Introduction to basic philosophical concepts and terms.

Welcome to TypePad! This is a sample post you can edit or delete later.

The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

For use on Flickr and elsewhere. Another practical upload, about as exciting as those socks your Aunt Sadie bought you on your birthday.

The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

... and some more documentation, to deal with the same silliness ...

The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

This comes up in another forum ...

The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Both the structure and the photo

The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

Bright day, manual camera I was just learning to use, and a vagely worded demolition permit sitting on the door, compelled me to do what I could - quickly.



Not ideal circumstances, but a good excuse to play.

The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy posted a photo:

As seen, pre-adobe. I shot this with equipment much older than I am (true), and a light meter I didn't really know how to use, so some touching up will be needed.

Ghazal ^o^ posted a photo:

groenling posted a photo:

my 11,111th flickrfoto

Chris28mm posted a photo:

View Large



B l a c k M a g i c

vdubber1 posted a photo:

Ruff woods

dirk vde posted a photo:

IMG_9251. Eglise de Cany-Barville.



******************************************************************************************

© All rights reserved. All images protected under copyright laws and may not be downloaded, reproduced, copied, transmitted, modified,used in blogs, used in web-pages or used in publications without explicit written permission of the author. *******************************************************************************************

Fort Photo posted a photo:

View Large on Black



Moments after this shot was taken, Maria came running across that verdant grassy plain singing, "The hills are alive with the sound of music." ;-)))



Shot Notes: a hybrid blend between Enfuse, HDR and about 40% of the non-HDR -.67 EV frame. This the same evening as my last sunset with the small lake.

StephYo posted a photo:

Comments:

• If you entered this group, or any of my other groups or sites from a webring, one of the links below should help you get back to it. - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Tags: navigation

by: The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Comments:

• I have difficulty taking this one seriously, which might not be an utter surprise, given the fact that we're talking about a post about an alleged research project posted to a science fiction site. An unnamed "researcher" (identified elsewhere as Mark Holley of Northwestern Michigan College) claims to have found a Stonehenge like arrangement of boulders at the bottom of Lake Michigan. Looking at the picture included in the article, the only thing circular in it seems to be the field of view.
  
  
  
  A thumbnail of what is said to be a sonar image of this supposed find can be seen below. How would you describe the distribution of the rocks you see in this image - as being a circular arrangement, or as something more linear, with a little random scattering - as one would expect to see if the river of ice that carved out the canyon that became Lake Michigan had melted, and dropped the rocks?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  How would a stone circle - were one present - end up at the bottom of a Lake that every child growing up near its shores knows was carved by glaciers? The article states "These submerged stones could have been raised by local populations at a time when part of the lake bed was dry, in the late Ice Age." Except that the Lake, again as we all grow up knowing, was initially filled with the water from the glacial melt, so there was no such time - the Lake has been retreating, not advancing, over the millenia.
  
  
  
  Another user (lprnal) tries to make the blog writer's suggestion sound more reasonable than it is, saying "lake michigan has been shifting and evolving for quite a while now, and sometimes it's not slow at all. For example in the door peninsula, there are bluffs which are quite high you can stand on, that used to be right on the edge of the water.", but again, this is not due to the ground around the lake moving, but to the level of the lake dropping.
  
  
  
  So I found this all quite strange. - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Note: Those who wish to read the article itself, which I've bookmarked, should follow this link:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  http://io9.com/5130669/another-stonehenge-discovered-under-lake-michigan
  
  
  
  
  
  and continue from there. Ma.gnolia, where the Ravine was original set up a few days before the fun of January 30, 2009 (ahem! cough!) doesn't (didn't?) allow us to edit links in discussion group posts after the fact, so I'll be making lavish use of offsite redirect pages over there to allow me to update links as needed. Maybe.
  
