Flickr Photo Links

-Well Appendix, I'm excited by your attitude to our new Web 2.0 world, by your willingness to engage.
-Perhaps Caecum you weren't paying attention to what I was actually saying.
-Actually, I was. You claim blogging to be largely a waste of time. You claim we'd be better off going out and learning something instead, doing something useful instead of filling our time with the muzak of personal opinion made public. And yet you gave us this message in a blog. I don't want to say it's ironic or hypocritical. But you could at least admit some small irony in saying that blogging can be useful only if you use it to say how useless blogging is.
-Yes, the paradox at the core of our being made large in a blog about the pointlessness of blogs.
-At least you're involved my friend. I'm proud of you.
-Thanks. I guess. Though I'm not sure your pride in me is something to celebrate. Anyway, enough of this idle getting us nowhere chat. What are we here for today?
-Flickr. We're here for Flickr.
-I'm already excited.
-I knew you would be. Flickr, as if you didn't already know, is a website where you can upload your photos and share them with members of your family, other groups or everyone anywhere in the world who has access to Flickr.
-So it's like a 24/7 slide night at your grandparents?
-Your grandparents, your parents, friends, other relatives, work colleagues, you name it. And seeing how a picture is worth a thousand words, that's a lot of communication shared around humanity as a whole. All you have to do is click on an image and it's almost like having the experience of being there yourself. Imagine how many more experiences, how much more information, how many different places and concepts you can be exposed to. Imagine how much you can grow as a person just through exposing yourself to these images. The great repository of human knowledge and experience has just augmented itself again. Congratulations to Flickr and to any site like it.
-As much as I'd like to share your enthusiasm, I wonder how much the world has changed due to the images on Flickr. I wonder just how much humanity has grown through the millions of human hours spent on Flickr posting images of pets, holidays, commercial products, snatches of architecture, sunsets, bridges, sci fi conventions and Aunt Gladys's skiing trip. I wonder how many human-caused problems have been exposed and resolved through the posting of images on Flickr.
-Well, it's not just Flickr we're talking about, is it? It's the power of the captured image itself. Flickr is just one example of one type of image-sharing medium. It's not all just a self-indulgent waste of time. Throughout the history of humanity, the image has been a powerful tool in the fight to right wrongs, to expose shady dealings, to embarrass people into doing the right thing.
-Has it? Name one.
-What about the famous images of the burning girl in the Vietnam war or the image of the Vietcong being executed in the street? Didn't these images invoke outrage? Didn't they galvanise opposition to the war, encourage help to those who needed it?
-Did they? Did they stop the Reagan administration's killing of the Sandinistas? Did they stop the fighting in the Balkans? Did they stop Saddam's gassing of the Kurds? Did they stop those planes flying into those buildings? Did they stop the Iraq war? How much power did those images actually have?
-What about the images of the dead Jews in the mass graves? Or the images of the starving skeletal bodies of the near dead Jews in the concentration camps? Were they not powerful? Did they not result in an undertaking for that sort of thing never to happen again?
-Did they? Did they managed to the violence in the Middle East? Did they stop the Australian Government from putting refuges into concentration camps?
-What about the images of polar bears on shrinking ice flows? Or the images of the melting glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic? Are they not galvanising world action against climate change?
-You're kidding right? Tell me what one image has done to help us understand the nature of human existence or the nature of any other existence for that matter. Tell me what one image has done to expose the delusion that is our belief in the veracity of our beliefs. Tell me what one image has done to help us understand that though we might not share beliefs, we all share the same underlying belief gathering processes. Tell me what one image has done to help us understand that, through sharing these underlying processes, we share so much of each other that we are all closer to each other than any two siblings can be. Tell me what one image has done to help us understand that through an understanding of these underlying processes we can come to feel love and compassion for all things. Tell me what one image has done to help us place the teaching of philosophy and science to children on the same level of importance as we currently place the teaching of literacy and numeracy. Can you give me one image?
-Now that you put it like that, no.
-So tell me the point in all this pointing to images on Flickr.
-Hey, not everything can be about saving the whales or the planet or encouraging peace and love to all mankind, man! All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Remember that! There's plenty of entertainment value on the old Flickr site.
-Yes there is. More mindless crap to fill in the time between now and death. Eyeball muzak to keep at bay those quiet times where we might have to think about the nature of our existence, about who, what, how and why we are, about the nature of the thought that thinks that not thinking about the nature of thought is an all right way to spend our lives. Heaven forbid we'd have to do any heavy thinking.
-Yes. Yes. Thank you very much. Blah. Blah. Blah. You still have to provide your links to images on Flickr. That's what we're here for. That's what this is all about. There's no way round that. What are you going to link to to prove that you can link to stuff?
-Ah, yes.
Well I've found someone's sheep: http://www.flickr.com/photos/glennkarlsen/2094470968/
Not to mention an ostrich: http://www.flickr.com/photos/panorama_paul/2679200448/
And to round matters off, here's a little imbedded link to a beautiful expose on political expediency and hypocrisy. It is of course Jon Stewart from The Daily Show:

