• I wonder if the logic of “broken windows” also applies to improving standards of dress and manner, it seems likely it might. Is this a reason dispense with the T-shirt/jeans as default dress?
• Well, it’s one of the main reasons I blog.
• To what use, one wonders?
• Yet Another Looming Crises … YALC? Let’s hope yalc doesn’t make it into the lexicon.
• Ethics and science, yet if ethics and science are both pursuit of beauty … isn’t there a connection? And there is the beauty and God connection as well.
• The bad old days … not so bad, but at least they were, you know, still actual days.
• Climate, of Nina, Nino and the PDO.
• Well, to be honest, I’m not sure I understand why she’s still “a popular search” and I wasn’t unfavorably disposed toward her candidacy.
• In which, “I thought they were in the Bible“ was said.
• A bad idea noted.
• Starting the fight.
• Book suggestions for the younger set.
• Suggested lessons from Mumbai.
• A book reviewed, not exactly liked, but the review is worth perusing.
• Good use of technology.
• Well, the first time I misread that as “treating the flu by soldering” … which makes just about as much sense.
• Can I put pedals on a treadmill? That’d make about as much sense.
• Florida native unimpressed.
• Why CGI you ask? Elephants. Trampolines. ‘Nuff said.
• In which we discover that dog (and cock) fighting is a Constitutional right.
• A book on the physics of Christianity.
• Get fixed.

I will readily admit that I don’t follow baseball very closely. I do however, cycle in fact in the past I raced and I hope/intend to return to racing in the spring. One of the most important magazines/periodicals for the cycling enthusiast is called Velonews, “A Journal for the Competitive Cyclist.” This magazine is aimed at people who aren’t at the top professional level in the sport, but are participants and not just spectators and fans. Thus most of the advertising and many of the articles are not aimed at just giving insight into the top names and events in the sport, but equipment, training, and strategy for the participant. Running magazines, I think, most often aim for a similar audience.

What I’m looking is the analogous magazine or publication for the baseball enthusiast who, as an adult, still plays the game and is a fan as well.

Any suggestions?

• I think it’s safe to say, that this is not about the nativity.
• Terror as institutional momentum.
• Discussions of global warming.
• Some thoughts for your Monday morning.
• On numbness of thought.
• Mumbai and four models for the WoT, hidden costs, their tactics, and tactics reprised,
• Cheating and the newest generation.
• Alone in the crowd.
• Premise and presupposition.
• Pictures from an exhibition.
• For Advent.
• An unusual band.
• A film.
• No?
• Atheism and belief … an interesting conversation.
• Three words I’d never thought to see together, Stalin’s Siberian Zion?
• Demand.
• Better chess.
• Loving thy neighbor.
• Tit for tat … will they play?

In reading this book, which I had intended to compare to Mr Rawls political ideas, the Pure Theory of Politics, I found another interesting idea for a short essay. This book at the outset tries to discuss some ideas of political theory which are less often discussed. Political theory, such as Rawls as well as Locke Hobbes and so on, typically discuss static ideas on politics. Rights or Justice and other such notions. Jouvenel instead wants to partially (or perhaps mostly) concentrate on the dynamic aspects of politics … the dynamics of getting and keeping political power and authority. To that end, he has an extended dialog, entitled “pseudo-Alcibiades” so named after the Alcibiades dialog by Plato featuring Socrates and Alcibiades. In the pseudo-Alcibiades, Jouvenel envisions a return dialog between Socrates and Alcibiades much later … in fact just before Alcibiades is to embark on his fateful trip to entreat the Athenian assembly to embark on their disastrous Syracuse adventure.

At any rate, I have not read the original dialog and only skimmed the latter. But … reading (and then discussing) both in detail is my intention to do so this week.

• Of Tea.
• CFS and the Christian life … a book reviewed.
• Neuron’s simulated.
• Some Thanksgiving posts, From Ms Eden, Tom Cotton, Dr Platypus, and Jim Skaggs.
• Funky deep sea squid.
• Jonestown recalled.
• Media, old and new and Mumbai.
• On the surge and Rummy?
• Language, category and SSM.
• Some christian philosophical blogging for the long weekend.
• Faith and evolution … a book discussed.
• Throw the bum out.
• The Christian carnival.
• Iraq.
• I’m not sure that’s still true.
• Outrage at the outrage.
• The FTC.
• A gift notion.
• Weirdness.

