the œcumenical panheresy

I'm not a fan of Rod Dreher...

2012-02-02T13:50:00.000-05:00

For a lot of reasons, but I will give credit where it is due. His article on Ron Paul is great. I wholly agree with him. Racism is bad.

Assorted thoughts on the New Year

2012-01-03T16:08:00.000-05:00

My resolutions will be my usual ones.

It seems my 401(k) went down 3.99%, which is not as bad as I expected based on the last half of the year. Given the limited options available, I think in the next year I might move toward a much more bond-heavy portfolio, as I am not optimistic about the market this year, either. If things were more flexible in the 401(k) and I had the time and skill, I would bet on high variance, but you can't really do that in a 401(k). Anyway, I can't retire yet this year, that's all I know.

I have some secret projects brewing for this year. They're secret, of course, and may not pan out.

I guess what I might also resolve to do this year is pack my lunches more often. Well, that's that, I suppose. Another year.

Church web sites suck.

2011-12-20T11:02:00.000-05:00

One thing that has always annoyed me is that a lot of churches suck at the whole "web site" thing. Namely, it's really really easy to have a web page that says when your services are for Christmas, Theophany, or Easter at least, say, a month in advance. And makes it easy to see. Seriously, on Thanksgiving, if I go to your parish web site, I want to see, on the front page, your regular service times, your address, and your Christmas schedule. If you're on the Old Calendar, fine, by December 15th. At the beginning of Lent, I want to see your regular service times, your address, and your Holy Week schedule (or at least your Pascha schedule, I understand if you haven't nailed down how many presanctified liturgies you're doing that week). If your church web site does not make those three things quite obvious, you fail it. Those are the three things I would probably want to know about your church, so if you do not tell me that information immediately without additional mouseclicks, you are not doing the right thing on your web page. Also, if you send out weekly bulletins, you might want to mention the timing of Nativity services starting a month in advance.

My own parish's website gets at least a B+ here. They had an up-to-date monthly calendar available which listed all the services. However, it was not until this week that you could see immediately on the front page the times of services for the Nativity - there is a weekly calendar on the sidebar. If I recall correctly - perhaps they had an announcement up earlier. The parish I will be at for the Nativity gets a C. I found the information on the site eventually and, in retrospect, the schedule in PDF has apparently been there since 10/31. It takes a few clicks to get there, the information was not announced in their weekly bulletins, it seems to be in conflict with the google calendar, ugh.

What's in the news.

2011-12-02T13:50:00.000-05:00

So I've kind of been thinking about returning to school to do research in statistics or operations research. There are a lot of possibilities. One that looks kind of cool is stochastic combinatorial optimization. Y'know. It's combinatorial optimization. Except stochastic. Think, like, Monte Carlo or Las Vegas algorithms. Or getting into other types of stochastic systems modeling or algorithms stuff. Generally, stochastic programming. Or something more along the lines of statistical computing, namely, researching new methods for getting meaningful knowledge out of data. I'm starting to fiddle around on Kaggle. There's a common thread through all of that, making decisions under uncertainty.

Anyway, so I'm applying to a handful of schools and seeing where that goes. If I don't get in anywhere, well, okay, too bad, I'll get on with my life.

It's official.

2011-09-27T14:43:00.000-05:00

Monomakhos is the worst web-log in Blogoslavia. The stories of the last three weeks have conclusively proven it. They have surpassed OCA Truth, but perhaps only because OCA Truth does not publish frequently anymore. I'm not sure which article was the final straw, as both the Bishop Melchisedek and Fr Michael Oleksa stories were utter crap. Then again, perhaps referring to one of the Ecumenical Patriarch's positions really is secretly an explicit threat to the OCA's autocephaly (or a paean to Gaia-worship, hard to tell these days, but, either way, it somehow involves the panheresy of ecumenism (Monomakhos did not state that part, I did (ecumenism lurks everywhere))).

If you're confused by this post, please, don't bother looking up the web-log and seeing what all the hubbub is about.

Reading series of books

2011-09-13T17:13:00.000-05:00

Right now I'm in the middle of reading several series of books.

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. It's rather good. I'm on the fourth book already. Never worry, dear reader, I am not about to turn into one of those fantasy geeks. I highly recommend it if you have a high enough threshold for sex and violins and if you can stand reading multiple 1000-page books. I'm on the fourth book already.
The Master of Hestviken by Sigrid Undset. She wrote this series of books after Kristin Lavransdatter. Again, requires a certain threshold for sax and violins. Reading this alongside ASoIaF is pretty cool, as both worlds have the rough feel of 13th century Norway, but one is realistic and one is fantastic. I have only finished the first book, which is a fairly painful story about a young couple who want to be married, but fornication, deaths of parents, property problems, murders, exile, infidelity, and abortion complicate things. It's a tetralogy, but has only approximately 1100 pages, so it's not much compared to the other series I'm reading.
The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. I just started this. I'm about 400 pages into the first book. I assure you, I am not going to turn into a sci-fi geek, either. I am fairly sure I can keep up the momentum and finish the next 2400 pages of the series. I am, however, mildly disappointed by the naval scenes so far because I am used to a high standard of writing about 18th century English naval life. I realize he's hitting a slightly earlier era than I'm used to seeing, but boats are boats.

I recommend all three series, but the first is very much an R-rated series, which some people might not handle well. Others may lack the attention span necessary to complete one 900-page book, much less 5. I also hear that the series is trailing off toward the end. I recommend Hestviken if you liked Lavransdatter and I think everybody should like Lavransdatter. It is very well written and engaging. And who doesn't care about 13th century Norwegian social norms? I think a lot of people would hate the Stephenson series, especially if they don't care or know much about 17th century history and the history of science in particular.

Explanation of previous post

2011-08-19T22:10:00.002-05:00

Some of my regular readers may be wondering why I took a break from my regularly scheduled programming to discuss how Reebok hates children.

The source of the image is CrossFit Apex. Apparently one of their trainers thought it was a cool thing to do and then crossfit.com, the owner of the brand name, posted a link to it, presumably because they thought it was cool. I don't think it's cool. CrossFit.com has recently entered into a partnership with Reebok (note the banner) and I don't think Reebok thinks it's cool. So I encourage people to write to Reebok (corporate@reebok.com) and let them know what they're supporting. Legitimate lulz involved.

CrossFit.com is, of course, a bit of a joke to thinking people because of their pompous rhetoric¹, general douchebaggery, cult-like followers, and inevitable results (injuries, burnout, subpar performance). Take, for instance, an amusing take-down of their pompous claims that "We got the science" and it will "dwarf anything ever conceived of in Framingham or Harvard Nurses". LOLWHAT.

Anyway, so I posted that for my own personal amusement. Perhaps it will ruin somebody's day. But it will make so many other people's days so much better because a reckless and dangerous corporation may lose some marketing dollars or be recognized as the purveyors of batty insanity that they are.

