In Search of a Spherical Cow
Stewart said:
A selection:
No particular order.
This is just the sort of helpful, detailed post I was hoping to find. I am in search of a certain kind of forum. I would like to find a forum that discusses literature, poetry, philosophy and theology. I guess I realize in my heart of hearts that what I want does not really exist.
The best forum I ever found was shut down several years ago because it was repeatedly hacked, and the owner just gave up. It was zen-forum.com. The archives are still available in the search engines. There, I was free to write and express myself freely and was not persecuted for it.
If you visit my profile, and visit my website, you will get an idea of the kind of essays and posts I write, and the kind of dialogues I have.
I was hesitant to make this sort of post here until I found this thread and see that it is acceptable to mention other forums.
At my site, I listed a few writers forums that I was participating in.
I suppose I should mention the one IRC forum that I participated in for a year, though that was several years ago: IRC undernet #philosophy moderated by skept, who is a retired teacher.
There were some very educated serious people there, but it was very strict in that if you deviated in the slightest from the topic of philosophy, you would find yourself booted or banned. I made some mention of "fear and trembling" which is a verse from one of St. Paul's epistles but is also the subjecting of something which Kierkegaard wrote. I was booted for that mention, and I asked forum owner, skept, about my membership, and he said such posts were unacceptable. In retrospect, I realized that I would have been better off just being a lurker, capturing logs, extracting what is of interest to me, writing my own monologues or essays in response to those extracts, and then posting those essays at my own site, available to the small minority of people who might take some interest in such discussions.
My general experience is that I am a member of a small minority with regard to my interests and tastes, and I have been frequently persecuted by people in a position of power. But then, what is power good for, if you don't use it? And, what good is a clubhouse if you don't put a door with a lock on it, and keep some people out?
Anyway, if you should stumble across some very literary or philosophical or intellectual site, which you think I might enjoy, please drop me an E-mail or forum private message. I would appreciate it.
I realize my interests and tastes are not shared by many. Everything I have written is available on-line. So, if you are one of those few that enjoys such things, and would like to correspond on some topic of interest, then drop me a line.
I graduated from St. John's College in Annapolis Md in the 1960's. I mention this because I was shaped and influenced by their unusual curriculum. There are no electives at St. John's. For four years students take all, required, courses: four years of mathmatics, four years of lab science, for years of ancient Greek and French language, and four years of seminars on the so-called hundred great books of the western world (Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Kant. Hegel, Tolstoy, Doestoevsky, etc. etc.)
I mention this not only so that you might better understand what I seek, and why I seek it, but also because there may possibly be one person approaching college age who would like to apply to such a college.
I should mention
http://aldaily.com which stands for "Arts and Letters Daily".
That is typical of the kinds of discussions that interest me.
I have not been there in a while, so I just now visited, and read an article
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/45938?&print=yes#46167
which refers to a mathematician's joke, which starts: "Consider the Spherical Cow".
Google.com is really my antidote to a companionless world. I searched on "consider the sperical cow", and found many articles, one of which is:
http://www.lyndonstate.edu/intranet/academics/acaddept/nat/Student_Comments.htm
I have made a post entitled "A Seminar on Baudelaire" here:
http://forums.thebookforum.com/showthread.php?t=7489
which is a good example of the "sort of thing" I do, and also, and also a taste of what it might be like to study at St. John's in Annapolis for four years.
And, just now, I have discovered this useful post here:
http://forums.thebookforum.com/showthread.php?t=3994
with many interesting links, including a link to the other literary forum where I have been posting for a while.