It seems like only yesterday that Frankly Curious published its 2,000th article. (It wasn’t; it was almost two years ago.) We are now well over 5,000 articles. What’s more, the articles are much longer now. In the early days, articles were often very short. And then there is this thing since I moved over to Word Press. It tells me how many words I’ve written, and that tends to make me shoot for 500 words — the Frankly Curious standard. But I often find myself well over double that. What am I gonna do? I have a lot to say.
This comes up because I was thinking of writing an article about the ridiculousness of the libertarian argument against labor unions. I will probably get to that soon, but I was thinking, “Didn’t I write about that before?” Well, the truth is, I can’t find that I have written about it, which is odd given that it is something that really bugged me even when I was a libertarian. (As a libertarian, I was a huge supporter of labor unions — strong labor unions were the only way libertarianism could ever work.) But what if I had? It isn’t like it would be just a rehash of the older article. And it isn’t like I had anywhere near as many readers before as I have now.
But what is the purpose of this blog? I know I write these articles from time to time. But I really am trying to figure it out. As you should have noticed, there is now a “Morning Music” post. It took me exactly three days for it to get totally out of hand. The idea was just that I was going post some video that I thought was interesting. But it couldn’t stay at that — no. Now I have to go on and on about what I think is interesting. For example, I have one coming up about Michael Penn’s minor hit, “No Myth.” And I swear, I get 500 words out of talking about Wuthering Heights.
So I seem to have set up another trap for myself. Now, instead of five posts per day, it is six. And there are three set ones: the birthday post, the quotation, and the music post. But here is the interesting thing: they are actually the easiest ones to write. I know I have to create them, so there is no question of whether I should or shouldn’t write them. The hardest part about writing any article is starting it. Actually, of the three, the quotations are the hardest, because I have to find something that is interesting without my commenting on it.
This means that I have three articles per day that I consider “real.” And by “real,” I mean hard. They are article that generally require that I read a lot about what’s going on and look for something that I think is worth writing about. And then that leads to reading what other people are writing about. And this usually results in what I think is my best work here. Most especially, I think my best work is about economics, because that’s an area where I think I have the perfect level of knowledge (low but not zero) to get across complicated issues. But in general, no one is interested in these articles. Which is fine.
The question remains: do people like this? That’s a rhetorical question — don’t feel the need to chime in. But if you think it sucks, please let me know. It isn’t likely to change anything. The addition of “Morning Music” is part of my broader attempt to make Frankly Curious a destination site. This isn’t as loony a thought as it might sound. The number of people who come directly to the home page is way up over the last year. I want this to be a place where people can come every day and know that there will probably be something that they’ll find vaguely interesting. And it provides my life with structure that I badly need.
Afterword
Speaking of structure, this is currently the publishing schedule of Frankly Curious:
12:05 am - Birthday Post 06:05 am - Morning Music 08:05 am - General Post (usually politics) 11:05 am - General Post (usually politics) 02:05 pm - Quotation 05:05 pm - General Post (hopefully not politics)
I’m thinking of moving the birthday post to 5:05 am. There’s a technical reason for that. I rather like it going up after midnight.
Also, lest we forget, journalists are not entirely immune to the seductions of affluence. While they are not nearly as well paid as the nation’s corporate, legal, or medical elite, high-level Washington and New York journalists do make considerably more money than most Americans. They have spouses who do too, and hence, live pretty well. According to a study conducted by the sociologist David Croteau, 95 percent of elite journalists’ households earned more than $50,000 a year, and 31 percent earned more than $150,000. He points out, “High levels of income tend to be associated with conservative views on economic issues such as tax policy and federal spending.” And journalists are no different. The journalists’ views on economic matters are generally consistent with their privileged position on the socioeconomic ladder, and, hence, well to the right of most Americans. They are more sympathetic to corporations, less sympathetic to government-mandated social programs, and far more ideologically committed to free trade than to the protection of jobs than are their fellow citizens.
On Monday, Nicholas Bagley over at The Incidental Economist wrote, 
Vindication! The European black rat, long blamed for the Black Death and for later waves of plague, has been exonerated. The real culprit, it seems, is the gerbil with its “cute” tail. Ha! All you rat haters out there can suck it! Not that I dislike gerbils. They are wonderful. I am fond of all my fellow mammals. But rats have been vilified for too long. And why?
The real culprit, of course, are the fleas. And it isn’t like the rats weren’t carrying the infected fleas on them. The problem seems to be that the plague was even more devastating to rat populations than it was to humans. So rats are not only not the culprit — they are one of the primary victims of the plague. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, you rat haters!
After my rant about the 
On this day in 1707, the great playwright