Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., writing at Sancrucensis, plugs an offshoot of Marrow devoted to Catholic blogs. It is a splendid service, not only because it aggregates our posts, but also because it represents one-stop shopping for people interested in the Catholic blogosphere. Obviously, we think that you, dear reader, should sit down first thing—with your morning coffee and Dunhill, of course—and read Semiduplex. But you could do a lot worse than starting your morning by perusing Marrow.
Metablogging
A comment on comments
We have, for the moment, disabled comments on Semiduplex. If we do activate them, we will institute pretty heavy moderation controls.
Our reasons for doing this are threefold:
- In 2015, almost everyone has as many outlets to express his or her opinion on a piece as he or she could want. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are but three of the options available to someone who wants to make a comment about a piece. The days of the good old combox being the first, best place to talk about a post are over.
- Comments frequently require close attention, which we, for a variety of reasons, are not well situated to provide. (This might change, and if it does, it would be an important factor in our reconsideration of our current comment position.)
- Comments often devolve either into pointless assent and affirmation of the original post or into nastiness of one kind or another. Neither outcome is especially desirable to us.
Also, it is far from clear that Semiduplex has any readers who wish to comment on posts.
A brief note at the beginning
Does a blog need a program or plan?
This blog—Semiduplex—is a personal project, and we do not anticipate that it will expand into anything else. Therefore, we do not think that it is necessary (or even desirable) to set forth a lengthy, detailed plan for Semiduplex. In past projects, furthermore, we have found that a detailed program, or even a precise focus, makes it easy to let a blog fall by the wayside. Invariably, one’s interests develop or one simply runs out of things to say, and having a plan makes it easier to drop the whole project than to admit that the plan no longer works. (This is, to be honest, why our most serious previous project failed.)
Therefore, we believe, at this point, that a more flexible approach will result in better results. However, we can say—with some confidence—that Semiduplex will address the following topics with some regularity: (1) the Catholic Church; (2) music, serious and otherwise; (3) literature, good and bad; and (4) movies. Nothing we say, however, on any of these topics should be considered authoritative, if for no other reason than we are not an authority.
We do not know whether a blog needs a plan. But Semiduplex doesn’t have one.
Semiduplex 