Friday, August 31, 2007
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's address at the 1978 harvard afternoon exercises. Saving for future reference regarding the downfall of the west.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
I had always thought that geek humor was the monopoly of scientists (e.g., physicists, mathematicians, computer, etc.) and the wacky consequences of geek hobbies like sci-fi (e.g., star wars kid and Cthulhu plush toys) were constrained so as to protect society. However recently I've found avidence every genre has its own version of "geek". While visiting my medieval history proff I discovered he owns a Pope Innocent III action figure. It was something that I might expect to see in the clutches of a star trek fan had it been of Spock instead of arguably the "greatest" medieval Pope. (The latin reads: Son of Hohenstaufen, kiss my ass - go look up Innocent in Wikipedia to get the joke). Then while reading Neil Gaiman's clever blog, I came across a link to this animation of the Bayeaux tapestry. It's good to know I'll never get to escape being a "geek" no matter what I choose to do with my life.
I cleaned the office today and I'm ashamed to admit it's the first time I've really done so in the two-plus years I've lived here. I discovered numerous spots on my window introduced in clusters by my feline looking intently at birds outside, as well as dust bunnies the size of real rabbits. I can see my desk top now and I replaced the keyboard. The old one was just beyond washing. It was also while cleaning that I noticed the book count has grown 30% in two years. That's mildly disturbing. Let's hope it's not exponential growth.
I cleaned the office today and I'm ashamed to admit it's the first time I've really done so in the two-plus years I've lived here. I discovered numerous spots on my window introduced in clusters by my feline looking intently at birds outside, as well as dust bunnies the size of real rabbits. I can see my desk top now and I replaced the keyboard. The old one was just beyond washing. It was also while cleaning that I noticed the book count has grown 30% in two years. That's mildly disturbing. Let's hope it's not exponential growth.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Are we Rome? Are we doomed?
I find that when traveling to Europe, and even Asia at times, a frequent topic of conversation tends to revolve around the infrastructural progress the rest of the world seems to be making that we are not. Our roadways are illogical and often ill-conceived, our cell phone infrastructure is a bear to deal with and the newer technologies take us longer to decide upon and adopt. I ran across this article in FT where the US comptroller warns about going the way of Rome. While I'm generally allergic to such broad generalizations it's an interesting new trend of thought and I can see some parallels in the decline of Rome and America such as the over-bearing stresses of maintaining a vast infrastructure and control center. Our military forces are taxed and we are increasingly becoming non-homogenized in our culture.
After reading more about the idea of the origins of Holy War over the past few weeks in the context of 12th century Europe, I ended up in a mind-tangent that society is only cohesive if there is a commonality behind which it can rally. For medieval Europe it was being Christian and this formed the "dominant culture". Any challenge to it was seen as a tug at its cohesiveness. For America it's the complex tradition of freedom and the culture that sprung up to support the cohesive nature of it (e.g., learning english, joining the military, becoming "American"). Let's call this Americanism. America has always had to be somewhat heterogeneous as a culture with influences coming in from all parts of the world (although I would argue against the notion we were ever a melting pot), but in a way the incoming cultures intended and had to mix and alter to support the ideal of Americanism. I think there is now a trend coming with immigration where we're seeing immigrants bringing the dominant culture (as opposed to morphing themselves into it) and people are afraid it's tugging at our sense of cohesiveness. It's a lot like the "barbarian invasions" in the late days of the Roman Empire. Are we "losing" Americanism the way the Romans lost Romanism? If society requires a commonality and our only commonality is Americanism, what impact would the loss of Americanism have on us as a unified nation?
Cullen Murphy has written a book on the subject titled Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America. I haven't read Mr Murphy's work so I'm unaware how it relates to the opinions of the US comptroller or a sense of losing Americanism. It is now on my todo list.
After reading more about the idea of the origins of Holy War over the past few weeks in the context of 12th century Europe, I ended up in a mind-tangent that society is only cohesive if there is a commonality behind which it can rally. For medieval Europe it was being Christian and this formed the "dominant culture". Any challenge to it was seen as a tug at its cohesiveness. For America it's the complex tradition of freedom and the culture that sprung up to support the cohesive nature of it (e.g., learning english, joining the military, becoming "American"). Let's call this Americanism. America has always had to be somewhat heterogeneous as a culture with influences coming in from all parts of the world (although I would argue against the notion we were ever a melting pot), but in a way the incoming cultures intended and had to mix and alter to support the ideal of Americanism. I think there is now a trend coming with immigration where we're seeing immigrants bringing the dominant culture (as opposed to morphing themselves into it) and people are afraid it's tugging at our sense of cohesiveness. It's a lot like the "barbarian invasions" in the late days of the Roman Empire. Are we "losing" Americanism the way the Romans lost Romanism? If society requires a commonality and our only commonality is Americanism, what impact would the loss of Americanism have on us as a unified nation?
