I have not posted since April 8th. I realized that I needed to clean up the code that runs the site, and I also have been making a decision about whether to move myself to a new home on the other side of the country. It's been a busy time, with a lot of uncertainty. Fortunately, a lot of that uncertainty is now resolving.

On the subject of fixes to the site, I have done quite a lot of work to clean up code, compress images, and redesign the overall page layout a bit, all to get the site to load more quickly and reliably. The first page you load on the site will take a bit of time to complete, but for all following pages that you load, the time to completion should be fast, at just a few seconds.

The text of the page, which is what you are visiting the site to see, will load first now. You should be able to begin reading the text within just a few seconds. After the text is already loaded, the sidebar will fill in in a way that I think you will find less distracting than before. I hope you like the changes so far and find the site easier and more pleasurable to visit.

Once I have the chance to begin working in earnest on the site again in August and September, I will be reorganizing the navigation bar to provide room for more subjects. I will be adding photos to the site as soon as I can, and I will probably add videos later.

From now until mid-August, most of my time will necessarily be taken up in getting myself packed, moved, and unpacked. I will be moving from California to New England, and there is a lot to do over the next several weeks to make that happen. One good outcome is that I will be driving cross-country through some beautiful areas, and I have a new camera to help me capture some photos to share on the site once I am settled in my new home.

I want to thank you for your patience so far. It has been more difficult than I thought to get the site set up, designed, cleaned up, and structured. However, over the next several months, the site should start finally coming together as I have wanted it to.

Please make life easier for yourself by subscribing to my RSS feed or my email feed using the two buttons in the upper right-hand corner of any page. That way you will not have to check the site for updates. When I start posting again, the updates will show up on your feed in either your browser or your email box. If you don't want to do either of those actions, then I suggest that you schedule a visit to the site in early September. I should be posting material again by then.

It's admin time again, this time for this site's policy for handling legal questions.

Most issues involving the law will be concerning how this site or its commenters use copyrighted material owned by others, or related questions involving intellectual property.

It is always my intent to use the copyrighted material of others in ways that abide by intellectual property law and Fair Use guidelines. I also intend to respond expeditiously to concerns voiced by copyright or IP owners in notices to me concerning possible infringement, etc.

If you are a copyright owner and feel that any material on this site or in comments is infringing on your intellectual property, please go to the Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy page and read how to provide notice to me. I promise I will respond with goodwill.

If you have other legal concerns not related to intellectual property and copyrights, please go to the Website Policies page, where you will find a list of all the policies that govern this website. There you will also find information on how to contact me informally or formally.

I hope you never feel the need to use these pages to notify me of a possible problem, but if you do, please know that I will respond to your concerns and help us reach a solution that is acceptable to both of us.

I have completed a substantial but still partial update of the Sphere of Joy article. Quite a bit more text will eventually be posted there, but I wanted to get something up in the meantime.

I also revised all three of the major graphics for the Sphere of Joy, the Sphere of Peace, and the Sphere of Love. These changes should help clarify some of the points I am interested in making. Please check them out and let me know what you think!

I promise that more material is on the way…

I have published an extensive update to the article Everyday Actions and Consequences. I've added further commentary in the Overview section, but the main addition is in further details on a couple of important points.

First is a discussion of whether someone who believes he is doing the right thing in a given situation actually is doing the right thing. For example, a belief that he is attempting to create a wonderful future can cause him to adopt measures in the present which are negative, unethical, immoral.

Can someone attain a good end by using bad means? Check out the article for further discussion.

Second, I felt that I should say something about fear and anxiety, what each is, and how each can affect a person's motivations. Fear is an ally when a person is faced with a real, present-moment threat. When dealing with concerns about a possible future, fear is not the appropriate concept to use. Anxiety works better in that situation.

Where can anxiety take us when we aren't paying attention to it consciously? Can it warp our judgment? Does it motivate us to make inappropriate choices or take inappropriate actions? Check the article and find out!

I know, I know: it's about time that I got the legal stuff out of the way.

Today I am publishing the initial draft of the Terms of Service that govern this website. If you would like to comment on this agreement and perhaps suggest changes to improve it, please do leave a comment below or, if need be, Contact Me. I will carefully consider whatever comment you provide and will hold the comment period open for 30 days.

This is the third of seven policies that I will be using on this site. I hope to have the remaining four policies drafted and published in the next few weeks.