[pdfs] negotiating the maze

I've just wasted two hours of valuable blogging time trying to find a way to put the chapters of my book as pdfs. I'd already made the pdfs on my Mac and that was no problem - there they sit on the desktop, in a folder.

The problem is uploading them to my bedside reading website. When using googledocs, they're only available to google users and the url skews the whole template when the link is put in the sidebar.

OK, so I went to Scrbd and it uploaded fine, the url was made, it was put in the sidebar, all was fine, except for one thing - to click on the link doesn't take you to my pdf, it takes you to my pdf upoaded on their site and your have to register with them to view it.

Stuff that.

My friend mentions easyspace but I'd like to know from you good people out there - what do you do to get your pdfs in a form where I can come along, click on your link and read them?

[pornography] keeping it where it belongs

Zoey Zane was murdered and they finally got the killer.

It’s hard to get sound stats on the explosion of porn around the world but here are some articles about it.

These things tend to be dry and boring but to go anecdotal is also fraught, for obvious reasons. It comes down to how much you care, in the end. It’s so widespread that even religious groups are trying to come to terms with it as to how much and what type is acceptable.

I think I’d like to step back from moral judgements and just urge all men [and women], boys [and girls] to start boycotting any images or categories which depict the type of young lady in the pic above, the one who was murdered. Start boycotting the webcams, don’t post them, don’t view them.

Idealistic, yes, but …

If we were to pull the rug from under the young market and concentrate more on the Milfs and the like, then market forces would surely prevail and kids would not be drawn in to the same extent. We could start a campaign ‘Milfs, not Teens’ or some such.

You might say, ‘Let’s wipe it out altogether.’ You can’t – it’s human nature for men [and women] to try to cater for the libido. Even being married is not going to help that – look at the stats on the most common age range of porn viewers; these are more often than not married.

Sexuality is too powerful to control. Of course I’d be tempted to see that girl in the pic unclad but when it involves multiple men and even farm animals with her, somewhere the line has to be drawn. And that’s the most frightening thing today – how young they are doing things which twenty years ago would have been the preserve of scaggy whores.

I hate to defend old-time pornographers from decades ago but at least they portrayed women in those pics, not children. There just wasn’t the broad market for kiddy porn then which there is these days.

At least a boycott might be a start.

[inference] deduction, induction and abduction

From the International Encyclopaedia of Communication:

Deduction, induction, and abduction are three basic forms of inference that inform the methodologies of communication research as well as other fields and disciplines.

Whereas the most familiar forms are inference from a general principle or law to individual instances (deduction), or from several instances to a law (induction), abduction is an equally important constituent of scholarship, serving to identify possible explanations for a set of observations.

Different traditions of communication research can be seen to rely on distinctive variants and combinations of deduction, induction, and abduction.

Aristotle had identified abduction as a type of inference; it was reintroduced in modern philosophy by Charles Sanders Peirce in an 1878 article.

Wiki defines abduction thus:

Abduction, or inference to the best explanation, is a method of reasoning in which one chooses the hypothesis that would, if true, best explain the relevant evidence.

Abductive reasoning starts from a set of accepted facts and infers their most likely, or best, explanations.

The term abduction is also sometimes used to just mean the generation of hypotheses to explain observations or conclusions, but the former definition is more common both in philosophy and computing.

Just thought you’d like to know.

[caption time] what's wrong in this picture

[easter day] today in the eastern tradition

This article was from the Melbourne Age from 2005. Sadly, I can't attribute it, as it is from my pre-blogging days but it does put the significance of Easter in perspective. There are statements in this article you're going to challenge.


The question is how our shared values might be kept from consignment to the museum if the faith that shaped them continues to decline in influence.

The cross, according to Christians, stands at the centre of history. On this day, about 1975 years ago, Roman soldiers scourged Jesus and nailed him to the cross. Christians believe this appalling piece of cruelty was God's deliberate plan, the supreme demonstration of his love and his identification with human suffering. The cross is used repeatedly in the New Testament as a metaphor to sum up the content of Christianity.

On the cross, the Bible teaches, humankind was ransomed, redeemed, reconciled with God and acquitted of guilt and sin. Sydney Smith, the 19th-century Anglican wit, was surely right when he observed that "man is certainly a benevolent animal. A never sees B in distress without thinking that C ought to relieve him directly." According to Christianity, God saw A, B and C's distress and acted, in the cross.

Non-Christians, of course, don't see it this way. Nevertheless, for them, too, the cross represents a defining historical moment because Christianity's influence has reached most of the globe. Certainly it has been the overwhelming force shaping Western culture and values, so much so that many humanists concede there is little in their ethical outlook that wasn't earlier in Christianity.

Sometimes the influence is obvious, as in the church's work among the poor and broken. Hospitals, for example, are a Christian invention, along with free public education. And sometimes the influence is malign, as when the church has helped to entrench injustice and endorsed the status quo.

Sometimes the influence is so deep it is taken utterly for granted. Take the ethic of love: Christianity took the Greek concept of unconditional agape and gave it new meaning, centred in human relationships. Or humility - perhaps the central virtue of a Christian - is by no means esteemed in all cultures. Agamemnon and Achilles, Homer's heroes of ancient Greece, fell out over the honour owed them.

Centuries later, Aristotle's great-souled man was duty-bound to trumpet his worth and require due recognition, so long as he did not exaggerate it. As Australia moves into post-Christian modes of living, humility is ever less valued, and most of us regret its loss (at least in other people).

The most enduring ethical bequest of Christianity is the belief that all humans are equal in dignity and have unique worth as individuals. That flows directly from the belief that every person is created in the image of God. Many can no longer use that sort of language today - opting instead for the discourse of rights - but most still insist that humans have individual value. Whatever else people might make of what Christians commemorate today, this enduring value flows from a Christian culture.

Most Australians, while valuing a pluralistic and multicultural society, also admire many other ethical values that linger from our Judaeo-Christian heritage - such concepts as compassion, love, forgiveness and redemption. The question is how our shared values might be kept from consignment to the museum if the faith that shaped them continues to decline. Some ethical capital remains but it is fast being spent.

One thing Christians note with interest is that though atheists and agnostics may reject the notion of a personal deity they admire the example Jesus set in his life and teaching. Non-believers often suggest that these ethical qualities can endure independently of religious belief. Christians have their doubts, because Jesus' ethical teaching flowed directly from his theological commitments.

But, in a pluralistic society, Christians should be glad that their values retain the purchase they do. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the church is to present and preserve a world in which these values can flourish.

[hillary] where is huma now

The thing which always puzzled me was why Abedin would have wanted to.