  
  
  Assuming that Ma.gnolia ever manages to get back online. As for here, I'm still learning how the Diigo system works, so I don't know what's needed on this site. That I can embed photos in the text, instead of referring the visitor to images elsewhere as one must at Ma.gnolia, and use some html, comes as a pleasant surprise.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Tags: fringe, science, skepticism, underwater, archaeology

by: The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

"The Ravine" is the name I've attached to the space associated with this account on mine on Diigo, and associated pages elsewhere. Think of it as a site that spills over several servers.



This link takes you to the main page for that distributed site.

Comments:

• "The Ravine" is the name I've attached to the space associated with this account on mine on Diigo, and associated pages elsewhere. Think of it as a site that spills over several servers.
  
  
  
  This link takes you to the main page for that distributed site. - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Tags: homepage, introduction

by: The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

If you'd like to be notified of updates to my bloglike (blogish?) homegroup on Diigo, and you have a Yahoo account, you should join this community.



Just sign into Mybloglog with your Yahoo account, if you haven't set up a Mybloglog account already, and you should be ready to run in about a minute. Just remember to click on "my home" and look at your own page before trying to set your nickname in IE, because of a small bug in the system.

Comments:

• If you'd like to be notified of updates to my bloglike (blogish?) homegroup on Diigo, and you have a Yahoo account, you should join this community.
  
  
  
  Just sign into Mybloglog with your Yahoo account, if you haven't set up a Mybloglog account already, and you should be ready to run in about a minute. Just remember to click on "my home" and look at your own page before trying to set your nickname in IE, because of a small bug in the system. - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Tags: joseph dunphy, updates, mybloglog

by: The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Comments:

• 
  
  
  
  I just edited an old post on a group, and noticed that Diigo has jumped onto the bandwagon and started adding rel=nofollow to all outbound links in its groups. Guys, please stop doing that.
  
  
  
  The standard argument for using nofollow is that its use deters spammers, even if the rate of spammage would seem to have increased since the introduction of nofollow. This belief can easily be seen to be nonsense by anybody who has ever waited for one of his sites to appear in the search engines listings. Why? Because that process can take months, sometimes even years, and spam sites don't tend to live that long. Within weeks of a site being so promoted, sometimes even within days, complaints about the spam will have gone in to the service hosting the site and to the site's registrar by the truckload, and the site will be gone. Only to be replaced by a brand new site at a brand new location, selling the same old stuff, as anybody who, out of perverse curiosity, has ever clicked on a link on a semi-old spam message (and then checked his newer e-mail) almost certainly has seen for himself.
  
  
  
  Spammers work by getting large numbers of visitors to go to throwaway sites that won't live long enough to rise in the search engine ratings, so pagerank won't matter to them. Logically, it shouldn't, and if we take a look at spammer behavior following the introduction of nofollow, we find no evidence whatsoever that it does. It can, however, matter immensely to those who are trying to establish a web presence for themselves honestly, by doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing, that which the search engines are supposed to be encouraging them to do - by creating and posting content that people want to read and link to. Let's say that one of us posts content to a "black hole", a site that (like Diigo) has rel-nofollowed all outbound links, including the homepage links on our profiles. (Check it out - Diigo has done this). Let us say that somebody looks at the content, likes the content, and links to it. Diigo gets a search engine boost, but the person who took the time and did the work to create that content doesn't. Meaning that his other sites would have done better in the search engines if he had posted that content elsewhere, where nofollow wasn't being used.
  
  
  
  In effect, he is being penalised for having chosen Diigo (or some other black hole) as the place where he would post his content. Nofollow hurts the legitimate poster, while having absolutely no direct impact on the spammer. But it can have an indirect impact, as one can see by looking at services like Simpy, where the spam has taken over.
  
  
  
  Think of the difference between being the one guy who's speeding while everybody else is staying below the limit, and being that same guy when everybody else is doing 85, too. You're still breaking the rules, and you still know that (theoretically) you can be slapped down for that, but there's a great feeling of safety in numbers. As the ratio of spam to legitimate content goes up, the spammers get bolder and more aggressive, as anybody who has ever been away from a forum he moderated for a little too long knows - spam tends to snowball, and probably for the same reason that the number of speeders will start to soar after a point; because one's chances of being one of the people grabbed and sanctioned are dropping. The life expectancy of one's spam is rising, and the profitability of it is doing likewise in the process, a thought that will lure more spammers in to take advantage of this opportunity.
  
