Dave's Page

This is Dave's page.

Work

He works at the Schools Health Education Unit.
Chess
He looks after the Exeter Chess website (www.exeterchessclub.org.uk),
including its Chess Coaching section, hosted at [ChessB@Demon] and [TechnoCool]
You can read more about his chess activities at the Ten Ways to Chess Success website.
Home
He has a Local Apache Web Server, which includes local copies of:
SHEU website
SHEU Test area
Chess
OurWeb
 

 

David Regis - Personal Page

Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: Two. One to screw it in, and one to observe how the lightbulb itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin cosmos of nothingness.

me

 [cartoon in case you were looking for a different David Regis or a different Dr. Dave]. (It's a little known fact that the phrase "David regis" appears a couple of times in the Vulgate BIBLE (Chronicles 29), which is about as close as I get to religious affiliation.)

C.V.

 I went to college near my home town, where I studied all sorts of things, found out about the English class system and discovered modern music, used to teach sixth-formers in Cambridge, and am now researching in Exeter, a happily unmarried man. My reading of psychology has given me some insight into myself: am I anything like you?

science

 Like a lot of people with a scientific background, I like the works of Escher and am intrigued by what is going on in the same vein these days.

While I've mastered only the bare minimum of mathematics to survive professionally, I've always enjoyed Recreational Mathematics and am pleased by the recent growth in popular popular mathematics books and interest in the History of Mathematics.

I don't subscribe to The Philosophers' Magazine but I like what they have done to make thinking seriously more fun, more so since I got a TPM Medal of Honour; I'd like to big up the Atheism Web and the Secular Web online.

Everyone should play with Biomorphs at least once before they die.

One of the most important sort of thinking these days, it seems to me, is the time and effort spent in de-bunking the avalanche of nonsense with which we are subjected. I celebrate in this regard the efforts of Isaac Asimov, Martin Gardner, James Randi, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins and Francis Wheen; on the Internet, special mention should go to www.talkorigins.org and The Skeptic magazine. I voted in and was both pleased and puzzled by the GREATEST PHILOSOPHER VOTE RESULT

fun

 I'm a real chess nut, and if you are too you might want to look at my Chess Coaching Page , or even trawl through the murky depths of my chess career. I also look after the home page for Exeter Chess Club. My chess pages have been namechecked by Chess Monthly, by Tim Harding's Chess Mail, by John Nunn in the British Chess Federation Yearbook 1997, and Chess Life Online, although not everyone appreciates them. I have played several chess variants like Shogi and Chinese Chess; I know how to play Go and Bridge.

I have got a lot out of my Palm Tungsten T5; library, games companion, alarm clock and a computer more portable than any allegedly "portable" computer I have seen (ever tried using a laptop while walking?). It's helpful when coaching or writing books.

join

 I don't buy Nestlé products like KitKat or Nescafe, Shell petrol and I'm not mad keen on burgers, either. I'm a member of the Institute for Health Education, It's an irony that despite a lifelong affection for socialism, I'm currently a director of a private company and no longer a member of the Labour Party. I still have a soft sopt for the Cooperative Party (having been active in the peace movement).

Other memberships include The National Trust, the Devon Wildlife Trust (one of the local Wildlife Trusts), the Amicus Trades Union [having been for many years a member of the the Association of University Teachers (AUT)] the British Humanist Association [humanists are like existentialists, but with a sense of humour], and a few others I haven't found (or made) links for. I have a lifelong passion for natural history, particularly bugs; I once studied zoology but never recovered from hamsters. (I confess I am the author of Sex and Violence in the Hamster, Unpublished MS, University of Cambridge 1982. Ford knows, I wish I was joking.) Occasionally I retrace some of my former passions at the treeoflife web and the AES Bug Club, although I won't be sorry if I never see again any examples of Rhagonycha fulva again.

read

 I would be a different person if I hadn't read Darwin or Prince Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, works by Marx or Marx & Engels, the poetry of Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley and the writings of Bertrand Russell and Aldous Huxley.

