.

My "What's Up?" section is the central location where I announce additions or changes at Every Fork in the Road dot org. It's also kinda like a journal of thoughts and/or events having to do with me and my life (some might refer to it as a Blog [which is short for Web Log]). 

This is the history page of "What was Up in 2003". That basically means that I simply cut the 2003 "What's Up" announcements out of the main "What's Up" page and pasted them here in case anyone ever gets curious about what's been up in the past.

To join my "What's Up?" mailing list, please see my notes about it at the bottom of this page.  

[As with the main "What's Up" page, the most recent entry will be at the top in this format: yyyymmdd_HHmm and possibly even ss if appropriate]


20031211 
As a result of an e-mail conversation with a couple of friends, I've recently added a bunch of new pages to this site. I've also added to a couple of others. 

Here is the list of the new ones...  
the Communal Instinct 
  (does our "need" for community really set us apart from the other animals?) 
Assumptious Claims? 
  (Am I an Outsider Jumping to unfair or unfounded Conclusions 
  or are these Hypotheses based on Personal Experience and Scientific Observation?)
Should/Shouldn't/Shoulding 
  (My comments on unreasonable expectations in the "Universal" section of my A.S.S.U.M.E. page) 
Admirable Acknowledgements  
  (Honesty, Humility and Intellectual Integrity in the Face of Ignorance) 
A Short-Sighted Critical Eye? 
  (Is my critical eye short-sighted? Do I ever turn the critical eye on anyone other than religious-believers? 
  How about on my own worldview?) 
Reasonable Faith? 
  (Do we have any more logical reason for gambling on one suggested, unverifiable thing than any other?) 
Unreasonable Assertions 
  (Matrix, Madness or the Manifold Wisdom of our Ancient Ancestors?) 
Absent Until Proven Present 
  (A Welcome Confrontation about Sudden Certainty and Unverifiable Assertions) 
 
Here is the list of changed pages... 
An Invitation to Community 
  (Human Relationships at Every Fork in the Road)
Right & Wrong/ Good & Evil  
  (this is the page about my concept called A.S.S.U.M.E. and contains the section on 
  "Should/Shouldn't/Shoulding" mentioned above)


20031116_1004
Finally! Today I added a page offering a little bit about my understanding of the issues of beauty, physical attraction and sexual selection. It's called, "the eyes genes of the beholder: Finally, the truth about beauty, physical attraction and the nature of sexual selection in the evolution of homo sapiens". Here's the link. 


20031110_0612
Today I replaced some text titles with image files (screenshots of the text). I've done this a bit before. Now I did it to the section titles on the left side of the home page. I also did this for the banner title on my "What's Up?" page (this page) and my "Humanity" page. 


20031109
Today I added a "favorite icon" (favicon.ico) to the root of my website. I'm not really sure exactly how it works, but this is my take on it.... create an icon, name it favicon.ico, put it in the root of the website and it should appear in the address bar (of IE anyway) of the browser and will replace the normal system icon used when saving a shortcut or adding the site to one's Favorites.   


20031019_1857
I just edited the top message of this page once again. I decided it was too long, but wanted that info to still be in here. So, I just put it here as an entry so that I can at least get back to it when I need to or want to or whatever. 
"As of July 20th, 2003, my former "Periodic Journal" page was renamed to "What's Up" and was taken over to become the main place where I will announce "What's New?" information about things that I've added to or changed at Every Fork in the Road dot org, for those of you that just want to check in from time to time and know whether anything has been added that you might be interested in checking out." . . . "You can check out my About Me page for some things that might help describe me, my likes and dislikes, hobbies, skills, my attitude about life and a bit of historical data...kinda like a mini-bio or a "user profile" of sorts I guess (of course, these things will be touched on in just about every article I have on this site too, but...)." 


20031019_1800
I finally rearranged my "Humanity" page and gave it its own location with greater prominence than it has had before. Actually, it used to be a page where I just had a few comments about the direction I want to go in education and in my life work. 

Now, I've combined it with my page that I used to call "Some of My Thoughts on Life as a Homo Sapien". I decided to stick with "Humanity" as the page title and the subtitle is "How considering where we've been can help us deal with where we're at and plan for wherever we go". Here's the link to it at its new location. 


20031019_0911 
Another sign of hope for our species... ...and for my own life, right here and now. 
While searching for info about Nancy Etcoff (author of the book "Survival of the Prettiest: the Science of Beauty" which my wife and I are currently reading, I found a page about her on the website of an organization called "Edge". 

Then I decided to check out what kind of site that page was on, and whammo!! 

