Okay, I finally jumped. I took pity on the poor anguished people at Cliopatria, one in particular, who urged me to leave four or five times yesterday. No actually that’s not true – the taking pity bit. The urging five times is true! Ding, ding, ding, in came the emails, one after another, rebuking me for my sins and asking ‘Are you going to go?’ Terrific fun, because yesterday was also the day we were doing the last final positively last edits on the Dictionary, and I wasn’t really in urgent need of extra interruptions. But that’s okay, that’s no one’s fault. At any rate – of course as soon as people started pushing me toward the door I came … Read the rest

My baby done gone last month but it came back for a little while for some last improvements. We’ve improved the squalling little thing within an inch of its life, and now we’re through. Finished. Done. That baby is so over. That baby is history. That baby has to go out and make its own way now. We’ve got better things to do. At this point, having nails driven through our eyes would seem like better things to do.

And yet, oddly, however sick of it all I am, I still find it funny. There I am proofreading away, with my eyes glazing and the lower half of my body getting ever more paralyzed – and I still find … Read the rest

I belatedly added a couple of blogs to the select few in Links yesterday: The Panda’s Thumb and Pharyngula. I’ve been meaning to add both for awhile, and finally got around to it yesterday. I’m very picky about blogs in Links, partly because my colleague doesn’t like blogs to begin with, and much more because I think the longer such lists are the less useful they are. There are lots of interesting, entertaining, well-written etc blogs out there, as well as lots of the other kind, but they’re on subjects that are not all that relevant to B&W, so I don’t include them. Thus you can assume that if a blog is in Links, it is [clears throat grandly] … Read the rest

I was going to post this as a reply at Cliopatria, but then it went on a bit longer than I intended, and seemed (yet again) less anodyne than I feel I need to be on this subject in that location. Maybe I’m wrong to feel that way, but…I’m not convinced, and so far what people have said has just convinced me of the opposite. At any rate. Ralph said this in answer to a question about why say G_d –

As I suspect you know, there is a long tradition in Judaism of using g_d. It transliterates the Hebrew which has no vowels and it respects the unknowable, mysterious, ineffable qualities of ultimate reality. It isn’t a “naughty” word,

Writing God as “G_d” isn’t just irritating because there isn’t a God, though that’s part of it. It is irritating because, in certain contexts, it is indicative of a casual assumption that religious belief is something which cannot cause offence. Why should it cause offence? Well, let’s skip over the whole horrors done in the name of Christianity thing, and also the whole religious right thing, and the whole Intelligent Design thing, etc. It’s got to do with double-standards. If I flaunt my atheism, or if Ophelia flaunts her atheism, then in certain contexts this is considered hostile, aggressive, bad mannered, etc. But it just doesn’t work the other way around. It doesn’t seem to occur to the religiously minded … Read the rest

It’s fundamental disagreement time. I disagree radically with a line of argument at Cliopatria, and what’s worse, the kind of argument it is makes it very difficult to dispute as directly and bluntly as I would like to – or as I would like to in one sense but would not like to in another. That’s exactly the problem. I may decide to leave Cliopatria as a result – because as it is, I seem to be semi-acquiescing in views that are anathema to me.

My politics are derived from my faith, not the other way around. When I was younger, and a secular liberal, my politics were the only faith I had! Since coming to Christ (and yes,