[Probably of at least equal importance was a book called Tuffy the Tow Truck, which I have probably read and listened to more than any other, but no longer own a copy.]

I've read most of John Updike. I used to read a lot of SF before the rise and rise of fantasy novels; I liked Isaac Asimov, Joanna Russ, Harlan Ellison and middle period Robert Silverberg.

Terry Pratchett's L-space is a wonderful place to explore.

I subscribe to Private Eye and to Chartist; I don't read a national daily newspaper, no time, but I get a daily fix of the Today Programme. Actually, Radio 4 is often on somewhere near me, although they don't broadcast enough Goon Shows or editions or Clue.

Fan sites
(and sites I'm a fan of...

"It used to be said that if an infinite number of monkeys were allowed to type on an infinite number of keyboards, they could write Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true."

 Despite that quote, I genuinely think the Internet is wonderful; it has made so much valuable material freely available -- like that from The Secular Web -- which I wish I had read many years ago. It's far from an 'ideal speech community', in that access is dominated by the rich and/or privileged, but with it I would have made a better job of growing up, I believe, because it would have enabled me easily to find out about ideas that took me decades to catch up with. Having access to even apparently simple things like the Talk Origins FAQs would have made my life easier, although I could do without computer viruses.

Some of my family and friends are starting to appear on the web, if only tangentially: one day my partner Sally and may have her own pages, but you can already find people like her daughter Laura (who keeps me up to date with bands like the Period Pains) Jo, Shane, ...

[The tail end of my .newsrc provides some personal clues, as least as far as my interests coincide with available newsgroups: it tells me I have also lurked on alt.humor.best-of-usenet, alt.atheism.moderated, alt.books.phil-k-dick, alt.fan.capt-beefheart, alt.fan.frank-zappa, alt.fan.harlan.ellison, alt.fan.spalding-gray, alt.motherjones, comp.lang.perl, misc.kids.health, (a.k.a. misc.kids.health.circumcision.flamewar) rec.aquaria, rec.arts.ascii, rec.humor, rec.music.classical, rec.pets.herp, rec.ponds, sci.skeptic, sci.sociology, soc.atheism, soc.bi, uk.people.health, among others...]

lobby

 Much power to the elbows of ABOUT - FACE and Skinema (these are about the only sites from the 199x edition of this page that survives at their original URLs). I welcome a lot of what I read by the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, by Greil Marcus and Stonewall. I'm glad Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are on the case. For professional and private reasons, I welcome the work of Bandolier.

listen

 My jazz tastes are conventional: I cut my teeth on Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker and moved on to the great artists of the late 'fifties such as John Coltrane and Miles Davis, and my favourites Thelonious Monk and Charlie Mingus. Anything cut on Blue Note Records I find easy to like. Among more contemporary artists I listen to John Zorn, surely a noise for our time, and I like what is being done by The Bad Plus and Medeski Martin and Wood, by Michael Gibbs, Nikki Iles and Claire Martin. The blues artists I like are less well-served by fan sites on the Web, but I will always have a place for John Lee Hooker and Dr. John.

Contemporary music is a bit of a secondary interest, but, as well as the good people listed above (or linked as .wav files), I've got a lot out of Carter USM, Elvis Costello, ry-cooder, the FALL and West Country Girl PJ Harvey; oh, and the world would be a poorer place without Captain Beefheart or Frank Zappa, and I have recently developed a soft spot for the Alabama 3. And while I don't dig out my old vinyl too often, I can't throw away all my Beethoven, Prokofieff, Webern, Ravel... I think the last classical CD I bought was from SoundCircus.
  Publications:
Dr.Dave's Top Ten "Top 10s" [in prep.]
a Bright is a person with a naturalistic worldview (is.that.all.there.is?)

RETURN to menu page

This document (dr_pers1.html) was last modified on 1st October 2005 by

David Regis, a dry, fruity red, sometimes a cool blue cat
 Home   Sally   Laura   Dave   XX    ZZ    Links