Started my new job today. Hooray! I'm gainfully employed!
Thanks to all who offered encouragement during this dry spell. It's been a rough month-and-a-half and we're not 'in the clear' yet - but we're not going to go bankrupt this week, either.
The hours are terrific and the environment is great. I must have met about twenty people in the office and they all seemed happy to be there. Several of them told me that it was a great place to work, even though they work hard. The only downside is that it doesn't pay anything close to what I was aiming for.
I won't say much about the job at this time, except that it is at the University of Delaware and that it is accounting work. I don't want to divulge information that could, for all I know, be priviledged. I may reveal more at a later time.
Oh, and another drawback is that I am not employed directly by the university at this time. Rather, I am working through a staffing service. With luck, I will get hired on quickly and get a pay raise, but I'm not going to assume that will happen. So, I will still be sending resumes out, albeit a little more selectively because of the new time constraints.
In other news, Simcha fell off a chair yesterday and injured her face quite badly on the cheek. We almost took her to the hospital. There were no symptoms of bone damage however, and after some time she was eating and talking as normal, so we chose to just monitor her closely. (If we had insurance, there would have been no decision to make - I would have taken her to the ER in a heartbeat.) Anyway, her cheek is still swollen today, and turning all sorts of Christmassy colors.
For Love of Tender Recondity
- snaars
- Cognoscension, MY, United States
- If it can be spoken, then it is not the true snaars. Snaars should not be mistaken for his mortal alter-ego, snaars. This earthly manifestation of snaars - or snaarsissistic prophet, if you will - is a rather unambitious thirtysomething recent college graduate with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and a minor in religious studies. A devoted husband, and father of three beautiful snaars daughters, Snaars blogs about his life, his times, his family, favorite song lyrics, nonsense, wisdom, atheism, metaphysics, science, rationality, and the snaars. Snaars likes to remove old words from the back of the cupboard, polish them up, and display them in fresh ways. Feel free to expand the horizons of discourse, because snaars has ever-unplumbed depths of mutifacetedness. And humility. (If only the world knew the perplexity of my condition, for Snaars could be so easily consumed by vanity!)
La lettre d'écarlate de l'athéisme, snaarsassiste
TCPS
UCS
Iraq war web sites
Cost of the War in Iraq
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7 comments:
at least you will be in good company. I'll be there with Bertrand Russel, Trent Reznor, Nietzsche (maybe, he is iffy... his violent tendencies may supercede his heresy), Douglas Adams, and many many more we don't know.
Maybe even a few surprises like a pope or two. I'm sure several priests will be there, barring other sins committed.
Mary P.,
You honor me by placing me in the same category as Q.
It's ironic to me that you should bring up the word "intellectual". One of my friends is always telling me that I'm an intellectual. Although he is sincere, I always balk at this, I think because, to me, intellectuals are people who put on airs like they're smarter than everyone else. Then I remind myself that I really am smarter than most other people. I just don't want people to think I think I'm smarter than them. 'Cause then they'd think I was some kind of snotty intellectual. Once I remember this I feel much better. I mean, that's okay then, except that my friend has found me out. Damn him!
I'm joking of course. I'm really not "smarter" than anyone. I think what sets me apart from others is that I'm more thoughful than most, by which I mean this: I never take anything at face value - I'm always making distinctions between things and asking myself if such-and-such is really the case. That, and I do absorb information quickly while reading.
I do think Q and I have some traits in common. Thanks for the comment.
Arglor,
You place me in the same class as Douglas Adams! You rock! Douglas Rocks! I guess Trent Reznor rocks, too, although I haven't listened to any of his music since, oh, about 1995.
Say, did I ever mention to you that I knew a lady who baby-sat Trent Reznor***? Yeah, she was a teacher at my high school. Meaningless little bit of info. Small world. I'm just a little verbose tonight.
***When he was a kid, of course. You sicko, did you think I meant yesterday?
I honestly think you limit the phrase intellectual too much snaars. I am of the mind that an intellectual is exactly as you define yourself minus the ego trip. I think an intellectual is simply a person who doubts, questions, and ponders everything he is given. no more no less.
perhaps that is too broad, but it is my definition. that way you can add all sorts of adjectives to give the intellectual extra traits like:
stubborn intellectual
snotty intellectual
religious intellectual
atheist intellectual
minor intellectual
and then my favorite,
ignorant intellectual
because when someone is forced to doubt, question, and ponder everything that is put before him there is always a point in which the individual must resign and throw his hands into the air at his lack of knowledge on the subject matter. I.E. me and special relativity. Sure, sure, i can decipher about 1-10 of what it is talking about, for the large part i'm an ingnorant intellectual, constantly searching for more information to assist with making the full understanding.
my least favorite is the:
lazy intellectual
it is a part of me i must fight every day. Read this nice article about moral theory? or watch a artistic film about the saddest song in the world..... ding ding ding... watch the movie... (it was a very wierd dark comedy... but good... called "The Saddest music in the world")
Snaars:
We intellectuals disagree about everything, even the meaning of the word "intellectual".
It was Mary P. who first labelled me "intellectual". Like you, I had to overcome a certain reluctance to accept the label. In my case, because my formal schooling is not so great (two undergraduate degrees), I'm ignorant about so much, and I fear I have an inadequate grasp even of the subjects I focus my attention on.
So Arglor's input is quite helpful, that I can be an intellectual and still be ignorant.
Actually, I think Arglor and I have a compatible understanding of the term. I say that to be an intellectual is a matter of orientation. Some people are all about sensual indulgence; some, athletics; some, social life. Me, I approach any subject that interests me analytically.
I think Mary P. is smarter than I am (though she might deny it) but less intellectual.
I suppose a person could be not very bright and still be an intellectual in terms of orientation. But of course I'm not suggesting you're anything less than brilliant.
Q
So that's why I have so few readers these days! It's not, as one would be apt to think, because I haven't been writing. Rather, it's because I am fully appreciated only by true intellectuals, who are few and far between!
Seriously, in my experience the people who seem the most sure of themselves usually have the least education.
Those people who are experts at something will usually not hesitate to profess ignorance in subjects with which they have little knowledge.
Socrates seemed to think that the one thing that made him wiser than other folks was this: he knew he was ignorant, whereas just about everyone around him failed to recognize their own ignorance.
We are all intellectuals. It therefore follows that we are aware of our own ignorance.
Of course, Socrates also had this penchant for demonstrating to people how they were ignorant - a lamentable habit which led to his trial and execution.
That reminds me ... I have to pick a Socrates quote for my sidebar ... all my books are in storage! Can anyone help me out? Let me know of a good quote and I'll put it up.
"I have been bitten by a worse than a viper's tooth; I have known in my soul, or in my heart, or however else it ought to be described, that worst of pangs, more violent in ingenuous youth than any serpent's tooth: the pang of philosophy, which will make a man say or do anything."
Alcibiades, in the course of expressing his adoration of Socrates; toward the end of Plato's Symposium
Oooooh, good one! Thanks, Q!
If I understand your citation correctly, it's not a quote attributed to Socrates but to Alcibiades. Nevertheless, it's close enough.
If I don't have my books out of storage next month (a near-certain possibility), I will run a little quote contest, similar to the one I used to re-name the blog a while back.
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