Paul Oppenheimer's Blog

A Philosopher Muses.

After a long happy time with blogger, I'm trying WordPress. See my new blog, A Philosopher Muses.

Jesus Camp

Ruach Hamidbar

Tonight I attended my first service at Ruach Hamidbar (Spirit of the Desert), a congregation here in the Valley of the Sun (that is, the Phoenix metropolitan area) affiliated with ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. The Shabbos service was a perfect preparation for the High Holy Days. Ruach's gifted rabbi, Ayla Grafstein, is creating a Jewish Renewal DVD Library as well as completing a feature

The Telling

Spoiler warning! The final chapters of The Telling parallel the final chapters of The Left Hand of Darkness, with the breakthrough into communication and communion with the Other and the painful dles are reversed.

Skype 'My status' button

Bush destroys U.S. military

Destruction of the military capability of the United States is being conducted by the administration of Mr. George W. Bush.The New Republic has an analysis and summary of this process. This destruction should outrage any patriot.

An Inconvenient Truth

Last May, Mumbai received 37 inches of rain in a single day.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy RSS Feed

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy RSS Feed will keep you up to date on the very frequently added new entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Amy Brown Fantasy Art

If you do not like fantasy art, do not visit Amy Brown Fantasy Art.

Corpses get cold.

The moment somebody pulls a six-shooter out, it will have a chilling effect. So says Michael K. Young, president of the University of Utah, in response to the decision by the supreme court of that state that it is unconstitutional for the university to ban guns on campus. (See today's Chronicle of Higher Education, online edition. [Nota bene: unless you are an individual subscriber or a member

Face the Issue

Face The Issue works to raise awareness of common emotional and physical health issues faced by young adults and to build a supportive community without judgement.

The Metaphysics Research Lab

The Metaphysics Research Lab explores axiomatic and computational metaphysics. Metaphysics is the science of what is presupposed by the special sciences.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an authoritative dynamic encyclopedia.

Mermaids.

"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each" from "Teach me to hear mermaids singing" (Donne) ?

Dharma Bump

Dharma Bump is a blog by Adriana Scarpin.

Good day, I want my life back.

Guten Tag, ich will mein Leben zurck.

Domestic violence

Proposition 107 strips unmarried women of protection against domestic violence.

Arizona: Vote No on Proposition 107.

Arizona Proposition 107 would amend the Constitution of the State of Arizona to make it unconstitutional for an employer, public or private, to offer domestic partnership benefits to an unmarried coupleany unmarried couple.

Lies and D----d Lies.

As a patriot, I find it painful to listen day after day to Mr. Bush's lies.

The Law Cannot Make a Man Love Me.

"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

December 15, 1791.

On December 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights became part of the Constitution. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

September 17, 1787.

On September 17, 1787, members of the Constitutional Convention signed the final draft of the Constitution. Before [the President] enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the

The Pomo Generator

If you enjoyed "Transgressing the Boundaries", try rolling your own with the aid of the Pomo Generator. Unless you're as smart as Alan Sokal, though, yours won't be as funny as his.

The Sokal Hoax

In case you were on another planet between 1994 and 2004, here's "Transgressing the Boundaries" by Alan Sokal.

Team Building and Project Management

Here are 101 Tips concerning project management. Whether you are a team leader, a team member, or both, these are well worth some careful consideration.

Everything wants to flow.

Everything wants to flow; nothing wants to stagnate.

Big Brother Runs Mad.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the Department of Education, in blatant violation of the FERPA law, has turned over student records to the FBI without permission from the students or their parents.

The Icken or the Chegg?

Susie Bright wrote: "Science fiction would have curled into a historical corner if it wasn't for the Internet crowd that created a resurrection." Laurie Mann wrote: "So while I don't believe that the Internet revived SF, I do believe that SF readers 'made' parts of the Internet. It's very true that SF is popular on the Internet, but that's not the same thing as saying that the Internet revived

my del.icio.us

In the past week or so, I've begun to use del.icio.us seriously. Keep an eye on my del.icio.us for short citations that I might previously have posted to this blog.

