Weblogs

November 05, 2007

Philosophy Going Off the Rails

Cicero famously pointed out that there is no view so absurd that some philosopher hasn't held it...and he was writing over 2000 years ago. There has been plenty of time since then to generate odd positions...

I just came across a weblog called 'Philosophical Misadventures' that catalogues some of the dodgier things famous philosophers have said over the ages. This includes postings on Hume's apparent racism, Kant on rape, Rousseau on masturbation, WIttgenstein on travel to the moon, and many others.

September 22, 2007

Best Blogging Books...

Every now and then someone asks me how to set up a blog...

Andy Wibbels' book  Blogwild! How Everyone Can Go Blogging is how I got started. It is clear and to the point and very practical. Wibbels doesn't take anything for granted. This is book is a model of clarity. I followed his recommendation to use a Typepad blog and haven't looked back. Wibbels gives you the basics of blogging in 180 pages.

Another book I've found interesting is Bob Walsh's Clear Blogging. This ranges more widely  and includes interviews with Seth Godin and others. It gives many tips for generating content, readership and income too.

There is plenty of useful information on this blog: Blogging Tips for Beginners

I'd be really interested to hear about other books that bloggers have found useful.

September 18, 2007

3 New Posts on my Art and Allusion Weblog

I have recently resurrected my Art and Allusion weblog at www.artandallusion.com. There are 3 new posts there:

1. A catalogue essay 'Re-Imagined Prisons' for artist/photographer Emily Allchurch's new exhibition Urban Chiaroscuro.

2. An interview with Mark Haworth-Booth, curator of the centenary exhibition The Art of Lee Miller at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

3. An essay on the photographer Sze Tsung Leong 'Who Controls the Past Controls the Future' which was originally published in Portfolio Magazine.

August 19, 2007

Bloggers have so far only interpreted the world...

Are we on the cusp of a weblog revolution? What would happen if bloggers of the world united behind a single cause? Possibly not very much except for a lot of typing...But if you are more optimistic than me about this, read this proposal to change the world by means of a blog action day - this post includes 16 reasons why bloggers will transform everything and why you are wrong if you dismiss us as egotistical ranters going on about our own bugbears...My view is that bloggers do better through pulling in different directions - homogeneity would be the equivalent of an excess of CO2 in the blogosphere. But don't let me spoil the carnival.

Bill Thompson has an interesting article about blogs and why journalists should read and write them.

August 10, 2007

Institute of Philosophy has a new weblog

London University's Institute of Philosophy, run by Tim Crane,  has just started a weblog here. Worth watching to see how this develops...It includes an interesting post about whether good philosophy has to be true inspired by Edward Craig's interview on the Philosophy Bites podcast.

July 30, 2007

How Do I Find the Source?

This great quotation from Kierkegaard is plastered all over the Internet:

'People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.'

Yet none of the places I've seen it quoted gives a source. I went through five pages of Google references to this without finding one. This may be because it spun off from a single unquoted origin on someone's webpage...or, more worryingly, it may be a symptom of how people are using the medium. Can anyone give me chapter and verse?

March 24, 2007

Is the word 'blog' ugly?

Yes. I have to admit to being reluctant to describe Virtual Philosopher as a 'blog' - I'm more comfortable with 'weblog' and have completely resisted the word 'blogroll'...Im pretty sure this is because it sounds like 'bog' which was school slang for toilet/loo in my day - 'blogroll' is 'bogroll'. Apparently Im not alone in disliking 'blog' - editor of US Vogue, Anna Wintour has banned the term from their website...

There are some other nasty neologisms around weblogs too (just nasty, not because they are neologisms - I've no problem with words like 'email' and 'Internet'): for example  there are numerous theories about how to 'monetize' your weblog. That word 'monetize' should be treated with the same disdain as the pretentious 'problematize' ('problematise'?)  in the area of philosophy. Anyone who uses either word without irony should be ridiculized.

March 03, 2007

Philosophers' Magazine Changes Its Tune

Perhaps as a result of the discussion here 'Can You Do Philosophy on a Weblog?' (or, more plausibly,  of Ophelia Benson's article which triggered it) , The Philosophers' Magazine has started its own blog 'Talking Philosophy'. Julian Baggini and Jeremy Stangroom are listed as the posters...

February 22, 2007

My Blog Is Bifurcating

I have just started a new weblog Art and Allusion where I will be placing my posts about art and photography that aren't so obviously philosophical. I'll keep linking to them from here for the time being, but will eventually be splitting the content.

February 18, 2007

Can You Do Philosophy on a Weblog?

In a recent article in The Philosophers' Magazine (1st quarter 2007, no.37, p.12-14) Ophelia Benson (recently interviewed for Virtual Philosopher), opens up with the question of whether weblogs are somehow incompatible with 'the rigour, discipline, and seriousness of real, grown-up philosophy?'  To me this is a bit like asking whether ink on paper is compatible with philosophy - apart from Socrates, most philosophers have agreed that it is. I suspect in the next few years most philosophers will also recognise that blogs provide a good place to do philosophy and to communicate with anyone who might be interested in it.

I suspect Ophelia's opening angle was a reaction to her editor's parody blog that she mentions where he remarks 'Blogging would waste my time and yours. Go read something I or someone else has put some prolonged thought into.' Apart from the informal fallacy of assuming that more prolonged thought = better results (the Protestant Work Ethic Fallacy?), this seems confused. As I've mentioned in a previous post, one of the best ways of conceptualising blogs is as published commonplace books.  Once you see them that way, anything goes  - including  philosophy of any kind. For an example of a philosopher doing  philosophy on  a blog, see Stephen Law's new blog with his ongoing discussions about relativism: the medium allows musings, links to articles, comments, responses to comments, and revisions...philosophy in action. Add to that the possibility of delivering files in all formats, images, and MP3s or webcasts...and it is hard to see why anyone might think that blogs are intrinsically incompatible with any content whatsoever. You could put a digital book as a downloadable file on one if you wanted.

I stand by what I said for her article about how they can also trigger new ideas:

'Instant publication of drafts of ideas can be stimulating: archiving of articles can be useful. I like blogs which give you leads to other interesting things on the same topic - so reading blogs can stimulate you to thoughts you might not otherwise have had and resources (and even people) you didn't know existed. What is great about a blog is that you can link up all kinds of things that might otherwise not be noticed.'

There's more on this topic from Richard Chappell here - not sure I completely agree with him though. He seems to ignore the fact that blogs can deliver book-length file, article-length files, paragraphs as posts, or aphorisms (not to mention audio and video clips) and that there is nothing about the medium that condemns it to be transient or brief.

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