Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Blogging

  • Tenth Anniversary Pledge

    This weblog commenced operations on 4 May 2004.  I thank you for reading. My pledge: You will never see advertising on this site.  You will never see anything that jumps around in your visual field.  I will not beg for money with a 'tip jar.'  This is a labor of love and I prize my…

  • From Racists to Sexists

    Image credit.  (HT: Bill Keezer)  By the way, I am grateful to all my correspondents.  Don't take it amiss if I forget to credit you by name.  And of course some of you I do not mention by name for your own protection. If you send me something, but don't want it posted, just say…

  • The Cyberattack on Typepad Continues

    This has been going on since Thursday.  There is nothing wrong at my end: the Typepad server is under DDoS attack: Distributed Denial of Service. Could the malevolence abroad in this world be a merely natural phenomenon? I rather doubt it.  But I'd better post this while I have a window of opportunity.

  • Typepad Downtime

    Sorry if you couldn't get through at various times over the last few days.  The following from the Typepad geeks: What happened? Beginning Thursday evening, Typepad was hit with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) off and on through today. A DDoS attack is an attempt to make services unavailable . . . . The attack…

  • Computer Troubles Again

    Blogging will tend toward the terse and the aphoristic.

  • Ten Years Ago on Keith’s Blog: A Letter on Chess

    I just now happened to click on one of Keith Burgess-Jackson's many Ten Years Ago in This Blog links, having no idea what was on the other end of it, when I pulled up the following: Dear Keith, In your post of 3/31/04 1:22:05 PM, you classify chess as an intellectual contest rather than as…

  • From the MavPhil Powerblogs Masthead

    To promote independent thought about ultimates. Philosophy, commentary on the passing scene, and whatever else fuels my fire or rouses my ire. Pages wherein one man pursues his education and works out his intellectual salvation in public. Since 4 May 2004. By William F. Vallicella, Ph.D., Gold Canyon, Arizona, USA. Motto: "Study everything, join nothing."…

  • My Most Read Post . . .

    . . . is 'One Man's Terrorist is Another Man's Freedom Fighter.'  And that is probably because Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic cited it.  So I tell myself that I am having some influence, and doing some good.  But even if I had no influence on anyone, the life of the mind would remain for…

  • ‘Lede’ or ‘Lead’?

    Why do some journalists use 'lede' instead of 'lead'?  I don't know.  A lede is "the introductory section of a news story that is intended to entice the reader to read the full story."  (Merriam-Webster)  The same source claims that the first known use was in 1976.  Why the innovation? Just to be cute or…

  • Links and Plinks

    Tatto this:  Think before you ink.  Or this:  I think therefore I do not ink.  Better: I inked, therefore I did not think.  Or the equivalent of: This page intentionally left blank. Michael Sudduth, Getting Sober about Survival (1/3).  HT: Dave Lull, argonaut nonpareil of cyberspace Ed Feser trains his polemical laser upon Jerry Coyne…

  • An Argument Against an Open ComBox

     

  • Anthony Flood’s Tenth Anniversary

    2014 will  be a big year for 'tin' website anniversaries, tin being the metal corresponding to tenth anniversaries.  Many of us got up and running in 2004.  My tenth blogiversary is coming up in May.  Today marks Anthony Flood's tenth anniversary.  His site, however, is not a weblog. Flood has been an off-and-on correspondent of…

  • Is There Anything About this Blog You Don’t LIke?

    And don't forget my ironclad guarantee.  Double your money back if not completely satisfied.

  • Why I Rarely Allow Comments

    Because of comments like these, though they are surely not the worst one can find. (I cite them only because my Referral List pointed me to the post to which they are appended.)  But they are characteristic.  In my experience, to discuss religion with the irreligious and the anti-religious is a sheer waste of time. …

  • Popular Science: No Comments are Good Comments

    Popular Science closes its combox. A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television. And because…