NOTE: CrossFit.com originally had a link to the guy's website on that page. They also said that they don't "unpublish", so they would keep the picture up. However, they've taken down the link, which is why I provided a link to http://www.crossfitapex.com.

1: This does not need a footnote, really, but here's a canonical quote demonstrating their self-delusion: "We can take you from a 200-pound max deadlift to a 500-750 pound max deadlift in two years while only pulling max singles four or five times a year." No, they can't.

EDIT: This is rather amusing, more amusing if you're familiar with the dysfunctional circus that is CrossFit (which I barely am, mostly out of a mild curiosity toward them not unlike my mild curiosity about anti-vaccine advocates, Mercola followers, 9/11 Truthers, etc): http://www.forgingelitesarcasm.com/2011/08/babies-need-to-harden-the-fuck-up-2.html

Reebok hates babies.

2011-08-16T22:15:00.002-05:00

Reebok hates babies. This patently unsafe image is proof.

Reebok hates children. Just FYI. Reebok encourages patently unsafe behavior. Reebok is bad for children.

What's going on in Blogoslavia

2011-08-16T13:30:00.005-05:00

That is my cute name for the Orthodox web-log-o-sphere. I've been trying to make it a "thing" for a while, but it hasn't caught on.

Answer: mostly just a bunch of wankers talking about stuff. Apparently "homosexuality" is a big "thing" right now. An extremely polarized "thing" - which is to be expected. It's also extremely political, and explicitly so in the treatment of one side. This has the unfortunate side effect of allowing the treatment of those outside your bloc as a monolith without nuance and declining to hear anything they say. Of course, that right there is a characterization which you may not agree with. Fortunately for us all, the people that actually matter, for the most part, are not the ones spewing crap on web-logs. Some, unfortunately, seem to have some influence (AOI and its ilk, though, of course, they would claim that certain other groups they don't like have some influence, perhaps).

All I would say is that people should be careful of the rhetoric they use and not be dickheads. And ignore anything coming out of AOI and its constellations.

As a result of this, I've actually started posting on some forum or other. Intriguing. Some people are apparently very tightly wound and likely insane, and I say this not necessarily on the basis of discussions of this topic.

EDIT: Unlike, it seems, some of the AOI/Monomakhos/etc people, I approve of Metropolitan Jonah's approach outlined here if the outline does it justice. Particularly point #5: Homosexuality is a much smaller problem for the Church than heterosexual pornography, infidelity, and divorce. Much better than what the culture warriors and, for instance, Fr Josiah Trenham, seem to say. Also point #7: The bigger problem is people judging each other, gossiping about other people’s sins, and causing a lot of hurt. (A lot said on this.) See, by way of contrast, any discussion about Mark Stokoe in the last six months by anybody involved with AOI, OCA Truth, etc.

EDIT #2: It seems the commentors on monomakhos don't like Metropolitan Jonah's points at all. Well, I guess it's a twofer, then!

One thing I'm very curious about...

2011-08-15T12:24:00.001-05:00

Is why I get google hits for "mr gzt" on this page. Okay, I know why they end up here, I'm flummoxed as to why people google "mr gzt". I don't sign off as that very often, in most places I'm just plain "gzt". Even if I did sign off as that, why would people google it? On most web-logs, I even put a link to this web-log when commenting, so there's no need to google. Most of my hits come from the venuleius site, by the way. I was curious as to whether people were clicking on my comment links or the links on the site itself, so I made the comment links point at my extremely boring and narcissistic chess site. I'm not linking to the venuleius site because I don't find it particularly helpful.

I would also just say that not informing on people is a fundamental aspect of interpersonal relations. I'm thoroughly disappointed whenever I hear of people "snitching" to their priest about gossip or somesuch.

Divorce, Sanctity of Marriage

2011-08-11T08:52:00.003-05:00

Monomakhos, a web-log I don't particularly like, quite frankly, posted a piece about OCALaity's resolutions that they are submitting at the All-American Council this fall. The author's intro text says, "All are well aware of the continued assault on traditional marriage due to fornication, adultery, divorce, and same-sex unions." Emphasis added. I do like that he included divorce in this list.

The resolutions, however, do not contain the word "divorce" at all and only allude to it. It is of course true that, in certain circumstances, the Church allows divorce and remarriage. However, I would certainly argue that divorce is a far greater threat to "traditional marriage" than "same-sex unions" - though certainly far less than fornication and adultery - and therefore deserves at least an explicit mention in any resolution about the "sanctity of marriage". If George Michalopoulos can find room in the intro text on his web-log for the word, I'm sure the actual resolutions can as well. Divorce is the only thing on George's list, after all, that will end a "traditional marriage". I realize it's tricky to mention appropriately, but if you're going to tackle tough subjects, you have to actually tackle them. Otherwise, it's just political posturing.

EDIT: Of course, the big issue is not so much divorce but remarriage after divorce. If somebody divorces and remains celibate perpetually, there's not much to object to. However, neither Michalopoulos nor the resolutions refer to remarriage after divorce and only Michalopoulos mentions divorce.

What I'm Reading Right Now

2011-08-11T08:16:00.002-05:00

I'm reading A Change of Heart, a book about the Framingham study, a groundbreaking longitudinal study which unraveled many of the mysteries surrounding the causes of cardiovascular disease. They're the people who coined the term "risk factor". It's amazing how far science has advanced in the last few decades. I got it for a penny off of Amazon, but it seems that the used price is now slightly more. I don't know that I would recommend seeking it out unless you are interested in the subject matter, but it is very good if you are. Of course, how can all these scientist jokers compare to an exercise cult? They will obviously be dwarfed.

Before that, I read The Fatal Shore, which is about the founding of Australia up to the end of the transportation system. This book is not only a wonderful history, but it well-written and enthralling. I highly recommend it even if you are not terribly interested in the subject matter. As a bonus, you can still get it off of Amazon.com for a penny (plus shipping). I first heard about this book while reading the Aubrey/Maturin series. O'Brian mentioned it as a valuable resource when writing about their trip to Australia and highly recommended it. It was a good recommendation. Interestingly, the author is an art critic, not a historian. There is some overlap in the training for the disciplines, to be sure, but it is not what I would expect.

Besides that, some chess books. Before all that, the Flashman novels, which you'll either love or hate. The last few get a bit redundant, but are interesting for their historical details, just like the boat books.

I haven't been reading much theology lately besides the lives of the saints and the OCA tabloids.

Good grief, OCA Truth is still silly. Ironic quotes.

2011-07-29T14:57:00.002-05:00

Remember the last time a leave of absence was announced, how well that went? Making it public did how much good?

Of course, one could argue that the histrionics of the OCA Truth web site played a large part in "how well that went", given that they were publishing, on average, 2 articles per day.

