ThinkBlog

This is about how I feel today:

That is all.

Yesterday I drove to Greenville to watch a friend’s softball game in Cleveland Park. While I was sitting there, I was reading during the lulls in the game a book called Anger is a Choice by Tim LaHaye and Bob Phillips. A little boy came over to the bleachers on which I was sitting and began climbing around the back end of the things–on the outside part. Essentially, if he had lost his grip, he would have fallen around 10′ to the dirt below. I watched him out of the corner of my eye and, smiling, admonished him several times to be careful.

Near the end of the game, he came up to me, looked me in the eye, and said, “You look like a counselor.” I laughed and thanked him, then asked him why he thought so. “I dunno, you reading a book, dressed nice.” (I was wearing khaki pants and a black-and-white striped Polo-style shirt.) He then asked me what I was reading, and when I told him, I could hear him mouthing the title almost inaudibly to himself, mulling it over.

I thought that was a little funny, a little sad, and very interesting. It has made me think about, among other things, the intimidity of children in speaking their minds. I loved the inquisitive adventuresomeness of this kid.

http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,67155,00.html/wn_ascii

[I’ve had a couple of posts languishing in the “Drafts” folder for far too long. Here’s the first of two.]

Check out that link; it’s to an article about mice whose cells were injected with some newt enzyme by which the latter dedifferentiate (change back to “younger” state) cells when they lose limbs, to grow them back. It worked. Mice are 99% genetically similar to humans, and it worked. It could work for us, too, effectively meaning that we could manufacture stem cells from our own bodies instead of using external ones. There are, of course, some limitations. Very interesting.

Dr. Martin Luther, Of Justification, § 319:

I never work better than when I am inspired by anger; for when I am angry, I can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart.

Just let out the pixel-based restrictions on the content, and swapped sides for the sidebar; the sidebar still loads before the posts (by design; otherwise we have a sticky situation!), but it should be on the right.

If you loaded the page while I was tinkering with the CSS, the formatting is probably ridiculously broken, so please Shift+Reload to grab the latest CSS template.

More updates in the future. Hopefully after exams. I may make this my Pre-Exam Procrastination Project™: Spring 2005 Edition, but I really want to re-learn CSS and PHP from the ground up and make my own b2evolution skin from scratch; so we’ll see.

Let me know what you think of the new “breathing room” on resolutions > 800×600!

Sitting atop my to-do pile of papers, books, CD-ROMs, coupons, jewel cases, notebooks, and paper scraps has sat my battered copy of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. There are little slips of paper in it marking things that I wanted to briefly talk about, from the months ago that I read it. Here are the notes I wanted to mention.

• 1.I.5.
  

  These young men [who, like Alyosha, tried the monastically studious life but, unlike Alyosha, cannot “hack it”] unhappily fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices. They fail to understand that to sacrifice five or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply ten-fold their powers of serving the truth […], is utterly beyond the strength of many of them.

  This was at once encouraging and an admonition to me. It was as if I began to question again whether I was supposed to be a professor, whether my end goal really was worthy, or whether I was worthy thereof. This paragraph fragment alone engendered much soul-searching on my part.

• 1.II.3.
  

  Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to re-open the wound.

  Such a good word. I have thought much of David’s sorrow over the prospect of losing his son; or, more broadly, on the ancient Jewish customs of grief at large. Namely, there is a set period of mourning, and then it’s over with. You move on. You stop complaining and worrying and fussing over it. You are able to look back on X time in your life and you remember that you have fully grieved the loss, whatever it is, and so do not need to continue to be sad. What an enormous insight into the nature of depressive psychology, and how true!

• 1.II.7.
  

  Ivan is above that. He wouldn’t make up to anyone for thousands. It is not money, it’s not comfort Ivan is seeking. Perhaps it’s suffering he is seeking.

  Is not suffering addictive? Like any pain, we may seek it not only for the endorphins it releases (if physical pain), but also because in a dialectical sense, it tells us we are alive. Those that seek pleasure ultimately lose themselves in a dream world, unsure of the sturdiness of their existence; but those that seek pain are, while experiencing it, fully aware that they are experiencing it, quite acutely; and if they are experiencing it, they Are.

