What’s in a name?

I got a message asking how I came up with my pseudonym, Obtusely Oblique. Well, if you’ve read some of my posts, it should be obvious, but I may as well explain: As a person with a philosophical bent, and a history as a monk, where scholarship is often deep if arcane, I do tend to ramble around a topic, but more often seem to take a tack on topics which are, well, obtuse. Also, I used to write book reviews for a magazine. The editor would send me a pile of books and I’d write reviews. After I published a good number of them he commented that I was the most ‘obtuse’ of his reviewers. The comment stuck with me as I’d not thought of it that way. The oblique part means coming at things from an unusual angle…so FWIW, that’s where the a.k.a. came from.