like to keep the discussion itself on a high plane.

I think that’s an available niche in Internetland, and I’d like to fill it.