• 2.VI.2.g.
  

  At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men’s sin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that once for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvellously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.

  Every day and every hour, every minute, walk round yourself and watch yourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenceless heart. You don’t know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love. Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labour. For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Everyone can love occasionally, even the
  wicked can.

  What I have been unable to articulate for the life of me, Dostoyevsky sums up via Father Zossima in a couple of paragraphs. This is so true of my experience: kids remember things that you would never dream of them remembering, and it haunts them longer. Let us be careful of ourselves around children, but really, around everyone! If we cultivate lives of loving humility, then even the hardened, jaded adults who think they are unaffected by all things, will possibly be affected for good.

• 4.XI.3.
  

  [Dmitri, to Alyosha] Do you know, perhaps I won’t answer at the trial at all…. And I seem to have such strength in me now, that I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, ‘I exist.’ In thousands of agonies- I exist. I’m tormented on the rack—but I exist! Though I sit alone on a pillar—I exist! I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there. Alyosha, my angel, all these philosophies are the death of me.

  As above, the sufferer knows the dark addiction of suffering if only to confirm his existence.

• Ibid. Emphasis mine:
  

  “She [Grushenka, Dmitri’s lover] told me [Alyosha] she was very much grieved by you to-day.”

  “I know. Confound my temper! It was jealousy. I was sorry, I kissed her as she was going. I didn’t ask her forgiveness.”

  “Why didn’t you?” exclaimed Alyosha.

  Suddenly Mitya [that is, Dmitri] laughed almost mirthfully.

  “God preserve you, my dear boy, from ever asking forgiveness for a fault from a woman you love. From one you love especially, however greatly you may have been in fault. For a woman—devil only knows what to make of a woman! I know something about them, anyway. But try acknowledging you are in fault to a woman. Say, ‘I am sorry, forgive me,’ and a shower of reproaches will follow! Nothing will make her forgive you simply and directly, she’ll humble you to the dust, bring forward things that have never happened, recall everything, forget nothing, add something of her own, and only then forgive you. And even the best, the best of them do it.

  Sheer genius, only because it’s absolutely dead-on; though you’d get shot for saying so these days in a book like this. I was having a conversation with a gentleman I work with and he was telling me this essentially same thing. “Women,” he said matter-of-factly, “will always try to get into everything you do. If you screw up, you’re going to know it. They’re bred to trap you: they’ll bring up a string of everything you’ve ever done wrong, what they’ve done for you and your family, and you just have to take it.” He wasn’t angry, he was just giving me advice. I hope I’m not that cynical … or acquiescent! when I’m his age.

• 4.XI.9. The entire conversation between Ivan and the devil is like a century of apologetics wrapped up into one chapter. Astonishing; it would take volumes to go through it all.

There were more, but they don’t seem so profound now as they did when I first marked them.

http://www.megatokyo.com/

MegaTokyo is a thoughtful, well-drawn, thoroughly enjoyable webcomic about the adventures and misadventures of two American guys that find themselves in Japan. Rich, imaginative manga that I recommend to all my friends.

I had heard of this comic a long while back, perhaps even when it first started, but I thought it would just be another somewhat silly comic, or just harsh. One of my major complaints with most webcomics is the lack of either creative thought or accountability through editing, the latter of which I believe is the reason that certain comics can suffer to the point of being essentially unreadable. This is never an issue with MegaTokyo: the creative powers at Fredart Studios don’t need to resort to sophomoric humor and expletive overusage to get the readers’ attention.

“relax, we understand j00” — This tagline captures the essence of what makes this webcomic (+ multiuser blog) so accessible to me. I’ve spoken 1337 since before it was fashionable to do so; I know what it’s like to be a social outcast for want of confidence—and be okay with that; and I enjoy pouring my heart into my creative work (writing, in my case, not drawing, but that notwithstanding…).