Meaning and Mitzvah

I heartily recommend Meaning and Mitzvah by Rabbi Goldie Milgram.

Endicott Redux

The new Endicott Studio blog replaces the Endicott Calendar. Enjoy!

Finding harmony with the natural environment

The frog does not drink up the pond in which it lives. To live in harmony with such a country seems to require either a degree of public regulation we will not tolerate or a degree of private enlightenment we do not possess.Aldo Leopold

Armed Madhouse

Palast's old-style gum-shoe detective work to dig out the info on the War on Terror, greed-dripping schemes to seize little nations with lots of oil, the hidden program to steal the 2008 election, and the media biases that keep it unreported are the meat and bones of this BBC television reporter's new book. Armed Madhouse is illustrated with dozens of documents marked "secret" and "confidential"

a network of response

A chain of command is easy to describe; a network of response isn't. To those who live by mutual empowerment, "thick" description, complex and open-ended, is normal and comprehensible, but to those whose only model is hierarchic control, such description seems a muddle, a mess, along with what it describes. Who's in charge here? Get rid of all these petty details. How many cooks spoil a soup?

A wall of separation between church and State

To Messrs. Nehemiah Dodge and Others, a Committee of the Danbury Baptist Association, in the State of Connecticut January 1, 1802 GENTLEMEN, The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist Association, give me the highest satisfaction. My duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my

New Address of Blog of Paul E. Oppenheimer

Please note the new address of Paul Oppenheimer's Blog.

Land of the Free?

Whatever civil liberties remain to Americans are rapidly being taken away by the administration of Bush II, the Republican congress, and the newly distorted Supreme Court. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" used to be a rallying cry of people who called themselves political conservatives. Where are they today? Are they committed to restoring the Land of the Free, or have they now put

New Blog

A friend of mine, Nancy C. Much Ross, has founded a new blog on blogger. There is no non-trivial content yet, but I look for great things from her.

Jewish Meditation 101

If you are interested in learning about Jewish Meditation, I recommend: Ribner, Melinda (Mindy); Everyday Kabbalah: A Practical Guide to Jewish Meditation, Healing, and Personal Growth; (New York: Citadel Press; Kensington Publishing Corp., 1998); ISBN 0-8065-1980-0. I quote from the publisher's puff about Mindy: "Melinda Ribner, C.S.W., is the Director and Founder of the Jewish Meditation

A Poem Honoring The Eightieth Anniversary Of The Birth Of Leonard (Len) S. Oppenheimer On The Tenth Of July In The Year 2006 Of The Common Era

A Poem for My Father

Power-Law Homelessness

Why problems like homelessness may be easier to solve than to manage.

The Atlantic Monthly

http://www.theatlantic.com/ is the blog of the Atlantic Monthly. Throughout my lifetime, The Atlantic has always been a high-quality magazine.

http://az252509.livejournal.com/

http://az252509.livejournal.com/ This is the new LiveJournal for Paul E. Oppenheimer . My web site is slowly but surely progressing. Please visit me often at http://www.peoppenheimer.com/ and send me your questions, comments, criticsims, and suggestions.

Jennifer Niederst Robbins

I have been using HTML and XHTML Pocket Reference (Third Edition; http://www.oreilly.com/, 2006); ISBN 0-596-52727-6. The cover boasts: "Quick, Comprehensive, Indispensable". This is no idle boast.

Paul E. Oppenheimer's book purchasing pages

http://peoppenheimer.org/files/commercial/commercial.html, Paul E. Oppenheimer's book purchasing pages, will soon be migrating to the http://vendors.peoppenheimer.org/ domain. Eventually, this entire blog will be moving to the blog.peoppenheimer.org domain.

A Superb Walkthrough!

There is a superb walkthrough of using GnuPG encryption with Mac OS X Mail on the I speak dog blog.

FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF

Find out for yourself.

Ellen Datlow has a blog at Amazon.com

Ellen Datlow's Profile at Amazon.com Ellen Datlow, one of the most important editors of fantasy and science fiction, has a blog at Amazon.com If you like what Ellen has accomplished and contributed as writer, editor, critic, reviewer, and so on, chances are that you will enjoy reading her blog. I do.

