Blogging – Page 7 – Maverick Philosopher

We Were Under CyberAttack Yesterday

Typepad bloggers were subjected to yet further outages yesterday, outages Typepad claims were caused by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. Every outage an outrage to the 'blogsessive.' Let's hope we don't see a repeat of April's fiasco.

So I managed to snag only 744 pageviews yesterday. But traffic is overall good. 15 May saw a surge of 2298. And a few days ago I passed the 2.5 million pageviews mark. Presently total page views for this third version of MavPhil, commenced on Halloween 2008, stand at 2,503,919.

That averages to 1,235.28 pageviews per day. Total posts including this one: 5098. Total comments: 7018.

I thank you for your patronage.

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 independence.

I also pledge to continue the fight, day by day, month by month, year by year, against the hate-America, race-baiting, religion-bashing, liberty-destroying, gun-grabbing, lying fascists of the Left. As long as health and eyesight hold out.

I will not pander to anyone, least of all the politically correct.

And I won't back down. Are you with me?

Addenda:

Philosopher TB writes, "I’m with you, man! I’ve learned a good deal from your blog, and, what’s better, you inspire me to be a better person. I’ve only been following for about a year, but it was a great year of blogging."

JC writes, "Congratulations on ten years of fighting leftist nonsense! If you're interested in reading some history dealing with leftist delusions I recommend Simon Schama's Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. I also recommend this excellent docudrama on the French Revolution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SP4iii_THQ

I also cannot recommend enough Martin Malia's The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-199.

The Johnny Cash version of "I Won't Back Down."

TC writes, "Congratulations on celebrating 10 years in the Blog world. It appears that you are attracting and interacting with some first rate minds and providing a great service to the public. I hope that some of your correspondents who are still in the academic world or in other positions in which they might be able to influence people are recommending your page. Congrats again and keep up the great work!"

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 so and I will honor your request. Otherwise, everything you send me is potential blog fodder.

In these "times that try mens' souls" one has to be very careful. But there is also such a thing as civil courage.

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 on Typepad was similar to an attack on Basecamp which you can read about here.

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 a sport, which is a physical contest. You seem to be saying that chess (and checkers) are intellectual contests with no physical, hence no sport, dimension. If this is what you are saying, then I disagree.

Tournament chess, which, like all serious chess, is played with clocks, is extremely demanding physically as well as mentally. Suppose the primary time control is 40 moves in 2 hours, the secondary control is 20 moves in 1 hour, and the tertiary control is 1 hour sudden death. Such a contest could last 8 hours with no adjournment! But even if a game lasts 3-4 hours, the physical demands become considerable. To play well, one must be physically fit and keep oneself supplied with nutrients during the game. Physical training is an essential part of the training regimen for the top players.

So I would say that chess counts as a sport. The Dutch employ the term, Denksport. Besides the sport aspect, it is easily arguable that chess has aspects of an art and a science.

There can be no doubt about it: Chess is the game of kings, and the king of games!

Regards,
Bill Vallicella

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." (Paul Brunton) Latin Motto: Omnia mea mecum porto. Turkish motto: Yol bilen kervana katilmaz. (He who knows the road does not join the caravan.) All material copyrighted.

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 me an end in itself and its own reward.

‘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 'different'?

Here we read that 'lede' is an invention of linotype romanticists and does not come from the linotype era.

Why do I blog about such a bagatelle? To fix in my memory this word I learned just this morning.

The uses of blogging are many.

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 and blows his scientistically shrunken pate 'clean off' as Dirty Harry might have put it. "He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword." The pointlessness of Jerry Coyne. Jerry-built atheism
I take aim at Coyne in these entries: Jerry Coyne on why you don't really have free will; Jerry Coyne on religion as child abuse; The abysmally ignorant Jerry Coyne; Jerry Coyne's modal confusion; More on Jerry Coyne on Free Will
The church of liberalism must have its demon, and its name is Tobacco.
Spencer Case writes about testimony in 1000-Word Philosophy, which looks to be a good venue for aspiring philosophers.
Mike Valle issues a challenge to supporters of Obama on same-sex marriage.
Howlin' Wolff, the stoned philosopher, is at it again in a scurrilous attack on his moral and intellectual superior, Charles Krauthammer. And the Wolff still hasn't learned how to spell 'Seeger.'

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 mine since the early days of the blogosphere: I believe we first made contact in 2004. I admire him because he "studies everything" as per my masthead motto. As far as I can judge from my eremitic outpost, Tony is a genuine truth seeker, a restless quester who has canvassed many, many positions with an open mind and a willingness to admit errors. (The man was at one time a research assistant for Herbert Aptheker!) Better a perpetual seeker than a premature finder. Here below we are ever on the way: in statu viae. But Flood may be settling down now, in a position wildly divergent from those he occupied hitherto.

Here he marks a decade and comments briefly on the article referenced below.

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. You may as well discuss logic with the illogical, music with the unmusical, or poetry with the terminally prosaic.

I am regularly surprised by how much garbage Victor Reppert tolerates in his ComBox. He will even allow people to insult him in vile ways. It may be that he is a model of Christian detachment, slow to anger, quick to forgive, tolerant to a fault. It may also be that he doesn't appreciate that to tolerate bad behavior is to invite more of the same. A conservative, I take a harsher line, one more in keeping with the realities of human nature, realities liberals tend to ignore. Conservatism as I espouse and practice it subsumes the classically liberal commitment to toleration. But toleration has limits. In any case, a weblog is private property where no one has free speech rights.

A man's home is his castle, and his blog his cybercastle. Just as I do not tolerate bad behavior in the first, I do not tolerate it in the second. But bloggers are free to run their blogs any way they see fit.

You might think that disallowing comments limits my traffic. Not so. Traffic is better than ever, recently up around 2000 pageviews per diem. Readers I respect tell me that they like my Comments Policy.

To end aphoristically:

The best arguments against an open combox are the contents of one.