CAMELOSOPHY: As many of you know, this blog started out as an e-mail newsletter, mostly about books and music. Then two forces converged to give birth to BLIND CAMEL the blog.

First, I started to crave a broader platform, a place where I could hold forth about, well, everything. I wanted to explore politics, wine, parenting, dogs, the Chicago Cubs and the Detroit Red Wings, my ill feelings toward Madonna, and so forth. And I wanted to be able to just sort of file those feelings somewhere, suitable for perusal or not. Thing is, this blogging, this often meta-level musing about my life and the world around me, well, it's not so much about writing completed essays, about being authoritative or completist, as it is about just being engaged in living and thinking, in thinking about living, etc. I blog like I think.

Second: Blogging software was invented.

I initially launched BLIND CAMEL as an e-mail newsletter because it was easy and egalitarian. I could send a text e-mail to just about anyone, and they could simply choose whether or not they wanted to read it, or even receive it at all. They didn't need to download any helper applications, or even have a high-speed Internet account. The technology hurdles were low on both sides of the fence, and yet the technology was sophisticated enough to enable me to become a self-publisher who could scale at will. Creating and archiving a website was another solution, but I knew it would be much more difficult than writing the e-mail newsletter.

Enter blogging. Now I can have a website thats very architecture is like a million little comp books, stitched together and indexed for easy reference. I can scribble here as if it's my small little space, while at the same time knowing that my "comp book" is lying open on a thousand tables, so to speak. This is low-budget, guerilla-filmmaking...for those who'd rather read.

I trace the evolution of the Camel to introduce a little story. Last week, as many of you know, I sent out a reminder e-mail to old BLIND CAMEL subscribers, telling them to drop by this blog and check out my latest musings. (An aside: It occurs to me that blogging is Mailer's ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF writ large and mechanized.) And so several of the old subscribers did drop by, judging by my traffic numbers, and did get a chance to see how my interests have evolved from precious pop music to pressing geopolitical issues.

At least one such visitor was flummoxed by the new editorial direction, not to mention a bit angry. While I won't betray what was a personal correspondence, I will say he was particularly uneasy with what he perceived as my move to the right, my acceptance of the ongoing war in Iraq, my recommendation of Andrew Sullivan, and so forth. We had a heated exchange which, in the end, I'm delighted to say seems to have produced some light from the friction.

What's with my rightward shift? Have I grown fat and happy? Have I experienced the good life, as I was accused by another friend in a parking lot not too long ago, and decided "pull up the ladder, I'm aboard" is my new political philosophy?

I don't think so. My rightward inclination continues even as our household income contracts for the first time in a decade. It continues even as our charitable giving increases, as our support for NPR and Salon.com remains in force, and as I've come to identify myself a pesco-vegetarian and a PETA sympathizer. For years, I was a textbook left-liberal, and I still wear the trappings of same even as I buy The National Review at the newstand and read AndrewSullivan.com.

I'm reminded of a college professor of mine, a fellow named Art, who practiced an unusual and powerful form of teaching. Each class, he'd write provocative statements on the chalkboard, and he'd force us as a class to choose a side to argue in favor of, and to move our seats to the appropriate side of the room. "No moral relativism," he'd lecture. "In the real world, you have to choose a side. Sitting in the middle gets people killed." If he felt you were to weak in your advocacy of a particular position, he'd force you to switch sides. Or, if you were simply against the other side and not for your side, he'd also protest. "Being against something is not enough in this world," he would say. "It's too easy to be against things. Always ask yourself: What are you for?"

Over time, I learned there are flaws to every argument, that there are merits to every side. But I also came to accept Art's contention that, in real life, you have to pick a side, and you have to choose that side based on what you stand for, not what you stand against.

This blog, then, represents my ongoing attempt to do just that. I concede: It's immediate, and it's flawed. It's kneejerk and half-baked. It's thinking as it happens. It's not a signed column in a newspaper; it's my comp book left open on a table in the middle of the sidewalk. To those of you taking the time to read it, feel free to add your own two cents in pen. And thanks for reading.