• Of small towns.
• A book on string theory recommended.
• Of recursion and intelligence.
• Men at the spa? Huh? I’ve never even had any inkling of an impulse to do such a thing … and I’d wager I don’t know anyone (male) who would. Do you?
• Links on the tide.
• I am a ROFTer..
• I begin suspect that post is, uhm, not serious.
• No. No. No no no no.
• Wow. That’s big.
• Is outrage.
• 1 in 5 … over there.
• Dummer than you thawt. So … explain the “get out the vote” thing again?
• A song … for St. Catharine the Great Martyr.
• Praise of the rail … but this ignores very the different population densities in the States vs Europe.
• On Mr Paulson’s actions.
• Of Primes and a heuristic proof, err, demonstration.
• Except of course … the Smart car doesn’t get 75 mpg.
• Scots.
• Good for bloggers?

• Budgets and the “special treat.”
• The politics and emotions, a book noted.
• Human rights and its history.
• Afghanistan, a skirmish.
• Ukraine and NATO.
• Mill examined.
• Morals and multiverse.
• Missing the whole, howto ‘splain it to your boss part.
• Debate and a man’s movement to faith.
• The effect of the CAPS key.
• Hmm, aliens again.
• Art.
• Support terror … a consequence.
• On ecumenical dialog.
• A book noted.
• Needing roots.
• Sipper.
• On principles.
• Well, duh!
• Iraq and Pakistan.

• Memory eternal … and film.
• A prayer.
• A punchlist for those being laid off.
• Considering man and the primate.
• Did you notice?
• Pakistan … quoth Richard, “It has nuclear weapons, corruption, poverty, extremism, a terrible financial situation, a government that’s just come in that’s not very strong, and it is in a location that is absolutely essential in terms of dealing with Afghanistan.” Read on.
• Uhm … OK. Not my cup of tea.
• Christ the King … which means next week is Advent in the West … how soon we forget, the East started  “Advent”, i.e., the Nativity fast, two weeks ago.
• Sex and violence?
• Some things for which thanks are given.
• The history of a (bad?) idea.
• Mr Obama proposes returning to the New Deal … after all it worked poorly the first time, right?
• Mr Holder and Mr Rich … still awaiting an apologetic from the left I guess.
• Neglect for St. Basil the Great?
• Heh, a smart-alec saint … or quoting Homer can get you killed.
• A book and a conversion.
• Crafty recycling.
• A homily on change.
• Duh.

On global warming.

1. If quarterly or monthly global mean tropospheric temperature averages (which isn’t “weather” by the way) aren’t meaningful than what is? What weather data is meaningful when talking about climate “change?”
2. Those temperatures have been trending sharply down for about 30 months or so now. How much longer before the downward trend becomes meaningful?

• Rawls and an anti-abortion argument.
• One man and a prediction.
• Some links.
• The “new” Insight dashboard … I have to say on the old Insight (and I hear on the Prius as well) the instantaneous mileage feedback’s ability to optimize one’s driving habits does as much if not more for mileage than the technology in the car.
• A collapse.
• Afghan news.
• Is outrage?
• A plug for the homeschooling crowd?
• Adult stem cells.
• The non-primacy of the desert.
• Meditation and the Christian life (here too) … ah, try hesychasm?
• More names in the protean Obama admin.
• Keep that away from the porn industry.
• Africa.
• Mr Obama on climate change … fisked.
• Teaching.
• Stupdendous stupidity.
• I think that the notion that the insurance industry has “buy in” on the “universal” healthcare … which includes a requirement that everyone must get it is clueless. What industry would not support a legal requirement requiring their services?
• Biking in a winter wonderland, how to do it.

In this recent post arguing for the converse of cogito ergo sum, two comments were elicited for which the response I felt was better promoted to a new post. Plus, of course, the ever present problem for the regular blogger is solved … that is on what to write? Two responses, not entirely unrelated by frequent commenter, the Jewish Atheist who first remarks:

Intelligent space aliens would discover i²=j²=k²=ijk=-1 but would likely have a completely different theology. Math equations are universal. Theological angel-pin-dancing calculations?

There are two problematic features of this response. The first is the (especially the first) Star Trek alien problem, that is all too often aliens are portrayed as humans in rubber suits. Their concerns, appearance, and their communications are all to often human with a small twist. JA elaborates:

People from different cultures on Earth come to the same conclusions about math. They differ on theology. This is because math is a formal system learned by humans and theology is just made up.Are you really denying that given an intelligent civilization elsewhere that they would almost certainly discover i²=j²=k²=ijk=-1? And that they would almost certainly have created thousands of their own theologies that bear only superficial resemblances to Earth’s theologies? If they had theologies at all?

