Line drawings (free, royalty free)

There's a great online collection of free line drawings from copyright-expired books. I used some recently to spice up a booklet I made. Here are a couple of examples:

On being late

Argh. I just made the woman I am courting 25 minutes late for a meeting. I feel very guilty about this. I have this tendency to "squeeze" time - trying to be "productive" by doing things before I need to leave, then not giving myself enough travel time.

Enough is enough. Based on articles like this one, I'm going to promise myself to double the expected travel time (according to Google Maps or whatever) and add a 20-30-min buffer (depending on familiarity/importance).

May we all be LATE NO MORE. Do you have trouble with being late? Any tips on getting rid of this bad habit?

On forgetting an anniversary

I have been trying to buy some roses each month for the woman I am courting, on the monthly anniversary of our courtship. Today, it didn't go as planned - I actually bought the roses, but I forgot to give them - I left them behind in the car when I picked her up for Mass. And she told me later that she was expecting them too. So I felt a bit bad.

How does one deal with the guilt or regret that accompanies failure? She said that I could just bring the roses tomorrow, but you still feel bad because things didn't go perfectly. One approach is to follow the advice of the AA prayer ("God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...") and just accept the fact that it now lies outside of your control, and just move on. But still, you feel bad about the failure. Is there another way to look at it?

You could say, it's God's fault/will (or it's fate). Then you wouldn't feel so bad. But then you'd start feeling bad again because you know deep down that it actually was your fault.

The way that works for me is to realize that yes, it is my fault, but God can make some good come of it. Aquinas demonstrated that God is existence itself; so as I see it, when we mess up, he can order things so that good can come of it nevertheless. There is also a Bible verse that says that "in everything God works for good." So it is interesting to see, when bad things happen, whether any positive things can happen as well.

Such as this blog post! It's something good that sprung up from my failure, and maybe there's someone that will be helped by it.

How to shred a document by hand

Here's a simple way to shred a document by hand. It's easier and more effective than just ripping it up haphazardly.

First, take the thing you want to shred (a document, or just your address), and fold it many times:




Then cut it once:




Finally, put one half in your recycling bin and the other half in a garbage can. If you do that, it should be pretty safe.

20 seconds of courage

A couple of days ago, I watched a movie called "We Bought A Zoo". I thought it was pretty good. Anyway, I liked the following quote:

Sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage. Just, literally, 20 seconds of just embarassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.

Buying gas like an investment

My brother does this interesting thing when he buys gas, similar to "dollar cost averaging" in investing (i.e., investing the same amount each month, regardless of whether the price is high or low).

Basically he pays the same amount at the pump on each visit ($20), regardless of whether gas prices are high or low.

I was trying to think if this has any real benefit, and actually I think it does. When gas prices are low, $20 will last a long time, which is good. When gas prices are high, $20 will last a short time, and you will be forced to retry again soon - so you will have more frequent opportunities to try again for a lower price. Kind of makes sense.

Compare this to filling the tank to the top every time. You will be visiting the gas station at a constant time interval, without the automatic adaptation mechanism described above.

Interesting!

Most versatile dance move for any music

I recently found myself in a dancing situation at a Christmas party, and really had no clue what I was doing. Afterwards, I did some googling on the subject, and found this useful video on a basic dance move that works for a variety of types of music.

If you are as inept at dancing as I am, check out the following video:

Giving up RSS feeds

I'm considering giving up daily reading of RSS feeds, in order to gain some extra time each day.

This Wikipedia article is spurring me on to try this: How to Live on 24 Hours a Day.

Undercurrent

There is in this place an undercurrent of muck
But under this muck is a bed of stone
And sweet music makes a space in the muck
And in places, massy walls push the muck aside.

But sometimes the muck seeps in through the walls
Weakens them to the verge of collapse
Then sweet music cleans the muck from the stone
And fire burns the muck away.

