Site Map

Contacting me. My email address / phone number

Some recent Google rankings for the site
The development of the site
This site: an opinion
Imperfections

Comments on the site / criticism of the site
The profiles published on the site

 

Site Map

 
The Home Page includes the functionality of a Site Map. There isn't a separate Site Map.

 

Some recent Google rankings for the site

 

Google no longer gives figures for the total results returned for a search. Only the rankings are given now. The approximate figures for total results shown below are from a time just before the change. Rankings can go up and down, of course, but most of the figures shown below have been very consistent or fairly consistent for a long period of time. Very recently, there has been more in the way of change, without a doubt very beneficial change for the most part..

 

ethical depth  1 / 146,000,000

farming water collecting composting -
1 / 28,000,000
Christianity remembrance redemption -
1 / 12,700,000 [from a critical perspective]

aphorisms religion ideology
1 / 1,480,000
[the aphorisms are my own, not quotations from other sources]
Cambridge University excellence stupidity 1/ 1,500,000

[From a perspective which, overall, is very appreciative]

theme theory introduction  1 / 465,000,000

linkages themes  1 / 58,900,000

poetry line length  3 / 33,300,000
poetry modulation  1 / 14,700,000
poetry composite  1 / 35,800,000
Seamus Heaney poem criticism -
1 / 866,000
Seamus Heaney poetry success flaws -
1 / 531,000

metre meaning generative metrics -
5 / 528,000

The development of the site

 

The site is centred upon what I call {theme} theory, although I regard this theory as having a great number of practical applications. Innovations, I also believe, are far more likely to be made if a person thinks in terms of linkages and contrasts and other {themes}. In this site, I give some of the innovations I've made - but not all of them.

 

I first began to formulate Linkage Theory, the precursor of {theme} Theory, as a result of intensive study of poetic forms.  At this stage, I explored linkages between poetry and art and design, for example, by fragmentation of the poem, but later, I made a more intensive study of linkage and contrast in the visual arts.

 

Chris Pulman, in 'The Education of a Graphic Designer,' writes 'If you ask why something works and you push back far enough, eventually everything seems to be based on contrast: the ability to distinguish one thing from another. Composition, sequencing, even legibility all rely on devices that affect the contrast between things.' (Quoted in the Web Style Guide). I later developed my ideas concerning contrast (and linkage) far beyond these origins.


The next stage involved a great broadening of scope: the concrete linkages and contrasts of modern life, technical extensions to linkage theory, above all the inclusion of linkage theory in theme theory, with a much larger set of applications, including mathematics, logic, physics, chemistry and biology - and many more applications in everyday life.


I'm responsible for every aspect of this site. The content, design and implementation are my unaided work. The only exceptions: many of the photographs. (These have been purchased or are copyright-free.) The diagrams in the Patent Document were produced by me and I produced a very great deal of the text, but not the aspects which make use of the distinctive patent language, such as the legal claims, other aspects which make this a legal document.

 

This site: an opinion

 

by Anna Evans, a poet born in England but now living in the United States. She has the Web site Barefoot Muse, a Journal of Formal Metrical Verse:


http://www.barefootmuse.com

which I commend, the work of a dedicated poet and editor, whose desire to promote formal metrical verse I certainly share.

The comments below are from the section 'Dreaming in Iambic Pentameter' at


http://www.barefootmuse.com/blog/?m=200612

In the discussion below, I'm referred to in the first paragraph and discussed in the final paragraph.

' I have a mixed bag of literary figures for you to consider: two dead and one alive, two English and one Portuguese, two men and one woman etc. etc. The main thing they have in common, as I see it, is writing with no other purpose primarily in mind BUT to write: no pressures of academia, no intent to conform to a given school, no drive to publish (other than that we all have, which is for others to be able to read our words.)


'I’ll start with Stevie Smith. In a recent Thrift Shop haul I acquired an early edition of Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, complete with newspaper clipping obituary of John Berryman from 1972, and a copy of Stevie, the unauthorized 1985 biography by Jack Barbera and William McBrien. (Each book cost me 25c. I imagine, if you spent any time waiting in line at Barnes & Noble or Borders this holiday period, that fact makes you feel a little sick.) Born in 1902, Stevie followed an unconventional path to poetry. She became a secretary after leaving secondary school, and was introduced to the London literary scene after the critical and commercial success of her first autobiographical novel Novel on Yellow Paper. Her poetry is quirky and filled with a black humor that has survived the decades. She never married, and rumor has it she died a virgin, although she had several love affairs with men in her twenties and thirties. She illustrated her own books of poems, and considered the possibility (rather than the execution) of suicide to be a redeeming feature of an imperfect life. She is not well known in the US, although she retains a following in the UK thanks in part to her best known and much anthologized poem, also one of my own personal favorites, “Not Waving But Drowning.” So, if you’re bored with the cookie cutter poetry served up in the likes of APR, you could do worse than google Stevie. You might even find one of her poetry books (Tender Only to One and A Good Time Is Had By All) in a Thrift Shop near you.


