Katie tagged me with the book meme, so here goes.
1. One book that changed your life.
The Screwtape Letters
2. One book that you’ve read more than once.
The Man who was Thursday
3. One book you’d want on a desert island
The Napoleon of Notting Hill
4. One book that made you laugh.
The Decline And Fall of Practically Everyone: Or, We Blew It Real Good
5. One book that made you cry.
The Amber Spyglass
6. One book that you wish had been written.
His Dark Materials IV
7. One book that you wish had never been written.
The House of Seven Gables
8. One book you’re currently reading.
The Five Love Languages
9. One book you’ve been meaning to read.
The Confessions of St. Augustine
That's it for me. I don't know who has gotten this, so if you want it, it is yours.
Yours in Christ,
Thursday
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Thursday, August 17, 2006
The Quote Meme
Dom from bettnet has tagged anyone who wants it with the quote meme. Seeing as I didn't have anything to write about today, I will consider myself tagged.
The Directions:
Go here, to the random quotes generator, and look through random quotes until you find five that you think:
a) reflect who you are
OR
b) what you believe.
The Results:
1) "A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."
~G. K. Chesterton
2) "A room without books is like a body without a soul."
~Cicero
3) "A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on."
~Carl Sandburg
4) "All virtue is summed up in dealing justly."
~Aristotle
5) "I can resist anything but temptation."
~Oscar Wilde
I now tag Katie, Mary Liz, Claire, Antonia, and MM.
Yours in Christ,
Thursday
The Directions:
Go here, to the random quotes generator, and look through random quotes until you find five that you think:
a) reflect who you are
OR
b) what you believe.
The Results:
1) "A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author."
~G. K. Chesterton
2) "A room without books is like a body without a soul."
~Cicero
3) "A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on."
~Carl Sandburg
4) "All virtue is summed up in dealing justly."
~Aristotle
5) "I can resist anything but temptation."
~Oscar Wilde
I now tag Katie, Mary Liz, Claire, Antonia, and MM.
Yours in Christ,
Thursday
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
First Anniversary
Today is the First Anniversary of Thursday's Trifles! One year ago I decided to start blogging, and set up my free blogger account. Ironically, I was given a very nice gift today. I have been helping someone to fix his computer, and he gave me a Balvenie 50 mL sampler pack. It has a 12 year old doublewood, which has been aged first in standard oak casks, then in sherry casks; a 15 Single cask; and a 21 year old scotch that was aged mostly in oak, then spent the last few months in a port cask. There is no better way to celebrate such an auspicious occasion as with 3 fine single malts.
Thank you for sticking with my blog over this last year, and please join me in raising my glass in hope for many more to come.
Yours in Christ,
Thursday
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Spinoza: On the Infinite nature of God.
This I know, that between finite and infinite there is no comparison; so that the difference between God and the greatest and most excellent created thing is no less than the difference between God and the least created thing.
~Spinoza, Let58-P04.
No one can deny that Baruch Spinoza was a genius; a misguided genius, but a genius nonetheless. His work on Infinity was 300 years ahead of its time, though few people give him the credit he deserves.
Last semester, I took a seminar course on Spinoza’s greatest work, The Ethics. I was amazed at the complexity of the work. For those of you who have not come across it, it is all done in geometric proof form. Almost every definition, corollary, postulate, and proposition interlink to form a web that goes from the beginning of book I to the end of book V. True, he does make several slips here and there. At one point, he references a postulate that doesn’t exist; and at another, he declines to give a proof for a proposition, stating it is “self evident.” However, if something is self evident, it falls under the umbrella of a definition in Spinoza’s work, and should not be a proposition.
In the end, however, the system in flawed. There is a fundamental difference between Mathematics and Philosophy. I can make a mathematical system where 2+2=5, and make it internally consistent, much like I can make a simulation of the laws of physics after changing a few constants. The system will not be externally consistent, that is, it will not be equivalent to reality. Philosophy requires external consistency, or it is meaningless. Spinoza never proves that his initial definitions are equivalent to reality, and therefore, we do not know if the system is externally consistent.
This was not the point of this post. The last two paragraphs show that Spinoza was a misguided genius, with the emphasis on the misguided. What I wanted to write on was the absolute genius in the opening quotation. However, on considering it further, I don’t think there is anything I could add to the perfect simplicity of the statement. So, instead, I will leave you to dwell on it.
Yours in Christ,
Thursday
~Spinoza, Let58-P04.
No one can deny that Baruch Spinoza was a genius; a misguided genius, but a genius nonetheless. His work on Infinity was 300 years ahead of its time, though few people give him the credit he deserves.
Last semester, I took a seminar course on Spinoza’s greatest work, The Ethics. I was amazed at the complexity of the work. For those of you who have not come across it, it is all done in geometric proof form. Almost every definition, corollary, postulate, and proposition interlink to form a web that goes from the beginning of book I to the end of book V. True, he does make several slips here and there. At one point, he references a postulate that doesn’t exist; and at another, he declines to give a proof for a proposition, stating it is “self evident.” However, if something is self evident, it falls under the umbrella of a definition in Spinoza’s work, and should not be a proposition.
In the end, however, the system in flawed. There is a fundamental difference between Mathematics and Philosophy. I can make a mathematical system where 2+2=5, and make it internally consistent, much like I can make a simulation of the laws of physics after changing a few constants. The system will not be externally consistent, that is, it will not be equivalent to reality. Philosophy requires external consistency, or it is meaningless. Spinoza never proves that his initial definitions are equivalent to reality, and therefore, we do not know if the system is externally consistent.
This was not the point of this post. The last two paragraphs show that Spinoza was a misguided genius, with the emphasis on the misguided. What I wanted to write on was the absolute genius in the opening quotation. However, on considering it further, I don’t think there is anything I could add to the perfect simplicity of the statement. So, instead, I will leave you to dwell on it.
Yours in Christ,
Thursday
Monday, August 14, 2006
Better than Site Meter!
I love looking through my site meter. It is incredible that I can get so much information about who is visiting my blog. I just found something better. Site meter is only free if you don't want to see more than the last 100 visits. Google has a service called Analytics that offers all the features of the professional meter services, and then some. It has meters you can use to see how a change on your website affects traffic, Graphs to show which keywords are bringing the most traffic to your site, and graphs that show the "loyalty" of your visitors. It really is a great service. Sign up for it now, while they are still offering it for free. When you sign up, they ask for an invitation code, just ask them to email one to you, and you get it in less than 5 minutes.
Yours in Christ,
Thursday
Yours in Christ,
Thursday
An update on the screenplay.
As I said a couple months back, I am working on a screenplay for The Napoleon of Nottinghill. I would like to thank Katie, who put all the dialogue into script form. I am working on the direction and the narration, and maybe in a couple weeks, I will be able to post some selections.
Yours in Christ,
Thursday
Yours in Christ,
Thursday
Okay, my summer break is over. . .
I know I haven't been posting at all this summer, even though I said I would. I decided I was too busy with work and other things to give the posts the time they deserved. But, I registered for classes today, signaling the end of my break. I'm heading back to Canada on the 2nd or 3rd of September, and classes begin on the 6th. I think I have a really fun course load this semester. Just take a look at this: (click to enlarge) 
So, now I am going to try and get back into the habit of posting every day. I may miss a few days here and there, but I am hoping to get most of them. Thanks for sticking with reading this blog even when I had nothing interesting to say.
Yours in Christ,
Thursday
So, now I am going to try and get back into the habit of posting every day. I may miss a few days here and there, but I am hoping to get most of them. Thanks for sticking with reading this blog even when I had nothing interesting to say.
Yours in Christ,
Thursday
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