Page of Moss - bloglet for Saturday 15 June 2002

Grr. Argh. _
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02:30:09 AM, Saturday 15 June 2002

Xander: What he lacks in smarts he makes up in lack of smarts.
Willow: You just don't like him because of that time he beat you up every day for five years. _
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01:56:53 AM, Saturday 15 June 2002

I don't want to want a Mac. _
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07:32:53 PM, Friday 14 June 2002

I love debugging. _
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03:25:35 PM, Friday 14 June 2002

I was pleased to discover someone else who noticed the similarity between Tolstoy's calculus of history and Asimov's psychohistory. And to think, I'd just been looking for an Animal House quote! _
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11:01:36 PM, Thursday 13 June 2002

I'm worried that my unit tests are being too rigorous. Sure, I'd like to test all the functionality; on the other hand, if leaving out a few tests makes it considerably easier to manipulate a class, and the tests are for things I know I can keep track of myself, maybe it's best to leave them out. _
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11:35:29 PM, Wednesday 12 June 2002

Make large, sweeping statements that you will have to retract later. _
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08:01:07 PM, Wednesday 12 June 2002

Yum. _
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12:55:21 PM, Wednesday 12 June 2002

Nobody ever disliked something just 'cause it was offensive. _
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11:58:08 AM, Wednesday 12 June 2002

I was blogging mostly about Wobble. Now I'm blogging mostly about God. I think God wants me to finish writing Wobble. _
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11:08:33 PM, Tuesday 11 June 2002

I suppose, by any reasonable definition, I'm also an agnostic. _
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11:08:06 PM, Tuesday 11 June 2002

Objectively real but imperfectly knowable. There should be a word for it. _
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10:35:57 PM, Tuesday 11 June 2002

I'll willingly agree that they are; I just don't think they're something that applies to reality as such. Similarly, a nose is a real thing, but God has no nose. _
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10:31:36 PM, Tuesday 11 June 2002

More and more, having a state just doesn't seem like it's worth the risk. But I suppose that's a bit of an illusion, unless there's something better we could set up in its place. _
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06:53:04 PM, Tuesday 11 June 2002

The hell? Why would it post that last entry nine times? Stupid bloglet. _
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04:44:27 PM, Tuesday 11 June 2002

It very much looks like this is going to be the ren faire to go to this year. RPFN was wonderful, but when it's off in fucking South America somewhere it's really not worth the > 3 hour drive. The Heart of the Forest faire may not be the same organization as the RPF, but what with having been founded by the Pattersons, it's got about as good a claim to continuity with the original one. Besides, it's in Novato, and the location looks like it may compare to the tragically lost Black Point site (now a fucking golf course. _
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04:42:16 PM, Tuesday 11 June 2002

I can't believe I just called the octothorpe a "pound". _
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03:39:59 PM, Tuesday 11 June 2002

Answers to old questions. _
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12:19:28 PM, Tuesday 11 June 2002

Googling for "hippos are mammals" makes me happy because of the blogmass connection, of course. But the last item in the search also makes me very happy. _
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03:13:05 AM, Tuesday 11 June 2002

A series of action movies, each based on one of the forms of government described in Plato's Republic. _
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07:26:20 PM, Monday 10 June 2002

BLT is now available in RSS format. This is largely for my own convenience, but if anyone else out there reads the bloglets and uses an RSS news aggregator (Mike, are you still using one?), you might also find it handy. I also added a <link> tag to the main blt page, so it supports autodiscovery.

I've just recently started using an RSS aggregator, largely because Les Orchard's outline template for AmphetaDesk made it much more usable. It lets you view channels as collapsable outlines, which gets rid of a lot of the visual clutter that I'd had trouble with before. _
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04:25:04 PM, Monday 10 June 2002

I still don't see what's wrong with treason, as such. _
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03:01:55 AM, Monday 10 June 2002

More importantly, South Park Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. _
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02:36:38 AM, Monday 10 June 2002

South Park Me. _
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02:22:51 AM, Monday 10 June 2002

Aha! _
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02:00:04 AM, Monday 10 June 2002

Pride is still a sin, whatever people say. _
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12:37:59 AM, Monday 10 June 2002

You little punks think you own this town. _
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12:26:25 AM, Monday 10 June 2002

Hmm... okay, maybe Pope isn't entirely without merit. _
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04:00:10 PM, Saturday 8 June 2002