Happy entertainment!
-I despair.

The virtues of blogging?

- Well, here we are Caecum at our new exciting blog where we're expected to blog about the virtues of blogging. A little self-referential self-referencing. A bit like advertising the positive and educational virtues of advertising, aducation, if you like. Think of how much we'll be advancing the philosophical and scientific evolution of humankind through this endeavour.
- Now, don't be like that Appendix. It's not all fun and games and disappearing up your own rectum in the search for coliform bacteria. We have things to share you and I, other than bacteria. And we're surrounded by people who want to know what we have to share.
-There are people in the world who want to read blogs about blogging?
-Yes. Think of all the interesting stuff about blogging that we'll be able to blog about. People will be tripping over themselves to read that stuff.
-What stuff?
-Our stuff!
-You mean this stuff?
-Yes. This stuff.
-Name one.
-Well, there are all the people involved in this little educational endeavour, all the 23 things people.
-They'll want to read this stuff?
-Yes.
-So, given a choice between, say, going to the movies, or maybe, going to the pub on a Sunday afternoon and listening to jazz, or maybe, spending the afternoon on their patio reading a book by their favourite author, or even doing some physical activity, and READING THIS BLOG, these people would choose to stay home, or even go to work, and read this blog?
-Well, I'm not saying that exactly. I mean, not even I'd do that.
-I rest my case.
-So, there are more attractive things than reading this blog. I accept that.
-And more important things.
-And possibly more important things.
-Like almost anything.
-Listen Appendix, we're knowledgeable people. We know stuff. Worthwhile stuff that needs sharing.
-You mean like how to cure every disease that there's ever been in the history of humanity, how to live together as one and love everyone else as though they were part of our own family, how to be smart and think in ways that would make Einstein jealous, how to cure global warming? You mean things like that?
-Not exactly. No, we don't know how to do that. Neither of us do.
-And yet people will still want to read what we have to say? Even though we have nothing to say that will advance humankind in any way? And even though people would be far better off actually going out and learning some actual stuff or actually going out and actually doing some actual stuff? Is that what you're saying?
-Well, I guess I am. It's not all about advancing humankind, is it? You can't go about advancing humanity all the time. Sometimes you have to eat, sleep, commute, go to the toilet, things like that. Hopefully not all at the same time but there are things to do other than advancing the human species. We all have our own lives to lead. Things to do. People to see. Movies to watch. Books to read. Blogs to write. There's other stuff, you know?
-You mean those things we do to fill in all that time we have to fill in, all that time that's leaking away and leading us to our own deaths as inevitably as our own deaths are bearing down upon us?
-That's exactly what I mean. We have time to fill. Plenty of time. You can go off and do your scientific research or think deeply about the nature of being if you want, but you can't do it all the time. Can you? We have to do these other things. Write blogs about blogging and so forth.
-So, blogs are a bit like muzak, are they? They fill in the gaps between things. Those gaps and their accompanying silence that would otherwise insist that we think about the nature of standing around thinking about the nature of gaps?
-That's it! Now you're getting it! Blog away, my friend! Welcome to the new 2.0 world!