Difficulties of modern language

Aren't names these days just getting downright unpronounceable? To say nothing of trying to spell them. For example:


And yes, Mr. Laurie is actually a brit. He puts on an American accent for House.

H/T to Just Jen.
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Contaminating the ether...

This is fascinating, and strange, and perhaps the reason that we have not been contacted by extraterrestrials since the 1950's:


From Abstruse Goose, via Strange Maps.
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Virtue can be fun!

The trick to living virtuously is to see the good in every virtuous act, even something as simple as climbing the stairs.


Crossposted at my other blog.
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Sheer genius

The Lord of the Rings as a 1940's Bogey vehicle:


Why is it that this nine-minute wonder captures more of Tolkien's mythopoesy than Peter Jackson's twelve-hour monstrosity?

Tip o' the hat to Donald McClarey.
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Random stuff - or is it?

So, I'm sort of obsessed with the motion of fluids (including liquids and gasses), and the motion of objects in fluids. I could watch a rolling stream, or milk swirling in coffee, for hours.

This is a visual of how Einstein explained this apparently random motion, known as Brownian motion:






I found this on a physics site at the University of Virginia. If you don't think this is cool, then maybe I think you're boring, too. Nyah!

And don't nobody ask why I have time to hunt down stuff like this. Just. Don't. Ask.

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Status update

As I mentioned on my other blog, I got in an argument on-line over the past week, and the truth is I've been taking it too much to heart. It's crazy how it just eats away at you, hurt and resentment and fear of being wrong.

But then today I had a job interview, during which the interviewer told me that I basically had the job. It's not a great job, and I'll wait till I actually sign the papers before I throw a party, but it's something. It's better than nothing. Whew!

The good thing is, the job won't necessarily interfere with my writing ambitions. All I need is a little self-discipline!

Heh, pray for me!
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Behold the true Jedi masters

I've been told that there are some who hate the movie, "The Men who Stare at Goats". I'd like to meet them. I'd like to know what there is to hate about this movie.

Now, I'll grant you that it's no "Casablanca". It's no "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". But it's a movie that I certainly wish George Lucas had made instead of "The Phandom Menace" and "Attack of the Clowns".

It is a journey, if not into a larger world, at least into a stranger one. "Inspired by" rather than "based on" the book of the same title by Jon Ronson, the film follows the misadventures of Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), a small town journalist trying to prove his manliness both to his wife and to himself by attempting to cover the lead-up to war in Iraq in the early 2000s. He runs into Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a putative salesman but secretly a former member of the New Earth Army.

Now, the New Earth Army was the brainchild of Lt. Col. Bill Django, who thought that the New Age movement would provide the solutions to war and conflict in the world. He sought to create a special forces unit within the U.S. Army that would be in tune with Earth and Nature and would fight battles with psychic powers rather than conventional weapons. They called themselves Jedi Warriors.

At first, Wilton is skeptical. And so was I. But the film presents everything with a perfectly straight face, leaving the viewers to follow where they will. As both the journey through Iraq and the journey through the development of the New Earth Army progresses, the lines between reality and delusion, between belief and insanity begin to blur - yet the lines between good and evil emerge with stark clarity.

I have not read the book, and I have no idea how much of the film is rooted in actual persons or events. I saw it with my dad, who served in Vietnam, and who told me, "That's the kind of [stuff] that really happened." Well, at least with regard to the availability and use of LSD and other drugs.

In short, belly-laughs were frequent, usually occasioned by questions of historical and metaphysical nature. It's the kind of humor I like best: the kind that sends you to a library to learn some more.
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Movie: Blood Money

A friend sends along this link to the film Blood Money. There's also a trailer on YouTube. It's an exposee on the abortion industry in general and on Planned Parenthood in particular. Well worth a look.

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I'm not so sure about this...

Breaking News: Catholic Deacon publishes "The Order by which People Get Into Heaven"!!

The part that makes me skeptical?

To be admitted only after review by the Screening Board (Catherine of Siena, chairwoman), the Board of Appeals (Meher Baba, chairman) and the Last Gasp Committee (Cardinal Joseph Bernadin, chairman): poets, novelists, buskers, spies, New York Yankees fans.

Yankees fans I understand, and poets. But come on, cut novelists a little slack!

Maybe my girl Kate will help me get through...
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Dilbert on moral relativism

Hat tip to Mike Flynn.


Heh heh heh. Witnesses. Heh heh heh.
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Profits not satanic?

Um, strictly speaking, true.

But there is such a thing as usury:

an unconscionable or exorbitant rate or amount of interest; specifically : interest in excess of a legal rate charged to a borrower for the use of money

And one who makes his wealth by usury ought not defend himself in this manner.

I mean, if justifying your lies and theft in a church isn't also a violation of the Second Commandment, I don't know what is!

Now, seriously, lest I be mistaken for a commie pinko, I have no problem with a profit motive in business. There's nothing wrong, in and of itself, with making money.

But what is wrong is profit as the primary motive, or the only motive.

The role of a business, it seems to me, is to provide some good or service to society. The role of a bank in particular is to provide ordinary people with easy storage and transport of their wealth. This is a good and noble and necessary service. And there is nothing wrong with making profit from such a service.

So long as the service comes first.

What these banks have done is pursue profit at the expense of the service they were committed to provide for their customers. And that is wrong. It is immoral, and if it isn't criminal (which I think it is) it should be.

This is one reason I'm more a fan of non-profit credit unions than of banks. Credit unions generally do keep the service of society at the forefront. And if they don't there are more immediate consequences.

Would that many other sectors of society were run on such a basis!


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New blog up and running!

So here it is!

Virtue Quest

The focus is, as the title (I hope) indicates, an exploration of ways to develop virtue and grow as a human being. Based mainly on the negative examples of my own life.

I.e., if you want to grow in virtue, don't act like me.

I apologize for my neglect of this blog. That hasn't been my intention. But now that it's up and running, I should be able to post regularly here again ... at least until it's time to get my second "professional" blog up.
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