Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Causa Sui

Richard notes that someone is making a family-tree of the blogosphere. The idea is that your blogfather/mother is the blog that most inspired you to start blogging. I'm a little weird in this, I suppose: I have no blogparent. Phemius once said, (Odyssey XXII, 347) "I am self-taught; a god has inspired me." I could say, "I am self-taught, no blog inspired me." I sprang Athena-like from my own brain (that's a picture worth keeping before you). More seriously, I came across Blogger's homepage during some idle searching to see how I could make my classes more interactive, so what inspired me to blog was simply that it seemed an easy way to do something interactive online. That was the old Houyhnhnm Land; I found it useful, and so made Siris, and then, after the course was over, moved Houyhnhnm Land to a new location.

This, incidentally, is why I occasionally point out that Siris is primarily just a sort of public online notebook. I didn't start it up to join the blogosphere, or to debate; I started it up as a way to give my unruly mind a forum for being unruly. The blogosphere and occasional debates were just a nice bonus on the side. And thank you, readers; you are my perpetual encouragement for being even more unruly.