Personal

  • Phillies lost World Series.

My Thoughts

  • Jonah con­trasts with Noah: both heard God’s voice. Noah obeyed, Jonah dis­obeyed. Noah’s preach­ing was ig­nored, Jonah’s preach­ing was heeded. Ark pre­served Noah, fish pre­served Jonah. Noah lands on a moun­tain, Jonah lands on a beach.
  • Jonah is the prodi­gal son’s older brother.
  • Saying God is throw­ing a fit when he pun­ishes sin is like if I built an ob­sta­cle course for my daugh­ters with a bar­rier to rope climb over, my daugh­ter runs up to it and bangs her head re­peat­edly on it, and you say, “Brian is such a jerk for build­ing this ob­sta­cle course!”
  • I am a dab­bler.
  • The Dapper Dabbler would be a great Silver Age Batman vil­lain.
  • On hell, in re­sponse to Preston Sprinkle
    • After Irenaeus (1st cen­tury), Ignatius (2nd cen­tury), and Athanasius (3rd cen­tury), why are there no pro­po­nents of an­ni­hi­la­tion­ism un­til the Millerites (from whom the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventists split)?
    • The crux of eter­nal con­scious tor­ment vs an­ni­hil­i­a­tion­ism is are souls eter­nal. Immortal souls is ap­par­ently out of fa­vor (even for Thomists and Neoplatonists?)
    • “Eternal does­n’t al­ways mean for­ever”; same goes for heaven?
    • Punishment is nev­erend­ing but not the act of pun­ish­ing - rea­son­able point
    • For all OT ar­gu­ments: the Jews had no con­cept of res­ur­rec­tion un­til af­ter the OT. You can’t use the OT to ar­gue for or against.
    • The Devil is tor­mented for­ever, but maybe not the wicked - why would the Devil be eter­nal if souls are not?
  • Napoleon play­ing 3D chess: Russian army pur­sued him through Europe, re­al­ized Russia was be­hind Europe, plant­ing seeds of rev­o­lu­tion.
  • Gattaca: hu­mans can push past log­i­cal lim­its
  • Thinking me­dieval painters were poor artists be­cause their art was un­re­al­is­tic is like think­ing the Simpsons an­i­ma­tors are poor artists be­cause peo­ple don’t re­ally have four fin­gers per hand and yel­low skin.
  • Time man­age­ment is a zero-sum game (you can’t get more time).

