Happy Thanksgiving

Well, I'm a little late, but I just wanted to wish y'all a very happy Thanksgiving. If you were traveling over the past few days, I hope you had a safe trip to your destination and will have a safe trip home again.

I had no less than two Turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie dinners today. I am extremely stuffed and feeling rather tired, particularly after spending some time tonight trying to refine my argument concerning divine simplicity some more.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Simplicity of God

I'm working on an interesting project at the moment; it is a paper on the subject of the Simplicity of God in general, and Aquinas's view of such in particular. It is interesting because simplicity isn't a doctrine that comes up very often, and yet, Aquinas uses it as the foundation of his discussion of God's nature. Simplicity in this sense isn't an indication of God being “uninteresting,” but rather a suggestion that God is not made up of “parts.”

I've been digging into Barth to try to find his thoughts on the subject; so far I haven't found a lot, but at least from a basic standpoint, Barth's emphasis on God's total freedom (to be Himself) relates quite well to Aquinas's doctrine of Divine Simplicity, I think.

I'll have to talk more about this as I progress on the project.

Sony, the PlayStation 3 and the PC Market

I forgot to mention this on my blog yesterday. My latest commentary on Open for Business analyzes Sony's need to reanalyze its PC strategy in light of the PlayStation 3.

With the launch of the PlayStation 3, the fate of one of the world’s best-known brands, Sony, hangs in the balance. Although the technology, and the price tag, of the new system will likely lead to it moving at least partially into the realm of home theater enthusiasts rather than just gaming enthusiasts wanting the latest game system, presently Sony is staking much of its future on that market. For true security, it needs a complete digital ecosystem, and for that, it needs to change its PC strategy.

You can read the piece here.

Free Coffee

So, I went to Starbucks today and ordered an Iced Venti Latte through the drive through window. I had the money out and was ready to pay by the time the barrista came to the window. She took a little while, but not that long. When she did finally come, I thought it was odd that she did not ask for my money before handing me the coffee, however after giving me the coffee, she told me that the drink was on the house since they had been slow! Indeed, the service wasn't as fast as it is sometimes, but it was still nothing to sneeze at.

That's good customer service for you!

C. S. Lewis and T. S. Eliot

Most of you know of my great admiration for C. S. Lewis. His writing style has always been, for me, a goal — however hopeless — that I should like to someday reach in my own prose. He also was an academic, a noted literary critic and a master at explaining theology (and, to a lesser extent, philosophy). As a theologian, he also embodied many of the principles of neo-orthodoxy, though I have found little on his direct knowledge and interest in Barth, Brunner and so on.

In short, Lewis is sort of the archetype that I would like to aspire to in most things. Don't get me wrong, he wasn't perfect and I don't “idolize” him, I simply recognize him as a man who did essentially the things I would like to do and did them very well. The combination literary critic-theology writer isn't exactly a common occupation, you know?

T. S. Eliot, as I've come to appreciate him over the last few years, is interesting to me for similar reasons. After a bout in Eastern religion, he ended up an Anglican, like Lewis. He was a literary giant (I'd suggest quite possibly the literary giant of the twentieth century) in both poetry and criticism and he was also well versed in philosophy and theology.

Given that they both worked in the field of literature at Oxford or Cambridge during the same time span, I wondered how they got along, for surely they knew each other. I never actually knew anything in relation to that, however, until I ran into this excellent transcript of a lecture on the subjection. If you read it, make sure to read it all the way through for the interesting twist toward the end.

Interesting.

(It is also interesting I keep bringing up Eliot here. He has been popping up in a lot of things I've been working on lately, not all of them even related.)

Mac OS X Server

I'm doing a test run of Mac OS X Server (Tiger) — not for hosting, just for general server duties on my network. So far, so good. It is nice that OS X server is essentially as pleasant as Tiger normally is, it just has a bunch of servers ready to be activated and slick GUI administration tools to keep the system in line.

I'll be writing on how I like it quite a bit more in the coming weeks.

TQ: Attire

Mark provides another interesting TQ that I'm answering really late.

1. Do you think your attire effects [sic] the way you work?
Yes, and in a two-fold way. In some settings, I will probably be better off in a suit (or at least a sports jacket) — say giving a presentation or talk. I wouldn't be comfortable otherwise, so I'd probably stumble somewhat. Comfort is another matter. I won't function very well if I'm hot, so in the middle of the summer, a dark suit or trousers or anything of the sort is probably going to decrease my productivity.