Reasons SomeoneLikesYou.com is maddening:
1) The most obvious thing to do, if you get an email from them, is to list everyone you know in the effort to figure out who sent it. But that would be wrong, because if it was one of them, they'd get an email back confirming that you liked them, which might... er... give the wrong impression (after all, one doesn't send anonymous emails about mere friendship). Besides which, then all your friends would also be stuck with those maddening emails.
2) Of course, if you do get an email, there's a fair chance that it has come from someone doing The Most Obvious Thing, so responding to it would just lead to massive confusion.
3) They give you clues about who it would be, but to get them, you have to keep feeding in more email addresses. And they don't help, anyway.
4) Jesus, what are they going to do with all those email addresses? That was my private address! It was known only to human beings! What if I start getting spam at it?
5) Wait a minute... does anyone fitting the description given in those clues even know that email address? ::checks:: Well, if they do, I didn't give it to them, and they've never emailed me before. And that means I probably wouldn't even know their address if I were filling in addresses.
6) Look, just email me or something. _
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04:18:51 AM, Saturday 8 June 2002

'Chef', on a triple word score, for 36 points. _
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04:07:13 PM, Friday 7 June 2002

I can also understand, to some extent, why people believe in cults. But in that case, their reasons seem to be utterly without merit. The explanation for someone's belief in a cult seems more purely psychological--simply an artifact of their own mind, their own fears and desires and weaknesses. Christianity seems like it can derive from an honest--if possibly imperfect--perception of truth.

Of course, there are sometimes strong psychologoical reasons why someone would find Christianity very appealing. There are those who believe because they are afraid of hell, and those who believe because it comforts them to think that they will one day be in heaven. But the varieties of Christianity that focus most strongly on this sort of appeal are the ones that seem closest to cults themselves. _
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01:19:17 AM, Friday 7 June 2002

The rising and setting of the sun speaks as loudly to Copernicus as it does to Ptolemy. But where it speaks to Ptolemy of the turning of the heavenly spheres, it speaks to Copernicus of the turning of the Earth. _
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01:01:22 AM, Friday 7 June 2002

In the discussion on Kerne's entry 2605, Mike asks how it is that Kerne and I, as nonbelievers, nonetheless understand those who believe in God.
Would y'all mind explaining how you understand this? I'm curious because I don't think I would, if I wasn't a believer. And I don't mean that to be haughty: I bet I'd simply think it was all foolish hogwash, and have to work at being civil to believers. At least, that's how I am around members of what we now call cults. And, strictly speaking, that's how all religions start - as cults.
...
I'm particularly curious about Christianity, since a God which commands His followers to be dead to the world would seem particularly meritless to those who don't believe in Him.
This is a good question. I of course can't speak for Kerne, but I'll try to give at least the beginning of an answer for myself. I also have great difficulty thinking of the complete range of human beliefs as being a single sort of thing, so I'll consider Christianity in particular.

There is certainly a share of contempt in my attitude towards religious belief. To the extent that I can trust my own beliefs, religious beliefs must seem like a sort of madness, and there is no denying that religion in certain forms has done the world great harm. Further, religious belief is notoriously unsupported by physical evidence, so it is quite easy to dismiss it from a skeptical perspective. However, there are other forces that counter this attitude.

To begin with, of course, there is my awareness of my own fallibility. I have not heard an argument for atheism so strong that it should be convincing to any reasonable person. Therefore, if someone else, starting from different beliefs, has not come to share my own, I cannot fault them for it; I see nothing that should absolutely compel them to do so. I have come to understand that my own atheism is as much a matter of historical accident--I was raised without religion--as it is a matter of rational conviction. So, to begin with, I have tolerance for religious beliefs. This is not the same as understanding, but it is a necessary precondition. It grants me permission, as it were, to see what is appealing in religious belief.

The Christian understanding of morality contains a number of things that speak to me very strongly. First and foremost, of course, there is the emphasis on love, which I share, and which I seem to understand in a similar way. Even beyond this, though, the recognition of the universality of guilt, and the corresponding importance of forgiveness, seems to me almost manifestly true. So already, I have some sympathy for the Christian view of the world. With this in mind, I can see how some of the more mysterious Christian beliefs would feel right if I shared a Christian belief in God. (It is this sympathy for Christian moral beliefs that I was thinking of when, some months back, I considered the validity of reasoning from ought to is.)

I also have--and I believe I share this with Kerne--some awareness that there are other reasons for belief besides rational understanding. I do not have anything I consider faith. And yet, there are things that present themselves to me as clearly and manifestly to be believed, and I can imagine that one might be called to believe in God in a similar way. Inversely, I can see how, in the context of some religious training, I might experience these same feelings as faith.

So it is understandable to me that one could find oneself inclined--even compelled--to believe in God, and given that belief, the rest seems to follow naturally. _
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01:00:42 AM, Friday 7 June 2002

A very happy birthday to Mr. Martin Marks. _
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12:06:30 AM, Friday 7 June 2002

Ha! I've figured out why my xmms alarm clock wasn't working! _
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08:47:38 PM, Thursday 6 June 2002

A weblog about free online scholarly literature.
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature on the internet and making it available to readers free of charge. Removing the barriers to serious research.
[via Dive Into Mark] _
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05:14:23 PM, Thursday 6 June 2002

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