I read the first 600 comics across the span of two days (copious downtime at work one weekend), so immersive is the MegaTokyo experience. You will do well to start at the beginning, and won’t be able to put it down (or, in this case, stop clicking “Next”). Buy the manga, too.

For anyone who has ever spoken 1337, who knows what it’s like to be suspended in a video game temporal distortion, who knows real animé and manga aren’t “cartoons” by a long shot—enjoy it, fellow geeks: there are those who understand j00.

The assignment:

Explain Aristotle’s conception of human flourishing (i.e., happiness) in terms of the four causes (i.e., material, efficient, formal, final). Make sure that you mention only those necessary for explaining his conception. (350-400 words)

The product:

In the first book of his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle lays the foundation for what he goes on to say constitutes the best life for human beings. The best human life, he says, is one characterized by eudaimonia, or human flourishing (Ethics 1094a, 1097a-b). This is unique to human beings because we have the capacity for rational, and therefore virtuous, living (1097a). In considering which of the four causes is instrumental in directing human flourishing, we must take note of what makes the faculty of reasoning possible, since that is for Aristotle what makes us capable of virtue (1098a). Therefore, it will be necessary only to mention the formal and final causes, and the former only briefly. Human beings are rational animals: it is a part of their formal cause to be able to exercise reason, which makes them uniquely human (De Anima 414b-415a). However, the formal cause of anything must be understood in light of the end toward which it is directed, that is, its final cause. In considering the final cause of a human being, Aristotle reminds us that, just as the carpenter has as his highest job to do carpentry well, it is the “job” or end of a human being to exercise reason well, insofar as the exercise of reason is common to all human beings (Ethics 1097a). An account of the “best good” for the well-lived human life will necessarily have as its centerpiece a “life of action of the part of the soul that has reason” (1097b-1098a). There are two parts of the rational soul for Aristotle: first, the part that exercises reason insofar as it obeys it; and second, the part that “itself [has] reasoning and thinking” (1098a). If, as Aristotle says, the good human life is one in which the soul expresses reasoning through actions and activity, then “the excellent man’s function is to do this finely and well” (1098a). The virtuous, eudaimon life, then, must be understood as first of all well-reasoned. A human being who cannot effectively and consistently exercise his faculties of reason as Aristotle describes the excellent man will not flourish. The life that is most committed to reason, though, will be the best fulfillment of the human being’s final cause, since a well-reasoned life is intrinsically virtuous. Hence, the human life that fulfills its final cause is the one that will flourish.

This post will hit the web at the moment the class for which this assignment is due begins. It’s the last class of spring semester ‘05! Praise God!

Let’s look at some query strings by which people have stumbled upon this site, just before class begins, shall we?

• Many queries lately have regarded the installation of, and Protestant opinions on, Pope Benedict XVI (16th). You have this protestant’s opinion already. Other queries have regarded the meaning of the name “Benedict.” Simply, it is a truncation of the Latin “benedictus,” which is the same word in Hebrew transliterated “baruch.” Both mean “blessed,” and both may be used as peoples’ names (in fact, Baruch is very common in Israel).
• “Communion” is defined as everything from “sharing thoughts and feelings” to the act of participating in the Eucharist at a Mass or other church service. What I believe it connotes is a deep, perhaps paralingual connection between two or more parties.

More later; be well!

http://corbeledg.blogspot.com/

The Taranis Posts: A Corbeled Gallery Work

Speaking of Walter Jones, you need to check out his weblog at Blogspot. Wally’s thoughts on everything. It’s worth subscribing to the RSS (Atom)—I am!

Walter is an accomplished writer, magazine publisher, student, and now blogger.

<shameless_plug>Buy his magnum opus to date, Training for Utopia, at Amazon.com! </shameless_plug>

In his own words:

I’m finally writing again. Read it here first, because I’m going to TFU these posts. By that I mean I’m going to turn all these posts into a big story one day, publish it, and make 60 cents per copy of the book, and once a year I’m going to have a badass dinner.

w00t

http://thinkblog.org/index.php/2005/04/21/dreams_at_semesters_end_1

I had missed this guy’s class several times over and above the limit when he starts taking off points from the final grade; by rights I should have had, at maximum, a B-.