  
  
  There's the indirect impact on the spammers - by undercutting the incentive given to one's legitimate contributors, one helps create a friendlier environment for those spammers, which perhaps is why the rate of spammage has gone up since the introduction of nofollow. The law of unintended consequences has kicked in with a vengeance, and why wouldn't it? If somebody, in "real life" (offline) decides to treat all of his visitors as if they were scofflaws, hardly anybody is surprised when he eventually finds himself surrounded by nothing but scofflaws; honest men expect to be treated with respect. Why should life work any differently online? Because treating us all like we're spammers, even after we've proved that we're not through months or years of honest posting, isn't even remotely respectful. Even if it is fashionable.
  
  
  
  Yes, I know that dealing with spammers can be exhausting, and I'm sure that one will be greatly tempted to believe that a shortcut can be found to doing that tedious, emotionally unrewarding task, much the same way as some of us would like to believe that we can find a fun way of getting around the need to do cleanup in the lab, or that's there's some diet that allows one to lose weight and reduce one's cholesterol while eating all of the steak, bacon and chocolate one wants, maybe by nibbling a few acai berries or something like that. But reality is what it is, and it either gets dealt with on its own terms, or it gets worse. Sometimes, a lot worse.
  
  
  
  One doesn't win popularity points by reminding people of this, but it is the truth.
  
  
  
  - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Tags: nofollow, policy, policies, spam

by: The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Link to the complete page of my bookmarks, created so that I could link my homegroup to that page, for the sake of easier navigability, the two being tied together, as I've explained elsewhere, the homegroup being used for elaboration on subjects and points raised on my bookmark page.

Comments:

• Link to the complete page of my bookmarks, created so that I could link my homegroup to that page, for the sake of easier navigability, the two being tied together, as I've explained elsewhere, the homegroup being used for elaboration on subjects and points raised on my bookmark page. - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Tags: no_tag

by: The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Returning to one of the rings to which my group on Diigo, named "The Ravine", belongs.



Link made necessary because the Diigo staff did not have the foresight to provide us with a homepage link option for our groups, and Webring insists that all pages on one's site be within two clicks of a ring, with an easy path back to the ring. Therefore, I must create this link, put it into the pool for that group, and then never have another link entered there, ever again, or at least very few, because otherwise the link back to Webring will get buried, and their support staff will not be pleased.



Sigh. What can one do? Staff at Diigo - when you have time, please consider the possibility of a little added functionality in this area.

Comments:

• Returning to one of the rings to which my group on Diigo, named "The Ravine", belongs.
  
  
  
  Link made necessary because the Diigo staff did not have the foresight to provide us with a homepage link option for our groups, and Webring insists that all pages on one's site be within two clicks of a ring, with an easy path back to the ring. Therefore, I must create this link, put it into the pool for that group, and then never have another link entered there, ever again, or at least very few, because otherwise the link back to Webring will get buried, and their support staff will not be pleased.
  
  
  
  Sigh. What can one do? Staff at Diigo - when you have time, please consider the possibility of a little added functionality in this area. - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Tags: no_tag

by: The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Proper credit - where I found a few of the photo pages I've submitted to Ma.gnolia in the past, and now am about to mirror on Simpy and Diigo, as I wonder whether Ma.gnolia will ever come back. (I'm writing this on Feb.4, 2009; Ma.gnolia went down on Jan.30). When you see me refer to "Anatoly", this is the Stumbleupon blog of the Anatoly of whom I speak.

