Welcome to Ruminations! A writing exercise combining various present hobbies (cigars and rum) along side that which keeps me intellectually exercised, philosophy. Somewhere on your screen is a MENU. The menu consists of categories and articles under them. You can use these to navigate to articles of interest. In the interest of convenience however, I present here a list of the categories as links you can use. If you click on a link you will see all the articles under that category. They are always arranged in reverse date order (latest on top). Some articles are multi-part. If you see a “part II” scroll a bit further down to find the part I.

Nov 14, 2024, A special essay, “A.I. Can Have My Stuff!” where I discuss the latest bugaboo over on X and everywhere else, is about using posts and other content to train A.I. Everyone seems to be up in arms about this. In the linked essay above, I argue that it is much ado about little, and Elon Musk’s new user agreement is only formalizing what has been going on throughout the social media landscape for years.

Also, in November 2024, a policy change: I will no longer review non-fiction on Amazon. I am tired of their censorship. I will continue to post reviews of interesting books here, but the format will change. First, I added a new category, “Tiny Reviews,” for book reviews I would typically have written for Amazon but not added to the blog. Nature’s Mutiny, a history of Europe in the “Little Ice Age”, is the first entry in this new category. There may not be much that ends up here. I used to put up three reviews on Amazon for every one extended here. If I put all these reviews here, there will be many of them. I’m still thinking about this. I will continue adding books to the regular review section with extra comments directly integrated.   Here is a link to a little more information on the problem.

A note about advertising. Ruminations is not a free WordPress account. I let WordPress layer ads into my blog posts, hoping some income would offset the cost of this account. After a year, I have received $0, so obviously, there is no point to this besides cluttering the reader’s experience. The advertising is gone.

There are three marketing-rich subjects discussed here.  Rum and cigars, I suppose, cannot be advertised even to adults. Stupid, but that’s the way our politically correct society happens to be. However, the philosophy and book reviews area is ripe for advertising. I link to dozens and dozens of books (all via Amazon). Why aren’t booksellers, especially of philosophy and science, selling to my readers? This does not require any sophisticated user tracking. Anyone who clicks on a philosophy blog page is interested in philosophy! Be that as it may, you, reader, win!! No more ads!

Categories:

Philosophy: Mostly metaphysics and epistemology in the English analytic tradition. The starting point is presently fleshed out in my books (the non-fiction, presently 3 in number) described in my books.

As of May 2017 a new subcategory is my book reviews published on Amazon. I’ve reviewed many books for Amazon. These posts are the text of the reviews themselves, not Amazon links. However, each review has a link to the book on Amazon.  The books posted here are those that, in my opinion, warranted additional philosophical commentary. This commentary is posted at the head of the article. The book reviews themselves always follow. See above note (November 2024) for policy change.

At the end of 2019, there are as many book reviews as philosophy essays.  In December 2018, another new category under Philosophy: Philosophy Guest Posts.

Lastly, I have become a novelist! As of 2025, four novels are described in “My Fiction.”

Cigar Reviews: One of my present hobbies (I have had many). Many reviews here mainly focused on affordable cigars (under $10). A surprising number of very excellent cigars are in the single-digit price range. Note: I haven’t written new cigar reviews since 2020. Like everything else, cigars have become much more expensive. I might comment more on this at another time.

General Cigar Articles: About cigars and associated products. Covers “care and feeding” of a cigar collection.

Rum Reviews: A hobby enhancing my enjoyment of cigars. Many reviews. Like cigars, there are no new posts (2020) here. I’ve been focusing on other things.

Bourbon Reviews: A couple of reviews here.

General Spirit Articles: Pairing drink with cigars.

Hope you enjoy. I continue to add to the blog in all categories. Hope you will like and/or comment.

January 25, 2017 (original date of this post)