'My former teacher Stephen Dunn is lecturing at Bennington in January. Now I admire Stephen hugely, and his book of essays Walking Light is one of the reasons I am currently pursuing an MFA myself. When the letter came out with his lecture topic, therefore, it was natural for me to want to find out a little about it in advance. Who is Fernando Pessoa? I asked myself. It turns out to be a perplexing question. Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese poet and man of letters famous not only for his poetry but also for his heteronyms. He wrote a vast body of material (fiction, essays, poetry, plays) under a number of pseudonyms, but was unique in claiming to feel the presence of each of these personalities as strongly (some would say stronger) than he did his own. Each heteronym had his own style: Alberto Caeiro was a natural poet of minimal formal education; Ricardo Reis was a classically educated modern pagan etc. etc. Again, Fernando had hardly any involvement with academic life–he worked as a professional writer and translator until his death from alcoholism in his early forties. My knowledge of his poetry is limited, although I plan to use the gift card from my good friend KB to purchase the newest selected translation, but his essay collection Always Astonished is a must read ...


'Finally in this list I offer you a contemporary writer and thinker, Paul Hurt. I don’t know too much about Mr. Hurt, except that he is, like the other two, a total original unassociated with academia. I came across him because he has written a meticulously thought out essay on Jared Carter’s poetry. Then I browsed around his site, assuming he was a poet, and realized that he is much more than that.'

 

Imperfections

 

 I've been working on new, very demanding projects. The time I have available for other projects is restricted.  Pages I intended  to  revise / extend, pages with formatting issues, will have to remain for now in their present state. Many of the images on this page without a link to a page will be provided with links and text explanations but again, the demands on my time will delay this work.

 

Comments on the site / criticism of the site

 

Comments, including critical comments, are always welcome.


What I've written on any page of the site can be challenged - preferably with arguments and evidence.  I don't mind criticism, unless it's reckless, completely uninformed criticism by someone sheltering behind a pseudonym.

 

Emails sent to me are treated as confidential. They won't be released into the public domain and won't be published on this site, in whole or in part, except with the permission of the sender of the email. The sender is free, of course, to make public the comment or criticism.

 

There are exceptions: automatic, machine-generated emails sent to me may be quoted on occasion, but usually won't be. Any emails threatening action which is clearly illegal may be quoted on occasion, but if the threats seem to be made by a crank rather than someone with dangerous intent, then the content of the email won't usually be released into the public domain.

 

In a limited number of situations, I may release the content of emails sent to me into the public domain for other reasons. I post notifications of my intention. I don't take sudden, arbitrary action. The only examples of this action have been very few and far between and  have been to do with Christian posturing too ignorant to ignore.

 

 

 


  

 


 



Contacting me. My email address /  phone number.

 

There's a link to my email address on every page but the Home Page. The email address is

paulhurt100@gmail.com

 

If you'd like to speak to me by phone for any reason, I can be contacted at 07301785530, although I hardly ever use a mobile phone. I far prefer to use a landline. I don't give the landline number here. If you'd like to phone me on the landline, please email me with a request for the (Sheffield) phone number.

 

I'll be glad to send the information. As with other emails I receive, your email address won't be released into the public domain and I won't quote your email in whole or in part, on this site or anywhere else.  I won't email you for any purpose other than providing you with the landline number, unless you make it clear that an email from me would be welcome or acceptable. When you phone - if you decide to  - then I would expect you to conceal your own phone number.

 

The profiles published on the site

 

Anyone who is the subject of a profile on a page of the site is welcome to submit comment, with or without a request to revise the profile or withdraw the profile. I never agree to demands to withdraw profiles or any other material on the site.

I regard the many profiles of the site as having multiple functions. They reflect an interest in people. There's general recognition that novelists and playwrights have to have an interest in people.  I think that polemicists and protesters - and opponents of protesters - should have an interest in people, not just in issues,  reasoning, causes, evidence - not that protesters always have these interests. Very often, opponents are viewed in grotesquely simplified ways. Opponents of feminists who use the term 'feminazis' are making a bad mistake, for example. 

 

The profiles are also intended to go beyond the giving of information and commentary, to support activism, in ways which I don't spell out here.

 

My criticism isn't relentless. I completed a profile of an individual who had written an ant-Israeli piece which I considered vile but  I found that he'd had to abandon his career as a result of serious health problems. I knew immediately that I couldn't publish the profile.