Concoction for killing a cold

My friend Dale bombards himself with the following medications at the onset of a cold or flu. He says it works every time:

• Cold FX
• Airborne
• Buckley's
• Echinacea tea
• Humidifier with Eucalyptus drops
• Halls
• Fisherman's Friend
• Spicy food
• Teas

iPhone earbuds have a built-in microphone

Wow - I did not know that the earbuds that come with your iPhone have a built-in microphone. And it seems clearer than the iPhone's built-in mic. This is cool. I was a bit concerned about cell-phone radiation on long calls (sometimes I get a "cell-phone headache"), and this saves me from having to buy a headset.

BGE method for eliminating blindspots from vehicle mirrors

There is an interesting idea called the Blindzone Glare Elimination method for almost eliminating blindspots in your car's mirrors. So you theoretically wouldn't need to shoulder check. It's kind of weird but it's also kind of neat. And it takes some getting used to.

One showstopper for me though is that when your mirrors are set up this way, you can't use them to check parking lines when backing in. So I don't think I'll be switching to this method.

Friend looking for Special Education Assistant job near Vancouver

A good friend of mine will soon be looking for a Special Education Assistant job (or similar work with disabled children) in or near Vancouver. If anyone knows of any openings coming up, please let me know.

How to close the flap on an OtterBox iPhone case

There are many complaints that the bottom flap on an Otter Box Defender iPhone case fails to close.

I studied the flap, and the problem is that there is a big ridge along the outer edge of the flap (probably to ensure a tight friction fit). So if you want to close the flap and have it stay closed, give the flap a good hard squeeze on both sides when closing it. This will push the ridge in; when you relax it, the ridge will expand and push out against the hard case wall.

Connecting the dots looking backwards = Teleology

I was thinking about something Steve Jobs said in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address, that "you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future."

It struck me that this is simply Aristotle's long-lost idea of teleology: that a basic feature of reality is that things have ends, that there is a sort of "invisible hand" that guides things towards their ends. The dots somehow connect.

IPhone love

Man, I can't believe how long I waited to get an iPhone. It truly increases the quality of one's life in certain ways (provided one is not busy with it in the presence of friends, that is). For instance, I am at present writing this blog post on a bus from the ferry to Victoria. The windows are fogged up and it is nighttime, so I cannot see where we are, but I can tell by looking at the Google Maps app. Man! This is great.

Update

Lots happening in my life at the moment. I'm moving to Surrey, BC (near Vancouver) in a month, to be closer to friends, the Dominican Laity, etc. I also have too many books to read (let me guess, gentle reader – you have this problem as well).

Wish me luck!

My two favorite grammatical constructs

I have two favorite grammatical constructs, from my English 11 course with Mr. Featherstone back in high school. They both have to do with parallelism.

The first uses semicolons and commas, and it looks like this:

Consequently, one must infer that Plato would have programmed in Smalltalk; Aristotle, in Java; Descartes, in Python; and Hume, in Basic.

Note that each item in the list is separated by a semicolon – and even cooler, we use a comma in place of the repeated words (“Aristotle, in Java” is used instead of “Aristotle would have programmed in Java”). Isn’t that neat?

A second favorite grammatical construct is a mix of grammar and formatting. When I do a bulleted list, you can insert headings at the start of each item, in bold italics. Like so:

• Step 1. Print out the code. Sometimes the code you face is so gnarly blah blah blah...
• Step 2. Tidy up the code. Tidying up whitespace and fixing the style of the code is a great blah blah blah...
• Step 3. Make the code easier for yourself and others to understand. What I mean here is adding doc, and especially renaming variables, methods, and classes blah blah blah...

I get a warm, fuzzy feeling when I get to do either of the above. Try it – you’ll like it.

Thanks, Mr. Featherstone!