Comments:

• Proper credit - where I found a few of the photo pages I've submitted to Ma.gnolia in the past, and now am about to mirror on Simpy and Diigo, as I wonder whether Ma.gnolia will ever come back. (I'm writing this on Feb.4, 2009; Ma.gnolia went down on Jan.30). When you see me refer to "Anatoly", this is the Stumbleupon blog of the Anatoly of whom I speak. - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Tags: Stumbleupon, blog, internet, blogs

by: The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Comments:

• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Chicago Photography is a group that I started and now run at Flickr, that is already a daily source of delight for me. What follows is a sampling of some of the images that have been submitted to the pool, along with credits and links back to the profiles of the photographers, where you can see more of their work. These are reductions of photos that, over on Flickr, were set to allow for the blogging of images, which is what you see me doing here. Click on them, and you'll get to the larger and more interesting fulll sized photos in their original locations. This is, I think, as it should be - the point of a page like this is to get you interested enough in some of these artists to go visit their pages, not to give you the feeling that you had already done so.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Nick by T_Bex
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  I believe that this was the first image submitted to the pool of the new group, by somebody also known as "Broken Bottle Betty", according to her Myspace profile. If we go to her photostream, we find more black and white (and some color), club scenes, and a few pictures that show that sometimes less is more.
  
  
  
  
  
  - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  mliw1 by T_Bex
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  mliwlast10 by T_Bex
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Tags: photography, Chicago, Illinois, Midwest, Flickr

by: The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Comments:

• Videos I've found on Youtube and other video hosting services follow below. - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy
• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This is said to be radio noise picked up by Voyager as it approached Jupiter. I'll admit to a little initial skepticism about that - it sounds a little too smooth to be noise and the publisher is listed as "BRAIN/MIND Research", not NASA.
  
  
  
  But at the very least, it is interesting background noise.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Tags: videos

by: The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Comments:

• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  These are images others have made, which I've found on Flickr, DeviantArt and other places where photos and other artwork are hosted. I'll be blogging these with links back to the original locations, where you can see the full sized images, and a minimum of commentary, other than the credit being to the creators of the images.
  
  
  
  How many different ways are there to say "I liked this piece and would like to thank the artist for having posted it"?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Tags: art, photography

by: The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Somewhere my friends and contacts can gather on Diigo to talk about whatever they feel like talking about, as long as it is good taste and they stay reasonably civil.

Comments:

• Somewhere my friends and contacts can gather on Diigo to talk about whatever they feel like talking about, as long as it is good taste and they stay reasonably civil. - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Tags: no_tag

by: The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Comments:

• This is a group, but this is not a discussion group. This is more an extension of my profile.
  
  
  
  Right now, the name of this group is "The Ravine". It is a possible replacement for a group at Ma.gnolia by that name, which I had just created when Ma.gnolia went away on January 30. This event came as a great surprise to all of us, the owner included, who seems like a decent enough fellow. While I'm inclined to give Ma.gnolia and Mr.Halff another chance, at this point none of us know when or even if that site will ever return. I hope it does, but one has to make contingency plans.
  
  
  
  This group and my membership on Diggo, together, are my contingency plan. Regardless of what happens with Ma.gnolia, both will be put to good use. All that will change, should Ma.gnolia come back, is what that good use will be. - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy
• What is the purpose of having such a group? We could think of my profile at Diigo as being a kind of blog. I am not that excited by the thought of giving you and endless series of bookmarks, just standing alone as bookmarks. I want to talk about what I saw on the sites I bookmarked, and maybe go on a few tangents which I find interesting. Some of those tangents might be ones that you find interesting, but maybe they won't all be so. The problem with the straight blog format is that it presents the reader with a strictly linear format - section one follows section two follows section three for everybody, whether everybody wants to read section two or not. This, I always found strange, because blogs were invented after the advent of HTML, so why take what was one of the worst limitations of the fora during the all text era, when the limitation was inescapable, and impose it on a more technologically advanced modern medium like a blog?
  
