Welcome to Doctor Robert’s blog! I hope that this blog will be entertaining and informative, but never misleading. I can dream.
About the photograph
The cover photo 1 is Voltaire’s home in Ferney (now Ferney-Voltaire), France, outside Geneva. François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778) wrote under the name Voltaire, reportedly because it seemed more edgy. As is often true with intelligent and outspoken young people, he frequently found himself on the wrong side of authority, resulting in a two and one-half year exile to London, and eleven months in the Bastille. By the time he died, he was revered throughout all of Europe, had been close friends with Frederick the Great and Benjamin Franklin, and had written books and letters that fill entire wings of modern libraries.
Voltaire lived in Ferney from 1758 until just before his death in 1778. Voltaire, though a deist 2 , was antagonistic toward organized religion, and never hesitated to make his views known; it has been said that he chose Ferney so that if the French Catholics came for him, he could duck over the border into Geneva; if the Swiss Calvinists were on his case, he could scoot back to the French side! Despite his views on religion, he had a chapel built in Ferney for his friends and neighbors; it is for this, and similar reasons, that he is referred to as the Patriarch, and the town was re-named for him.
I will probably devote a post to Voltaire sometime in the future.
I especially like the open door in the picture.
About the blogger
Doctor Robert 3 is a father, a family practice doctor in rural New Mexico, and a performing musician. He has been a construction worker (journeyman electrician, framer, and inept plumber), car mechanic and sound tech; has appeared in a few musicals; and spends far too much time commuting to rural clinic sites (in other words, has Too Much Time On His Hands). 4 Despite having a head full of useless knowledge, he failed to make the first cut to be on Jeopardy!.
About the blog
Content-wise, the blog will mostly address scientific topics (including the Queen of Sciences, math), with forays into music, linguistics, medicine (of course), and whatever else strikes my fancy. I will avoid politics like the plague.5 Comments will always be welcome, as long as they are reasonably polite! And just who will decide that?
Who do you suppose?
Future posts may include:
- What is science?
- Yes, Pi day 2015 (3/14/15) was cool, but 2018 will be twice as cool
- How did knowing “units” (ie meters, seconds etc) help me pass the MCAT?
- My objections to libertarianism
I will add new posts as they happen, hopefully weekly.
Comments welcome! Please share widely!
- The photo is by B. Curtis or D. Jackson, couldn’t tell you which
- Which is to say, he believed in a God that did not intervene in human affairs
- Sorry, but I find this more comfortable in third-person
- If the idle mind is the Devil’s playground, Doctor Robert’s mind is crammed with monkey bars, swings, merry-go-rounds, and definitely teeter-totters
- But this is New Mexico, where the plague can’t always be avoided
Having engaged in many fascinating discussions with you over the years, I greatly look forward to reading your blog (whenever my colander brain allows me to actually remember to do so)! Not sure you can delve into objections to libertarianism in an apolitical way these days, but I certainly hope you pull it off! Societal ethics is a fascinating area.
I plan to lay out what I see as “the necessary functions of government” and go from there. Even to do this will require some groundwork, I think!