Two Lands

γηθόσυνος δ᾽ οὔρῳ πέτασ᾽ ἱστία δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς.
αὐτὰρ ὁ πηδαλίῳ ἰθύνετο τεχνηέντως
ἥμενος

HOMER

By God’s grace, I was given a boat
And for fifteen days I rowed
I knew not whether they were lands or clouds on the horizon

I was not, thank God, one of those who drowned
Nor one of those adrift on rafts, asleep
But whether my destination were real or a mirage, I did not know

Then I turned my head and saw two lands
In one direction lay lands with lofty mountains;
In the other, grassy lowlands
But alas, how distant they were
And all the more after all my rowing

I question the sun as to which way to go
I question the moon and the stars
But they do not answer

Cream cheese on rice

Today I discovered that it is possible to eat cream cheese and rice. We didn't have much in the fridge – we did have cream cheese and rice though. If you want to try this, it is really quite simple.

Ingredients:
cream cheese
rice

Place rice in a bowl.
Heat it up for 45 seconds in the microwave.
Add a dollop of cream cheese.

I believe it is an acceptable substitute if you don't have any bread and you have a hankering for cream cheese and something. Bread and rice are related foods, so I think this is acceptable.

Need help understanding teleology

I’m finding it hard to sleep, so I’m jotting down some thoughts on a question that has been troubling me. I’m having trouble grasping the Aristotelian idea of teleology, or final cause. This is basically the idea that many things in nature have an (unconscious) goal or function. An example would be kidneys – their function is to filter the blood. Evidently, contemporary philosophy of science has been trying to do away with the notion of final causes for the past 300 years, but it is apparently making a bit of a comeback these days with the “new essentialism” philosophy of nature. But I digress.

In the book I’m reading by Edward Feser, he gives the kidney example above as an example of something with a final cause. I get that example – kidneys do seem to have a function (i.e., a final cause). He gives another example: human action. For example, I go to the kitchen in order to get coffee. This is an example of (conscious) goal-directedness – my goal is to get some Java – i.e., a final cause.

But he gives some other examples that I’m having trouble seeing as (unconscious) goal-directedness. A match is “‘directed towards’ the generation of flame and heat as its final cause”. I wouldn’t call the flame and heat a “goal” of the match. That said, elsewhere in the discussion Feser uses terms like “inherent power” and “tendency” – these seem to fit the match better. So are there different kinds of teleology? Teleology of function (kidneys), teleology of conscious goal-directedness (getting coffee), teleology of inherent power (the match)? Or am I just having trouble seeing what these different examples have in common? I suspect it is the latter.

In fact, Feser reduces the idea of final cause to the following: “if there is a regular efficient causal connection between a cause A and an effect B, then generating B is the final cause of A”. He gives the example of ice making something cold. Because ice causes the drink to be cold, generating coldness is the final cause of ice. Ice inherently “points to” coldness or is “directed at” coldness as its natural effect. Hmm. Well if that is all it is, what’s so notable about that? What is it about final causes that contemporary philosophy of science finds so hard to believe? Is it Hume’s modern idea that we cannot say that cause A has an inherent power to bring about effect B, only that event E1 seems to be regularly followed by event E2?

Actually yes, I think that is the issue. Aristotle (and the average person) would say that a cause A (such as ice) has an inherent power to bring about effect B (making the drink cold). On the other hand, modern philosophers of science would say that all we can say is that an event E1 (putting ice in the drink) is regularly followed by an event E2 (drink gets cold). I believe this distinction is what separates Aristotelian “efficient causality” from modern “efficient causality”; that is, the Aristotelian thinks that there is something in the cause that has the power to bring about the effect, whereas the modern does not think in those terms at all – he just sees the first event regularly followed by the second event.

I'm not sure why the modern has such trouble with A-B, why he will commit only to E1-E2. Perhaps A-B has implications that are troubling to the modern mind? I would be interested to know what those would be?

Back to bed.

Moleskines and other notebook thingees

Are you the kind of person who buys a shiny, expensive notebook journal and faithfully writes profound thoughts in it for a few days, then forgets about it and never uses it again? I have several expensive Moleskine and Paperblanks journals that only have the first couple of pages filled out. It's quite sad, really.

