Author: Nancy E. Shaffer

NANCY E. SHAFFER has been an experimental psychologist (M.A., Cognitive Psychology, Rice University), a philosopher (Ph.D., History and Philosophy of Science, University of California, Davis), and software developer. She taught history and philosophy of science at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec and the University of Nebraska Omaha. Her philosophical work has appeared in the journal Philosophy of Science and her pop-culture philosophy website, All Things Philosophical on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series. Dis/inhbition is her first novel. She currently resides in Tempe, Arizona.

Squinting at sunlight

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 4 Comments

I’m officially settled into my new place and life can go back to something resembling normal. Just in time for the rush of the holidays. I went to K-Mart yesterday to pick up a few odds and ends for my condo and ended up walking out empty-handed. Too many people strolling at zero miles an hour through the aisles, and let’s not even get to how many people were lined up at the check-out registers.

On the other hand, a successful change of address with Netflix brought me more Alias, 24, and Taken goodness. I got Firefly in the queue now, too, waiting for later this month, and Farscape. And somehow, Highlander season 3 came out on DVD a while back without me noticing. Amazon is already selling used copies. I have it on my wish-list pending finding out how much money I’ll have in the coming months. My old iMac computer is acting up, and I’m wondering if it might not be a good idea to get a new computer instead of getting the old one fixed.

Speaking of “Taken”, I just finished up that mini-series yesterday and really liked it. Taken spoilers

Left brain, right brain

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 3 Comments

Ganked from etrangere

I like having both a logical side and a creative side. One side runs from order and loves beauty and delight. It works on intuition and is never predictable. The other side finds patterns in seeming chaos and makes connections between disparate things. It works with effort and sees things through to the end. They work together in that thing I call my brain.


You are a narrative writer. Usually a writer of
stories rather than poetry, you grew up reading
Shakespeare’s less popular and heard of plays–
like King Lear or the Henry series. Your
writing contains a certain order and
organization–be it chronological or otherwise.
If you are to write poetry, it has to convey a
logical (or perhaps unreal) story with some
sort of order behind it.

What’s YOUR Writing Style?
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Tuesday morning

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 10 Comments

current film: Total Recall

I had this whole big butch blog entry planned out in which I was going to analyze the aspects of the American psyche that would lead it to put politically inexperienced actors in its top government positions, but since politics is boring, I’ve decided to just record that, other than going to work, my big plan for today is to vote.

Actually, my current film isn’t Total Recall. I watched that on Sunday and it inspired me to get out my voter’s guide and make out a little sheet to take to the voting booth with me. This morning’s film is actually Tron, which is a wonderful little allegorical cgi nugget that deals with the themes of religion, faith, power, and the coming of a messiah.