Blog policies

About comments

I love reading your comments, and hope you will comment as often as you like. Here are my common-sense commenting policies:

  • Comments must be non-commercial and on-topic. If you put a link promoting your business website, I may remove or edit your comment.
  • If your comment includes links to any website, your comment may be held for moderation. My spam reduction software may blacklist you if you put more than four links in one post.
  • Comments by people who have not yet posted an approved comment get held for moderation. It’s sad that I have to do this, but I do.
  • Discourteous, rude, or hostile comments will disappear, or be redacted.
  • Due to attacks by malicious spammers, my Internet Service Provider requires that I use Captchas. I’ve switched to a non-invasive Captcha, which is working so far. But if you find that you’re unable to post a comment, please email me.

Finally, like all blogs my blog is still a regular target of malicious hacking attacks. Sometimes comments get lost in one of those attacks. If your comment doesn’t appear in a week, please contact me via email. (If I don’t reply to your email, assume that your comment violated the above policies.)

Email and snail mail welcome

If you have trouble posting a comment, and decide to send it to me via email, be sure to explicitly state that I have your permission to post that email message as a comment. Be assured I won’t post any email from you without your explicit written permission.

You can reach me at danrharper at aol dot com.

If you prefer sending snail mail:

Dan Harper
c/o First Parish in Cohasset
23 N. Main St.
Cohasset, MA 02025

This is a personal blog

Since I am editor and principal writer, this blog represents my own viewpoint. It does not represent the viewpoint of the congregation I serve, First Parish in Cohasset, nor of any previous congregation I have served while writing this blog (i.e., Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva, Illinois, and First Unitarian Church of New Bedford, Massachusetts). Nor does it represent the viewpoint of the denomination with which I am affiliated, the Unitarian Universalist Association.

No advertisements, no paid reviews, no “tip jar”

I receive no money for writing this blog. I provide all the funding needed to pay for this blog. My income is adequate, and ministers are supposed to do something in the public sphere, so I don’t solicit money from my readers.

But if you’re feeling generous and want to support independent writers, here’s what you can do — DON’T BUY BOOKS FROM AMAZON. My spouse is a writer, and she makes almost no money from the books she is forced to sell on Amazon. When you buy books from Amazon, all you’re doing is screwing writers and supporting Jeff Bezos’s lavish lifestyle. I buy used books from Powells or A Libris. I buy new books, especially academic books, from The Seminary Coop Bookstore (they have great customer service, and will order anything for you). Or support your local bookseller — I buy books from my local bookseller, Buttonwood Books and Toys in Cohasset.

I don’t do ads or product placements. If I review something on this blog, it’s because I happen to be interested in it, not because someone paid me or asked me to review it.

I collect as little of your data as possible

Unlike FaceCrook and other social media sites, I collect as little data about you as is possible. I only collect such data as I need to keep this blog operating — please see my Privacy Policy.

I don’t want to aggregate your data so I can predict whether you’re pregnant, or a cat fancier, or whatever. And I am not not interested in selling your personal information to some dodgy “analytics” company that’s trying to destabilize American democracy.

Warning: I have embedded a number of YouTube videos in this blog, and YouTube DOES want to aggregate your data. Therefore, I recommend you don’t look at YouTube videos when you are logged into Google or YouTube. (Better yet, search for the video you want to watch on DuckDuckGo.com — they have a good privacy policy, and offer you the option of viewing the video anonymously.)

Copyright notice

Unless noted otherwise, my entire website is:

Copyright (c) 1999-present Daniel Harper.

This notice constitutes written permission that Unitarian Universalist congregations, as well as their ministers and lay leaders, may use my copyright-protected material on this blog, provided this copyright notice accompanies all republication (including print, electronic, audio, video, and all other forms of republication) of this material.

Updated June, 2023.