Cogent Provocateur's Prehistory
The original Cogent Provocateur ran from 3/4/2002 to 4/23/2003 on the blogspot platform. At the time I was one of about 25 “Star Posters” of Slate.com’s multidimensionally diverse reader forum, The Fray.1 Another Star Poster, ur-blogger Glenn ”InstaPundit” Reynolds, had begun “weblogging” and inspired several other members of the community to give it a try … often posting in parallel on The Fray and our own blogs.
My last post on old CP, Operation Desert Snipe, was an evisceration of the WMD theory of IW II. For much of the ensuing year, a link was pinned to the top of the right-hand column of the Poynter Institute’s bloggy web presence, and the estimable Brad DeLong nominated it in late 2007 as one of his five best weblog posts ever ever.
I also authored the CAMP ENRON Report (1/11/2002 - 6/20/2003), a special-focus blog dealing with corporate shenanigans and, more broadly, with the challenge derivatives pose to the norms of traditional accountancy. For a prime cut, see Camp Enron Scoutcraft: Flatland meets String Theory.
I had also been active in the fever swamps of DailyKOS, and was invited to become a front-page contributor — a new thing at the time. I later ran afoul of tribal taboos, was “downrated” so severely I could not see my own posts, and eventually expunged from the site’s official history. My work was, however, memorialized by at least one non-official site historian2.
To be continued …
{Note to readers: This page is a work in progress. I will keep updating it with other notable posts from the past as opportunity permits.]
The Fray shut down in 2011 when Slate changed content management platforms, and deleted all archives in March 2012. The public notice escaped my notice, and I assume all is lost from that era. However, digests of The Fray were sometimes posted as primary content and may still exist.
That compilation being Part 2, I may have to go looking for Part 1.