It made me think of Paul’s rebuke against pride: “What do you have that you haven’t been given?” The point is to be grateful even for the little things, because when it comes right down to it, everything we have comes from God.

Think about it. People take pride in their beautiful bodies all the time–but what do they have to do with that? Sure, we can put makeup on (y’know, if we’re ladies or actors )–but God gave us the will and strength to work to make the money to afford it; sure, we can work out, but God gives us the material and metabolism to work with. Likewise, it’s by grace that I received an `A’ in that class, for which I’m grateful.

This is nothing new to me, but reminders are always good. Life lessons come in the little things.

Jeff had to wake up and let me in tonight because my key wouldn’t work in the deadbolt (and I broke it off and had to rebuild the lock). Thanks. (I hate this apartment complex.)

I thought it was going to be a bad day: I’ve had insomnia for the past week or two, and this morning I sprang awake as though undead, animated only by sheer will and not by any overflow of life.

I had been dreaming: my mother’s new-bought house, now fully furnished with antiques and great deals of brass objects (in reality my mother desires and has neither) burst into flames: from a great black spot in a window like a festering wound, the fire roared to life immediately. She and I went in and tossed buckets of water on various objects that were, and were not, on fire. Suddenly it occurred to me that something was wrong, that I was not moving as logically or as frantically as an emergency would require, and I slammed myself into consciousness only to look at the clock and see that I’d overslept and that my second class had begun thirty seconds before.

It took me a rather long time to get to class, and when I did the professor had written “Diderot” on the board and was talking about Pragmatism and John Dewey’s neo-Leibnizian theory of democracy.

Then he talked about the exam, and what was on it: in fact, he read the questions to us, then gave us the sheet and declared it thus “take-home.” Furthermore, he proceeded to hand out little slips of paper with our grades up to that point, and whether or not we had to take the exam. All that was written on mine was “A”.

I had fully expected what I deserved, and what I deserved according to his attendance policy was not, “A”. More on this later.

Here’s what my schedule looks like for fall semester this year (note: nothing on Fridays, and no 08:00 classes … finally!).

Just received a Google search from Austria about what it means “to cough up” something, or at least, that’s how I read the query. (Wenn Sie gestatten, gut Österreicher.)

The literal translation, I think, is “abhusten” or “aushusten,” and it means “to come up with (quickly).” Usually it carries violent connotations, or is used in a threat: “Cough up the money by tonight or I’ll break your fingers.” Or, it can be used in a way that implies sympathy toward the actor: “You’re going to have a tough time coughing up more collateral, I know, but I can’t give you the loan without something more substantial.”

I hope that helps!

I updated my BBClone installation today, so the stats were reset and now the Google queries are pouring in. Glad I have readers, even overseas! [Yes, the timestamp is ridiculous. That’s what I get for having too much on my mind and trying to use midday sleep to escape! Ha!]

http://autechre.watmm.com/

If you’re into Autechre, you want to know about the latest happenings (and, incidentally, if you’re living in the southeastern US and you know about shows, we want to know, too); these guys have all your æ news, fairly frequently updated. Little tidbits you’re not going to find at the official Bleep æ site.

By the way, “Untilted” was released two days ago!

http://thinkblog.org/index.php/2005/04/14/kant_personality_analyzed

A few days ago I posted my short and very poorly written paper on Immanuel Kant’s personality as evaluated from three different perspectives (Freudian/psychoanalytic, Skinnerian/behaviorist, and cognitive). Thom remarked that it sounded rambly as it went along. I’ll tell you why that is, if not for the fact that I just can’t write too well: I don’t believe much in it.

Let’s take a look back, and I’ll show you what I mean, shall we?

