Friday, March 03, 2023

Dashed Off VII

 The First Law of Thermodynamics ties energy change to heat transfer and work, and thus heat transfer and work to each other; the Second Law establishes that heat transfer and work must be distinguished, not conflated.

To begin is to tend to an end.

"The proper nature of each thing is some mode of participating the divine." Aquinas ST 1.14.6

moral, jural, and sacral tendency toward God

believing on testimony // borrowing by credit

one: divine maternity
holy: immaculate conception
catholic: assumption
apostolic: perpetual virginity

hierarchical acts of parenthoood

State use of force against its own citizens should have costs and risks to the state, even when legitimate.

Political power is produced by oppositions an dtheir reconciliation.

prophetic mission as what links priestly power and royal power

classical logic as based on a logical conservation law
(1) all informational steps can always be recalled
(2) movement from premise to conclusion cannot create new information (what is in the conclusion must be in all of the premises)
(in linear logic, informational steps are preserved or lost; in nonmonotonic logics, information can be created; classical logic handles the relevant cases for the former by abstraction and subargument, and cases like the latter by assuming that information is derived from the context)

A curious feature of the electronic age is that the vast majority of our interaction with the natural world is mediated by testimony.

photo and video as testimonial seeing, audio media as testimonial hearing

We get the causal category of exemplar cause when we define or describe things relative to effects.

-- craters are generally about ten times the size of the bodies that made them

militia and the reserve powers of the people

"To acknowledge neither king nor father is to be in the state of a beast." Mencius

stunts as works of art

Blasphemy is sometimes a way of attacking people indirectly.

To be human is already to be a deontic creature.

the temple tax and atonement in Ex 30:12-16

the cleansing of the Temple as a prediction of the destruction of the Temple (Jeremiah 7)

Childhood is a constant state of change.

Pollock's Principle (for tort law): "All members of a civilised commonwealth are under a general duty towards their neighbors to do them no hurt without lawful cause or excuse. The precise extent of the duty, as well as the nature and extent of the recognised exceptions, varies according to the nature of the case."

the abstract frontier and the American conception of freedom

the eternal Vedas as a mythological symbol of the divine Logos

In creation, divinity posits capax divinitatis.

Rejoicing in the beauty of creation is not worship, but it is part of a turn that when completed comes to God.

Half of genius is the world itself.

The Christian apologist should heed the story of Zhuge Liang and the Hundred Thousand Arrows.

opinion - size - age -shape -color - origin - material - purpose (lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife)

subjunctive and indicative: 'If the butler had been in the hall, he would have seen the suspect; he was in the hall; therefore he did see the suspect.'

"Painting is the intermediate somewhat between a thought and a thing." Coleridge (Table Talk)
"It is a small thing that the patient knows of his own state; yet some things he does know better than his physician."
"Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style."
"That legislation is iniquious which sets law in conflict with the common and unsophisticated feelings of our nature."
"In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly."

Song 2:4 Vulg: Introduxit me in cellam vinariam, ordinavit in me caritatem.

"And the whole world is the chalice of the Holy Grail." Sergius Bulgakov

Becker's Criterion (Joseph D. Becker, "The Phrasal Lexicon" 1974): "Any theory (or partial theory) of the English language that is expounded in the English Language must account for (or at least apply to) the text of its own exposition."

Becker's Lexical Phrasing Classes
I. Polywords (invariable multiword phrases treated as single, e.g., man's best friend, the oldest profession, for good)
II. Phrasal Constraints (small number of words, some of which constrain variability of others)
III. Deictic Locutions (low variability, short to medium length, course-directing, e.g., for that matter, that's all)
IV. Sentence Builders (phrases with slots for parameters, e.g., as ____ as ____)
V. Situational Utterances (standardized sentences for occasions, e.g., How can I ever repay you?)
VI. Verbatim Texts (texts of any length, memorized approximately verbatim, e.g., Better late than never)

All regulation proposals should be able to answer: What problem is addressed? What does the regulation contribute to the solution? How does one explain this to the citizens who will have to deal with the regulation?

reading history as useful for upamani

Most of fasting is managing the time devoted to something.

experience -> ritual -> language

God as the authority with power to act on behalf of anyone

Part of professional ethics is facilitation and cultivation of the circumstances for a certain kind of love associated with the profession -- love of helping, love of study, love of prayer, love of arms, love of discovery, etc.

checks and balances as making it possible to handle a larger amount of non-unanimity

shall issue vs may issue licensing

States inevitably try to make other states like themselves.

"When sacrifices either of the altar or of alms are offered on behalf of all the baptized dead, they are thank offerings for the very good, they are propitiatory offerings for the not very bad, and in the case of the very bad, even though they do not assist the dead, they are a species of consolation to the living." Augustine (Enchiridion 110)

2 Tim 2:1 -- "be strong in the grace that is *in* Christ Jesus"

"A type is an indication of what is expected through imitation, ostensively foretelling the future." Basil
"The imitation of Christ is necessary fo rthe perfection of life, not only in his living example of humility, patience, and freedom from anger, but also in that of his very death."
"The water fulfills the image of death, while the Spirit furnishes the pledge of life."
"Now in their struggles on behalf of piety some have already suffered death for the sake of Christ, not by imitation, but in truth. These men need no water as a symbol for salvation because they have been baptized in their own blood."
"The source of being is one, which makes through the Son, and which perfects in the Spirit."
"Just as in the arts there is likeness according to form, so with the divine and incomposite nature, the unity is in the communion of the Godhead."

indulgences and the priesthood of believers (offering sacrifice)

capable of a virtue -> disposed to a virtue -> possessing a virtue

Modern societies use protests as civil catharsis.

 interaction with pets as showing basic forms of social communication: expression-to, being-with, gift.

Parents babbling to babies are communicating in the most basic sense of making something common between them and the babies.

Reducing things to method has obvious advantages, but it also increases the chances of collapse into cargo-culting.

People make a distinction between those who are wealthy in ways connected to hard and difficult work (e.g., successful farmer, surgeon, hands-on business owner) and those who are wealthy in other ways; but this distinction tends to be ignored in economic theories.

Church Militant, Church Patient, and Church Triumphant are not wholly separate, but are one in the Mass and before the heavenly altar of God.

storytelling as virtual reality programs running on the brain

imitation by nature, imitation by custom, imitation by stipulation (cf. paintings of people whose actual appearance is not known)

the sense of humor as a protection and instrument for prudence

One should not confuse undisciplined Christians with nominal Christians; the former are far more integrated, if only unsystematically, into the life of the Church.

Merely notional victories will kill you in the long run.

design
--- define problem (desiderata, givens)
--- develop general design options
--- select option
--- develop design details
--- articulate design
build
--- fabricate parts
--- assemble into whole
test
--- strain and stress
--- evaluate

Well designed cedar may outlast badly designed iron

Popular uprisings and revolutions are structurally different.

There is a world of truth in every truth.