  
  
  What I attempt to do is couple what is the strength of the blog format - the reverse chronological order of the postings always taking visitors to what is the freshest material present, without making them wade through old material to find it - with the strengths of webpages and other less linear sorts of pages, one of which is that of offering the reader a chance to be more selective about which points he will read about at length. The way I plan to do this is so simple, that I'm surprised more people don't do it - I'm going to create a series of little "consumable" sites or pages that expand on this point or subject or that, linking to them from the blog, having them link back so that when the reader is done, he finds himself back on the blog. With more standard HTML pages, the way to do this is to organize the little sites into sub-articles, in the form of strings small html pages that loop back and drop the reader off an a central homepage for the site - which is how most sites tend to work. - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy
• More about this, when I get up. It is now 3:25 am, my time, and I need to get to bed. For now, I'll just say that this group is going to be part of that nonlinear component of the blog, of which I've been speaking. - The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Tags: introduction

by: The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy

Tags: no_tag

Posted by: josephdunphy

If you came to my pages at Diigo from a webring and wish to return to it, now, you should find the code you need on this page. Be sure to click onto the url you see above the preview window, after clicking on the link, to get to the ring return page instead of the preview page.



Yes, I know that's a little confusing, but that's Diigo's doing and there's not much I can do about that, other than maybe look for a new hosting service. Again.

Tags: site navigation

Posted by: josephdunphy

I will probably be leaving Diigo. For a variety of reasons which I might discuss elsewhere, I don't feel valued as a user here. What I had been creating was destroyed by the recent changes Diigo's staff surprised us with over Yom Kippur. The damage doesn't look like something that I can fix, because Diigo no longer provides me with the tools I need, and I wonder who I'd be fixing it for, anyway.



If you want to read what I'm doing elsewhere, and see if I ever create a replacement for this account, my Mybloglog page will be a good source of information about that.

Tags: relocation

Posted by: josephdunphy

Something I've created, a moderated community for past and present users of Diigo. Communities on Livejournal are group blogs. This is somewhere where you're invited to elaborate on what you've been doing on Diigo, talk about the sites you've bookmarked, etc.

Tags: diigo livejournal community unofficial moderated

Posted by: josephdunphy

An unofficial, moderated group for past and present users of Diigo, which I've created at Flickr. Post your images, which you'd like to have seen somewhere on Diigo (in some discussion group or another, probably) on Flickr, and then maybe discuss them in this group.

Tags: flickr unofficial diigo

Posted by: josephdunphy

"The Ravine" is the name I've attached to the space associated with this account on mine on Diigo, and associated pages elsewhere. Think of it as a site that spills over several servers.



This link takes you to the main page for that distributed site.

Tags: homepage introduction

Posted by: josephdunphy

In case you were wondering why the same three bookmarks kept popping to the top of my bookmark page and onto your screen - this is why. Discussion on Diigo Community.

Tags: censorship concerned

Posted by: josephdunphy

Returning to one of the rings to which my group on Diigo, named "The Ravine", belongs.



Link made necessary because the Diigo staff did not have the foresight to provide us with a homepage link option for our groups, and Webring insists that all pages on one's site be within two clicks of a ring, with an easy path back to the ring. Therefore, I must create this link, put it into the pool for that group, and then never have another link entered there, ever again, or at least very few, because otherwise the link back to Webring will get buried, and their support staff will not be pleased.



Sigh. What can one do? Staff at Diigo - when you have time, please consider the possibility of a little added functionality in this area.

Tags: navigation

Posted by: josephdunphy

This, regrettably, is no joke. An official barged in as the cyclist was making arrangements for his son's funeral.



Somebody needs to be fired, not reprimanded or suspended.

Tags: war on drugs abuse of power outrageous insensitive

Posted by: josephdunphy

Men in Black gone wild. Employees of a county department of Homeland Security decide to make their own laws about the viewing of porn.

Tags: abuse of authority censorship

Posted by: josephdunphy

Law that is good in principle, applied without the use of common sense or basic logic.



One of the reasons why underaged teens aren't allowed to consent to model nude - without parental consent, and there are issues enough in that to justify a whole other post - is because children are believed to lack the mental capacity to fully understand the decisions that they are making. Yet now they are to prosecuted for making those very same decisions on their own, as if they were competent adults who had preyed on incompetent children, luring them into decisions their victims might later regret, leaving us with a pick and mix in which the teens are regarded as being both competent and incompetent at same time, the state they are to be viewed as being in depending on the needs of the argument under which they are to be imprisoned at each given point.