I think OCA Truth here has succeeded in making another tempest in a molehill. I think they would do well to reconsider what the reply they published said, viz, "What is WRONG with you people that you’re filled with this much hate, pride and animosity?! If I were you, I’d go find something more important to do with your life than needling and ripping apart the Church you belong to." And, finally, I must, of course, comment on the irony of OCA Truth criticizing any web site for being indiscreet. The only thing they were ever discreet about was their own identities.

EDIT: Though it does make me mildly curious who has their hand up the puppet's back that OCA Truth cares so much about Fr Zacchaeus, or at least who would care enough to write them an (anonymous) e-mail for publication about it. Or perhaps everybody involved only cares about justice, transparency, discretion, etc, which is so readily evidenced by the rest of the contents of the OCA Truth web-log. OCA Truth publishes infrequently these days, so it's somewhat intriguing that they pop out and post two articles about some minor figure they've never met who should fade into obscurity (unless some scandal breaks later, but of course it won't if OCA Truth's righteous indignation is well-founded).

At least he isn't crazy.

2011-07-13T09:09:00.000-05:00

On some other message board somewhere, in the land of crazy people talking about Orthodoxy (why are they all crazy on the internet?), some guy started a thread complaining about how his priest wasn't hard enough on him in confession. Namely, he uses pornography and such and wanted practical advice about kicking the habit. The priest, however, according to his impressions, was basically saying, "Yeah, whatevs, stop doing it, it's bad. Okay, let's talk about the other stuff." At the time, I said, in my infinite wisdom, that it's a specific problem and the priest might not have the specific resources to help him deal with it. Big deal, go to SA or something, get professional help, whatever. He's not being a bad priest.

Recently, though, somebody brought up how utterly weird this stuff can get. In retrospect, I think the guy should be grateful his priest isn't some weird fellow who wants to get involved with this sort of stuff (perhaps helpfully, perhaps not). This stuff can get downright crazy. However, some people, it seems, want the crazy. Not sure what can be done for them. Perhaps they can all get on a boat and sail to an island that they can have for themselves.

I forgot the most important "pro" of the Greeks!

2011-06-08T20:41:00.002-05:00

Pro: the English was "You/Your" instead of faux-archaic English.

Review of recent non-OCA parishes

2011-06-06T13:27:00.000-05:00

I have barely been in $HOME_PARISH for the last month because of travels and other nonsense, so I will post a brief review of the non-OCA parishes I visited.

Mostly Russian ROCOR Church in Texas
Pros: pretty much all Slavonic, had an exhibit of 17th-19th century Russian icons that weekend, had a panikhida for soldiers because of Victory Day, sermon mentioned the names of myrrh-bearing women, very Russian.
Cons: slow style of serving. I probably would've been out at 1pm if I hadn't ducked out.

Mostly Convert ROCOR Church in Virginia
Pros: cute little country church.
Neutral things: did the service of preparation for communion before liturgy.
Cons: I thought the service was starting at 9:30 or something like that instead of 10.

Greek Church in Nebraska
Pros: quite Greek, priest had a decent voice, still not Pentecost so no kneeling on Sunday.
Cons: an organ and pews.

I guess I can review my own parish, too, for the month.

gzt's OCA Parish (a couple weeks ago)
Pros: had a hierarchical liturgy, it's a good bishop, service still moves quickly and starts early.
Cons: regular choir director on vacation, gzt is incompetent at hierarchical liturgies despite having a comprehensive manual, gzt no longer outranks the children.

I hope, dear readers, this will help you discern the phronema with your nous.

"The Mind of the Church"

2011-05-31T12:03:00.001-05:00

Or, perhaps, "phronema".

I flippantly remarked recently when somebody asked how to "discern the mind of the Church" on a message board that it sounded like a "silly convert" thing to ask. I was being flippant and not entirely fair because I'm not a terribly nice person. Anyway, a conversation yesterday with a real-live seminarian made the pieces fit together, so I thought I'd discuss it here.

The seminarian discussed how they were being taught to acquire the mind of the Church in school, but this meant learning to think like the saints of the Church and apply their methods to discern the truth. The way the message board poster had stated it made it seem like it was about finding the one right answer (ie, "I have discerned the mind of the Church on this matter, it is now closed and I am done thinking about it."). The pieces fit together in my head now.

I'm still not being entirely fair to the man on the message board, because he could really be asking the same question: what method do we use to figure out what we should think?

Like science, it's far more about method than what's in the textbook. Another cheap comparison: in science, all you really ever know is what isn't true. Apophaticism, baby.

Resolved: Orthodox weddings are better than any other weddings.

2011-05-30T08:46:00.000-05:00

Other weddings have their charms, of course. There's something to be said for a rather simple and traditional Episcopalian wedding straight out of the BCP or a nice Catholic wedding (best to be very, very Catholic). I am also by no means trying to diminish other, non-traditional weddings, as marriage is a pretty good thing no matter how it got done.

More hits in the last month than all the rest of history.

2011-05-24T15:03:00.001-05:00

Largely from including the URL to this site in my signature on the Venuleius web-log, it seems. And then there was the link which did not actually work from Pactum Serva. Between those two, that's 1/3 of everything. I didn't know that many people read Venuleius. I got about 300 hits from there, and that's just people who followed my random link in my own signature, not a direct link from him.

EDIT: Oh, it seems I'm one of the few links on his front page. Well, whatevs.

Two methods of interpretation.

2011-05-23T10:06:00.001-05:00

I'm not going to comment much on this except to point it out. By the way, if you don't care about the OCA's internal workings (really, why should you?!), you can ignore this post, though I suppose you can find something in here of interest.

Two different sites, on opposites sides of some dispute, posted a copy of a speech Metropolitan Jonah, the primate of the OCA. One interpreted it as a sign he was wrong, another as an example of how awesome and right he is. If it were merely a matter of interpretation, I suppose this would be quite justified, and on some level it is a matter of interpretation, but there are a large number of matters of fact which are at stake between these two interpretations. I certainly don't have sufficient access to the facts to make a decision between one party or the other, but I am forced to wonder at times what state of affairs could make the pro-Jonah side (note: the other "side" is not anti-Jonah) ever change their mind. There surely must be some somewhere, since there is, at some level, a basis in matters of fact. It could be something that they're 99% sure isn't going to turn out to be the case, as long as there's something other than, "My Metropolitan, right or wrong."

Disclaimer: I am pro-Jonah, pro-Synod, and (most of all) pro-Matthias. I want the lot of them to be able to work together and play nice. I can't believe either the simplistic pro-Jonah side or the nuanced interpretation put forth by Stokoe is the whole truth, but I certainly have neither the access to information nor the inclination to discern necessary to develop an informed opinion on the matter. Therefore, I won't form or express an opinion directly on the matter and confine my comments, as usual, to how much I dislike OCA Truth and the Monomakhos web-log.

