As you ought to have already noticed, I’ve designed (and reorganized) the web site. Mostly, I was tired of my old design; I wanted the site to be both more subdued and more compact. A few points of note:

• I added some new pictures of the beasts. Finally, you can get a good look at the horses! (I didn’t even realize that I got a picture of Jackson sticking his tongue out until I downloaded the pictures to my computer. But it’s quite perfect for him.)
• I converted all of my more recent (i.e. post-undergraduate) papers and lectures to PDF files. Any HTML files are entirely gone for various reasons, but the MS Word files are still available. If those would be of greater interest than the PDFs to some of you, let me know and I’ll add links to them.
• I finally updated my TOC page. It now links to all the relevant blog entries on The Objectivist Center, Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, the Ayn Rand Institute, and so on. It also has a bit of introductory commentary, including a short but clear statement of my view of ARI.
• I added a general cautionary note to the web site: “The inclusion of a writing on my web site ought not be regarded as an endorsement of either its content or the forum for which it was written. I now disagree (to varying degrees) with many of the claims and/or arguments made in my old work; I have cut my ties to some of the organizations mentioned. Sometimes, my change in views was related the issues discussed on this page. In other cases, I changed my mind for more mundane reasons. Nonetheless, I have chosen to retain these writings on my web site as part of the record of my intellectual history, warts and all. To have selectively removed objectionable writings would not only have been an impossible chore, but also an unseemly act of whitewashing in some cases. Anyone with questions about a particular writing is welcome to e-mail me at [email protected].”

  Just for the record, not a single person has ever pressured, encouraged, or even suggested that I remove those outdated or objectionable portions of the web site. But I do get tired of this sort of stupidity. (Of course, it is precisely because I am not willing to “rewrite my own history” that Michelle Cohen was even able to find that old blog post of mine. Oh, I hid it ever so cleverly… on my web site!)

  Obviously, the basic point of the warning is to alleviate the confusion of reasonable people unfamiliar with my unfortunate history with The Appeasement Center.

  If you run into any problems with the redesign of the site, by all means, let me know. If you just hate the new design… well… too bad. :-)