o best beloved

About this blog

2009-03-08T02:04:26Z

O best beloved is a selection of quotes from my spouse, who refuses to blog, yet has many wonderful things to say. Anonymous, to protect the not-so-innocent ;-)

Why people become academics

2009-03-08T02:02:05Z

I just like typing the phrase "egospatial temporal coordinate description."

Something is wrong on the Internet!

2009-01-09T20:33:53Z

I've taken all the pressure off myself to fix errors on Wikipedia; the more it's improved the more people will want to keep it. If it is allowed to suck, maybe people will turn away (like Claudius ruling so well the Romans got used to empire).

(Title reference)

December 2008: Said in passing

2008-12-22T01:12:34Z

If you can't understand a single person, how can you purport to understand people?

March 2008: Said in passing

2008-03-25T01:57:04Z

Not every term of art in a discipline is jargon.

February 2005: Three footnotes

2008-03-13T18:48:12Z

From OBB's dissertation, which showed a sense of humor unusual in such creatures. Here he addresses the inherent sexism of the terms fraternity and brotherhood, in characteristic style.

This is the idea, taken for granted by James, Dewey, and Mill, of universal human solidarity¹⁶⁹....

This sort of slimmed-down, streamlined, 'merely ethical' Christianity 'might have sloughed off exclusionism by viewing Jesus as one incarnation of the divine among others', thus allowing its 'celebration of an ethics of love' and human solidarity¹⁷²....

By contrast to this view, Rorty emphasizes 'that no chain of inference links the ideal of human fraternity¹⁷³ to the ideal of escaping from a world of appearance inhabited by animals to a real world in which humans will become as gods’.

169. Actually, Rorty calls this idea 'universal human fraternity'. I have amended this unfortunate gender-exclusive locution with the Rorty-friendly term 'solidarity'.

172. Again, Rorty uses the term ‘human brotherhood’, which I have very kindly amended for him.

173. My charitable impulses extend only so far.

March 2006: Response to a fundamentalist

2008-03-13T18:21:40Z

Excerpt from an emailed response. The respondent had taken serious exception to OBB's lecture on "Bad Faith in Intelligent Design."

From your remark, "I do not think I will waste my time at this brown bag," I infer that you did not even trouble to listen to what I had to say (had you done so, you would have found out that I am not "Godless" but a Christian, and that my project was to defend the faith and the perception of the True God from the corrosive effects of deeply flawed arguments like the Intelligent Design Argument). Nevertheless, you felt qualified and compelled to comment on it. Criticizing what you don't know anything about is not an intellectually respectable practice.

I have no time to respond in detail except to say that just about everything you say about evolution, science, religion, and God is in serious error logically, factually, philosophically, and theologically. Indeed, it would take some time even to educate you in the subject to the level that we could have a serious discussion about it. (For example, you claim it is vain to believe that all this arose by chance. Look up the word vanity. What is vain is to believe that all this was created just for us.)

If you really feel strongly, why don't you come to my office hours sometime and I can tell you exactly why it is uninformed attitudes like yours that bring the faith into disrepute among the wider population.

October, 2000: A brave thing

2008-03-13T02:19:18Z

The first passionate moment between us.

Me: I would sleep with you in a heartbeat if you had the slightest interest.

OBB: What a brave thing to say