On the Saying 'God is Odd'

• September 17, 2004
• James Skemp

Listen to On the Saying 'God is Odd' (MP3 format). An old and popular saying states that ‘God is odd’. But is there any validity to this claim? This article shows that there is indeed validity and truth to this claim. God consists, or is equal to the addition, of three characters; ‘G’, ‘o’, and ‘d’. If a number is not evenly divisible by two, that number is odd. Three divided by two is one-and-one-half, therefore three is not evenly divisible by two.

Read More

Overview of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy

• September 3, 2004
• James Skemp

René Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy consists of three parts; a preface to the reader, a synopsis, and the six mediations themselves.  Heralded as the first ‘modern’ thinker in philosophy, Descartes introduces the problem encompassed by ‘dualism’: how is it that mind and body can interact with each other?  Descartes also questions how it is that we can know reality.  While the quick answer is through our senses, depending upon our senses opens us up to questions of how we know that our senses are correct.

Read More

On the Saying "Terrorists Will Put Bush in Office"

• August 23, 2004
• James Skemp

The reason most people foresee George W. Bush taking the presidency in the 2004 election is because most people believe Bush has the best chance protecting America from terrorists, compared with John Kerry.  The question is, what does this mean? Put bluntly, this means that despite Bush’s record from 2000 to the present, fear will put Bush in the Oval Office for another 4 years – fear brought on by an arbitrary colour system – fear of a people on the other side of the world, attacking us because we believe in freedom, or so they say.

Read More

On Mohandas and Arun Gandhi's Blunders of the World

• August 16, 2004
• James Skemp

Any indented text is my own regarding the particular blunder outlined above.  The rest of the text is Arun Gandhi’s. Mohandas K. Gandhi was convinced much of the violence in society and in our personal lives stems from the passive violence that we commit against each other. He described these acts of passive violence as the "Seven Blunders." Grandfather gave me the list in 1947 just before we left India to return to South Africa where my father, Manilal, Gandhi's second son, and my mother, Sushila, worked for nonviolent change.

Read More

Heidegger's Principle of Reason Lectures

• June 17, 2004
• James Skemp

The reason I picked up Martin Heidegger's The Principle of Reason was quite simple - having read Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation and agreed with many of his points, I attempt to further my knowledge of his principles as much as possible. While Heidegger doesn't mention Schopenhauer a single time in his thirteen Lectures, nor in his Address, Schopenhauer certainly discusses the Principle of Reason, pulling off of Leibniz, and is therefore a blatant oversight of Heidegger's to not mention Schopenhauer at all. Whether this is unintentional one cannot know from simply the text, but for a German philosopher to not know another German philosopher who covered the same content is quite surprising, to say the very least.

Read More

On Rest

• June 13, 2004
• James Skemp

Rest. Passivity. Inactivity. All speak of the absence of movement – the absence of activity – in common language. Yet, when I stand still is it really very different than when I am moving about? Is inactivity really the absence of activity? Let us say I am walking down the street. I see a beautiful manikin in a storefront window with short, shoulder length, red hair. While it is true that I am no longer in motion – I no longer advance down the street, I still made a choice to stop at the particular storefront window and look in.

Read More

Overview of Leibniz's The Principles of Philosophy, or, the Monadology

• June 12, 2004
• James Skemp

The following is meant to be an overview of The Principles of Philosophy, or, the Monadology (1714), by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). My main interest in Leibniz is to see how his work relates to the works of Arthur Schopenhauer. Any notes that I make should be read with this in mind.

Read More

On Karate

• May 6, 2004
• James Skemp

Listen to On Karate (MP3 format). The best thing about Karate is that you can be walking down the street with someone and they can bust a Karate Move™ just like that. Karate, pronounced care-aht-tay, is more than just a way of life; it’s also a way of being and living. On a scale from one to ten, it’s ten times God. One time I was walking down the street with my friend and he was like ‘Woah!

Read More

On the Difference Between Business and Personal Sites on the Internet

• March 31, 2004
• James Skemp

The Internet consists of a couple different kinds of sites. In the first place, we have educational sites, such as universities, libraries, and working groups. We also have business sites, which include sites that sell products online, as well as those that offer technical support through their site. Personal sites, another category, take up another chunk of the Internet. Personal sites can vary between a journal of an individual, to a compilation of multiple individuals (either in design or content).

Read More

An Open Letter to Richard Fitz

• March 6, 2004
• James Skemp

January 11 2005: I noticed a missing parenthesis, so I made the change – this is such a minor change that it has no real impact upon the document as a whole. <Address Information Removed> Mr. Fitz, On March 3rd 2004 I found, much to my dismay, an individual attributing various unsatisfactory statements to you, Richard Fitz. I, having read contrary statements in articles that you had previously written, felt that the very least I could was point out said statements to this individual, as well as suggest to them that they contact you directly regarding said statements.

Read More