First, the Oedipus complex due to his mother dying as a young man. This pseudoscientific doctrine that a man sexually loves his mother is one of the most damaging and misunderstood pieces of Freudian dogma. The mother is the first love in a young boy’s life because there is a God-given bond of intimate caring between the two; this is a fact of life, and a wonderful thing. Kant was most certainly affected by his mother’s death, but who in their right mind isn’t or won’t be? The idea that Lutheranism played into his philosophy by somehow piggybacking on an emotio-sexual connection with and pining for his dead mother is a ridiculous perversion of what grief is and means. Often I find getting “into character” of philosophers and psychologists is fun, and oftentimes I’ve found it humorous to get into Freud, but perhaps I am disgusted in this sense because I see Kant as Freud’s master both as philosopher (which Freud certainly was and had to be) and as psychologist. Kant is absolutely Freud’s better, IMHO, in the spiritual, psychological, and philosophical realms.

The idea that Kant sublimated his sexual desires to write philosophy intrigues me, my Freud-blasting notwithstanding. I disagree that the “libido” Freud describes is properly so-called, though; I would say, rather, that every person has a life-force energy that is so opposed to the “nothing” that it can be creative. If the person chooses to marry, this creative power becomes partially procreative and nurturing, &c., &c.; if the person chooses not to marry, this creative power goes into other things. I may develop this more fully some other time.

Well, Kant was certainly anal and oral by the neo-Freudian definition, and that’s fine by me: so am I! I mean, come on, I’ve already admitted I can be prolix, right? And when it comes to things being put in order, well, I think that’s just a German thing more than anything else.

The idea that Kant was affected by the German language would be better suited to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic determinism. There may be something there about Prussian society, but really I think the biggest influence on Kant was his English merchant friend Joseph Green in getting him more structured. The academic schedule seems to me rather incidental. Skinnerian determinism (a.k.a. “behaviorism”) has been gloriously reviled by Noam Chomsky on almost all counts. His critique of Skinner’s take on reality is, I think, one of the finest pieces of work in all psycholinguistics. (I’ve tried to find the article to no avail.)

And some of this stuff is just common sense, or rhetoric. “He took a global perspective on philosophy, incorporating everything he could from the thinkers that had come before him.” Please. That sentence says nothing. The idea that Kant was a cognitively complex individual is to say nothing more than conventional wisdom. The rest of that paragraph is okay, but is mostly filler. I was repeating myself because it had become six in the morning and I had class in two hours.

So. There’s my self-critique. Just had to get that out there.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/85a0e3d8-b10e-11d9-9bfc-00000e2511c8.html

The new pope has been elected: the white smoke rose from the chimney in the Vatican to signal the installation of Pope Benedict XVI of Germany. I find this interesting for a number of reasons, and although I’m a Protestant Christian, I’m delighted at some of his policies.

First of all, John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope in 455 years, and suddenly they’re following up a Polish guy with a German. Intriguing, and I’m wondering about the reasons there.

The mixed reactions in Germany don’t surprise me: some are proud, some are worried that he’s too conservative.

Thom, whom I hope doesn’t mind my quoting him, has said this of the kind of watered-down theology in an attempt to “make amends” between Protestants and Catholics (I’ve been mulling this quote over in my head lately): “The trend in modern theology toward universalism in both Catholic and Protestant traditions is, in my opinion, cowardice. It is also not fair to other faiths, because they deserve to make their own confessions and not have it usurped. I can’t tell which is worse, challenging the claims of other faiths or making them innocuous through some kind of sleight of hand.” From the article,

The Catholic reform movement We are the Church said the Pope’s election was a “catastrophe” that would “drive more people from the church”. Annegret Laakmann, an official with the grassroots movement said she “did not expect any change of direction from the new Pope” despite, she argued, the need for greater openness on issues ranging from abortion to women priests.

You know what? That’s fantastic. It’s high time we had somebody with enough sense to know that the Bible is the unchanging Word of God, and didn’t try to fudge on it to appeal to the philosophy of the day (link to Fr Joseph’s illuminating “Orthodixie” blog).

Or again,

Many German Catholics remember the former Cardinal Ratzinger’s tough stance during a major controversy in Germany in the late 1990s in which he issued a ruling banning parishes from running pregnancy advice centres. The new Pope was also highly critical of recent efforts to improve ties between the Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany by holding joint communion services.

