StumbleUpon | josephdunphy's URL reviews

Food writers online guide to building an H-bomb...the evidence that put this man in Guantanamo | Mail Online

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:31:04 -0800

More about Binyam Mohamed, the unfortunate detainee I mentioned in another review, alas, perhaps not from the most credible of sources. If the report is correct, however, we are looking at an incident straight out of Kafka, and the Bush adminstration is left playing a key role in it.

American Civil Liberties Union : Biography of Plaintiff Binyam Mohamed

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:26:29 -0800

... Binyam Mohamed. Beyond words. Somebody needs to stand trial for this.

josephdunphys blog - StumbleUpon

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:14:14 -0800

Hi, again. I'm in the process of turning this profile into something that will be more of a blog. A recurring theme will be my attempts to build on what I've seen on some of the sites I've reviewed; what did I learn from visiting them, what subjects did they touch on, etc. You might have noticed the continued post format I was playing around with on the Draka and Steak Porn Video reviews; expect to see more of that, with some of the short, one-liner reviews moved into the spaces between the essays. What I'm trying to get away from is the idea of Stumbleupon as a bookmarking site, as I move toward making this into a site that one can simply sit down and feel comfortable reading; more like a magazine and less like a phonebook, or something like that.

Comments about Stumbleupon related drama, past and present, can be found elsewhere, if you really want to read about that for some reason.

Browser selection - Please pardon the imperious tone in my comments above, but Stumbleupon surprised us by changing the background color on our pages. In IE, my blog has a black background, and you can see the links. In Firefox and Chrome, the background is white, so you can't, unless you have logged into Stumbleupon, in which case you might see a black background even after you log out, again. Very silly. I can't imagine what they were thinking about, when they did this. It definitely damages the functionality of our pages, and causes a needless headache for visitors to SU.

I regret any inconvenience, but would point out that this wasn't my idea or doing, and that unlike the SU staff, I have no say in it. If you'd like to know when this will be fixed, they're the ones to ask. I wouldn't have the faintest idea, myself.

Center For Individual Freedom - Browser Upgrade

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:13:44 -0800

I came across this semi-memorable rant about the senate, supposedly, getting in the way of the Bush administration's refusal of the right of due process to the accused terrorists being held indefinitely and without charge in Guantanamo and its fondness for the use of torture as a tool of interrogation. To post something like this on a site calling itself the "Center for Individual Freedom" is so wonderfully Orwellian that I'd have to laugh with delight - if our friend's dementia were rare in the United States or, far better, if this was satire. Regrettably, it's getting close to being the norm, and he's deadly serious.

Consider the fact that the supposed opposition needed seven years to make even a token gesture in the direction of insisting that the United States accept that one need not be a national of a country to have a legitimate right to expect that said country recognize the existence of one's legal rights - a failure that literally took political thinking in the US back to the pre-Roman era - and that one can't legitimately attempt to wriggle out of one's obligation to do so merely by keeping the victims of one's misconduct from placing their feet on one's soil.

The question that never gets a reasonable answer is "what if the accused happens to be innocent", and pardon me if I'm blunt, but it was two buildings that the US lost, SEVEN YEARS AGO. Let's compare this to the destruction and loss of life endured in London during the blitz; note that respect for the concept of due process did survive in England, raising the question of why the very suggestion that it ought to survive here as well produces so many howls of rage, not just on the site under review, but from so many other quarters as well; one can hardly argue that the national trauma was so great that reasonability shouldn't have been able to endure - or at least return at some point. Hysteria has been granted a far more than reasonable time to subside, and yet, if anything, the insanity seems to be mounting, leaving some of us very, very tired of hearing about 911, and seeing it used as an all purpose excuse for any overtly stupid or barbaric thing that somebody in a position of power at the time feels like doing (eg. the Star Simpson fiasco).

So, from this one blogger on StumbleUpon (and maybe a few other people in this country who've become tired of being expected to pretend that Bushism has anything whatsoever to do with traditional American values) to the author of this site (cfif.org), the fans of the Fox network and their ilk - please sit down, shut up and get over it. Oh, and do have a nice day.

