Welcome faithful reader! How do I know that you’re a faithful reader of this blog? Well, because in the craziness that has been my life for the past few months, this blog disappeared and I didn’t even notice. I have rectified the problem, and it has left me with a group of lean, mean, faithful readers.
Any time you have an unplanned outage for your site, you might as well re-think what you really want to do with the site. However, I don’t really have time to do that right now, so things will probably continue mostly as they are now for the forseeable future. Currently, I write for and maintain several websites. You can read about them if you wish.
However, there is one small change that I would like to announce. As most of you know, I’m an avid reader. I read books, academic papers, news, and all sorts of other things. However, one of my favorite things to read over the last couple of years has been a great essay. I’m not entirely sure why, but I have a few theories I won’t bore you with.
Because of my growing appreciation for essays, I’ve thought about linking to some of the great essays for a long time. I’m not thinking about it any longer; I’m going to start linking to some of them in this category. Now, there are several sites out there that exist solely to aggregate longer form, essay-style writing. I won’t pass along nearly that volume of essays, so if you find that yourself loving the art of the essay, you should investigate those sites.
Today I would like to pass along an essay I read this past summer. It’s by Paul Ford and it’s titled “The Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” It’s an extremely well-written essay about Ford’s personal experience with in-vitro fertilization, and definitely worth reading. I’m passing it along today because I’ve learned (through Daring Fireball) that there’s a short post-script on his personal site. Don’t read the post-script first. There are spoilers there that could ruin the essay for you. Enjoy!