to e-mail me :
-- to search this site for any keyword --
I'm a middle-aged guy who's lived most of my life in the midwestern United States.
I am often shocked at my own ignorance and provincialism.
The editor of this site (see previous question).
I once needed a user name in a hurry, and this is what I grabbed. I'm a very "doggish" kind of guy; if I believed in reincarnation (I do not), I'd be sure I'd been a dog last time around. (image here ???)
The fast answer is epistemology ("how do we know what the world is really like?") and ethics ("how should we behave?")
(I recently - 22 June 1999 - ran across William Glasser's Reality Therapy, summarized as"reality, responsibility, and right-and-wrong". That's about what I mean.)
- From time to time I run across ideas that I wish were more generally known; this site is an effort to disseminate these ideas, and to make it easier to study and relate them.
- In light of the October 2004 flap about the "reality-based community" and its opponents, I note with some pride that advocacy of a vigorously reality-based compassionate politics has been this site's purpose since its inception in 1998.
- You ask what this site is about? This is what this site is about.
Good question.
Several of the hottest political and social issues of our time (i.e., 1998-2008) do not have their own pages on this site, and in fact, some are hardly mentioned. This may mean that I am not interested in the issue in question, but it may also mean that I do not feel that I have anything useful to contribute to the discussion.
Also, the purpose of this site is not to bash particular contemporary politicians; none has a dedicated page here.
(Clarification: I do have some pages on deceased politicians, and I do have a few pages on contemporary people who have sought political office but not attained it.)
MAR 2007: I've created the page / Politicians / with simple counts of the number of mentions that various people receive on this site, which should help to illustrate who I find interesting -- and more importantly, uninteresting.
This site was begun during a brief flush of optimism during the second Clinton administration, and many of the comments date from that time. Developments since then make me believe that human ignorance, short-sightedness, tribalism, and selfishness are considerably worse than my worst fears.
Update: Every day, every day, I see that no level of cynicism and pessimism is adequate to meet reality.
Update, JAN 2006: Things are much worse than I thought when I wrote that.
I make no claim to anything except complete ignorance.
The authors of the individual resources referenced.
I like what they say and/or how they say it.or
I think they're wrong, but in an interesting way.or
I think they're wrong, but I recognize the possibility that they may be right, and I want my readers to be able to make up their minds for themselves.
I reference materials from radicals, politicians, Ph.D's, rock stars, churches, government agencies, NGO's, high school students, scholars, eccentrics, and a few 'bots. Some people might be mentioned here because they have something interesting to say, rather than because they are particularly well-qualified to say it.
Your site editor, Doggo -- i.e. the authors I reference should not be presumed to agree with my views.
Sorry, I can't promise it. Caveat lector should be the Internet user's watchword.Personally, I hate quotations without good cites. But it's a major article of my credo that the truth is the truth regardless of its origin, so I do sometimes include these when I run across them.
Honestly, I do try to track down and provide the original source when possible. Corrections and original citations are always greatly appreciated.
No. Neither should you.Read, and decide for yourself.
-- I try to proceed in the spirit of this observation from David McReynolds:"... one of the things which most deeply impressed me about the late A.J. Muste was his ability to listen with respect to those with whom he deeply disagreed, not as a tactic, but because he hoped to catch in their remarks some truth he himself had missed."From Philosophy of Nonviolence: Introduction
There isn't one! The architecture of the site is supposed to be loosely modeled on that of the brain, i.e., "associational".
As that Coyote of the newspaper morgue files, Charles Fort, wrote in his book Lo!,
"One measures a circle, beginning anywhere" (Part 1, Chapter 1).
Navigating the site should be intuitive. At the top of each page are links to other pages on the site on topics that I consider related. Words in the text itself are often hyperlinked to pages on that topic within this site, and occasionally to pages on other sites. I've occasionally inserted a parenthetical link to a page in the main body of the text.
UPDATE: FEB 2009 -- Here - I'll help you out a little -- a list of several of the "most central" pages on this site.
You can also search the site for any keyword with the search utilities at the bottom of this page.
(Sorry - FEB 2009 - Site is being renovated and search won't be working correctly until I get around to fixing it.)
I'm not making a dime from this. The site is kindly hosted by FortuneCity.com, a free build-your-own-site company.This site is not an "affiliate", a "partner", or a .com. I don't get any kind of commission or kickback from anything you see mentioned on this site. I try to link to sources you can use to purchase materials mentioned. I sincerely believe that the authors, copyright owners, distributors, and other commercial entities involved deserve our monetary support. TANSTAAFL, cobber.
What you see on this site is Access to Knowledge that I'm trying to give away!
Sorry. I don't have a problem with them myself. FortuneCity.comprovides what I consider very generous site facilities, free, with the proviso that they put ads on the site. Seems fair to me. I try to choose the least obtrusive ad format.
(The adds are of course selected by the site hosting company, not by me.)
Indeed it is. The intention is to present an entrée into subjects and sources that you may want to research further yourself.