 

In the profiles, as in other material on the site, I make use of argument and evidence. I don't use Twitter or Facebook. I see the need for criticism to be based on argument and evidence, with sufficient detail to make a case. Anyone who finds the criticism unfair is welcome to contact me, preferably with counter-arguments and evidence, with sufficient detail to make a case. If I find the representation reasonable and convincing, I'll revise the material, taking account of the objections, if they seem legitimate, or remove the material completely from the site ...

 

But anyone who's the subject of a profile who is facing very severe problems is welcome to contact me, without giving much detail at all, and I may well remove the profile even if it can't be claimed that it's unfair.

 

Owners of hotels, cafes, campsites, actors and musicians who take part in public performances, authors and  people in local and national politics and many other people, of course, have to be ready to receive reviews and comments of the most varied kinds, sometimes hostile. For some reason, clergy and laity aren't the subject of scrutiny and criticism nearly as often. The profiles of the pages on Christian religion are a corrective, I hope, drawing attention to matters so often overlooked.

 

I see the need not to give too much attention to well-known names, people whose profile in the media is prominent but to give coverage to people not well known at all. If their viewpoint seems stupid, indefensible, then why not put the case against, or the case for and against, or point out some contradictions? Only a tiny minority can be scrutinized, but even so, the contradictions of people, sometimes fascinating or endearing, sometimes grotesque or hideous, are surely a study well worth pursuing.

 

 

Email    

   {} About this site

This page  gives introductory information on a wide variety of topics.                   

 

Mikhail Bakhtin writes of 'Dostoevsky's passion for journalism and his love of the newspaper, his deep and subtle understanding of the newspaper page as a living reflection of the contradictions of contemporary society in the cross-section of a single day, where the most diverse and contradictory material is laid out, extensively, side by side...' ('Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics,' translated, Caryl Emerson.)

 

My approach is in part systematic and rigorous, sometimes at a high level of abstraction, but I see no contradiction between system and rigour on the one hand and on the other, passion, compassion, activism, humour, an intense concern for the health of language and the vitality of culture, a whole range of other concerns. A systematic study can reveal gaps very clearly. The meticulous work of cartographers helped to show explorers which regions were still unexplored, to suggest new areas for risk and discovery. Activism and activists -  deluded and  deranged activists as well as ones I respect and admire - politics and politicians, have a part to play in the pages of the site, but also journalists, poets, musicians, scientists, engineers, labourers, scholars, miners, and many, many more, including animals.                  

 

The 'diverse material' in this site covers a very wide range, some of it of journalistic, some of it academic, some of it personal, some of it practical - working with wood, metal, other materials, designing and constructing buildings, other structures and sometimes machines, the growing of a wide range of plants - and the design of pages, graphic design. Some of it is concerned with aesthetics, some of it  with ethics - with humane values and harshness, unavoidable harshness as well as harshness which can be reduced by reform or technical advances, harshness in peace and in war,  industry and nature. Ethics: ethical theory and practice  is a page with technical and non-technical sections.  It introduces  symbolic notation for 'outweighing,' a fundamental concept  in ethics, for me, but with much wider applicability.

 

Pages concerned with value judgments include appreciation as well as criticism.  There's criticism of anti-feminists as well as radical feminists, criticism of people who oppose 'woke'  views as well as criticism of woke views, extensive criticism of  Christian beliefs  without assuming that non-Christians and anti-Christians have a monopoly of good sense, without assuming that they are incapable of stupidity (and worse, much worse), arguments and evidence in favour of 'conservative' views, but with significant reservations.

 

The pages  on universities contain criticism of some aspects of some universities (Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, the Sheffield universities and others) and many people at those universities. In other pages, I attempt to convey some of the astonishing achievement of universities, in science, technology and other fields. Very often, perhaps more often than not, the achievements outweigh the failures but obviously, the balance of success / failure is very variable. This is after all a massive subject, impossible to cover, to begin to cover, in the space available.

 

The study of linkages is one of the broadest of all studies. Linkages / contrasts (and {themes} are fundamental organizing principles of the site. I discuss linkages in many different fields and create new ones - there are many innovations here. Many linkages are  problematic and disputed. Astrologers find a linkage between human personality and celestial objects whilst skeptics find no convincing evidence. Scientific advances involve new linkages: Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation proposed a linkage between all the bodies in the Universe, Darwin's Theory of Evolution  proposed new linkages between organisms.

 

The site includes technical and and non-technical pages. Amongst the technical pages: my page on  Metaphor  and the page introducing  Linkage and {theme} theory, where  I explain many conceptual innovations and go beyond natural language, developing a symbolic notation with many uses and substantial advantages. Pages which make use of  this notation include the very technical page  Themes: Interpretations, hints   Most of these are concerned with topics in physics, chemistry, mathematics, philosophy and logic.