EDIT: Though one "matter of fact" which I am fairly glad that Stokoe did address is the matter of Metropolitan Theodosius's retirement. The people on OCA Truth and Monomakhos constantly harp on it, and Met. Jonah mentions it, but he retired suddenly due to health problems after 25 years of service and well before the scandals caught up with him. Several of the people writing those web-logs were barely here for +Herman's reign, much less +Theodosius's, so they have no institutional knowledge of this sort of thing. I was (barely) not around for +Theodosius, though I did meet him in the (I think it was) '04-'05 school year when he was in town, he hung out with the OCF for the evening. And another note, it felt to me like +Herman promoted Sanctity of Life Sunday and the other stuff around the Pro-Life cause more than +Jonah, but it could just be that, after +Job's repose, we didn't have a bishop relaying that push. But it's pretty much the only thing I really remember about +Herman's primacy.

And now all those truthers can shut up.

2011-05-07T08:15:00.002-05:00

The Synod met and has released the minutes of their meeting. MINUTES.

Now, if only they would stop their illiterate ramblings.

EDIT: And a summary report of the Metropolitan Council meeting, but no minutes yet.

I thought I wouldn't write about OCATruth anymore...

2011-05-03T22:02:00.003-05:00

...but they took down their post copping to their identities (Rod Dreher and Jesse Cone being the primary authors, Jason Folsom providing the hosting, just so google knows that Rod Dreher and Jesse Cone were the authors of the irresponsibly libelous OCATruth website), admitting Dreher had a copy of the confidential SMPAC report and Metropolitan Jonah's response, and admitting that perhaps Metropolitan Jonah had made some mistakes at some point in his lifetime. They did this under the guise of not quoting parts of e-mails that had been stolen (see here for details), but the post where they admit who they are doesn't exactly contain any such confidential information, does it?

To quote an instance of their irresponsible and reckless reporting - which, to be fair, they retracted - here is something they posted a couple days ago:

Last night at St. Seraphim’s Cathedral in Dallas, Bishop Mark made sure that Bishop Nikon was commemorated as locum tenens, not Metropolitan Jonah, even though Jonah had sent down a directive stating that now that he was coming back from his agreed-upon leave, he was going to resume his role as the Diocese of the South’s locum tenens. Why is Bishop Mark defying the Metropolitan? Why is he obliging the Dallas cathedral congregation, in its communal prayers, to defy the Metropolitan’s legitimate order?

Somebody's poisoning the well! And then the retraction soon after. This is called "Fox News". And, once again, it's from an "officially" anonymous source.

Hrm. It seems a very wise fellow once said in a very similar situation, "If you cannot even sign your name to such an accusation, is it really responsible to publically denounce a fellow Christian and stir up suspicion and distrust in others?" His name was Jesse Cone and he was defending somebody at his cathedral spoken ill of only a couple months ago in the comments at OCANews. Well, here is somebody speaking ill of somebody at that very same cathedral and hiding behind his anonymity to boot! Well...

I'm having too much fun with this.

PS the other post they retracted contained an exercise in counterspin, which is fine, since I'm not a fan of how Stokoe spins his materials, either, but notably absent were explanations of, viz, somebody referring to Bishop Mark with a rather unflattering and insulting term which ought not to be used with respect to a hierarch.

EDITED TO ADD: And while we're on the subject of things removed from their blog that were "under the seal of confession" or whatever, have they removed all their speculation about Mark Stokoe's personal situation? And their calls for Fr Ted Bobosh to discuss it?

An ironic comment...

2011-05-02T12:21:00.001-05:00

...from one of the OCATruth authors:

If you cannot even sign your name to such an accusation, is it really responsible to publically denounce a fellow Christian and stir up suspicion and distrust in others?

How three months will change one's opinion, it seems, once the rubber band is on the other claw!

And one from Rod Dreher:

When I was a Catholic, and a journalist writing about the sex abuse scandal, I heard from priests and laymen all the time who had truly shocking and terrible things to report. I believed then, and believe now, that they were telling me the truth. But I couldn't report any of it unless they were willing to put their name to the criticism of particular bishops, priests, et al. Their views and information, however passionately held and grounded in fact, were useless gossip. And for all I know, they had it wrong. That they wouldn't say what they felt needed saying in public, with their names attached to it, said a lot about the credibility of their accusations. [Ed: emphasis added] It is perhaps understandable, to an extent, when a priest or layman whose income depends on not crossing church leaders is hesitant to stand up. But that didn't stop many OCA priests during the Herman mess. What's stopping this anonymous attacker of Fr. Joseph from identifying himself or herself now, and letting all of us at the cathedral be the judge of his or her credibility?

No one has the right to do this to our parish and its priests. No one. Whoever you are, you either have no idea what you're doing, or you don't care.

Of course, two years is plenty of time to change your mind about anonymous criticism, especially if one discovers the utility of providing it. I believe he owes an apology to Fr Ted Bobosh.

I really don't intend to keep harping on this issue. I don't belong to any "team" and I don't pretend to have sufficient information to have a meaningful opinion about the current conflict between Metropolitan Jonah and some other members of the Holy Synod. I certainly don't have a public opinion of Fr Fester. I do, perhaps, have an unhealthy interest in schadenfreude and a couple spare minutes to use google well...

Rod Dreher is behind OCATruth.

2011-04-30T18:23:00.001-05:00

No wonder it seemed very "Fox News" - they had professional guidance. I admit to being surprised. Perhaps if I could stomach his prose, I would've been familiar enough with it to recognize it. However, I doubt whether I've read more than 2000 words written by him besides his at-times-slanderous anonymous posts on that web-log. Now, the behind-the-scenes details, those are about what I expected (a little more involved, actually, but not too far), just not the name I expected. I especially like the irony of the OCATruth people harping on an investigation of how/whether Stokoe got the confidential SMPAC report (he didn't) when Rod Dreher got both it and the official response of the metropolitan. Seriously, though, I think he could have done some good if he wrote a web-log saying, "Hey, I'm Rod Dreher, and I want to provide some balance here." Etc. And conducting it in the way you have to when you're attaching your name to it and have some integrity.

Okay, and the campaign against Bishop Mark which just rolled out, I didn't know what to make of that, but the background there doesn't look good.

Anyway, there was a pretty good ordination today, I like our new bishop. It's also always good to see all these shiny bishops in one place. One kid remarked to me that he was surprised that they were so funny. Anyway.

I have, of course, changed some of my opinions over the years.

2011-04-26T15:00:00.001-05:00

This thing has been running for five years and I don't think I've posted regularly since 2007. I have certainly changed a number of my opinions since then, though I'm mostly the same. I don't think I've changed many of them since I've been married, at least not the ones I discussed here or on my "less serious more personal" web-log which preceded this and which is also, more or less, defunct. Most of the change was between 2007 and 2009. I thought about this while looking back on what I've said publically about Catholicism. I haven't changed my mind about Catholicism except perhaps quite minor details which I will not catalogue.

EDIT: I also have not changed my mind about Protestantism.

I think the priest is exactly right...