Doublethink a la Orwell being used as a basis for Law, as the underaged are put in danger of sent to prison (where they are likely to be raped) using a law designed to protect them from a form of sexual exploitation.

Tags: injustice court law trial imprisonment

Posted by: josephdunphy

Before one laughs too loudly, let's just think of what it means - as the wealth vanishes into the hands of a few, those few are growing fewer.



The smaller the controlling group gets, the more easily it can keep itself closed.

Tags: no_tag

Posted by: josephdunphy

Tags: no_tag

Posted by: josephdunphy

Viral molecular structures, rendered in glass. Prettier than I just made it sound, probably.

Tags: no_tag

Posted by: josephdunphy

If you'd like to be notified of updates to my bloglike (blogish?) homegroup on Diigo, and you have a Yahoo account, you should join this community.



Just sign into Mybloglog with your Yahoo account, if you haven't set up a Mybloglog account already, and you should be ready to run in about a minute. Just remember to click on "my home" and look at your own page before trying to set your nickname in IE, because of a small bug in the system.

Tags: joseph dunphy updates mybloglog

Posted by: josephdunphy

The investigation reported is one of those connected to Burges. Do you notice ...



1. That the authorites are just looking into the members of Burge's crowd, as if they were the only problem on the CPD.



Please. Dealing with these thugs is a nice start, but it's only a start. One is left wondering, though, if this is where it will end.



2. That this wasn't exactly late breaking news or unknown in Chicago - the Reader did a series of articles on these fun, fun people back in the 90s, and word had hit the street long before then.



Why wasn't anybody looking into this, then? That last question being rhetorical, of course, for reasons I'll get to, in a second.



3. That the human rights abuses mentioned took place during the 1980s, meaning that prosecution has been stalled for so long that, even if caught, most of the offenders will escape justice.



4. When, some years back, I and a few other demonstrators were on the street in Chicago, trying to raise a little consciousness about the issues surrounding the death penalty in Illinois, mentioning this very case, there's a reaction to which we became accustomed.



The man on the street seeing absolutely nothing wrong with torturing confessions out of those accused of crimes. This is why, below, you see me suggesting that I was not surprised to see popular acceptance of the Bush administration's lavish use of torture. As a society, we had been there before, and hadn't seemed to be in any great hurry to get anywhere better.

Tags: human rights abuse of power abuse of authority torture

Posted by: josephdunphy

People are paying to drink their own bathwater, in Arcata, California.

Tags: arcata california

Posted by: josephdunphy

See bookmark below. The Bush administration's human rights abuses were not as without precedent in American history as some of us would like to imagine, according to this article.

Tags: human rights alternet sadistic torture

Posted by: josephdunphy

Satire of creationism.

Tags: satire humor

Posted by: josephdunphy

One of the most expensive varieties of coffee in the world, made by ... you probably don't want to know. But if you've tasted this, you paid $5 per mug for the experience.



Maybe a little more than that in the long run, because I'm not sure that you'll want to hold onto the mug after reading this.

Tags: luwak coffee odd bizarre unusual

Posted by: josephdunphy

I have a page called the Ravine. Depending on your point of view, either that page could be said to be elsewhere, or this blog could be said to be part of it. I do some social bookmarking - or at least bookmarking - on a variety of subjects at present, but primarily on a few (including Philosophy (mainly Ethics) and Scientific Skepticism) in the long run. I'll discuss one of those pages at length, until the discussion becomes a page of its own. A kind of blog results.



Having blogged, I then find myself wanting to visit other blogs, to read, comment and maybe, later, review. Some of those blogs will be at livejournal, because many blogs are. On this livejournal, I'll write about those other blogs, and anything that went on while I was over there, sharing a few of the comments I tried to post, and maybe a few of the second thoughts I had afterwards. Out of this will grow a small site blog, where you're browsing right now.



