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Lovecraft v. Calvin (Preview)
I am working to complete a monograph attempting to answer a challenge by Chad Underkoffler to explain what I meant by a throw-away comment linking the maltheism of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos with my childhood experience of Calvinism. This is the short form answer ( Read more... ) -
Another Conversational Excerpt
"The truth of the matter is I am not much like Holmes, and thus not much like House. I am not thin, I am not addicted to anything of a chemical nature (books being vegetable), I am not at all misanthropic (my friend Nick misses the point that House expects the worst of, and thus is nasty to, all people -- a category that includes women only ( Read more... ) -
Excepted from a Recent Conversation
I'd actually very much like to see ethics taught in schools. After all, it is not a religious topic, it is a philosophical one. The notion that ethics cannot exist apart from God basically boils down to semantics -- if God is definitive to ethics, then we need another term to describe "correct behaviour". The notion that correct behaviour cannot ( Read more... ) -
I Should Watch This Show
Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: the Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the ( Read more... ) -
Politics as Dinner Salad
Yesterday evening, while eating, Guinevere asked me if I'd heard anything interesting in the news. She works very hard in a very demanding career, while I tend to find myself with long stretches of unclaimed time, which I then tend to fill with research into politics, economics, and the history of science. The irony is that we each envy the other ( Read more... ) -
Montejon Mutters: Pathfinder RPG Review
Okay, so I got my copy of the Pathfinder RPG core rulebook on Monday, a little earlier than most people can. Here is your before-the-rush "GenCon starts tomorrow" review. The executive summary is that if you liked D&D v3.5, get this. It's the same, but better.
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Onward the Experiment
So, I set up a separate blog to do the Genji thing in, but plan to cross-post to here. The Genji-only blog is here.
It is likely that link will break sometime within the next year, but we'll deal with that announcement when we get to it. Also, there is no reason to visit that link as of 24 July, because I haven't actually posted anything yet.
Wish me ( Read more... ) -
The Tale of Genji
It has been a thousand years or so since “Murasaki Shikibu” wrote the Tale of Genji. She wrote three centuries before Chaucer made English a respectable language for those with literary aspirations. Much of what she wrote borders on the incomprehensible today. And yet, the story of Genji consistently moves me in a way few modern authors can ( Read more... ) -
What Happened
So, what happened?
Early Tuesday morning I received catastrophically bad news, of a highly personal nature. Upon returning home, I deleted the majority of my social networking accounts, and made other preparations to cope as best I could. At around noon it turned out that I had been misinformed, or had misunderstood.
But why did you delete all of ( Read more... ) -
Cook
Had an idea for a recipe this morning. Made if for dinner. While doing so, noticed very similar recipe on can of ingredient used. Appended to bottom of recipe, in a grating attempt to be "hip" or whatever it's called these day, was the question: "Now, why didn't you think of that?"
Rude words ensued.