See, I used to think that was a bad thing, that every chance we got we should try to embrace each other, Catholics and Protestants, as one in the faith. And you know, we should. But when it gets down to brass tacks, there are things that we don’t agree on theologically, and these may be in varying degrees of severity, but we don’t need to concede to one another where we really disagree. For instance, as a Protestant I do not recognize the Roman Catholic pope as the infallible apostolic successor; and Catholics believe that I’m in danger of hellfire for not being a member of the Holy Roman Church. We are to bear with one another in love and temperate patience, but there’s no need to smear theological lines.

In an age when it’s so unpopular to be a conservative Christian who believes in moral absolutes, I’m delighted to see a pope elected who’s willing to call black, black and white, white.

• Slashdot has the scoop on Skypecasting, using Skype as a kind of P2P filesharing program. I’m on Skype, but haven’t met anyone else who is. If you’d like to ring me, contact “tek1024″. (Relevant post coming soon.)
• Though the offer has just been rescinded, some computer science geeks randomly generated a paper (incidentally, you can too) to present at a conference and preliminarily got in. WMSCI 2005 will be the tenth annual congregation of “scientists and engineers, researchers and, consultants, theoreticians and practitioners in the fields of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics,” and these guys got in with a paper that looked so good at first run-through it was accepted. That’s genius. (Maybe I just admire them because I still identify somewhat with the comp.sci scene.)
• Another Slashdot story is about free journals—you know, the kind you usually have to subscribe to through organizations that charge ungodly fees and whatnot—and though they’re mostly in the biological fields, hopefully other areas of academia will get the bright idea too.
• From Slashdot (hey, I can’t phrase it more succinctly than this guy, be glad):
  

  Scientists at Harvard University have shown how ultra-cold atoms can be used to freeze and control light to form the “core” - or central processing unit - of an optical computer. Optical computers would transport information ten times faster than traditional electronic devices, smashing the intrinsic speed limit of silicon technology. This new research could be a major breakthrough in the quest to create super-fast computers that use light instead of electrons to process information. Professor Lene Hau is one of the world’s foremost authorities on “slow light”. Her research group became famous for slowing down light, which normally travels at 186,000 miles per second, to less than the speed of a bicycle.

  Optical computing is the future. Frankly, I don’t care to speculate right now all that much, I just want to be able to overclock my AMD x86_64 and still have a quiet machine—is that too much to ask? (Yes, yes, I know.)

• I don’t know if it’s going to be as spectacular as all the hype (frame that in less uncertain light), but the new infrared technology with which we’re now able to scan old manuscripts seems to promise great things nevertheless. Whereas before we couldn’t make out any writing, now we can, even on totally blackened mss. Of course, “Oh, new gospels!” is on everyone’s lips; I guess you can’t get away with it what with all the sensationalism surrounding the Easter/Passover season, at least in America. I’m looking forward to whatever may come; this could be very interesting.

Have a good week, everyone!

http://thinkforums.org/viewtopic.php?p=1383#1383

I couldn’t help myself. I have no idea if this is what Rob Brown & Sean Booth intended when they recorded this short track on LP5, but I had a great time writing it. This is what happens when I get into a groove on Saturday nights, I guess.

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Note the scraping atonal rhythms that begin this short track, then overlaid by a soothing melodic line. There is a sense that, if the scraping were personified, or at least anthropomorphized, we would see the toil of an angst-filled person, scraping at his psyche to catch some glimpse of peace but finding himself unable to do so (notice the alternating “frantic”/”resigned” rhythmic patterns). Hear the tensions! This, then, is the caliper, the frantic diameter measurement-makings of all his life experience to try to ascertain the knowledge of peace, meaning, fulfillment.

And lo! He finds some ephemeral bit of that fleeting notion, as we hear the melodic line enter. But the scraping doesn’t stop, because true peace is for him unattainable, trapped in the Heideggerian nothing, unable to feel this life of peace beyond his anxiety and isolation. Isolation, no doubt, brought on by his very desire to ascertain the exact diameters of something for which there is no caliper: the best things in life, at least the ones so conspicuously absent from his, are unquantifiable. And so it goes, this scraping, now frantic, now resigned, to find that remote peace, soothing psychological balm in which he would rest.

