The Curator

In the mid 2000s I came across a philosophical essay written by a “Reginald Firehammer” and I liked what I read. The essay was both direct and clear, explaining what I thought I understood in a new and compelling way.

Another essay was read, and then another. And soon I was smitten and proceeded to read all of Firehammer’s work that I could find, whether it was on his website or written under pseudonyms on other websites. He could be found in the comments sections of philosophy and liberty oriented websites where he was always the most polite, patient and insightful participant in discussions (note: I’m not sure those he debated with would agree!).

After some time I emailed Regi with some questions and comments, and learnt his true name. On and off over the years we would keep in touch. He was both kind and generous with his time and always sent charming and well-considered messages.

Now Regi/Randy is deceased and his website is gone.

I miss his honest and insightful writing. I miss the unique voice he brought to the internet.

This website of curated works is both my tribute to Reginald Firehammer and my gift to those individuals who, like I was, would be deeply moved and inspired by what he wrote.

Contact

If you wish to send any comments, then the Curator can be reached by email at:

curator at firehammer.page

A Note on Curation

The articles, essays, and stores on Randall’s website were in HTML but have been reformatted into Markdown to be compatible with the website generation tool that I have used.

Most articles are signed-off as “Reginald Firehammer” and others as “Randall Saunders”. I have preserved the original sign-offs rather than changing them for consistency.

I have endeavoured to preserve the original formatting as is, but no doubt there has been some change to the visual presentation.

Randall did not usually use HTML heading tags (<h1>, <h2>, and the like) but instead just bolded text. Where appropriate I have changed the formatting to use a proper heading.

Many articles contain large blocks of text under a bullet-point which I have reformatted to be paragraphs under a heading instead.

Occasional molecular names, like N₂O₅, and mathematical formulas, like 𝑎² + 𝑏² = 𝑐², have been reformatted to use proper unicode characters for subscript and superscript letters.

Some articles contain tables that used whitespace for formatting and layout. Those tables have been replaced with actual HTML tables.

I did not want to edit any of what Randall wrote, but in the process of re-formatting into Markdown I have corrected the occasional typo and missing apostrophe or hyphen when I’ve spotted them.

Some articles included images to illustrate a point or for visual flare and I have preserved these when they are present. However, a number of images are missing.

Many of Randall’s articles include links to external websites and articles that no longer exist. In some cases I have updated the links to point at the new home of a missing article, or to point at an archived version of an article on the Wayback Maching. And in other cases the links remain but simply point into the ether.

If you disagree with any of these changes, that is fine. The original text is still present on the Wayback Machine and you can enjoy it there.