(Posted July 8, 2008 at 3:50 pm)

Simple People #20 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:13:17 -0800

Capturing a quiet moment on film.

The Blog Name Incident - Stumbleupon and eBay | Google Groups

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:11:57 -0800

The story: I post a suggestion to the Stumbleupon Features forum, proposing that the users at Stumbleupon be allowed a very simple freedom granted to users at many blogging services - to be able to choose the titles of their own blogs. My own blog, for example, instead of being named

josephdunphy's blog - Stumbleupon

which, let's face it, looks kind of generic and more than a little shoddy (not even presenting the reader with anything resembling correct English capitalization), would appear under the title

The Abyss: Joseph Dunphy's Reviews and Commentary at Stumbleupon

While this was hardly the most radical proposal to have ever been heard in a user forum, it was fought by a group of users who expressed a belief that their fellow users at Stumbleupon would not be up to handling a freedom that simple. Suggesting that said fellow users lacked the intelligence, maturity, and good taste needed to select a few words appearing atop a browser page, our friends were willing to fight to keep their fellow users from enjoying the freedom to choose those words for themselves, in effect arguing that Stumbleupon should treat its own adult users (many of them old enough to be well into middle age or beyond) as if they were children. The argument advanced in support of this were - interesting - to put it gently, and at times, their behavior even more so, as one can see documented in the screenshots accompanying the story; petty, underhanded, and at times, memorably vicious, even by Internet standards.

This is page that I wrote on the Stumbleupon and eBay googlegroup documenting the story of how a policy decision here at Stumbleupon would seem to have been made in all of its absurdity, complete with screenshots, showing how the DIY moderation found in Stumbleupon's forums made matters worse, not better. Why I will never take part in such a discussion in a Stumbleupon forum, again, and why I would recommend that you think twice before doing so, yourself.

Note: Lokito, who I see has chimed in, was one of the participants in what passed for a debate on this point, during which our 15 year old friend decided to share with us the benefit of his many years of experience. As you can see, he took great offense at the thought that a mere adult would dare to talk back to him and point out the numerous flaws in arguments that were remarkably poorly thought out, even by high school standards. Somebody had been badly overindulged, but don't take my word for it. Take a good look at his contributions, and decide for yourself just how seriously his point of view deserves to be taken. As he took the time to write on July 3 of this year, "I haven't had someone thumb me up in many months. I'm sort of proud of that, in a way."

I don't doubt it ... continued

caile-girls blog - StumbleUpon

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:11:29 -0800

I'm reviewing a blog that probably won't exist for much longer, but to look back and think that this would be all that I ever wrote in this review? That thought was bothering me, and I had to post.

Let me come back to this later, but this user's blog caught my eye instantly, so much so that I wanted to make certain that I wouldn't lose track of it.

Yes, this is lameness on my part, but I haven't been caffeinated for two days because of some Christian festival or another that usually gets held a short time after Hanukkah, and the Pig's open. (Note for later readers: I edited a lot of posts recently; this one was really written during the Winter of 2007-2008)"

Dec 26, 2007 at 2:39pm, to be exact. How we do procrastinate. If I only have the time to say something brief before this review becomes a moot point, I'd like to say that Caile Girl's blog was the one that opened my eyes to the possibilities of what a StumbleUpon blog could be. Full of charm and beauty, sometimes disturbing, often amusing, this is a very personal creation of somebody whose presence could be felt in her space, almost like getting to visiting somebody in her own home, a very brave thing for her to have created and archived at a time when depression does not meet with widespread understanding.

I was just coming in as she was on her way out, so I never really had a chance to get to know her, but from the little of her I've seen, I can see why she'll be missed.

(Revised June 6, 2008, 10:55 pm)

Bravenet Copy: My (Joseph Dunphys) Reviews on Stumbleupon

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:11:00 -0800

A listing of my posts at StumbleUpon. What more could you ask for than that?

Burning Man: What is Burning Man?: 2001: Theme Art

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:10:24 -0800

Art from my virgin year at Burning Man. Be gentle with it.

ImageChicken.com - Free Image Hosting

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 09:09:58 -0800

Free image hosting. So far, they seem decent.