Alfred Bester, "Star Light, Star Bright": an appreciation.

Here is an appreciation of Alfred Bester's "Star Light, Star Bright" by Paul E. Oppenheimer. "Genius". Socrates had a genius (he called it a daemon, since he spoke Attic Greek rather than Silver Age Latin). Places had genii locorum. Sacrifice was offered to the genius of the emperor. Everyone was given a genius at birth. When did we begin to mean by "genius" someone extraordinarily

Censorship of open source software

Military censorship of open source software

Two new books by my favorite authors.

Kay Redfield Jamison has published "Exuberance", in which she explores the healthy territory between neutral affect and hypomania. Charles de Lint has published "Widdershins", the latest Newford novel.

Paul Oppenheimer's Audio Blog

The ED SF Project

The ED SF Project "The ED SF Project" "The Ellen Datlow/SCI FICTION Project, that is. We're showing the love for five and a half years of great short fiction, and we need your help! We've got over 300 stories to cover, so if you're a person who loves short speculative fiction, we want you. Go here to read the list and add your voice." Ellen Datlow is one of the great editors in speculative and

MRI Spectroscopy

The feature story "MRI: A Window on the Brain, " by Paul Raeburn, (Technology Review, 108: 11 (December 2005/January 2006), pp. 70--75), is an interesting overview of two variants of fMRI of which I had not previously heard: diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and, yet more exciting, MRI Spectroscopy. As far as I can tell from the article, which is written at a very popular level, DTI simply

"... we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness."

Quotation #26857 from Michael Moncur's (Cynical) Quotations: The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness. Andre Malraux French author & resistance leader (1901 - 1976) [from The Quotations Page ]

Essence and Modality

"Essence and Modality," by Edward N. Zalta, will soon appear in Mind.

The exploration of meaning and myth.

Paul Oppenheimer's Blog By the way, a convenient way to purchase or get more information about many of the books I mention or use is to visit my commercial page Commercial pages recommended and used by Paul E. Oppenheimer. This exploration of meaning and myth is quite new to me. Of the husband who neglected his wife in Middlemarch, he sought the key to all mythologies. The days of

Sur La Lune Fairy Tales.

Sur La Lune Fairy Tales discusses mythology, mythography, and folklore.

Paul Oppenheimer's Blog

Paul Oppenheimer's Blog This exploration of meaning and myth is quite new to me. Of the husband who neglected his wife in Middlemarch, he sought the key to all mythologies. The days of philology were great days. So, even though I am trained in a contemporary anglophone department of philosophy I would like to tackle questions of the meaning of life. Myth I don't know which. When we

Paul Oppenheimer's Blog

In due time, Paul Oppenheimer's Blog will be moving to http://peoppenheimer.org/

Revision of My HomePage

P. E. Oppenheimer's Web site, Paul E. Oppenheimer, is undergoing continual revision. Most recently, the following corrected entry has been added: Poggio, T., Little, J., Gamble, E., Geiger, D., Weinshall, D., Villalba, M., Larson, N., Cass, T., B529.

Locus of Aeschylus quotation?

If you can give the citation for the Aeschylus quotation used by RFK the day MLK was assassinated, please tell me. From memory: "Even during sleep, sorrow falls, drop by drop, into our hearts; thus, in spite of ourselves, we learn wisdom."

What Is Metaphysical About The Metaphysical Poets?

What is metaphysical about the metaphysical poets? (cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intrinsic-extrinsic/

Writing on writing

http://mally.stanford.edu/mally.html

Ernst Mally

http://www.blogger.com/home

Quotations.

The Quotations Page is full of interesting quotations. I used to keep topoi, or commonplaces, on my web sites. These days, I am more apt to depend on secondary sources such as The Quotations Page. [However, if you have a copy of one of my poems that I used to have posted on my old web sites, please send me a copy.]

The Theory of Abstract Objects

The Theory of Abstract Objects Edward N. Zalta has been working on the theory of abstract objects. Many of the key ideas come from the work of Alexius Meinong. I strongly recommend the introduction to The Theory of Abstract Objects to be found at