Their statement on the top of their home page says this, 
"To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves." 

Here's the link to their page about Nancy 
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/etcoff.html 
and here's the link to their home page... http://www.edge.org/ 


20031014_070
Today I added a page about a song I've heard recently on the radio called Heaven by a group called Live. Here's the link. 


20031013_1022
Today I added a page to my site about the sociobiological debate over competition versus cooperation. 


20031010
Finally, I added my comments from a petitiononline.com page I once wrote in either 2002 or 2003. The particular petitiononline document (It was not my own) had the title, "All believers in God are confused individuals". Here are my comments from that page. 


20031008
Today I added a page called "self-hatred or self-worship?" to my Critical Thinking section. 


20031003
Today I added a section to my "about me" page called "Things I Don't Like". I also renamed my Favorite Things section on that page to "Things I Like". 


20030828_2009 
Today I edited my "What is Real?" page and added a couple new pages; "Personal Responsibility and the Problem of Evil" and "Human Dignity: Reality or Fantasy?". 


20030827 
Mars is closest to Earth today than it has been for apx. 60,000 years. Here is a list of links to various sites with information about this once-in-a-lifetime viewing opportunity...
NASA, Space.com, Earth & Sky, The Mars Society 


20030821 
I edited the page mentioned in the last "What's Up?" entry and separated them out onto three separate pages. They are now "Love & Compassion", " Honesty & Justice" and " Reason & Intellectual Integrity". 


20030813 
Today I edited my front page a bit. I moved my explanations of the words Love, Compassion, Honesty, Justice, Reason and Intellectual Integrity to a separate page for the sake of making my home page a bit smaller. Here's the link to this new page. 


20030812
I finally got my site transferred to a different web hosting provider. It seems like all pages are working correctly. So, I removed the warning on my front page about bad links etc. 


20030807_0715
I added an article called "Believing and Learning" to my Believing section. 


20030807_0703
I added an article called "Believing and Relationships" to my Believing section. 


2003080?
Now I also combined my "What I Think About" page with my page called "Critical Thinking". I stuck with the name "Critical Thinking" for the page and its subtitle is "Field Notes from One Person's Continuing Journey Out of the Darkness of an Uncritical Mind". Here's the link to the newly arranged page. 


20030804
I totally redid the way my "What I Think About" section is arranged. Now, instead of being all on one giant page with links to bookmarks for each article on that page, the links on the index page of that section point to separate pages. This helps with making the index page much smaller, taking a lot less time to open when initially coming to it. It adds a bunch of maintenance work for me to do down the road if I decide to change something about the page format or something, but I won't be complaining to you about that. That's all up to me. 

    Also, I renamed my section called "Belief, Imagination and Creativity" to "What it Means to Believe and Why it Matters". 


20030803
I've been working on the issue of my "Redirects" getting erased. I still have not heard anything back from the web hosting company about them. So, I decided to move away from using them in the interest of saving me from so much headache in the future. There may still be some links on my site that were created with a Redirect in mind, but I've tried to go through every page and rewrite them all to point directly to the real spot instead of relying on Redirects. As much as I like the idea of Redirects (saving time down the road with page location changes etc), I see no other option at this point if they're not going to help me get them restored from their backups. 


20030802_0706
I'm finally getting around to putting things up here which I've had ready for a while. Today I added my comments on a statement by Jesse Ventura a few years ago, "Religion is a crutch for weak minded people" which bunches of people got really bent all out of shape about of course. Here's the link to my comments about it.  


20030731_2241
Ok, I'm really not trying to be a jerk here, but when I hear stuff like this, it means so much to me and makes such a difference in my life that I just really want to share it with as many people as I can. 
All I'll say about it right here is that it is in my "Odd Sayings" section and that the title I've given it is "...New Agey ...not ...flakey, spacey...". Here's the link. 


20030730_2213
I just added an entry to my site about something which has bugged me for years. I finally decided to say something about it. This is becoming a more and more frequently happening thing in my life. I'm just totally fed up with all the stupidity and no-brain-ism we are so accustomed to just putting up with. This time, it's about all the times someone says "How are you" when they have no intention what-so-ever of finding out, but it's just "the thing to say". Why don't we just say "Hi" to each other? That would at least do the job of acknowledging each other's presence, but would avoid the uncomfortable situations (for both parties) as I talk about in the following entry.... "How are you today?"


