Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Here's something I've noticed since I entered Blogistan: a phenomenon I call "Bait-and-Switch Blogging". This is where a blogger starts off a post talking about one thing, but later turns out to be not talking about that thing at all but merely bringing it up as an example of, or proposition in an argument for, some other thing.

Bill Whittle does this a lot -- in fact, I cited him doing it the other day, and as usual, I found the bait a lot more interesting than the inevitable "And that leads me to what's wrong with liberals" stuff that constitutes the second part of this particular post. The same thing happened in his post a few months back that paid tribute to the Columbia astronauts, although in that case he got the post back on track at the end in one of the more haunting posts I've encountered since I've been doing this. My advice on reading Whittle is this: By all means read him, but as soon as you detect the gears switching to "Time to beat the liberals", look away.

But the master of Bait-and-Switch Blogging is SDB, who does this with astonishing regularity. Today's entry is a case in point: I start reading it, thinking he's still discussing the logical ramifications of and justification for atheism, specifically as it pertains to inductive versus deductive reasoning, but before long, we're back into the dreary old "Why French people are goons" and "Why Jacksonianism rules" and all the rest of it. I almost think SDB would do well to write the interesting stuff, followed by a sentence like "It therefore follows that....", in turn followed by a link to one of his former screeds. Just a thought.