via Pax Nortona and Alas a Blog (for the links)
Joel had me hopping over to
Lauren to learn why she isn't blogrolling anymore.
She (partially based on a post by Shelley)
makes some good points, and a blogroll, to have one or not, is a personal decision. I have peoiple on my roll who I enjoy reading, even though they don't have me on their roll and even if I disagree with their writings. Interest, that the person has something to say, is what encourages me to put them on my roll, not "group think".
HOWEVER, I think to toss the blogroll based on Shelley's original argument is flawed. To me this is a case of throwing the "baby out with the bathwater". True, the biggies get tagged a lot, but it is via blogrolls and the ecosystem that I have found some of my favorite blogs. Some are quite popular writers, others are "low men on the totem poll." What I care about, rather egotistically, is if they interest me, not the rest of the world. But I wouldn't have had found many of them simply by reading another's blog or doing a google search.
Ampersand directed me toward things I would rather not have read. I know, head in the sand is not good, but sometimes Amp, I'd like to bury my head.
These are horror stories, real horror stores, the kind that leave me feeling hopeless.
A post about the
abuse of childrensanctified by no god that I would believe in via Echinde of the Snakes.
And abuse of a mother and her children by the courts.
There is a lot more out there to digest, but my stomach is churning. Abuse is horrific, when sanction by those who should be ending it, it is a great evil.
The question is, what can we do? Those in the USA may have some means of protest. Go to the jail where that woman is or was incarcerated, disrupt the court trials of the offending and offensive judge, keep up a letter campaign until the judge is disbarred and the children given to their motehr, write to every paper in the city of the "religious leader" who recommends abusig children as a method of discipline and demand that whatever shelter he is running be turned over to an actual human being. But will that really help?