After enough content is present to justify such a thing, I'll create a MyBlogLog community for this little journal, saving you the time and trouble of checking back for updates. I think that covers it. 

This particular blogger account exists primarily for one purpose - to allow me to comment on blogs on Blogger. This blog is associated with something called "The Ravine" which started out on Ma.gnolia as something akin to a blog, constructed out of a personal group and my bookmark page, then moving over to Diigo after Ma.gnolia self-destructed, only to find itself in need of a new home, again, after Diigo's staff managed to sabotage its webring navigability.



Sigh. Oh, well. More about that, later - somewhere else. My little place, still in its infancy and already uprooted twice, has tentatively found a third home on Vox. I've started assembling it in what seems to be becoming my usual way of assembling such things - just sort of freewrite for a while until the place develops a personality of its own, and then weed out that which doesn't fit. The original location, on Ma.gnolia, was an all text environment, so in the long run, I planned to try to limit the subject matter of this sort-of blog to that which needed no pictures: literature and philosophy came to mind. The primary focus will be on the theoretical discussion of ethics, with little, if any, venturing into the political applications that I find some would take for granted. Politics in America has degenerated into an ongoing screaming match between two factions - if they can, indeed, rightly be viewed as being two distinct factions - each of which seems determined to outdo the other in sheer psychosis - and I'm tired of it. I'd like a vacation from that garbage.



You're on Blogger, not Vox, so this obviously will not be that blog. This is a side blog, on which I'll sometimes - perhaps infrequently - talk a little about the blogs on which I've recently commented, maybe sharing the comments I've submitted. There will always be a direct tie in to the semi-meandering subject matter of the Ravine: Philosophy, especially ethics; Scientific Skepticism; canyons and caves ... all things that involve the setting of limits, as I comment on what I hope will be reasonably well written blogs. Note that I don't define "well written" in the Political Correct sense - "that which affirms my assumptions" - but in the more traditional academic sense: that which is a challenge to respond to. At times - not always - I disagree with Ayn Rand and her followers considerably, but they are a formidable opposition - when they are an opposition - and well worth my time, as I write.



This will be one of the scrapbooks I use as I assemble the Ravine, so you might find links from here back to that page (and maybe vice versa), this blog and the Ravine belonging to the same rings, because they function together as a unit. I hope you'll find this interesting. If, as I visit your blog, you get the feeling that I'm beating you up as you argue in favor of basic decency, don't take that personally, and don't get the wrong idea. I'm all in favor of basic decency; the fact that I argue with your arguments does not always mean that I disagree with your values or conclusions. I'm approaching this subject on a theoretical level, not a polemic one. Please remember that, no matter what the job market might have done to me, I still am an academic at heart and always will be.



My purpose in responding to you arguments is to get you to craft them as well, as rationally, as possible, and that means shooting down weak arguments, even when they lead to conclusions I like, or at least agree with. Reason, when honestly and skillfully pursued, will lead us to the truth, and so, if at times I seem to be splitting hairs without concern for the greater issues, remember that there is always a greater issue, still.

I’ve just created a new WordPress account, associated with a page of mine called “The Ravine”, which I will be using to post comments on WordPress blogs. This blog, itself, will be used for posting commentary about the WordPress blogs I visit, and to share and maybe expand upon the comments I submit to them. The [...]

The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy posted a new topic:

A link to a .gif file that I might find useful later, but is very difficult to click on, when found in a photostream: Blank Space

The Ravine / Joseph Dunphy posted a new topic:

When I come back after my afternook hike and outdoor reading session - summer is always far too brief in the Midwest for its daylight to be wasted indoors - I'll post a few photos I had on hand. These will not be typical of those you'll be seeing, probably - not if my travel budget picks up, that is - but I'd like to have something on my photostream.

I'll be more focused on building up my site at Diigo, waiting until it

has passed the hundred page mark before starting work on its companion

pages on Google.