Cullen Murphy has written a book on the subject titled Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America. I haven't read Mr Murphy's work so I'm unaware how it relates to the opinions of the US comptroller or a sense of losing Americanism. It is now on my todo list.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Really... how many attractive normal-looking blondes go to Defcon? I like how she threw on some black and didn't wear makeup so she could blend-in.
undercover dateline reporter flees Defcon. This is the funniest Defcon footage I've ever witnessed.
undercover dateline reporter flees Defcon. This is the funniest Defcon footage I've ever witnessed.
Books!
While we were in London on our second leg, and suffering from colds, we took a trip to the British Library. Having never been there I wasn't sure what to expect. The Library is well known for its collection of things old and lovely. The Lindisfarne Gospels have found a home here as well as the Magna Carta.
The exhibit I wanted to see is called Sacred. I would make an argument that it is one of the most significant displays of sacred texts ever put on. On display were early Jewish, Islamic and Christian texts. They borrowed some of the Chester Beatty Papyrus scrolls which contain the earliest copies of the letters of St Paul and Revelations in their original greek. The rest is in the CB Museum in Dublin. I've seen these and they're most impressive! They had 6th century Qu'rans, books from the collection at St Catherine's at Mt Sinai (which is the second largest collection in the world), bits of the Codex Sinaiticus, and you get the point... many significant pieces.
They had two rather interesting pieces [to me] that had nothing to do with the above. :)
Firstly, they had a copy of Gratian's Decretum ca. 1350. Gratian took on the task of removing "discord" in the church's laws by looking at the entire body of decisions, laws, rules and scripture, and providing solutions to seemingly intractable contradictions. It was a revolution of sorts and the church used this until 1917. What's amazing about these medieval manuscripts is that the text was written in the center of the page, leaving room for scholarly commentary by men who were masters at the law. The result is not only beautiful but very useful to students (contemporary and medieval) wishing to learn the intricacies of various legal interpretations by the great minds of the time. Here is an example of glossa ordinaria which you could think of as "standard commentary" that is automatically included in the creation of the document:
And here is an older version of Gratian's Decretum with notes scribbled by the Master directly onto the "gloss" of the page. These interlinear notes might have been used in the glossa ordinaria for later volumes:
It was interesting for two reasons. A) I'd never seen something like this in person before and the placement of the text on the page is fascinating. B) In an antiquarian bookshop in London, I ran across a copy of the Corpus Juris Canonici (the volume was printed in 1617, 36 years after it was first compiled), a compilation of 6 texts of church law with the first being Gratian's Decretum. It was beautiful. :)
The second item in the BL display I found most interesting was the Walton Polyglot Bible (ca. 1654). This is a representation of the bible text with multiple languages side-by-side. It contains nine different languages (although not all 9 are represented for every text): Hebrew, Greek, Samaritan, Aramaic, Lain, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic and Persian. Polyglot bibles aren't exactly rare or interesting; even I own a greek/latin new testament. No, what made this interesting was that the book would show the same verse in Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, etc... but show different Latin translations for each language. Here is an example:
The exhibit I wanted to see is called Sacred. I would make an argument that it is one of the most significant displays of sacred texts ever put on. On display were early Jewish, Islamic and Christian texts. They borrowed some of the Chester Beatty Papyrus scrolls which contain the earliest copies of the letters of St Paul and Revelations in their original greek. The rest is in the CB Museum in Dublin. I've seen these and they're most impressive! They had 6th century Qu'rans, books from the collection at St Catherine's at Mt Sinai (which is the second largest collection in the world), bits of the Codex Sinaiticus, and you get the point... many significant pieces.
They had two rather interesting pieces [to me] that had nothing to do with the above. :)
Firstly, they had a copy of Gratian's Decretum ca. 1350. Gratian took on the task of removing "discord" in the church's laws by looking at the entire body of decisions, laws, rules and scripture, and providing solutions to seemingly intractable contradictions. It was a revolution of sorts and the church used this until 1917. What's amazing about these medieval manuscripts is that the text was written in the center of the page, leaving room for scholarly commentary by men who were masters at the law. The result is not only beautiful but very useful to students (contemporary and medieval) wishing to learn the intricacies of various legal interpretations by the great minds of the time. Here is an example of glossa ordinaria which you could think of as "standard commentary" that is automatically included in the creation of the document:
And here is an older version of Gratian's Decretum with notes scribbled by the Master directly onto the "gloss" of the page. These interlinear notes might have been used in the glossa ordinaria for later volumes:
It was interesting for two reasons. A) I'd never seen something like this in person before and the placement of the text on the page is fascinating. B) In an antiquarian bookshop in London, I ran across a copy of the Corpus Juris Canonici (the volume was printed in 1617, 36 years after it was first compiled), a compilation of 6 texts of church law with the first being Gratian's Decretum. It was beautiful. :)
The second item in the BL display I found most interesting was the Walton Polyglot Bible (ca. 1654). This is a representation of the bible text with multiple languages side-by-side. It contains nine different languages (although not all 9 are represented for every text): Hebrew, Greek, Samaritan, Aramaic, Lain, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic and Persian. Polyglot bibles aren't exactly rare or interesting; even I own a greek/latin new testament. No, what made this interesting was that the book would show the same verse in Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, etc... but show different Latin translations for each language. Here is an example:
Friday, August 3, 2007
Owe...
