I have blogged a fair amount in other venues, but this is my first free-form blog about anything. I therefore intend it to be a venue for my friends and me to exchange ideas about anything that interests us. In the past I have tried to set up a true group blog with limited success, and I hope that the Lair can serve a similar function, but if it ends up just being a convenient place for me to record my thoughts, so be it.
Why bother at all? For starters, I believe that blogging is more than just a fad. It represents a fundamentally improved way of exchanging ideas in a convenient format. Arnold Kling has a good article explaining why blogging is not a fad (the whole thing is worth a read):
This filtering process makes all of us more efficient. Information with low value does not travel far. Information with high general value tends to travel the farthest. Information with low general value but high local value tends to reach interested people but then die out because as it gets passed along its value decays below the threshold. Everyone tends to receive information with a high value to them, and they avoid having to read information that has low value to them.
In short, the Lair is a venue for any of my friends to write about whatever they want, receive feedback, and engage in discussion. It will be a blog for ideas – any ideas – but not a diary as some blogs are.
Why the capybara? I just think they are cool, and I wanted an alias so that I can write my thoughts uninhibited by the notion that some future employer could google me and read my thoughts on something controversial like the Iraq War. Also, did you know that someone let a bunch of capybaras loose in Florida and they colonized the joint? Finally, the specific name Capyboppy is a book by Bill Peet, one of my favorites growing up.