2011-03-25T11:25:00.005-05:00

And "OCATruth" is exactly wrong on every single point of this article: http://www.ocatruth.com/?p=629#more-629

One of the best/worst quotes: "That is an indictment on the Synod for not squashing the suspicion that something nefarious isn’t [sic] afoot." Absolutely terrible. The Synod owes an anonymous web-logger nothing. This is pure Fox News.

Another: "As for the statements made about Fr. Ted [Bobosh] and Mark Stokoe, I think that everything we have written is easily defensible. If anything it has given Fr. Ted an opportunity to clarify himself." Fr. Ted Bobosh owes an anonymous web-logger nothing. However, an anonymous web-logger most certainly has a duty to be charitable in his readings. At the very least, he could commit libel using his own name, not a twee pseudonym.

This web-log is not exactly anonymous, though my name isn't listed anywhere. I'm quite glad to respond to any and all inquiries and if you meet me in person I think it would be quite clear that I am the author of this web-log. My initials, shown above, are quite distinctive and my interests are, too. I refrain from publishing my name to avoid the Google, not identification.

chess improvement

2011-02-04T17:27:00.002-05:00

I thought a bit about chess improvement and noted that what some people (learners, not instructors) seem to miss sometimes is the importance of actually playing the game and playing it at tournament speeds (ie, slow, for those of you without any chess experience). Perhaps it's just me, so don't be offended if you feel implicated. One canonical example discussed on web-logs is the phenomenon of Michael de la Maza - what the people don't comment on much is that he played around 200 tournament-speed games over 2 years when doing his "rapid chess improvement" and critically examined them. Many discuss his tactical study plan, but few try to emulate that aspect. Dan Heisman recommends, IIRC, 55% practice, 45% study, but it's easy to let get out of balance, as it's easy to sit there with a book and hard to carve out time for a G/90. That's three hours, after all! And all at once! Probably with another human (at least, it's best with another human)! Anyway, there are some opportunities around me to regularly plan in tournaments, so I'll do that and just let my rating float up.

Note: I'm being very lazy up there, I could just google what Dan Heisman recommends, he has a great web site with some great articles. It could be 45/55 rather than 55/45, but the point is still the same.

Goal recap

2011-01-05T10:07:00.003-05:00

Looking back on 2010's goals and thinking of this year's goals.
1. Did not crush many enemies.
2. Battled some cosmic evil.
3. Sought a little justice.
4. Did gain some weight and then lose some.
5. Didn't quite escape from the jorb, but, yes, I actually did do this. Won't comment publicly.
6. Didn't really do this.
7. PL total way over 500kg now, but not quite there on the olympic lifts.

This year's goals:
The first three are always the same.
4. Definitely escape the jorb this year or make it (pay) significantly better.
5. Indulge in some sort of "intellectual stimulation hobby" like chess or what-have-you on a regular basis. I've been playing cards a bit lately. Something with measurable levels of achievement and the potential for high levels of potential intellectual involvement.
6. PL total of 600 might be a bit much to shoot for. 550 is a little low. I'll still say 600. 230-140-230? I'm not going to have an OL goal.

EDIT: Adding a goal.
7. I suppose I should have some sort of goal about more regular social event type things, like board gaming nights or card game nights, especially since there are now quite a few sets of young couples around.

What I Have Been Up To Lately

2010-12-06T12:45:00.004-05:00

I've been playing piquet quite a bit lately. It is a marvelous game that feels like a board game in some ways. I hope to get the wife to start playing at a decent level. So far I've managed to figure out the basics of discarding and trick play, but I need to get better at sinking in declarations and counting cards in general. For those interested in learning the game, I would recommend keeping the following outline in mind to make sense of the rules. There are three phases: exchanges, declarations, and play. You exchange to improve your hand, declare things about your hand to score points, and then play out the hand for more points. These are all distinct phases of the game. The elder hand should almost always trade five cards and should rarely discard from the longest suit. Go for the point and tricks. A beginner should probably just make the biggest declarations possible, as that is usually the best bet. Beyond that, it's stuff you can figure out on your own by playing against a computer a few times. Three things: Pagat's rules page, Cavendish on Piquet (1901 edition, the best one), and MeggieSoft's program. We thought of finding a two-player card game because games of skill, like chess, would either be too one-sided or be something I wouldn't be interested in. That is to say, I don't think it is realistic to expect my wife to ever become a match for me in chess and I don't think I'm interested in learning a different pure game of skill.
I had hoped to squat 500# by year-end and was coming rather close, but travel plans and now a minor back injury have put me out of the running. I should make it in January, though.
I suppose I'm doing stochastic stuff at school. Woo stochasticity.
I'm almost done with the Aubrey/Maturin series. I highly recommend it even if you don't typically enjoy "genre fiction". You don't have to read through the entire series, but reading through the first few will pay off. I think the second book is even better than the first, for instance. I'm on the 14th book and think the quality has not waned (though I would say #2 was the high point), but I do admit that getting this far requires you to be a fan of the series, if not the genre. My recommendation is to try the first three, maybe four, and then decide whether you want to continue. You can find many of the books at a very reasonable price used on amazon.com. I paid less than $100 for my twenty books, including shipping. I found a large number of them for either $.01 + $3.99 shipping or $3.99-ish + super saver shipping. This series of books is also what sparked my interest in piquet.

So that's what I've been up to lately.

EDIT: BoardGameGeek has a very helpful cheat sheet for piquet that helps make sense of all the scoring.

When The Simpsons Started Sucking

2010-11-18T09:50:00.003-05:00

I don't know what prompted this, probably some random link I followed somewhere, but I found a website that clearly indicates when The Simpsons started sucking. I pretty much stopped watching regularly during season 10 and did not watch it at all after season 13, so I am not able to comment adequately about its continued slump, but I agree with this summary from a brilliant site:

Seasons 1-6 – The Simpsons
Season 7 – One Bad Episode
Seasons 8-11 – Mayday, Mayday, we’re going down!
Season 12+ – Zombie Simpsons. It has no pulse and no intelligence but it just won’t fucking die.

Zombie Simpsons ManifestoI have the first 5 seasons ingrained in my head pretty well and seasons 6-9 decently because I watched them when they came out and caught them in syndication over and over in my youth. They were on at 5 and later both 5 and 5:30 and I didn't have much to do in that time slot between my paper route and dinner - this was before the internets.

Somebody posited that the peak was the Monorail episode. That sounds plausible. It was season 4. I dare say the Monorail episode is one of the best things that has ever been on TV.

This reflection only makes me more mad that the "Jurassic Bark" episode of Futurama lost to an episode of The Simpsons.

Communism

2010-11-16T11:24:00.000-05:00

Communism is bad: http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/museum/musframe.htm

God Bless America

2010-11-10T10:17:00.003-05:00

I was at an event, a conference of sorts, with some interesting speakers, including Colin Powell. At the start of the event, they played the national anthem, and I stood up, hand over heart, looking for a flag (didn't look around like a yokel for too long, didn't see one, so I looked at the singer, found it later), in accordance with the suggestions put forth by Congress in the Flag Code. In the afternoon, they sang "God Bless America" and I did not stand. There are a number of reasons, but here's the one relevant to one of the purposes of this blog: the panheresy of ecumenism. The song indicates that it is a prayer, and I don't engage in acts of public prayer with heretics in accordance with canon law under threat of excommunication.