Incidentally, in the realm of pants, my bottom level is khakis or other similar types of trousers, preferably with a pleat, not jeans. I don't like jeans. My shorts are similar in style to my pants, only, well, shorter. Short sleeved polo shirts are pretty much my standard shirt, unless I'm wearing a suit; I will occasionally wear a t-shirt.

2. Do you think your attire effects the way others judge your work?
I know so. I've been told by people that they appreciated that I was not dressed as casually as my colleagues in projects. (In one memorable incident, I was wearing a suit, while another fellow was wearing a polo shirt and jeans. Almost everyone around us had at least dress slacks.)

3. Do you judge others by the way they dress?
Yes, in two ways. Incidentally, can you tell I'm in a class that is studying Aquinas at the moment? On every answer I feel obliged to say, “I answer in x number of ways.” I always like Aquinas's straightforward ordering of his arguments. But, I digress.

I'd say, first, I judge people improperly in this. Sometimes, I'll look down on someone, say, at church, for not dressing up a bit more. That's wrong, I know, and its petty. I've gotten better over time, but I'm still not completely over it.

The second way is more appropriate. The way someone looks and dresses says something about them. Someone who dresses entirely inappropriately for whatever event and looks like they could care less probably isn't taking the situation seriously. There may be exceptions, especially in the case of someone who cannot afford proper attire (or doesn't typically attend things demanding proper attire), but in other cases… You don't go to a job interview wearing your 1982 World Series T-Shirt, a ratty baseball cap on backwards and jeans that should have been retired three years ago.

Probably far more meaningful is when someone dresses in a way that obviously takes a lot of work (so their appearance is not from a lack of concern or effort) yet it is disturbing. I'm dubious about goth, for example. I'm dubious about overly baggy pants. I'm dubious about overly revealing clothes. That kind of thing. Those likely speak something about the person.

4. Do you think attire as a society is overrated, underrated or just right? Explain.
Overrated in the amount of time people worry about it, underrated in that every day is super-casual Friday now.

5. Do you think pay scale should dictate your dress code?
Not really. Attire is dictated more by the job position than the amount of money tied to the job.

Note: The questions on this page written by Mark are governed by the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.5 license. I believe my responses are allowed under fair use and therefore are not licensed under the Creative Commons license (I don't want people messing with adapting my personal opinions, thank you very much).

What a Run!

From July 1 through November 8, I believe I posted at least one blog post everyday. It was the longest run I've ever done of daily blog posting. It was a good exercise, I think, because it forced me to say what was on my mind rather than writing posts that were more like articles. Blogging in that mode serves as a form of catharsis and deconstruction of the day. I played with some creative ideas on days that I didn't have anything in particular I wanted to post about. It was good.

Unfortunately, on November 9, I forgot to post, somehow. I'm not sure how — I thought I had, but if I did, the post was lost in cyberspace. And, since the record was already ended, I figured I might as well take another day off yesterday. But, I'm back now. Perhaps if I get time tomorrow, I'll verify I really did post all of the rest of the days.

Incidentally: I'm really upset with the late theologian Francis Schaeffer. I've never read any of his works, and tonight I ran into one of them cheap on Amazon, so I used “Look inside” to read some of it. In the small part I saw, he labeled Karl Barth, T.S. Eliot and Soren Kierkegaard as part of those who have taken society below “the line of despair.” From the reviews, it sounds like he views Thomas Aquinas as part of the problem of creating this “line of despair” as well. What in the world would give him such an idiotic idea?

Life Moves On

So, we lost the election — locally (for Talent, though not for Rep. Todd Akin) and nationally. And cloning is constitutionally enshrined in Missouri's constitution. It was a bad day yesterday.

But, life moves on. After following the World Series and then the leadup to the most interesting mid-term election in recent memory, I shall return to my usual types of posts. Thanks for bearing with me while I went on some side excursions.

US2006: At 10:30, STILL TOO CLOSE TO CALL

Amendment 2 is still failing at 52.6-47.4 with just over 50% of precincts reporting. The margin is lower than I'd like, but at least it is still failing. Let's hope it stay that way.

Talent is leading 51.3-45.1 still with just a few more precincts reporting.

Update (22:59): Clearly my projections have been off so far. The Dems appear to be taking the house, perhaps leaving the Senate to the GOP. My projection has been Talent will lose and Amendment 2 will win. I hope I'm wrong with those projections too — so far the results are still looking good, but nail bitingly tight. 52.4-47.6 for the no's in Amendment 2; 51-45 for Talent in the Senate.

Update (11/09 00:24): Not looking good. Talent is losing and Amendment 2 is winning. Let's hope the remaining 20% of the precincts will switch that back in the coming hours.