This is the first entry, and mostly it is here to explain what the rest will be.
The interactive studies next door — the disputed questions — are maps. They lay out a debate from the outside: every position, who holds it, where it was affirmed or condemned. They are careful not to hand you a verdict.
Articles are different. Here I am allowed to think out loud, to follow one thread as far as it goes, and to say where I have actually landed and why. A map shows you the whole country; an article is a walk down one road.
What to expect
Some of these will be short. Some will be long enough that they should probably have been two. A few rules I am setting for myself:
- Show the sources. If a claim rests on a text, the text gets quoted or linked.
- State the position honestly before disagreeing with it. The version I argue against should be one its best defenders would recognise.
- Leave the seams showing. Where I am unsure, I will say so rather than smooth it over.
A good notebook is not a monument. It is a workbench — kept, added to, and occasionally corrected.
How this gets published
Every piece here is written in plain Markdown and stamped into the site's theme by a small build script. There is no database and no login — just files. That keeps the whole thing portable, fast, and mine.
If you are reading this much later, it has likely been buried under better entries. That is the idea.