Decompression

Two good things happened today:

1. I took my last final today: Brit Lit I. This means that once I wind myself down a bit, I'm back to only doing business-related work for awhile. At any rate, the final had two parts, six quote identification questions (of which you had to write an essay on three) and a comprehensive “matching” section that looked like something I did back in third grade. The essay/identification part turned out to be easy, but the matching was a bear — it doesn't matter what it looks like, it matters what you have to match. There were 23 or 24 items to match to 20 other items (the extra 3 or 4 weren't used), of those, I'm almost certain I got 10 right, I felt “alright” about 15. This part is supposedly something everyone does, and I quote, “terrible” on, is graded on a curve, and is only worth 5% of the total grade for the course, so I'm hoping it won't be too much of a problem.

   If I get a 90 on the essay section (which I think is realistic based on the previous two tests), I should only need a low-middle B on the paper (25% of the grade) to get an A on the course. If I get the same grade on the essays as the last two times, I'll only need a middle-C on the paper to do the same. This paper wasn't my favorite topic of the bunch I wrote, but it had the best result based on the given material, I thought, so I have cautious but high hopes for it.

2. Remember the issue I couldn't talk about that had me down back in October? Well, I think the situation has been remedied completely and even improved beyond where it was before the October issue. I'm thrilled about that. Now I just wait to see how all the pieces fit together. I still cannot talk about the specifics, but hopefully I will be able to eventually.

How was your day?

Hint Added; New Question

For those of you who were wondering about question #2, I have a hint for you. I posted it in the comments.

And now a new question: What was the theological system that Thomas Jefferson adhered to and what is its most closely related organization today? [10 pts.]

No Googling again. And Flip, I promise to think of some less Ameri-centric ones.

Intelligent Design Prevails Again

Well, he may not be Christian (yet), but a famous atheist has succumbed to the evidence that there is a God, perhaps in a fashion not all that alien from C.S. Lewis's slow conversion. Anthony Flew, whose most famous statements had to do with the fact that asserting the existence and/or love of God was meaningless since “nothing could disprove it” to the believer, now believes in a deist-like God. That science can convince an avowed atheist (for 66 years, since he was 15, no less!) of the existence of God should worry people in the “Bright” movement.

It just shows that we as Christians should not fear things like science. On the contrary, we ought to spend our time appreciating how all ways of looking at God's creation can give pointers to the Creator. “Seek truth knowing that there can be no conflict between God and truth.”

asisaid challenge: Question Set #1

See the last post to understand the “asisaid challenge.” Here's two questions; the first is worth 5 points, the second is worth 10.

1.) What type of armor was Sec. Rumsfeld questioned about today. Specifically, it was asked by Spc. Thomas Wilson. [5 pt.]

2.) Where does this quote originate from (hint: it is fiction) — author and work?

On page 22 of Liddell Hart's History of World War I you will read that an attack against the Serre-Montauban line by thirteen British divisions (supported by 1,400 artillery pieces), planned for the 24th of July, 1916, had to be postponed until the morning of the 29th. The torrential rains, Captain Liddell Hart comments, caused this delay, an insignificant one, to be sure.

Remember, no Googling!

Contest!

I was thinking about asisaid points, and I decided it is high time that I made them useful. Therefore, the first person to earn 350 asisaid points will get:

• A 1 year purchase of the domain name of their choice (under the .com/.net/.org/.us/.biz/.info or a few other top level domains). Yourname.com is nice to have if you don't have it already. ($5.95 value)
• 3 months of ServerForest.com web hosting's Maple plan — a $60 value. Here's what you get:
  • 500 MB disk space
  • 24000 MB transfer per month
  • 80 e-mail addresses
  • 30 extra (sub)domains
  • 6 MySQL databases
  • 15 FTP accounts
  • Urchin Professional Statistics
  • Protected by my new Spam Blacklists configuration
  After three months you can keep the account, downgrade to a smaller account or cancel it. This is your choice. Your dealing with me, not AOL, so have no fear about getting stuck.
  

Now if you're saying, “I already have a hosting account,” that's OK, you can take the domain and skip the hosting (or vise versa). If neither item is of any interest, well, maybe I'll think of something else too.

Here's how it will work: I'll post questions that offer asisaid points a bit more frequently than I have in the past. If you are the first person to answer the question correctly, you'll earn your way toward the prize. This is on the honor system — I trust that my readers will not use Google or any other similar service to get the answer. I reserve the right to disqualify a participant who I have deemed to be failing to honor this request.

The small print.
Void where prohibited. No cash value, no purchase necessary. To enter, you must be a regular visitor to asisaid, as judged by Tim — this means regular commenting and not simply coming over to this site to try to get points. You know if you're regular or not. Most anyone who has commented on this site prior to this announcement is a regular. Offer expires June 1, 2005, when someone has earned the set 350 points or when Tim deems it necessary to stop. If either of the services offered become unavailable a substitution may be made or the offer may be revoked. Personal contact information will be required by the domain registrar for the WHOIS record, therefore participants in the contest must be 18 years of age or older.

Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell

Here's another one to enjoy. I think it makes an interesting point… science overlooks one of the most important aspects of any given thing: its meaning. In doing so, so much is lost. We are creatures of meaning. Explaining how something works is only part of the equation, yet modern thinking often forgets this.

Science, that simple saint, cannot be bothered Figuring what anything is for:
Enough for her devotions that things are
And can be contemplated soon as gathered.

She knows how every living thing was fathered,
She calculates the climate of each star,
She counts the fish at sea, but cannot care
Why any one of them exists, fish, fire or feathered.

Why should she? Her religion is to tell
By rote her rosary of perfect answers.
Metaphysics she can leave to man:
She never wakes at night in heaven or hell

Staring at darkness. In her holy cell
There is no darkness ever: the pure candle
Burns, the beads drop briskly from her hand.

Who dares to offer Her the curled sea shell!
She will not touch it!—knows the world she sees
Is all the world there is! Her faith is perfect!

And still he offers the sea shell …

What surf
Of what far sea upon what unknown ground
Troubles forever with that asking sound?
What surge is this whose question never ceases?

—Archibald MacLeish

MacLeish: The Lost Poet

It seems deeply troubling — to say the least — that a poet like Archibald MacLeish is fading into the shadows of history. While 50 years ago he was nearing equality with Robert Frost, almost no one talks about MacLeish today. The “Ars Poetica” (see the present asisaid quote above) poet was so much more and yet few of his interesting works are readily available. Tonight, for example, I went on Google hoping to find two poems from Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller's City, a witty critique of the excesses of capitalism and the failings of socialism put together… how often can you find both of those together? Searching on the web, you won't even find MacLeish's combination: at least as far as I can tell, it is not any place that Google has indexed.

I need to stop by Amazon and order the complete (or at least, near complete) collection of MacLeish's poems — it is only twelve bucks. But it is a shame that ordering such a collection is the only way people today can see some of these marvelous poems, political and otherwise.

In honor this is excellent “lost” poet, I encourage you to enjoy these two poems, his most famous:

• Ars Poetica
• You, Andrew Marvell (it helps on this one if you've read Marvell's To His Coy Mistress recently). Note the emphasis on time's “winged chariot” in Marvell's poem, then note exactly what the traveller in MacLeish's poem is doing. Masterful!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy. I'll see if I can locate some of my more obscure favorites online and post link(s) to them.

Draining Myself

This fall has been interesting. Working toward getting out of the computer sector by getting an English and Religion degree is something I've been working on for awhile now (as noted in the linked post), but this was the first semester I was entirely devoted to this rather than meeting general education requirements and the like. Trying to balance obligations has been tough, and some less important projects that I normally work on as part of my business have gone by the way side… at least temporarily.

As I said a few weeks ago, business has been a bit slow, so I was focusing completely on papers. Since the beginning of November, I have probably written between 70-80 pages, about 60-62 on major papers. Now into finals week, I've written 28 pages in longhand over the past 24 hours over the course of six hours worth of exams (hey, that's 4.7 pages per hour). Now I hurt. I have the bad habit of gripping the pen very tightly when writing in such a manor, and my arm hurts from the bottom all the way to my shoulder. Even if I was not trying to work with clients and complete this course work, this has been the craziest semester of any kind, I've ever had. I've felt on the edge of insanity the last few weeks trying to get stuff done — I'm not the kind of person who likes to be working against the edge of a deadline. I feel completely drained.

But, I'm not complaining. It feels good. I can look back and I'm satisfied. I've spent the last four months immersing myself in the things that I love to spend time doing. It will be years before I am able to switch professions, who knows, I may never switch completely — but the point is I know that I am doing what I need to do; what I should have realized I needed to do a long time ago. If you can be so busy that you have no time to catch your breath and still be happy with what you are doing, that is an excellent indicator… I fit that to a “t” right now.

QOTW: Sleep

As if a busy day was not enough to make me tired, a gentle, peaceful rain is falling right now. Which leads me to think I'll call it an early night and get some sleep. And for the question of the week:

What is your favorite sound for sleeping?

Most white noise is nice, I think, but rain definitely wins out. I can hardly think of anything that encourages better sleeping than a slow, steady rain (as opposed to a raging thunderstorm). Rain also seems melancholy to me at times.

Tonight the rain is pelting rooftops There is no fire to melt the cold
I'm straining to hear a human whisper
And I'm painting images on the soft stone — Melting Alone, Sixpence None the Richer.

Good night.

This Week

Will probably be very busy, but after that, I should have a bit more tranquil schedule for awhile. That's a nice thought.