20030730_1825
The web hosting company that has been hosting this website has finally gone too far. I've had many poor service experiences with them since I started this website sometime earlier this year, but this time was the last straw. For some reason, all of my redirects have disappeared from my entire website. Since I use redirects to save text space in my html code and to make it easier to keep up with changing links down the road, this means that bunches of links on my site will not work correctly at this time. I am in contact with the service provider to get them restored from their backup, but I'm not sure if they'll ever respond. They usually take at least a week to get back to me. I am currently shopping for another place to host this site. Please let me know if you know of a better place. The company I'm hosting this site with right now is www.dotpromotion.net. They still have not responded to my request for help and it's been over a week this time. This is too much to deal with and so, I am looking for another place to host this site. 


20030721_2351
As you may have noticed if you looked there first, I added definitions for the words love, compassion, honesty, justice, reason and intellectual integrity to the message on my home page tonight. Maybe some people think my message on my home page is too long, but oh well. I'm not forcing anyone to read anything anyway. Oh ya... I also added the following to the opening part of the message just after where it says, "...as it really is..." Here's what I added... "without denying the pain of it, without candy-coating the negativity with a "positive-thinking" smoke-screen, without avoiding truth (but also without claiming to have found IT), without fear of celebrating the really happy things". Cheers. 


20030720_1107
Today I added a new section to my "about me" page called "Favorite Places, Songs, Sayings, Authors, Books, Hobbies etc" where I will list various things that fit into those categories and sometimes share something about why it fits in that category for me personally. My first entry is about an album by Tracy Chapman called, "New Beginning". Here's the link to that section if you want to check it out.


20030715_1056
As ironic as it may seem to some of you, I recently (July 15th 2003) added my thoughts (which I had been working on throughout May and June 2003) about my partner, Karen and the relationship we have together to my "about me" section. Please take a look. Also today... I added a section about Patriarchy and Misogyny

20030621_0834
Summer Solstice.
Today I added a page about the Summer and Winter Solstices. 


20030525_0731
Yesterday evening when I was at the Boulder Creek Festival I stopped at a tent that was displaying a sign with this on it, "GODISNOWHERE", which can be interpreted as either, "God is nowhere" or "God is now here". It was very interesting to say the least....to read more about this experience, please click this link. I've added this experience into my section on believing. I created a special section within that section for things having to do with not only believers, but with their teachers and leaders and so forth. This entry is in that new section. 


20030304
Today I removed the following disclaimer from my front page because it isn't really relevant anymore. I wanted to keep it around though as part of my history with this site.
"As of today, some of the links you see on this site may not work right. This is actually a modified copy of my home page from the University of Colorado at Boulder where I work. I will be getting some stuff moved over here from there and..."


20030303
Today I added a 'mouse-over' effect to links. It makes it so that they change color on mouse-overs. 
Here's the code...
<style type="text/css">a { color: #C0C0C0; }a:hover { color: #FFFFFF; }</style>
Just change the colors to fit your needs and place it in header of the html code. 


20030301
Well, as the days go by I keep editing these pages and trying to make them a bit better than the day before. I've added a signature blip and a "Last modified" tag onto the bottom of most of them. 
I also added a PHOTOS section even though I don't actually have any of them uploaded yet. 
As always, please contact me if you have any suggestions on how to make this site (any part of it) more effective and enjoyable. 
The page I'm currently working on and trying to get looking and functioning better is the one with my photos of fossilized stromatolites I found in Lyons. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. 


20030222
I just got this new domain name (EveryForkInTheRoad) and website up and running on about the 14th of this month. I'm still not exactly sure how it will be arranged in the long run, but for now I at least wanted to get started with something. 


What's was Up after this year?
What was Up in 2004?


Mailing List = What's Up at Every Fork in the Road?
If you want to get on this list and be notified when I add new stuff, just send an e-mail to [WhatsUp -AT- EveryForkInTheRoad -DOT- org] with the following text in the subject, "EFitR_List_What's Up? Request To Join". Also, please tell me (in the body of your e-mail) who you are and what your interest is in hearing about updates on my website (One sentence is sufficient if you're willing to share, but you do not have to tell me anything to join the list if you would prefer to remain anonymous). 
    When you receive "What's Up?" messages from me (usually no more than two per month, and occasionally none for a couple months at a time depending on how busy I am at the task of updating my website), they will have the following text in the subject line, "EFitR_List_What's Up?". If I decide to change that subject text, I'll first try to remember to send you a notice with the original subject in it and tell you about the change before I actually implement it. Also, it will come to you from the address [WhatsUp -at- EveryForkInTheRoad -dot- org]. So, it should be obvious when you receive them that they're coming from this site. 

                      ?
What do you |~_~|