February 2012
2 posts
January 2012
14 posts
Birthday Benchmark #2
2:06:35 Half-marathon/13.1 miles around Town Lake.
Longest distance in last 2 years: 5.5 miles.
Legs were definitely full of lead by mile 11, but I was not winded at all. I attribute that to CrossFit.
Next birthday: 13.1 under two hours. Maybe 1:30?
1 tag
The fact of the incarnation means we can't stop at...
Water is made of oxygen and hydrogen. What is a oxygen atom made of? Not oxygen, but of smaller particles, like protons and electrons. And what are they made of? Mostly space. In a lecture I just watched, Brian Cox gave a figure for how empty an atom is. It is 99.9999999999999% space. And what is that remaining 0.000000000000001% non-space made of? Nothing that we would call hard, or material. It...
Just finish
In my observation, it’s not whether one gives “110%,” it’s whether one actually gives 100%. Everyone usually gives 80%. The difference is that most feel good about that 80% and call it a day. Folks who actually get things done complete the final 20%. And it’s often the final 20% that is the least interesting or most grueling part of the work. Corporately, you see it...
“For nothing maketh man so foolish as wickedness; since when a man is...”
– Homilies of the Gospel of St. John, St. John Chrysostom
December 2011
2 posts
November 2011
7 posts
So comes November
Early darkness covers up
The clock sprints away
merlin:
“Gyururururururu…”
Hey, are you looking for the Perry the Platypus noise as a ringtone?
Yes, yes you are.
Perry Noise [m4r]
Perry Noise [mp3]
Oh! There you are, Perry.
October 2011
14 posts
The phenomena of Ontological Emergence
Reality is not flat. Reality is stratified. It exists and operates on many levels, each of which is governed by structures, processes, and tendencies appropriate to its own level… . the operation of phenomena at one level of reality often gives rise to new entities and operations at higher levels. What emerges above is fully dependent upon that from which it emerged below. But the emergent...
more than you can see, obviously
Reality has a deep dimension often operating below the surface of empirical experience. To think otherwise is to commit what critical realists call the “epistemic fallacy,” namely, to reduce what is to what we can empirically observe. That is a debilitating move.… I follow the critical realist lead in conceptualizing the real primarily, though not exclusively, according to a causal...
What Is A Person?
… .the case I will develop is resolutely realist ontologically, antireductionistic methodologically, and antifoundationalist epistemologically. It is naturally bent toward opposing naturalism, positivism, and scientistic empiricism. But it is also hostile to strong versions of constructivism, idealism, postmodernism and relativism… . a reality exists independently of our consciousness of it,...
Don’t confuse your Lifestyle Enclave for an Authentic Community.
(listening to Mars Hill Audio, vol. 108, no. 6)
“What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin, and crack have in common is that...”
– Paul Graham, The Acceleration of Addictiveness
That explains it
The System is the Theodicy of the Postmodern Age.
This body has meaning.
I wonder if the proliferation of tattoos is a subconscious cultural response against the strong current of Gnosticism in modernity and postmodernity.
“as I make the depressing rounds of publishers, I often think my dissertation...”
– http://m.designobserver.com/observersroom/alexandralange/post/thinking-in-tumblr/30088/
Reductio ad scientia
Technology is instantiated knowledge.
Belief that knowledge is the path to salvation is Gnosticism.
Modernity and postmodernity’s faith in Technology is the same old old old Gnosticism.
(Which, you will recall, goes even back to the choice, “know good and evil,” over relational trust.)
homousious
It makes a difference if you think Jesus had a perfect humanity vs him having a perfected humanity.
My money is on the latter.
September 2011
30 posts
3 tags
A Sign of Things To Come
John the Evangelist was into semiotics before it was cool.
“The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined...”
– From the essay, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” by Friedrich A. Hayek.
I believe that this is exactly correct, and why any kind of Totalitarian Government, Communist, Socialist or Fascist, is doomed to fail. And why I so rail against The State.
Private Robot Armies
The extension & projection of human power via suddenly ubiquitous and accesible robots.
First comes the high-tech arms race with China, Israel and all the other nations competing to build their own drones. Then comes the low-cost trickledown into low-tech wars like Libya’s, where tomorrow’s rag-tag militias fight with DIY drones. Finally, if robots are simply computers with wings (and...