I board a plane back to SFO in 2 hours. I have a tremendously unpleasant head cold with sinus pain, aches and probably a fever. The whole shebang. In 9 minutes I'm set to take a monster decongestant, prescription of course, I don't mess around with trips to the germ-ridden island of Ireland anymore; I stock up on amazing drugs. I realize I am now one of those travelers that everyone hates, the "sick person". I am typhoid Mary. Here I am bringing this year's head cold strain into the U.S. In fact I have a new theory: Ireland is where the flu and cold mutate during the year when most of the northern hemisphere is enjoying warm months outside. It makes sense to me: the place is always cold, it's like winter; people are packed into bars constantly; there is mold everywhere in buildings which probably decreases people's immune systems; the sun never shines and people suffer from vitamin-D deficiency; the plumbing systems in public places is old and poor so rarely does anyone ever wash their hands well. Everyone seems sick, all the time. Blame Ireland.
Decongestant acquired.
Decongestant acquired.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
A few updates...
We're in London at the moment, enjoying a few days of cushy hotel resting before heading back to the states. Sam is out barhopping while I nurse the beginning of my Dublin cold. I thought I had escaped that depressing place without catching anything. However, I was sorely mistaken. I swear that island is made of cold bugs. Perhaps it's just because it always is cold.
iPhone News - I updated my iPhone today. If you have an iPhone you should update yours too. This is a security update to plug holes in Safari. Better do it before Blackhat!
The phone has been pleasant and easy to use in Europe although I'm afraid that after 3 weeks of not using the data features that I'll forget it's there once I get back to the US. I also haven't used any data (although there is an edge network in the UK that roams nicely) because of the cost. SMS seems to work ok although I have trouble with one of the Ireland providers.
In other iPhone news I finally switched my calendar syncing officially to Google's Calendar and I read it as a subscription in iCal to sync it to the Phone. It's only one-way, unfortunately, so I'll have to be diligent about updates, but it works great otherwise.
It was while putting Birthdays into Gmail tonight that I ran across Chris Portman's and in the entry, a long time ago, I'd logged the conversation we had about which day his birthday was. He is, as most know, now dead, and it's times like these that I miss him so much. I wish I had the date of this conversation, but it must have been nearly 8 years ago or so:
In memory to him, since his death, I've used my $1/day Adwords allowance as a Google employee to show an ad to a memorial page (which is down at the moment as flop.org appears to be dead). If you do a Google search for Chris Portman, you'll see it. I miss you. More than you'll ever know.
iPhone News - I updated my iPhone today. If you have an iPhone you should update yours too. This is a security update to plug holes in Safari. Better do it before Blackhat!
The phone has been pleasant and easy to use in Europe although I'm afraid that after 3 weeks of not using the data features that I'll forget it's there once I get back to the US. I also haven't used any data (although there is an edge network in the UK that roams nicely) because of the cost. SMS seems to work ok although I have trouble with one of the Ireland providers.
In other iPhone news I finally switched my calendar syncing officially to Google's Calendar and I read it as a subscription in iCal to sync it to the Phone. It's only one-way, unfortunately, so I'll have to be diligent about updates, but it works great otherwise.
It was while putting Birthdays into Gmail tonight that I ran across Chris Portman's and in the entry, a long time ago, I'd logged the conversation we had about which day his birthday was. He is, as most know, now dead, and it's times like these that I miss him so much. I wish I had the date of this conversation, but it must have been nearly 8 years ago or so:
chrisaudo (12:28:59 AM): 01/26/80
chrisaudo (12:29:05 AM): there
chrisaudo (12:29:07 AM): i tell noone that
chrisaudo (12:29:08 AM): so
chrisaudo (12:29:09 AM): bgood
In memory to him, since his death, I've used my $1/day Adwords allowance as a Google employee to show an ad to a memorial page (which is down at the moment as flop.org appears to be dead). If you do a Google search for Chris Portman, you'll see it. I miss you. More than you'll ever know.
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