This follows much the same vein. So there are really two questions at hand here. The first is how fundamentally immutable are mathematical truths and how much of our mathematical construction is human, or to coin it more poetically what parts of math are divine and what parts mortal? The second issue offered here is on the theological side. To put it bluntly, our interlocutor insists that theological ideas are “just made up” and specifically made up in a way that math (such as the Brougham bridge example noted earlier) is not. Read the rest of this entry

• The Christian carnival is up in fine fashion.
• “Creationists” duck “the debate”? Is there a debate about any sort of science of God being Creator? I hadn’t noticed.
• WIMPs in the news (WIMPs as in Weakly Interacgting Massive Particles).
• Verse.
• Abortion and the Jew.
• If you can’t get data … just use insults.
• Math jokes.
• On War and methods of confrontation. I’m curious, has any one ever seen a progressive/liberal blog discussing Clausewitz? or similar works?
• Drugs and notions of self.
• Mr Holder … first the Rich thing, now this.
• Journalism and a blind spot.
• Democracy lemons.
• California jurists.
• Speaker hacking.
• Photojournalism resources.
• Rumor.
• Goofy pranks.
• A book reviewed, Anathem.
• Just a tad overblown hyperbole, Michigan as hell-hole.
• Mr Zawahiri and his remarks.

Tom Daschle is back in the news today. Oddly enough Mr Daschle’s name is linked in my noggin with a quote probably bugged me as the most wrong thing I’ve every heard a politician utter. There was some scandal he was defending another Democratic from and he said something like,

What X did was unethical and immoral, but it was not illegal.

This to me seems to get it exactly backwards and should not be used to defend anyone’s actions. Your actions should be moral and ethical … and its always a good thing if they are also legal. But if the two are at odds, i.e., the ethical/moral and the legal are not the same, we should always choose the ethical and let the cards fall where they may regarding the legal.

• Wonderful news … with a picture.
• The part of the “really smug, err, smart” people takes one on the chin, here too. More seriously, sometime I’d like to hear a non-partisan argument why uniformed and uninterested voters being encouraged to vote is a good thing, i.e., an argument that isn’t at its root based in “so we have a better chance of winning.”
• An Aussie on the financial crisis.
• How stop piracy (hint: remove da profit).
• A book plug … and a regrettable Vonnegut quote.
• Another book.
• And another, this one a dangerous book.
• My … what is this “plug a book day?” I missed the memo.
• One wonders if our resident neighborhood racist had similar applause for “our first Hispanic AG”? And the downside.
• Money from your lawn?
• One Obama comparison refuted.
• “It is good to be well armed, it provides a useful place to attach your hands” … or something like that.
• Twaddle and the President elect.
• What does the word “Backpeddle” mean? Is it theft?
• Taiwan, or politics are ugly all over.

Cogito Ergo Sum, the famous observation of Descartes is today in modern circles thought nonsense. Centers of consciousness and awareness are increasingly found to be fuzzy. And even beyond that modern Physics has fuzzy notions of reality as well. What is real is not particles, waves, or quanta/wavicles but wave functions, complex probability amplitudes whose collapse is some magical, ahem, not-well-understood “measurement” process. So that which I perceive as “I” may be in fact something quite different. As Descartes considered, everything I perceive about my exterior world might be fiction and not trusted. But, consider for a moment that those modern researchers on mind and conscsiousness are right. That consciousness which I perceive as “I” is a fiction. That is, that the reality of that which I perceive is not to be trusted and even the focus point of consciousness that I think of as “I” is a likely fiction.

Yet what remains, as the ancient Greeks considered more solid, is the thought about which I, err, thunk. For example, that which William Hamilton famously carved with a non-real knife on a non-real Brougham Bridge, namely

i² = j = k² = ijk = -1

That! That is real. Those ideas, those notions can be transmitted, transmuted, and touched (by mind). The quaternionic algebra is a “thing.” It is real and unlike consciousness, electrons, or my perceptions is by its ontological nature … not subject to the same sorts of questions as one puts to notions of self or the world of my perceptions.

The Christian faith is based on ideas, ideas like Trinity (the relational nature of God), Sacraments, and Theosis. These ideas are in some sense, likely, more real than we are (and as well as real as the quaternion algebra above) and as Jesus demonstrated on the third day … those ideas are real in the sense that my lunch is as well.