ululate!

One of the first of the "biggie" bloggers that I ever read when I was new to blogging was Steven Den Beste, who blogged at the now-defunct USS Clueless. I just saw on Instapundit that Den Beste has died, and while I have no emotional investment in the man, I thought I'd briefly note his passing here.

Den Beste was a massive voice for the conservative side of the blogosphere back in the day; he often articulated George "Dubya" Bush's Iraq-related intentions better than Dubya himself did. On that score, I felt Den Beste was dead wrong, but a lot of righties thought otherwise, naively believing that a plan to produce a "democracy-quake" in the Middle East would in fact be possible. Den Beste, normally quite rational, seemed convinced that a quick-fix "solution" would work in a region that is still in the thrall of ancient, intractable problems that long pre-date the advent of Western meddling.

While I wasn't a total fan of Den Beste's political insights (or his persistent grammatical and punctuation errors), I did find him to be a brilliant, inspired writer when it came to his home field of engineering. Long before sites like Wait But Why ever came into existence, Den Beste was pounding out essays on nerdy topics like, "What's the one invention you'd need if you wanted to change the world?"

For that, at least, I'll miss him. RIP.

UPDATE: Den Beste's "Unified Theory of Left-wing Causes" is enshrined here.