Or in the words of Voltaire:
"I will now acquaint you (without prolixity if possible) with the few things I have been able to comprehend of all these sublime ideas."from Letters on the English or Lettres PhilosophiquesLetter XV: On Attraction
-- this site should probably be considered to be at about the rhetorical level of a WPA poster
You might also think of this site as "notes toward a new Canon".
Well, I prefer to err on the side of caution. Consider my comments a "Yellow Alert" or a "Caution Flag", notifying of possible hazards.I believe that a strong commitment to the Scientific Method and free inquiry and communication will act to counterbalance any possible harmful effects of pessimism.
21 FEB 2001 -- Just discovered a "reply to criticism" by Katha Pollitt where she says:..(To those who) "kvetch that I'm a whiner, a complainer, a naysayer and a doomsayer:If it's good enough for Katha Pollitt, it's good enough for me!
Quite right! It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it."("Saint Ralph and the Dragon"/Pollitt Replies.
The Nation, 10 APR 2000.)
UPDATE: DEC 2002. Recent events make it plain that for many of the concerns of this site, real life has been worse (or at least faster) than our nightmares.
UPDATE: OCT 2008. Well, I've been yelling, "Smoke! Smoke!", but that's really one heck of a fire we've got going here, isn't it?
Sorry about that. I try very hard to resist the delights of ad hominem witticisms. The purpose of this site is not to denigrate particular persons or groups....
On the other hand I don't think it's unreasonable to hold people responsible for their statements, or to request that they defend their views.
Here's an idea -- send me a note explaining why I'm wrong.
Please note that:
- Being insulting is a waste of time.
- I find the belief that legalism/literalism/textualism is a sound source of knowledge and a good form of argument pretty baffling -- i.e., don't just send me arguments of the form "the Holy Book says so, therefore it's true." (I have no problem with quotations from such books as pithy summaries of otherwise valid ideas -- you'll find such quotes throughout this site.)
Um, right..
I don't like it much, but I do see the strength of the "not suitable for kids" argument.
This has actually been rather a thorny problem for me.I'm not personally frightened by the appropriate use of strong or graphic language, but since this is a didactic site and I do wish it to be available as widely as possible, in order to keep my site from being blocked by dumb censorware, as a bad compromise I've exercised a certain amount of self-censorship.
Original policy of this site: I don't believe there's anything on this site unsuitable for children, and I believe any reasonable and prudent person would agree.
Update: Well, I've had to operate in the real world. A very few instances of "adult" links and words have appeared on the site. These are few and far between and are by no means the point of the site, but it's possible that you'll run across something.
The official interior decorator of this site. When I first started using the Internet, I of course looked up all the subjects which interest me, and rapidly discovered that Shalizi had a page on most of them -- and further that his comments are brilliant (see his Notebooks and Bactra Review).
I really wish I could do that.
I see that a lot of items from John Derbyshire have also crept onto the site over the years. Derbyshire is a staunch conservative, with whom I often disagree and whom I rather respect. I cannot read a week's worth of his writings without seeing something impressive and trenchant, and cannot read a month's worth without seeing something that makes me think he deserves to be pilloried. For me, one of those frustrating and enlightening people, "I agree with this guy about facts A, B, and C. So how come I don't agree with him about conclusion D?" Derbyshire is sometimes called a racist, homophobe, and/or imperialist. He seems to me to be definitely lacking in compassion for those outside of his "me and mine" group.
You can call it that. I didn't see much point in re-inventing the wheel when there are so many painstakingly-crafted, elegant, and darned useful wheels already in existence. This site will (hopefully) act to introduce you to some of these wheels, and -- to my mind even more importantly -- point out some relationships between them.
I have added comments and a few essays of my own -- I expect these to increase in the future once I've laid the foundation of reference resources.
Hey, it's under construction, okay? I'm trying to maintain some kind of a life apart from the Internet.
Also, philosophically, I'm an incrementalist and a "satisficist", i.e., I believe that something is generally better than nothing -- so I may include a fragment of information or a link, and come back to expand on the topic later.
As Heraclitus said, PANTA CHOREI KAI OUDEN MENEI.
-- Personally, I think this should be the official motto of the Internet.
Markers for links that I haven't "captioned" yet. They'll generally work fine if you click on them, but you won't know where you're going till you get there. Hopefully, these will all be eliminated from the site soon.
You can trydoggoemail3 @@@ yahoo dot com diespambotsdie
( -- you'll need to "fix" this to make it a real email address: hopefully, if you're not a spambot, it'll be obvious to you what to do.)
Please note that due to constraints on my time, I will probably not reply to emails except those on administrative matters.
