Seeker Blog

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Searching Princeton’s WordNet for the definition of “Seeker”, we find:

1. seeker, searcher, quester — (someone making a search or inquiry; “they are seekers after truth”)

Thus the title of this blog, bearing in mind that the verb to seek is similar to the verb to fish. Note the distinction between the activities of fishing and catching. A similar distinction applies to seeking and finding.

SeekerBlog is motivated by inquiry - if it were about what we already know to be true, why bother? Well, because a blog supports comments, and thus a dialogue - a dialogue which hopefully may shine a brighter light on that elusive truth:

1. Readers can critique a source we’ve found.
2. Suggest a superior resource.
3. Politely point out that what we concluded is, umm… rubbish?

Our quest started 11, September 2001, as a search for Why? We were berthed in Constitution Dock, Hobart, Tasmania - adventuring around Tasmania in the Southern Ocean winter. Very early that morning our cruising friends Tom & Bev knocked on our hull to awaken us to a new reality: that forces-unknown had converted four 767 jetliners into cruise missiles, leveling the N.Y. World Trade Center, damaging the Pentagon, and but-for the heroic action by the civilians aboard UA Flight 93, would have decapitated the government of the United States.

While we have carried on “adventuring”, we’ve invested more effort trying to understand the “why?”, the “who?”, and the “what to do?”. We soon learned that relying upon our usual sources was not a successful strategy (e.g., BBC, New York Times). So our first task became one of seeking sources who were:

1. Objective
2. Truly knowledgeable
3. Unclassified - i.e., accessible

This is mostly an “off road blog” in that we generally only will post on “off road sources”. Since everyone can read the New York Times, Guardian, or Sydney Morning Herald we don’t need to waste bandwidth highlighting their content. We’ll be looking mainly at academic sources, think-tanks, less-read sources such as Atlantic Monthly or Commentary, plus a selection of New Media sources that we have come to respect.

Categories:

The Sidebar-Categories can be used to snap to a view of the related posts by content. Please send comments on the categories and how the Sidebar can be more useful.

Recommended:

The Sidebar-Recommended links are resources we wish to emphasize (having been exposed to so many excellent sources, it’s really difficult to keep the list down to 20 or less). Please examine the Menu Resources section for a more comprehensive layered directory. Our goal is to avoid an endless multi-page BlogRoll that each visitor must download on every visit to SeekerBlog. Dear Reader, if you have found this site, you probably are already aware of the BlogFather, Prof. Glenn Reynolds, AKA Instapundit. We are indebted to Prof. Reynolds and the other founder-folk - we just won’t list them all on our entry page, OK?

About the site menus:

about: You are here.

resources: The purpose of this content is to organize links to the sources that we have found to be the most credible and useful. This section is by definition “under construction”, and will hopefully be changing weekly.

books: At best, useful reviews and background on important books. At worst, links to books that are well-reviewed, but not yet read.

archives: A catalog of all Seeker Blog posts: By Month, and By Category/sub-category.

terms: The Creative Commons Deed for the site content.

search: Jumps to the page-bottom search window so you can see it. The search window is always there, in the page footer (don’t ask why Search isn’t in the header where it belongs!).

About SeekerBlog ethics:

Another work in progress, but to start with we have adopted the principles outlined here:

1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true.
2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.
3. Publicly correct any misinformation.
4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.
5. Disclose any conflict of interest.
6. Note questionable and biased sources.

Contacts:

CFLink

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