The Abyss / Joseph Dunphy's photostream

About this account:

My name is not the Abyss. I'm "Joseph" or "Joe"; I've incorporated the name of a site of mine into my screenname for the purposes of enhanced Webring navigability - I've trying to make finding one's way back to one's ring after following my links on Flickr easier than this might otherwise have been.

Yes, a number of the groups I'm joining are for photos of women, and I will be uploading photos of some of them. No, none of those women will ever be naked, or even scantily clad, no, not even if a few of you ask me nicely. This is and shall remain a reasonably family friendly account, with no image being posted that could not, in good conscience, be placed on a high school classroom bulletin board.

This account should be seen as being part of an anti-jihadist page, one created in opposition to that kind of fanaticism and so, something I try to remind people to remember is just how much richer all of our lives are because the women around us aren't hidden away. Not merely a respectful celebration of their beauty (as experience on Flickr might lead one to expect, except maybe for the respect part of that), or even of their charm and the happy non-sexual moments we share with them, but of their accomplishments as well, accomplishments that would have been lost to us, had the West or the moderate sections of the Middle East adopted the standards of Purdah endorsed by the likes of Al Quaeda. Or had it embraced an altogether unpleasant coarseness I've noticed creeping its way into public acceptance of late, given to us by the sort of person who can't imagine the possibility of a man and a woman simply, honestly, just being friends, I would expect - a coarseness that seems to get in the way of the sort of comfortable familiarity that makes real conversations feel natural, and helps real, human connections with others arise, including (ultimately) the sort of connections that help make advancement in one's profession a possibility, in a world in which "it is not what you know, but who you know". In either case, the failure is the same, one which by its presence gives the lie to the assumption that there is anything "progressive" at all about contemporary liberalism - a failure to see the women around one as people, a failure that makes the kind of celebration to which I have referred something other than a completely gratuitous reminder of the blindingly obvious.

None of which, incidentally, should be taken as support for or even acceptance of the cultural phenomenon that has come to known as "feminism", or of any other component of Political Correctness, something with which I ran out of patience a very long time ago. If you're one of those people who refers to any criticism of anything that a woman has ever said or done as being proof of "misogyny", keep going. I don't want to hear from you. "Respect" does not mean "a willingness to engage in boot licking". That, if anything, is opportunism of the sort to be found in the babbling of a low class creep who will say or do anything just to get "lucky". When one speaks of "respect", one should recognize that the real thing expects to be reciprocated, sooner or later, and not very much later.

Update notification pages are available, if you'd like to be automatically notified when I upload new pictures to my Photostream, or when I add a new photo to my Flickr Favorites. I have a page on Upcoming and a homegroup on Flickr.




To answer a question that somebody asked, much to my amazement, no, my screen name - "the Abyss" - is not a Satanic reference, at least not when these words are used as the name of my blog and pages associated with it, including a flickrgroup of mine by the same name. "The Abyss" was, in part, a reference to the first passage in Genesis:




"In the beginning, when G-d created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters.

Then G-d said, "Let there be light," and there was light. G-d saw how good the light was. G-d then separated the light from the darkness."




The words "the deep" are sometimes used, instead, in translation, but the meaning is the same. An unfathomably deep sea.

Originally, "The Abyss" was the unofficial name of another site and blog of mine. "Dude, you're like, naming yourself after your blog?" No. Not exactly. Flickr community guidlines required us, when we blog our images, to link back to the display pages for those images at Flickr, as they still do. This seemed reasonable to me; how else was Flickr to make its money? But if I was going to be routing visitors off that blog to here with regularity, the action would raise navigability issues if visitors couldn't easily find their way back. Webring.com might have viewed the Abyss as being either a one way site, and thrown it off the rings it is on, and visiting my blog might have become a frustrating experience.

I responded to these problems by developing my space on this account on Flickr, primarily as an extension of my blog, seeing "The Abyss" as being a site that spilled over onto a few servers. The display name I had chosen, then, was my way of letting you know that you were still on that site, in a sense, even if you were not on the same server, and of pointing you back to that site after wandering a few of the groups I had joined on Flickr, should you have desired to return and continue reading whatever you had been reading. You might not have remembered my name, or maybe found that another member of the group shared my incredibly common name, but you'd probably have remembered the blog's name.

Why was my blog named the Abyss? In the short run, the reason for the use of the name was a simple one - a mild self-deprecating joke about the fact my blog's most notable decorative feature in its original location was its use of negative space (an abyss is a large void). This was something that required a little patience on the system where the blog started, which was set to strip away most HTML formatting, and so seemed an especially good name for the blog back when it had just started. The Abyss didn't have the stereotypical blocky look of blogs at that location.

This account has gained a little history of its own, in the time since I first set it up, as a result of my having encountered the anti-terrorism groups, with the perhaps surprising result that rather than spinning the Flickr account off of the blog, I've spun the blog off of the Flickr account. The significance of the name has changed altogether, as I've set up a new blog associated with this account. Before, I was riffing off of some of the themes suggested by the opening passages of Genesis, thinking of blog that would explore themes of austerity and simplicity ... one doesn't find anything more austere or simple than the universe, before the moment of creation in those passages ... now, something different, but the name still fits. Which is a good thing, because I'm come to be known by that name, and changing it now might create a little confusion.

One can, incredibly, find apologists for terrorism and religious fanaticism these days, actual Al Quaeda lovers, the word "postmodernism" at times seeming all too fitting a name for what passes for their philosophy, as one watches the thinking of some of the self-proclaimed "progressives" slide back into the Middle Ages. "The Abyss", now, refers to an Abyss into which I see Western society sliding as people let themselves lose sight of what they so very recently knew to be common sense and common decency. It is not a celebration of evil, merely a recognition of its reality, so if you're doing one of those devil's horns hand gestures and yelling "whoo, bring it on, my dark brother", put your pinkie and index fingers back where they belong, and move on. You are in the wrong place.








If you were looking at my photostream, came across the "blank space" graphic listing, and found that you couldn't find a graphic or get into that page - no, the system isn't malfunctioning. That's a 1 x 1 graphic which I use to introduce empty or "negative space" into my pages on this site. You're aiming for a tiny, invisible target, and that's why you're not finding it. You can, however, go to the Flickr page for that graphic by following this link.

This is going to be a very utilitarian kind of profile and membership. The photostream, if it will ever be nice to look at, will only be so by pure chance. I use this membership for uploading images for use on blogs, forums, and other sites affiliated with the Abyss, with the required linkback to Flickr, of course. A few other pages are, along with these pages of mine on Flickr, considered by me to be part of "The Abyss", which I see as being one site that occupies space on a number of servers, the interlinking between pages and journals that will be taking place being a reflection of that. Links to some of these pages follow.






Homepage for The Abyss | Main Blog | Google Profile | Return to Your Ring

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Interests: Middle East, Near East, Israel, Human Rights, Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Physics, Physical Sciences, Cooking, Recipes, Theatre, Theater, Philosophy, Literature, Judaism, Sephardic Culture, Islamic Art, Skepticism, Anti-Globalization, North Africa

Favorite Music: Classical, Jazz