Notice the brevity of the piece (1:40), signifying not only the brevity of life but also the brevity of toil that can be sustained in this vain effort to measure peace and so somehow ascertain it: his strength tires, and, defeated, he stops scraping. Note well that the last note, just before the silence, is one of soothing melody and nothing further—and so now we see why the toil, why the angst-ridden one scrapes so! It is because even only for an instant, after he gives up, the soothing melody of peace comes and leaves echoes into the anxious silence of his isolation. So then, has he succeeded in defying what we have said before? Has he attained this peace, if only for an instant, simply by measuring it? Or was it all an illusion, the product of a disordered mind, calmed like the extreme obsessive-compulsive only in the act of scraping? Perhaps both.

Now you know why I prefer the essay question.

http://www.eyesofnye.org/

Wired News has an article about Bill Nye’s latest television series, this time directed at adults.

If you’re a child of the ’80s and went to public school, you’ll probably remember having watched “Bill Nye the Science Guy” at some point during your education. I certainly do. He was one of many people that fueled the fire for my exploration of the world, and helped me remember that science was fun.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a scientist. More specifically, I wanted to be a chemist: on “Career Day” in first grade, I turned a friend’s white Harris Teeter smock* inside out and voilà!—instant labcoat. Add a pair of glasses with the lenses knocked out, and I’m a regular geek-in-training at age six. I was going to cure AIDS, cure cancer, and build bigger bombs than anybody before (hey, I was six).

Science was fun. It was for the pursuit of scientific knowledge that I wanted to go to school until my motives began to change near the end of high school. Bill Nye was one of those guys whom I really looked up to in those formative years, and enjoyed even when (I thought) I’d outgrown his kids’ show. I’m glad to see he’s back, and hasn’t lost his sense of humor.

Anybody else remember this guy? (Anonymous comments now re-enabled!)

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* He was about forty at the time; I’ve always kept company with the older crowd!

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/visuren.html#floats

Part 9.5 of the Visual Formatting Model in Cascading Style Sheets spec 2.1 published by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) lays out how to replace the deprecated “align=“____'’” models with CSS “float” specifications on images.

Basically, that’s how I learned real quick tonight how to make text flow around the images in my last post, and thought it was probably most beneficial if I were to post a link to it. It’s a great deal easier than it looks, I’m delighted to report!

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/berkeley.html

In the twenty-second section of his 1710 essay A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Irish Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753—pronounced “BAR-klee” despite the spelling) begins,

I am afraid I have given cause to think I am needlessly prolix in handling this subject. For, to what purpose is it to dilate on that which may be demonstrated with the utmost evidence in a line or two, to any one that is capable of the least reflexion?

This, friends, is a wonderful thing that I may echo to you all from this online journal. I have been accused of being “needlessly prolix” myself, usually phrased in such a way as to say I am “long-winded” but acceptably benign in my general demeanor; and so, after a fashion, worth hearing every once in a while.

You see, I’ve been thinking for several weeks now about certain things I was going to write about. They all seem to focus around a central theme, though; and so, however much I may be tempted to write about them separately for the gratuity of greater self-expression, I’ll explain here, and as briefly as possible.

What friendship looks like, §1

I was in Clemson a few weeks ago with some of my old, dear friends, and as we were sitting there in this pizza place, we were discussing all sorts of things. It ended up, as I was sitting there partaking of a nice cigar, having just finished a few slices of Sicilian pie, that one of my friends and I were discussing ethics and, among other things, whether pornography is art, or whether art could be classified as pornographic, and so on.

As the discussion continued on, it struck me that there was something so warm and inviting about this conversation, about this atmosphere, and it had nothing to do with the food. It only occurred to me later in the weekend (this was a Friday) what the specific element was here: it really felt like I had something to add to the discussion.