Apologetics

2010-08-08T07:30:00.002-05:00

I read some boring apologetic article from some Catholic about why he didn't convert to Orthodoxy, and this got me thinking about the silly futility of apologetics. The only evidence I need to prove that Catholicism is wrong is that they do not commune infants. No bombardment of ratiocination can overcome that fact which conclusively proves they are wrong.

Goal Progress

2010-04-22T11:28:00.002-05:00

1. Still not crushing enemies.
2. Battling a little cosmic evil.
3. Some progress on justice.
4. I forget what I was at when I wrote this. I'm around 114kg right now.
5. Not really doing well on this. Not taking an exam this spring, which pushes things back. I am taking a class though and doing decently. I'll take another, maybe 2, in the fall. And maybe do an exam, but I'm not sure. The classes will be relatively low impact, so I might. But they take time...
6. Not playing much chess. I did look over some puzzles recently.
7. I competed at a powerlifting meet and totaled 475kg. 500 should be very easy this year. I might be able to hit it right now, actually. I'm competing in a weightlifting meet in July. I don't think I'll hit 225kg, but I might make it by the end of the year.

"Look at me!"

2010-02-02T17:23:00.002-05:00

"Look at me! I'm being critical of the people choosing a new bishop!"

Seriously, man. Come on. There's nothing wrong with being openly critical of a process, mind you, especially as important as this. I think he's being a little silly, that's all.

this year's resolutions

2010-01-07T12:16:00.002-05:00

I had some success with last year's resolutions. I didn't get a new job, but I was busy getting married at the time. I also didn't pack my lunch as often as I could have. But, anyway, this year's resolutions.
1. I will not crush my enemies in 2010.
2. Battle cosmic evil.
3. Seek justice.
4. Acquire more weight, but probably cut down to 110kg sometime before the end of the year.
5. Get out of this crummy job into a real one in the fall. I'm starting the process in the fall, so it might not resolve this year. But I'm taking a class and taking an exam in the spring, so, there we go.
6. Play chess, not too seriously, but solve a few puzzles and maybe play one game per week.
7. Olympic lifting total of 225kg, PL total of 450kg. I could probably hit 250 and 500, but I want modest goals, given how busy I will be. A month ago, I said I'd enter at least one meet this year, but recent developments have caused me to reconsider that, based on time, expense, predictable availability...

on bizarre terminology

2009-11-18T11:05:00.003-05:00

Gabriel referred to somebody else's argument about translating the usual references to the Virgin Mary in Orthodox liturgy. For those unfamiliar, the Greek title most often used to refer to her is "Theotokos" (Θεοτόκος), which roughly glosses as "She who gave birth to the one who is God", if you'll forgive my glossing it as though it were Sanskrit. Most other languages translate this title. Slavonic says "Bogoroditsa", for instance (Богородица). A lot of English Orthodox texts are translated from the Slavonic, so we have the absurd situation of translating from the Slavonic, which was translated from the Greek, not into the target language, but back into Greek. I find it slightly more absurd than using antiquated second person pronouns. Gabriel then goes on to say that he never uses the term when talking with non-Orthodox and rarely even when talking with Orthodox (unless explicitly discussing the third ecumenical council). I find this wise and tactful, because most people have a hard enough time understanding the nonsense we are talking about without our assuming that they know all these crazy big words we're using.

Which brings us to the topic of our conversation. Most people have no idea what the hell other people are talking about, religiously, if they are not a part of your bizarre little religious subculture. This has become more apparent over the last year, since my wife, for some odd reason, has a lot of Protestant friends, and they use common everyday words as though they are imbued with some special meaning that I cannot pretend to decipher and they have all these nonsensical debates which mean literally nothing to me. And they all pretend like they should mean something to me just because the words they are using are all English (imagine if they weren't and they were using hideously outdated German or French).

Of course, this extends beyond religious spheres. Any little coterie is bound to have manners of speaking that become pregnant with meaning, but when outsiders are introduced to them, their reaction is, "You say that as if it should mean something to me, but it doesn't." And, even more insidiously, conformance to these manners of speaking by those inducted can become a substitute for actual understanding. Leaning on the obscure words of others rather than, you know, realizing what you're saying. This isn't too bad if you're just working it out for yourself, but if you're trying to have any influence on other people, I recommend figuring out what you mean before you say it and trying to translate it into something somebody else can understand. This usually means using English words.

As a matter of policy, I pretend not to understand people who don't unless it's clear we know what we're doing. That's part of the motivation behind my post about words that cause me to tune out: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Or at least we may not agree about it.

Pascha: Daytime or Evening?

2009-07-08T09:48:00.002-05:00

A serious question came up recently. Is the midnight Paschal liturgy to be considered a daytime event or an evening event for the purposes of dressing? On the one hand, it is midnight after all. On the other, it is, liturgically, day, sort of.

Practically, this is the question of whether one has occasion to bring out the dinner jacket (tails would seem a bit much) or whether one should stick with a suit (no American has formal morning attire, but if one has a black peak lapel jacket and striped/checked trousers, one could sneak something by the unsuspecting masses, while a morning coat would just be too much).

I'm not going to suggest that one hire or purchase such clothes for the occasion if one doesn't have them, except to say that every man should have a suit. Nor am I suggesting that we turn the Paschal vigil into an ostentatious display of finery. This is, largely, academic for me, since I don't have a dinner jacket and don't intend to purchase one. I wouldn't wear one even if it were appropriate because I would typically serve and a black bowtie doesn't work well with a sticharion (nor should altar servers wear ties, in my opinion). I've already detailed my opinion on formal daytime attire. Accordingly, my Easter attire is already chosen for me no matter what: a dark solid-colored suit (striped suits are strictly business attire). I'm going with oxford grey.

Words that cause me to roll my eyes

2009-06-12T11:57:00.003-05:00

In religious discussions [particularly Orthodox, so others can tune out], here are some words that cause me to roll my eyes.
1. Ancient.
2. Mystical.
3. Mystery.
4. Tradition.
5. This isn't a word, but, well, most apologetics.
6. Pretty much most other conversations. People don't really talk about anything worthwhile, they talk about shit.

Marital Survey

2009-05-15T13:15:00.005-05:00

This is all purely theoretical, but it came up somewhere and was curious what you all might think. I'm asking around all the fora (and fauna) I have and would like your input.

Keep in mind, of course, that I have never asked a question about anything I did not already have a strong opinion on that you could not possibly dissuade me from.