-- you can also send me reports of errors or problems on the site through the Mal Function utility
"Editorial standards"
Since I haven't been lucky enough to have the ghosts of Voltaire and Quine hovering over my shoulder, I've settled for trying to follow in the stylistic footsteps of Cosma Rohilla Shalizi and Richard Shand-- very light on the graphics, let the texts speak for themselves. (My interest in this format actually originated with "File on the Plague" (also here) , by Ed Bryant, a slyly risque short-short story about an epidemic, told entirely as excerpts from (fictitious) sources.) (Also, though as of this writing -- 13 DEC 99 -- I'm such an awful newbie that my implementation of it should be regarded as extremely suspect, I support the objectives of the Viewable With Any Browser : Campaign for a Non-Browser Specific WWW.)
16 FEB 2001 -- More from Jakob Nielsen, writing in the late 1990's, on The Need for Speed, Nielsen's Law of Internet bandwidth, Why This Site Has Almost No Graphics, Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web), Inverted Pyramids in Cyberspace, Internet users' response time limits, and Readers' Comments on End of Web Design (from JUL 2000)."Every Web usability study I have conducted since 1994 has shown the same thing: users beg us to speed up page downloads. ... Research on a wide variety of hypertext systems has shown that users need response times of less than one second when moving from one page to another if they are to navigate freely through an information space. Traditional human factors research into response times also shows the need for response times faster than a second. ... Web design needs to cater to the masses. ... Web design must aim at optimal usability over a 28.8 kbps modem." (my bold, Nielsen's italics -- ed.)
How Much is Too Much?
The Bandwidth Conservation Society
Use of ALT texts in IMGs -- Image hereI've tried to point out sexist / noninclusive language when it occurs in quotes, and to eschew such myself. I have not always been successful.(A good guide on this is Talking About People : A Guide to Fair and Accurate Language, by Rosalie Maggio.) (and, confined to the field of religion but also interesting, Suggested usage of religious terms and Suggested usage of secular terms from Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance / OCRT)
I sometimes use the Japanese honorific -san with people's names in place of English "Ms." or "Mr." You can regard this as a silly affectation of mine. ("Silly but well-meaning" if you're feeling generous.)Singular "they" is acceptable usage. Good enough for Jane Austen, Shakespeare, and Shaw, good enough for the rest of us.
I've tried to keep repetition of individual resources to a minimum, but I've sometimes found it irresistable. When (just a hypothetical example) a quote on, say, "democracy and science" is a great comment both on "democracy" and on "science", I've sometimes included a resource on both pages.
Navigating the site should be intuitive. At the top of each page are links to other pages on the site on topics I consider related. Words in the text itself are often hyperlinked to pages on the site on that topic, and occasionally to pages on other sites. I've occasionally inserted a parenthetical link to a page in the main body of the text.
You can search the site for any keyword with the search utilities at the bottom of this page.
I'm trying to put the resources I consider more importanttoward the top of each page, so if you just check out the first half-dozen or so links on each page, you should in my opinion have a good handle on the subject.
UPDATE: DEC 2002. Well, that's the theory, anyway. In practice, the site has been growing so rapidly and disorganizedly that I haven't been able to keep the sources in much of an order. Until I can get things cleaned up (probably not Real Soon Now), you'll just have to use your own judgement.
I've tried to be logical, but frankly, not rigorously so. If you look, you will be able to find things on this site that contradict one another. I have sometimes used quotes as instances of particularly concise expression -- they may not be summaries of an author's total body of thought on that subject.
Boldface for an entry means that I find it particularly worthwhile.
I have also included comments such as "Nice" or "Great site". I don't have any formal ranking for these comments -- they're just my thoughts of the moment. However, when I say something like "Don't miss", or "Very Highly Recommended", I do mean it -- do take a minute to check that one out.
Comments displayed in ORANGERED mark longer digressions from your editor; I've often skipped this for briefer ones.
We vigorously assert the right of "fair use". On the other hand, I have tried to keep quotations to a minimum, and to link to the source whenever possible, in an effort to get people to read the originals.
Update: 17 Feb 99. Reviewed "generally accepted" standards of fair use as posted on various web sites. I am confident that my practice is, and always has been, consonant with these standards.
If you are an author and see your work quoted on this site, please understand that I'm trying as hard as I can to sell your book/article/performance art/whatever for you -- please think of it as free advertising!
"The problem of reuse of copyrighted material was "solved" by Ted Nelson in the early 1960. His model still seems eminently sensible to me:- You are never allowed to copy anybody else's material, but you can link to it as much as you want.
- "Links" are defined in a broader sense than the simple "goto" links that are the only ones currently supported on the Web. The first fifty years of hypertext research discovered and implemented many other types of linking, such as inclusion, expansion, and the ability to refer to elements within a node. Thus, you could "quote" a paragraph from one of my articles, not by illegally copying it, but by including it by reference and by linking.
- And finally, the one missing element that will make it all work: whenever your material is reused by somebody else, you get a micropayment.
The sad fact is that just because Ted Nelson wrote all of this up in his book Literary Machines does not mean that it is operational or that it will be easy to implement."
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofitpurposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
For more of my thoughts on the utilities used on this site