He was one of the greats of early blogging, and a brilliant man in many fields. I have to confess that I feel partially responsible (though I’m sure I was far from alone) in chasing him away from blogging with an ill-thought email. I think I later apologized, but if I didn’t, Steven, if you can read this, please accept my deepest apologies.
[Tuesday-morning update]
More thoughts from Jim Geraghty.
Damn.
(stupid wordpress insists on more words. unnecessary words.)
Very saddened to hear. He was one of the greats.
I only read a few posts from him before he retired the full time gig. It was good stuff. RIP
Great eulogy from Ace, which a link to this post. Reading the comments at the second link is refreshing. None of the knucklehead religious nuts commenting on subjects for which they couldn’t handle in school and certainly couldn’t handle as professionals.
The world is a little darker today.
Steven, you will be missed.
Before withdrawing from high-profile polemical blogging on account of health reasons, he was a pioneer alongside Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds.
Definitely a man who made a major contribution to the public discourse.
It was required to visit Clueless many times per day. He was the only atheist that ever had a good argument for his position. Enough to seriously impact my beliefs. His health suffered the entire time he was writing his articles, but he never made it an issue.
That his blog is no longer available is a crime that reminds me of an Asimov article about how technology may cause us to lose much of our recent history… making it much easier for liars to rewrite history without getting caught.
This is why integrity matters and SDB had that. His essays are part of who I am today.
USS Clueless is not gone! Years ago, he gave permission for someone to archive it. (Search is dead, though.)
https://erbosoft.com/ussclueless/