Ie. that point at which almost anybody will look and agree that, yes,

this is a real site. I'm feeling a little disappointed by Google's

Tagged by josephdunphy under

Tagged by josephdunphy under

Tagged by josephdunphy under

Tagged by josephdunphy under

People are idiots. Tagged by josephdunphy under

Maybe the Luddites have a point ... or not. Satirical video about a Microsoft product. Tagged by josephdunphy under

About Liu Shaokun, who was ordered to serve a year of "re-education through labour" after taking photos of collapsed schools that embarassed the local government. Complaints had been made in the past of shoddy construction and lax standards in building code enforcement. Tagged by josephdunphy under

Deadpanned comedy about a pair of average guys from the future, who find themselves stranded in the present, done in sketch format. Tagged by josephdunphy under

It's sad (and funny) because it's true. Blocky animation about Role Playing. Tagged by josephdunphy under

An English language version of an article at Ma.gnolia about the January 30, 2009 mishap at Ma.gnolia. Tagged by josephdunphy under

I can't read a word of Spanish, but I seem to be able to write in it. I had no idea. Post about the recent data corruption related failure of Ma.gnolia written in that language. My response is a few posts down. Maybe if I read my own response to myself slowly and loudly, I'll be able to understand it? It's worth a try. The 8th ranked result found in an ask.com search under "Joseph Dunphy" and "Ma.gnolia" I did as I tried to retrieve a few lost bookmarks. Tagged by josephdunphy under

This looked interesting, if a little heavy on the trayf, but that's probably to be expected, and maybe nothing that one can't work past with a few very mild adaptations. Found on StumbleUpon by justin. Tagged by josephdunphy under

Peru's top court rules that firing employees for drunkenness at work is unlawful. Something for tourists to think about as they enjoy that long ride up through the mountains to Machu Picchu. Tagged by josephdunphy under

Not exactly - more like a "drivable aircraft", one with folding wings, which can be driven down a road - and take off going down a road. Shared with Digg by the humbly named JamesBondJr Tagged by josephdunphy under

Now, something from today (2009) as the author talks about sometimes undignified extremes that some applicants go to in the often futile search for work. Submitted to Digg by bamafun. Tagged by josephdunphy under

Deliberately bookmarking an article posted over five years ago to make a point - one keeps hearing people say that the American job market has been bad "lately", as if lack of entry level opportunity in America was a recent phenomenon, instead of the lingering scandal that it has been. Tagged by josephdunphy under

Law that is good in principle, applied without the use of common sense or basic logic. One of the reasons why underaged teens aren't allowed to consent to model nude - without parental consent, and there are issues enough in that to justify a whole other post - is because children are believed to lack the mental capacity to fully understand the decisions that they are making. Yet now they are to prosecuted for making those very same decisions on their own, as if they were competent adults who had preyed on incompetent children, luring them into decisions their victims might later regret, leaving us with a pick and mix in which the teens are regarded as being both competent and incompetent at same time, the state they are to be viewed as being in depending on the needs of the argument under which they are to be imprisoned at each given point. Doublethink a la Orwell being used as a basis for Law, as the underaged are put in danger of sent to prison (where they are likely to be raped) using a law designed to protect them from a form of sexual exploitation. Tagged by josephdunphy under

Outlawed in Sardinia, but still available on the black market. For some reason. Tagged by josephdunphy under

Now you, too, can be a cartoon character? Create your own South Park style icon by choosing various features off of the menu, then wonder if you should be worried about just how good a likeness you've just achieved. Tagged by josephdunphy under

Abandon all hope ... Tagged by josephdunphy under

If you're seeing my last comment in duplicate, this is because Disqus is behaving most strangely on your site - first I'm logged in, then suddenly I'm not. My comment appears on the sceen, then it doesn't - odd.



Unless this has something to do with comment moderation, you might want to consider switching over to Typekey / Typepad. Going to my Disqus profile, I watch that little circle swirl around and around ... with no posts appearing, despite the fact that I have only a few to show, so far. From a commenter's point of view, at least, Typepad works far better.