The Ravings Essays
This document was most recently revised on Friday, November
14, 2008.
These essays examine words, choice, science, religion,
history, philosophy, and more.
1. | |
The Ravings of a Mad Man | |
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| | We have a very strange language. We use
it to say some very strange things. In this essay, I began to examine
some of the peculiarities of the language and discovered a whole new category
of words. By right of discovery, I call them nononyms. |
2.
X | |
More Ravings of a Mad Man - or - Diatribe Doesn't Mean Two Groups
of Indians Living Together | |
X | |
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| | In this essay I continued the examination of
language that I began in The Ravings of a Mad Man. Along the way,
I proved the obnoxious nature of Christian evangelism. |
3. | |
Who Was That Mad Man? Why, Don't You Know Him? He's
The Lone Raver! | |
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| | Did you know that there isn't any antonym in
Christian doctrine for the word sin? All Christians consider themselves
to be sinners. Their vocabulary doesn't allow them any alternative. |
| | In this essay, I strayed from the examination
of words and looked at the idea of choice. There are a lot of different
ways to look at things. I made some suggestions about who built the
pyramids, what causes the red shift, what amoebas might think about people,
and more. |
5. | |
More Adventures of The Lone Raver! | |
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| | Experience would be a better teacher if people
would be better students. Here's an abbreviated chronicle of some
of my schooling. Cleverly hidden among the factual data you might
find the occasional gently stated opinion. |
| | The dictionaries in our language are not very
good at describing humility, one of the more desirable of human conditions.
Furthermore, we're not very good at understanding humility. We're
even less good at achieving it. We have a very strange language,
a very strange culture, and very strange minds. |
7. | |
The Lone Raver Writes Again | |
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| | Is a test tube baby a natural human being, with
all the rights of a natural human being? Or, is a test tube baby
a manufactured human being, with about the same rights as a washing machine?
Read this essay and make your own decision. |
| | When documents remain in use for long periods
of time, changes in the usage of the words in the documents guarantee that
the meanings of the documents will change. |
| | What really happened at the Tower of Babel?
What was the Tree of Knowledge? Are we really alone? Why can't
we be peaceful? |
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