Writing, Links, Podcasts

November 2022 Summary

Brian

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Notes

  • Bishop Barron, “Called Into the Depths” ser­mon
    • Sea is sym­bol of chaos (tohu wa bohu, Flood, Red Sea, Jordan, Job, Noah, Sea of Galilee)
    • Notre Dame looks like a ship: on an is­land in a river, fly­ing but­tresses like oars. Nave = ship.
    • Through our con­nec­tion to God, we are con­nected to all cre­ation. The Church is the ship/​ark we sail through chaos.
    • Field of Dreams is Noah retelling.
    • Build an ark, build the church. When the ark lands, open and let out the life.
    • Noah is about spir­i­tual sur­vival. Jonah is about spir­i­tual mis­sion.
    • Moby Dick is the great American novel.
  • Literary Life pod­cast, Dracula episodes
    • Monsters are from pre-his­tory and must be de­feated be­fore civ­i­liza­tion starts. Monsters are soli­tary.
    • Enlightenment re­acted against me­dieval su­per­sti­tion. Gothic nov­els re­acted against Enlightenment, me­dieval sen­si­bil­ity.
    • Derrida de­con­structed lan­guage: words do not have in­her­ent mean­ing.
    • Through me­dieval pe­riod, mon­sters are Cain/sin/Satan. Modern psy­chol­ogy made them the Other: trau­ma­tized hu­mans.
    • Magnanimous - magna an­ima = big soul, great mind
    • Pusillanimous - pusil an­ima = small soul
    • God is not in a snit; the Flood and Jonah’s storm are spir­i­tual physics. Fighting your mis­sion/​sin brings storms.
    • God through the fish swal­lows Jonah’s will (constrains) that Jonah’s will would be turned to God’s - like Moses in the wilder­ness, David, Paul.
    • Becomes great­est preacher of re­pen­tance ever.
    • Disciples in boat (church). Jesus is asleep (gives peace in storms).
  • ECMAScript 2022
    • sta­tic/​pri­vate (#private field)
    • RegExp match in­dices
    • Top-level await
    • Object.hasOwn()
    • .at() (indexing, in­clud­ing neg­a­tive in­dex­ing)
    • Static ini­tial­iza­tion blocks
    • Error.cause
  • Ben De Bono
    • Not all ob­jec­tive truth can be re­duced to math. Moby Dick is ob­jec­tively bet­ter art than Jupiter Ascending.
    • When ex­cer­cis­ing, you can push past your lim­its to eu­pho­ria.
    • Time man­age­ment: un­lim­ited to do, lim­ited time. Every time you do some­thing, you’re not do­ing some­thing else (fixed amount of time).
    • Limits are pos­i­tive be­cause they let you ex­press value: no lim­its means no val­ues.
    • Butlerian Manifesto
        1. If tech­nol­ogy pro­gresses faster than hu­man­ity, we need to slow it.
        1. We need to re­de­fine progress as “increases hu­man flour­ish­ing”.
        1. We seek an abun­dance of life, not an ex­ten­sion.
        1. If we reach a point where the choice is all or noth­ing, we must choose noth­ing.
  • Doug Wilson
    • When the Constitution was rat­i­fied, 9 of the 13 states had an of­fi­cial de­nom­i­na­tional af­fil­i­a­tion.
    • On the same day Congress fi­nal­ized the first amend­ment, they pro­claimed a na­tional day of thanks­giv­ing and prayer.
    • 1892 “Church of Holy Trinity v United States” - Supreme Court: “These, and many other mat­ters which might be no­ticed, add a vol­ume of un­of­fi­cial de­c­la­ra­tions to the mass of or­ganic ut­ter­ances that this is a Christian Nation.” Cited state con­sti­tu­tions, Declaration of Independence, Constitution, course cases.
  • Angelina Stanford
    • Tolkien and Lewis stopped talk­ing lit­er­ary the­ory in ab­stract and started writ­ing sto­ries. 1st gen. Inkling schol­ars fo­cused on apolo­get­ics, 2nd on fic­tions. No one (except Angelina) is study­ing their lit­er­ary the­ory.
    • T. S. Eliot de­clined to pub­lish a C. S. Lewis ar­ti­cle on his neo-Aris­totelian lit­er­ary the­ory in his mag­a­zine.
  • Preston Sprinkle: of all the pas­sages for Origen to read lit­er­ally, he read lit­er­ally the pas­sage in Matthew about be­com­ing a eu­nuch for the king­dom.
  • Seth Studer: Eastern Orthodox church ven­er­ates icons be­cause of the in­car­na­tion. It’s not wor­ship, it’s re­spect, like the Japanese bow­ing to their el­ders.
  • “Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading”, fun Charles Lamb es­say
  • Sam Holbrook, who um­pired in the 2022 World Series, played for Cindy Rollins’s dad.
  • About 50 years af­ter Shakespeare’s death, women started play­ing the wom­en’s parts. Susanna Mountfort leg­en­dar­ily went mad af­ter a love af­fair ended, es­caped her keep­ers and lept onto a stage per­for­mance of “Hamlet”, play­ing Ophelia spec­tac­u­larly.
  • Thomas Betterton was the pre­mier ac­tor-man­ager of his day. Played Hamlet to great ac­claim. Knocked over his chair when see­ing the ghost in the queen’s cham­ber, mak­ing that the stan­dard (although it may go back fur­ther: his men­tor saw the per­for­mance of the suc­ces­sor of Richard Burbage, the first Hamlet).
  • Siege Perilous was the empty seat at the Round Table re­served for the knight who found the Holy Grail
  • Mare Nostrum was the Roman name for the Mediterranean Sea (Lat. our sea)
  • Lockhart’s Lament: “Mathematics is the art of ex­pla­na­tion.”
  • How to beat a knight: flood the plain (Flanders), traps, pikes, hal­berds
  • Trebuchets and can­nons were named, like ships. Why are tanks and air­planes not named?
  • First can­non­balls were stone, rounded by hand.
  • St. Petersburg was an ar­ti­fi­cial city. Peter I turned a swamp into the cap­i­tal of Russia. Built canals not re­al­iz­ing they would freeze over in win­ter.
  • The term “ghost buster” pre­cedes the movie: a 1952 short film in­vented the term (off of “gang buster”).

Quotes

  • “When did the tool be­come a god?” –Martin Shaw, via Ben De Bono
  • “It should cost you some­thing to en­counter God.” –Ben De Bono
  • “Machines will be ca­pa­ble, within twenty years, of do­ing any work a man can do.” –Herbert Simon, AI pi­o­neer, 1965

Words

  • Bathos: the art of po­etic sink­ing, lu­di­crous de­scent from the el­e­vated to the low, an­ti­cli­max
  • Dabble: play in wa­ter, do any thing in a slight or su­per­fi­cial man­ner, tam­per (Heb. dip)
  • Farrier: smith who shoes horses
  • Fettle: or­der, re­pair (fine fet­tle = good spir­its)
  • Fluvial: be­long­ing to rivers
  • Lethe: obliv­ion, a draught of obliv­ion
  • Parasol: small ladies um­brella for rain or sun (Lat. sol: sun)
  • Umbrella: shade, car­ried by hand to shel­ter the per­son from sun, rain, or snow (Lat. um­bra: shade, shadow)