1. How long should a guy go out with a girl before asking her to marry him?

2. How long should an engagement last?

3. How much time should elapse between first date and wedding?

Think of these questions as being about several parameters, like minimum recommended wise time, typical time, maximum recommended wise time barring special circumstance, etc.

I was reading Boundless.org and one of the authors recommended that one should plan for marriage within about a year, which really did seem quite reasonable as an upper bound to plan for, but I thought I would ask your opinions/experiences.

Resolution

2009-01-01T15:06:00.004-05:00

I don't typically do new year's resolutions, but I figured I would make a couple and share them.

1. I will not crush my enemies in 2009.
2. Battle cosmic evil.
3. Seek justice.
4. I suppose I should acquire at least 10 more pounds.
5. Get out of this crummy job into a real one.
6. Eat more offal and pack my lunch more often.

I suppose a couple of these are counter-intuitive or obscure. Trust me, though. I'm a trained professional

A few clear thoughts about the second person pronoun: part I

2008-12-24T23:02:00.006-05:00

I have been drawn into two internet discussions in the last few weeks on the use of the archaic second person pronoun in (Orthodox) liturgical translations and other (Orthodox) churchly settings. I, naturally, have derided its use on the grounds that it is "lame", "retarded", and "may turn you gay". Granted, I find these to be fully adequate reasons to switch to real English, but I fear that some people may mistakenly cling to their former delusions. Further, most of the arguments on both sides that I have seen are extremely weak and deserve about as much respect as my arguments above would indicate I give them. Accordingly, I shall try to raise the level of discourse slightly.

But, first, we do have a few things to get out of the way so we all know what we are talking about. There are a number of English translations of Orthodox liturgical texts. The oldest are approximately a century old. Some of them use "Thou/Thee" for every second person singular. Some use "Thou/Thee" only for God. Some exclusively use "You/You". People often cobble together the texts from a variety of sources, so it's not all consistent. There is also the question of what Bible translation to use liturgically – I am not going to address that question. At the very least, we should be consistent, so how should we do this?

One plausible answer is that it does not really matter: we should make a choice and stick with it. If we pick up a text for something which does not conform to the mold, we can either fix it or leave it as it is (if, say, the text is only being used once).

Another plausible answer is that it does not really matter: we should only try not to sound completely ridiculous. This is much like the previous option, except that we do not care so much if some small parts are not the same as the others.

I am not competent to comment on either of these practical approaches and will, thankfully, never be in a position to decide on their implementation at any parish. However, I do feel quite qualified to discuss the theoretical questions in this debate (which the above two approaches neatly sidestep), as I have strong opinions about English style and usage. Fortunately, most people have some real opinion about how things ought to be, even if we all end as pragmatists, and I hope my few thoughts on this matter may help you realize that I am, as always, right.

Before I prove that I am right and you are, if you disagree, wrong, I ought to at least present the arguments of those who disagree with me. Here, then, is the compendium of errors:

Thou/Thee is traditional liturgical English.
The Bible was written in such English. The Book of Common Prayer was written in such English. The Douay-Rheims Bible was written in such English. It was not until recent times that any church used any other sort of language. There are still some pockets in the English-speaking world that insist on using the Authorized Version. Accordingly, we Orthodox should use that idiom to translate our liturgy.
The language of the liturgy should not be dumbed down like the newspaper or, worse, like casual conversation, text messages, or hip-hop music.
The liturgy is poetry. We must try to translate it in an idiom similar to that in which it was written. Also, we are serving the Almighty God. Though nothing is worthy of God, we should give what we can. A lot of modern translations of the Bible simply do not sound like they are the Bible because they are so dumbed down. Modern evangelical Protestant “praise and worship” music sounds like it could just as easily be about some girl you just fell for rather than the Almighty God. We must avoid this.
Thou/Thee has the potential to be more theologically accurate.
There are some notable passages in Scripture where using the generic second person pronoun leads to some ambiguity where a distinction between singular and plural would yield clarity. Further, the use of the singular for God emphasizes the oneness of God: definitive proof for the Musulmans that we are not tritheists.
Complete sets of liturgical texts exist in Thou/Thee, but they do not exist in real English.
Though this is a practical matter, rather than a theoretical matter, it is salient. If satisfactory texts already exist, why bother with all the work of ditching them just because they say Thou instead of You? Making yet another translation of the Horologion, for example, would mean a few thousand man hours, and to what end?

Please let me know if I am missing any major arguments for the use of “Thou/Thee” in liturgical translations or if these arguments can be made stronger. My next post will be my case and a rebuttal of these silly arguments.

A spammer? No, worse: a 1L.

2008-12-12T18:13:00.002-05:00

I was poked out of my web-logging retirement by somebody commenting on my web-log. I thought, at first, it was a spammer, but I was not so lucky: it was a 1L. Ew.

If you must know, I'm still a bad man. I've taken up picking up heavy things and putting them down since it's too cold out to run and, besides, running isn't actually exercise as most people do it. It just makes you weak and sickly.

I'm planning on taking some graduate classes in some crap next semester if the employer approves, which they should.

And I am always seeking justice. And battling cosmic evil. When I'm not watching Doctor Who.

Been a while.

2008-08-27T09:07:00.003-05:00

How are you? I'm fine. I haven't written in a while because I don't have anything valuable to say. I'm in more of a position to listen. Or perhaps to hear, I don't listen very well (I don't hear well, either, really, but we can let that slide for now). I was lying about things being fine. Things are profoundly wrong. Or, rather, I am profoundly wrong. Evil, perhaps, is a better word there. This is hardly the time or place for this discussion, however. I just wanted to let you few faithful readers know I am alive and, since this web-log is often touching on theological matters, why I am not really speaking about them: it is because I really am in no position to do so. I suppose I should clarify, since people can take that many ways: I'm an Orthodox Christian - I just have nothing to say or no right to say anything or discuss anything at present.

on computers in chess

2008-06-22T13:03:00.002-05:00

They just cannot make realistic computer opponents that don't give up pieces at the first sign of trouble. I was playing in Chessmaster against one of their opponents nominally rated at like 1950, which is certainly stronger than I am. I had a winning position in a bishop endgame, I was about to penetrate on the kingside, but he had some counterplay and it wasn't sewn up at all. But it would be tricky. The computer's response was to trade his bishop for a pawn. It seems that whenever the computer gets into a tricky position and it's trying to play weakly, it just gives up a piece. This is not realistic, no human player, especially not one rated 1950, would make that particular mistake.

Slightly more annoying is the recap they give at the end and the annotations: since the computer never resigns, one must play through to mate. They have a "worst move" and "missed mates" feature, and their utility is hampered by the fact that I don't care to play the absolute most accurate way when I'm a rook up, so if I lose a pawn or take 10 moves to mate instead of 5, those show up, but I really only care about the part of the game before I got my decisive advantage or where my opponent got the decisive advantage, not where the evaluation changed from +80.31 to +50.32 (FYI, +1.00 is usually winning).

on weak computer opposition

2008-05-18T14:31:00.002-05:00

Computers, of course, can play at very high level these days. They aren't strategic geniuses yet, but they have impeccable tactical sense. The hardest problem is to come up with realistic weak opposition for lower-level human players to brush up against. So, I recently purchased the latest Chessmaster software. It's not the strongest computer program available (though it certainly is grandmaster-strength) or the best in terms of, well, various other metrics chess players use. What differentiates it is that it's pretty much the most user-friendly, especially for beginners. I bought it because it was on sale and it's supposed to be fairly good at what I really needed: providing a bunch of opponents of various strengths to play against.

