Long story short: I’ve been getting treatment that has made the bad news better, and a corporate job that helps pay for it. You can probably relate, but you probably would think I’m a sellout by taking that job.

In any event I hoped the Knox job would springboard you into bigger an better things, and I hope it still does.

It would be easy to say that sometimes what the post says needs no further comment, and maybe it’s too facile, but sometimes it really is true. If I’ve got nothing to add, why fill up the comment box?

I know, excuses.

I understand Susie’s frustration.
It’s become a ghost town here of late.
I feel funny being the only commentor in so many threads.
Sometimes I think it’s just me, Unpartisan.com, and
a couple of other blogbots.

BTW, Susie, is there any way to eliminate (or at
least hide) those nonsensical automated “replies”?

In my the post above: First to = for

I agree with joel. His comments, about comments, are appropriate.

You write an excellent blog, and I read it regularly. You also have good taste in music and you give good links.

I wish I could support your site financially, but I’m short on cash. Tell you what, move out west and I’ll help build you a cottage. (I’m a carpenter.)

Apparently, since you had far more commenters before your site required registration.

IMHO, it’s not a big deal to register for one site — but the sum of having to register an ID and remember a password for the many many sites that require them is a significant burden. NY Times, LA Times, WaPo, Chicago Tribune, google, yahoo, Salon … not to mention banking and travel and slashdot and online stores …

So a couple times I started to comment here, and ran into the registration barrier, and thought “another ID”?! and blew it off.

I guess that provides a telling measure of the value I placed on my own comment (not very high, if I was deterred by simple registration as a “cost”).

You’ve run into the economic problem with the net that so worries the content industries: when the alternatives are free, even the slightest cost (price) is a strong deterrent. There’s lots of other blogs where one can comment freely without registration, even using a different pseudonym for each posting. Your erstwhile commenters (me included, until this moment) have gone there.

But it’s not that big a pain in the ass to log in now that I’ve changed the password to something I can probably remember.