And yet I want to get another one and start again, afresh. I have this need to write things down as I read; or if I make some resolution about a new way to do things, I need to write it down. I believe Thomas David Baker keeps a daily journal - Tom, how do you keep it up? Anyway, I'm not talking about something daily here - I'm talking about occasional jottings.

I thought I could do this on my PDA. But electronic does not cut it for this sort of thing. It has to be pencil on paper (yes, pencil for me, not pen - I need the ability to erase). It can't be on a luminous screen or touchpad. No automatic backups, alas, but real paper - fibrous, ligneous, blottable pulp.

So I am thinking about buying, yet again, an expensive Moleskine thingee. I'm thinking a mini one (2.5×4) for my wallet, and a small but skinny one (the 3.5×5.5 ones that come in a three-pack) for my profound inner thoughts at my desk. To avoid the phenomenon of journals that are barely started then discarded, these journals are going to be mixed purpose: rather than dedicating a volume to a single purpose (such as "Reflections" or "Notes From Lectures" or "Comments on Scriptures"), they will have all of these things smushed together - separated only by dates. So they will be a stream of different things that I need to write down. Perhaps never to be read again - the act of writing it down is what is needed.

Or I could take up one of my existing barely-filled-in journals and continue using those.

Nah.

On the meaning of "Have a Great Summer"

I saw this on the signboard of Claremont High School today: "HAVE A GREAT SUMMER". If we were to take this seriously, what would it mean? Different people have different ideas of what it means to have a great time. For some, it could be watching lots of TV. For others, it could be visiting museums and studying great books. For others, it might be spending each day high on drugs.

What does it mean for something to be great? I think a good answer is to be found in Aristotle and Aquinas. I will be learning more about this later, but from the very little I have read on "natural law theory", what is good for a thing is anything that develops the thing toward its true nature. The nature of a human being is to be a rational animal. So anything that makes us more fully a rational animal will be good for us.

From our three examples above, (1) the visits to the museum and the reading of good books will develop our rationality. Good thing. (2) Watching TV? Depends on the programs, I guess. Could be good, could be not so good. (3) Getting high on drugs? This hampers the animal quality of human nature, so, not good. On the other hand, getting exercise and eating healthy food benefits the animal quality of human nature, so those would be good.

Have a great summer!

Cursocommentarial reading, or how to stay awake while reading heavy stuff

I have recently been feeling frustrated with reading some heavy books and, after a day or two, completely forgetting what I read. It's as if the hard work I put into understanding the text was vaporized.

But now I'm trying something new. The idea is basically to annotate each page of the book with a sentence or two, at the bottom, with a key insight or summary for the page. You could also add clarifications from the web or from other books, or pretty much whatever you like.

In effect, you're keeping a sort of running commentary in the bottom margin of the book. "Running commentary" in Latin is "Commentarius cursor", so I think that an appropriate name for this method would be cursocommentarial reading.

Why do it? It keeps you awake, since you must pay attention to get the key insight from each page. As a bonus, you can come back weeks later and instantly refresh your memory about the book by glancing down at your annotations. Note that this will slow down your reading (which is not necessarily a bad thing), so you will want to save this technique for books that deserve a close reading.

Below is an example of cursocommentarial reading. Note the brief annotations that I put at the bottom of each page.

Recent must-read comments

During my accidental neglect of comments building up in the moderation queue for this blog, there were some great comments left by some people. I had the pleasure of reading through them recently, including:

• Darius recommends Bohnanza as a great game for 4+ people.
• David wonders if the mind is a purely physical thing. 
• Chris Sivori enjoyed the video series The Western Tradition and also recommends Kenneth Clarke's Civilisation.
• Thomas David Baker quotes Wendy Cope's A Nursery Rhyme, As It Might Have Been Written By TS Eliot
• Alex Ksikes and w demonstrate that they haven't forgotten their calculus.
• あじ and Jeff Werner give their views on the definition of postmodernism.
• And Andrey suggests that a good way to disagree with someone is to say “False”.

