TFBW's Forum

So... I found this place sorta randomly...
Actually, in favor of keeping a long story short, I'll just summarize the randomness by the following:
Dreamland Chronicles --> Dreamland Chronicles forum --> Controversy Corner in said forum --> interesting contributions of TFBW to conversations therein --> TFBW profile --> linked Nutters web page --> Forum link on Nutters web page --> Here I am. After poking around the site a little, that is.
(Hmmm... as summaries and I go, that worked out surprisingly well. Which may, upon reflection, indicate little besides how very poorly I tend to summaraize.)

Incidentally, it was particularly the "Proof of God?" and "Good and Evil (Moral Philosophy)" threads that I was reading over in the Dreamland forums. And I particularly appreciated the strength of reasoning in your posts, TFBW. It's always nice to run across argumentation that shows an emphasis on logic, keeping clear on what the logic actually shows, and general discipline of thought. It could, at least in part, be due to the limits in my reading range as of yet, but I don't tend to run across such things very often.

Any case, a smidgen about me: I'm 23, graduated from college and am currently taking a couple semesters of Bible college before probably looking into Grad school. I have interests. Lots. Largely including books, though sometimes also including computers (though only the use, not the mechanics or maintenance thereof) or cameras or instruments or other such kinds of various items.

Hmmm... anything else? For ease and clarity of pronouns and such, I'm a girl. Aaaand... fond of elipses and parentheses, as you'll probably note. Also of semi-mocking self-commentary.

So any case... I'll close by mentioning what I actually read in poking around the Nutters website, namely: the Pseudo-FAQ, Poem: Forgotten Realms, A Bad Argument Analyzed, The Universe as a Mathematical Function, and In Defense of Feyerabend. We'll see if I come up with anything to actually say or ask concerning these or anything else. But in the meantime, I thought I'd go ahead and register and say hello.

Well hey. Welcome to what may well be the quietest forum on the 'net where posts still get a response and spam gets deleted. If your introduction is anything to go by, you're in the right place.

Thanks for the compliments in relation to strength of reasoning. Ever since I discovered his essays, I've had an admiration for C. S. Lewis' clarity of reasoning, so he's something of a role model (although his expertise and mine don't have much else in common). Over the years I've developed an interest in essay writing, argument, apologetics, and philosophy. It wouldn't surprise me if I wind up writing a book on something or other sooner or later. I'm getting plenty of exercise in writing my PhD thesis, which is already between 65 and 70 thousand words (and my supervisors want me to write another chapter).

I look forward to hearing from you, should you decide to post here.

Thanks for the welcome.


Actually, from what I was reading, this really doesn't surprise me. I thought of him at certain points while reading your posts. And I'd generally say the same of him - I was introduced to Narnia first, of course, and I absolutely love them. But after I discovered his non-fiction, he became my unrivaled favorite author. Over time George MacDonald (who Lewis actually very much admired) has come to tie with him, but really for different reasons. When it comes to logic, Lewis is the author I think I've most tried to model myself after.


Heh - I share all these interests except the essay writing. I've got to applaud you for that one; I still get frozen up over essays and papers every single time. I'm terrible at limiting topics (all the interesting ones are too big and too far outside my range of knowledge to do feasibly in the time available), so I spend all my time trying (and failing) to research my large topic adequately, and come down to the very last minute and say, "Hmm. I'm not happy with the material I've got, but if I don't start writing, I'm not going to finish." And so I write, and hate the paper, and grit my teeth and turn it in.


Hmmm. I never have been able to form a concept of length from word counts. I hope your thesis goes well, though. Out of curiousity, may I ask what it's about?

I really only discovered that essay writing could be interesting when I was 25. As part of my undergraduate degree (which I only just started that year) I was required to write an essay on the subject of censoring the Internet. This was a joint exercise in library research and report writing -- a token nod towards those skills which would not arise again in the remainder of the degree. I'd never liked essay writing in school: I never quite understood what it was that was wanted. Unsurprisingly, therefore, I wasn't too enthused about the prospect of writing this essay, but at least the subject was interesting.

In writing it, however, I found that many of the skills I had developed in computer programming were proving useful. Structure is very important in a computer program, and I found that I was able to organise the structure of my essay by similar analysis. In the end, I was quite pleased with the final product, but I had no idea how well it would be received, particularly given that I'd gone over the word limit. I was pleasantly surprised by the result: the essay was marked on a dozen or so criteria, each ranked "poor", "fair", or "good", and my result was straight "goods".

Based on that experience, I began to explore essay writing as a matter of personal interest. It's a good way to advance one's knowledge of a subject, since it demands that you research and think about the subject. My earliest essay which I made public is Philosophies of Free Software and Intellectual Property. It's not bad for a beginner.


As currently printed, it's about 160 A4 sides (with generous margins and 1.5 line spacing, as required by university standards). The subject is on how malicious participants (like spammers) change the problem of designing computer network protocols, and the kinds of techniques we must bring into the design process to deal with this problem.