Now, Walter, being the good ENFP that he is, is a charmer through and through. He’s socially intelligent, and he knows how to sell you on yourself: he’ll put ideas in your head and make you think you thought of them. That’s okay, because he uses his powers for good (and I like to think I do, too!;)). But this didn’t feel like one of those times. Though we disagreed, there was a respect here between Walter and myself; there was a genuineness that begged for the other person to speak their mind. This, in turn, cultivated the reciprocal, which is that when the other wanted to speak, we really, truly wanted to listen. [Incidentally, this was the note that I promised to expound on in my post “I’m Wardriving.”]

Let us leave that scene for a moment, then, but hold that in your mind.

What friendship looks like, §2

I met up with another few friends a couple of weeks after the aforementioned Clemson outing. Among them was a friend I’d known since we were both somewhere around twelve or thirteen years of age. He’s one of those people who is a master in much more than his chosen field. We were talking that night about all sorts of things: he’d been offered a job in Idaho, which is bittersweet; I was dealing with things going on down in Columbia, which is also bittersweet; and so on. But hereagain, there was this sense as I was talking with him that he genuinely wanted to know what I had to say, about all sorts of things. And, indeed, vice-versa.

We very quickly reached a point like Walter and I had a few weeks before, as we always do. I told him I admired his ability to so converse as to make the person feel so at-ease, so interesting.

“You can do it, too,” he said; “You just have to suspend disbelief.” It struck me, that’s a part of it. He and I have different worldviews about many varied and sundry things; and while it is true that we’ve always connected as friends in profound ways (e.g., when we were freshmen in high school, we found and read parts of Beowulf from my mother’s college English literature class—fellow geeks through and through!), he and I have had lively discussions about all sorts of things. And that’s it: when we talk, we both (I, to my shame, much less successfully so in latter times) suspend disbelief at what the other has to say.

I used to be such a nice guy

Mulling all this over for several weeks, having “stored these things up in [my] heart,” as it were, I realize what sorry habits I’ve been cultivating. I have gotten carried away in discussions that have turned into debates. You may partially investigate the evidence at the Forums, in fact.

I have described myself on various “networking” sites as an “avocational Christian apologist,” and that I am. But I think in sharpening the blades of reason in my own mind and in training for mental rigor, I have neglected the grace of “suspending disbelief,” and have thus lost some of that simple friendship with some people, I believe, because not all are as patient as Daniel with such choleric, “Type A” rational combatants.

Like hugging a Shrike

To borrow an illustration from Dan Simmons’ Hyperion, nobody really wants to hug a Shrike. (Throughout the series, of which Hyperion is the first novel, there is a kind of daemon of war that is feared above all else, a being composed of razor-sharp blades, &c. [Now now, suspend disbelief for a moment!] He is masterful at killing, quickly and expediently; but not at much else.)

The central tenet of Christianity is love exemplified, faith lived from love and toward love; not hewing asunder all logical fallacies committed against the Word so as to stand above all one’s intellectual adversaries. Sometimes I have forgotten this, and have become like a Shrike in some of my friendships, bemoaning the fact that no one will listen to me, or if they do, that they will not extend the hand of kindness.

This is my own doing! David was a warrior, aye, but he was also a sensitive man, not given to glorying in his victories or committing the vice of excess reveling in victories. I would do well to take heed of his example, and I am just coming to realize this.

Quid pro quo: Being heard follows listening

Maybe Berkeley was so wrong it was ridiculous; maybe his contemporaries couldn’t stand how long winded he was; but he deserved to have someone suspend disbelief. He asked patience above all else with his readers, patience just to hear him out.

That’s what I’ve been looking for in my relationships, and what I’ve been slowly losing over the past couple of years to a growing spirit of competition. Here’s to regaining that meekness and grace that I’ve been missing out on, with which I’ve been pushing away friends, girlfriends, parents, and perhaps even you, gentle readers.

Even now, you may think me prolix in my exposition. But I ask of you patience to read this blog, if you wish, and with the spirit of knowing that I, too, am listening.