Apologies for not responding to blog comments

I'm terribly sorry for not responding to blog comments - it seems that the have been queued up for moderation and I wasn't getting email notifications about them. There are some juicy ones in there, and I am definitely going to reply to them this evening.

Turning adjectives into nouns

I recently came across this title in my reading: "The problem of temporary intrinsics". Temporary intrinsics sounds cool, but we also have no idea what it means. I would like to propose that if you need a new word for something, an option available to you is to take an adjective and turn it into a noun (as "intrinsic" was above). Chances are that no-one will have done it before, so you will have your new noun. And it will have the advantage of sounding esoteric. But as with most esoteric words, it can turn off your readers.

For example, suppose you are doing some sociological work, and you need a special term for something that has to do with relationships. What's a similar adjective? How about "relational"? Now treat that as a noun and you've got your new word: a relational. The relational in the blah blah. Several relationals. Relationals in the Historical Contexts of Social Agent Consciousness.

Relational isn't a noun in the dictionary. It's all yours.

Another example. You are writing a paper on poetry or some sort of imaginative literature, and you need a special term for things that are fantastic or out of this world. You choose the adjective "atypical". Turn it into a noun: Atypicals in Dante's Purgatorio. The atypical shown above is the blah blah. A characteristic example of an atypical is Dante's use of...

Atypical ain't no noun in the dictionary. It's all yours, baby.

Adjectives which have been turned into nouns (which shall henceforth be known as potents) work better for some adjectives than others. For example, if we examine the thesaurus for synonyms for changeable, we see that "fickles", "uncertains", and "varyings" don't make great potents, whereas "transitionals", "commutatives", and "spasmodics" are more promising. They have that technical, hard-to-understand vibe to them.

I suspect that adjectives ending in -ic, -al, -ent (think referent), and a short list of others would make good candidates for potents.

History in the Movies

This is neat. Paul Halsall has an extensive webpage listing ancient history in the movies, medieval history in the movies, and modern history in the movies. Could be an entertaining way to get a bit more familiarity with the history of the world.

Free online OCR service (image => text)

I like to use Free OCR when I have an image and want to extract the text from it. You simply upload a < 2MB pdf, jpg, gif, tiff, or bmp, and it will do a reasonable job of giving you the text from it.

The "intelligibility of the world" according to Aristotle

I am trying to puzzle out what Aristotle could mean in declaring the world to be "intelligible", and how far it differs from the modern viewpoint. (I'm reading about these ideas in Jonathan Lear's Aristotle: The Desire to Understand.)

The example I'd like to consider is the "sodium-potassium pump" – this is something we learned about in high-school biology. It's basically a molecule that pumps sodium atoms in one direction and pumps potassium atoms in the other direction, across a cell membrane. I forget the details, but note that we speak of it as a "pump", as if it were a thing with a purpose. I think this illustrates the difference in thinking between the Aristotelian and the modernist. The modernist would say that it is is in actuality just a collection of atoms – that it doesn't really have a purpose. Any "purpose" there is ascribed by our minds as a convenience, a convention – just a way of speaking to make things easier to grasp.

On the other hand, the Aristotelian would say that the sodium-potassium pump has been assembled for a purpose. Not, indeed, by a Creator (Aristotle was not a theist), but by a weird thingy in the sodium-potassium pump known as its "form". All objects in the natural world (rocks, trees, moose, etc.) have this weird thingy, or form, that defines them, determines their structure, and, in the case of living things, makes them grow and mature. So for the Aristotelian, the sodium-potassium pump does have a real, objective purpose (not just in our minds, not just a convenience of speaking) that is given to it (by its "form").

This much I have been able to gather from Chapter 2 of Jonathan Lear's book. Many of Aristotle's ideas provide a framework for Catholic teaching (particularly that of Thomas Aquinas), so I am naturally quite interested in how it works. And yet classical philosophy is taught neither in the schools nor from the pulpit.