August 2002: A Mentor Dies

It was really hard for me to right this one. It was a busy month. I started dating again. I started working again doing Perl work for $15 an hour. Yes, the web industry crashed that bad. A mentor of 5 years, Hal Sarf, passed away from cancer.

Books:

  • The Symposium
  • The Phaedrus
  • Aristotle’s Politics

On-line dating sucked so bad this month that I swore it off forever. One of the last things Hal taught me before he died was how to get a number from a waitress, which impressed me from a 68 year old.

Also, if it wasn’t for Hal, I wouldn’t’ve gotten to meet Richard Rorty. His lecture on why Hegelian language can do nothing for social justice really impressed me. He read a newspaper clipping about a Jacquard loom worker who died and left his family in abject poverty and then went on to read some Hegelian non-sense about the progressive march of history towards the wellspring of Being. Okay, I’m convinced. Obscurantism in philosophy is a crime.

One thought on “August 2002: A Mentor Dies”

  1. How did he guide you to get the number? What did he tell you?
    He was born in 1941 – believe he died at age 60
    Loss of a mentor is loss of a treasured gift in life
    Do you k ow if any of his lectures/books are on tape?
    Where was he buried?

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