So, to get back in shape a little bit, I set up to play a tournament of G/60s against a bunch of weak opponents, just to get used to playing at longer time controls before using so much of my day against strong opponents. But, come on, a 1500-rated opponent hung a piece on the fourth move. Now, 1500-rated players occasionally drop pieces, even when they're playing at a long time control. But not on the fourth friggin' move. The opponent gave up a piece for a pawn later, as well. Up two pieces for free. I mean, I know 1500 is weak, but it's not "hang a piece on the fourth move" weak. But that's what it's like.

finished my first pass through CT Art.

2008-05-04T17:46:00.005-05:00

For those interested, I finished my first pass through CT Art, a computer program containing 1200 or so tactical chess problems. I mostly worked by "skill level" rather than by theme. I'll post my score breakdown below because I don't really see anybody else doing so. Overall, I had a success rate of 69% and a "rating" of 2420. Note that on a couple of these, I went back over "erroneous", so the percentages are slightly higher than on the initial pass, but level 50 and up is straight.

By Skill Level
10. 99% (originally 93%)
20. 91% (originally 86%)
30. 78%
40. 69%
50. 66%
60. 60%
70. 57%
80. 56%
90+. 55%

Levels 10 and 20 were initially a few percentage points lower.

Note that the "rating" provided has little correlation with real rating. I'm probably a weak class B player at the moment, in case you're wondering, though my real rating is public information if you really want to look it up.

Advice for Orthodox Converts

2008-05-03T00:13:00.005-05:00

Far be it from me to give advice to any, since I am the chief of sinners and, in most things, the most profitable advice would be to not do what I have done. Still, at various times, in my all-too-brief experience in chilling with Orthodox converts and other sorts, I have been on the receiving end of bits of wisdom which could appropriately be directed to myself which you may find profitable as well.

Don't be so "emo". For those of you not quite familiar with the popular jargon of modern youth, call to mind those roustabouts at the mall wearing tight jeans and having long hair on top of their heads and nowhere else: those people are "emo", but it's more than a fashion statement. Relax a little.
Try to get over being a convert as soon as possible. That is to say, don't ever forget where you came from, but try to get over the fact that you were once not Orthodox as soon as possible. Quit defining yourself in opposition to (viz.) the satanic delusion of Protestantism and start thinking of yourself as Orthodox. Orthodoxy stands on its own without reference to any external system. For a while, you may have to stand on the crutch of opposing yourself to your past, but, seriously, defining yourself as not Protestant is not the same as apophaticism. You should eventually get over it. There's a place for polemics. Odds are, it's not your place yet. Yes, you. I mean you. You. Don't get defensive.
A good proportion of male converts want to be priests. A good proportion of all converts want to be monastics. Be realistic about it, don't be a Romantic. See #1. You may be legitimately called to either, sure. That'd be great. Don't be disappointed if you aren't, don't unrealistically think you are if you aren't. EDIT: most importantly, don't go telling everyone or alluding to it, at least not until you're sure.
You have nothing to offer the Church. It has plenty to offer you.
Huw had a great post where he mentioned something somebody told him when he was looking for a martial arts school:
Are these people enjoying themselves? Are they welcoming? Is there a lot of ego on the mat? Are people trying to prove something?
My point here is that, well, I know my ego's on the mat and I'm trying to prove something. This isn't good. Are you? Should we work on this? Knowing is half the battle.
Debates are poisonous to the soul, especially if you are compelled to respond to every point and win every argument. Chill a bit, especially if you're on the Internets where the records will exist forever and ever. Somebody once likened winning an argument on the internet to winning an event in the Special Olympics, which I find entirely mean-spirited: I have found in my few days on this earth that the winners of the latter are usually marvelous people from whom I could learn a lot. Not so the former by any stretch of the imagination. Let it go.
This may just be me, but I don't find my conversion story that interesting, nor do I find yours that interesting. They're all the same, even the ones that are different. In the hagiographies, the conversions of the saints usually barely occupy a paragraph. There are few notable exceptions. They are generally all alike. Usually, anything longer merely indicates you're long-winded or that you're no saint. I'd rather not hear about the latter case.
The Orthodox Church will not give you what you want or like or expect, it will give you a cross. There are some things you might think God would never allow happen to a Christian. They may happen. Christianity isn't a "system" that "works". There are few guarantees, and they're not the sort you'll like.
NEW ADDITION: If you find that you, a recent convert of at most a couple years, are explaining theology to someone who may have been born in the Church, or, my personal favorite, who is a priest, please look back and consider what you're doing.

Well, I wasn't completely honest. A lot of these really don't apply to me except tangentially, but they were certainly deemed wise by me when I heard them. I hope you find this post to be profitable and eagerly await correction if I am being wrong-headed about anything, only please be patient with me, since I did not exactly graduate at the top of my class, as it were.
Much love in the risen Christ,
gzt

Action Plan

2008-03-18T18:54:00.002-05:00

Given my performance on the tactics test, I decided to pick up the Chess Combinations Encyclopedia so I could work heavily on those areas where I am deficient. It seems to have the ability to slice and dice the way I would need. My other deficiencies, as pointed out in the previous test, are adequately addressed in the materials I already have. I'll provide a review and results when I get it.

more chess

2008-03-12T23:03:00.004-05:00

Based on my results on the overall test (which were illuminating), I decided I should take the tactics test. The results were amazing (as opposed to merely illuminating). They were, overall, quite good (around 1800ish), but, on drilling down, that figure proved very misleading. I was rated over 2000 (!) in several areas, peaking at 2360 (!!) on one, but had abysmal scores on others (low of around 1270!!). That, my friends, is a big variation. It also clearly indicates where the least application of effort will yield the biggest results and where it would be fruitless, at the moment, to push forward.

EDIT, FURTHER RESULTS: After looking more carefully, it seems I'm very good at immediate tactics and not very good at preparatory tactics. That is magnificent. Brilliant! That is my problem in a nutshell. Good at the quick, easy, superficial things, not good at the stuff that requires a little more depth and complex synthesis. Illuminating, revealing, and completely thematic. The scales have fallen off my eyes.

Stuff Orthodox Converts Like

2008-03-09T15:46:00.002-05:00

So, the other day, I discovered Stuff White People Like. If you're not familiar with it, apparently white people like Graduate School, The Idea of Soccer, Whole Foods, Wrigley Field, and Coffee. Well, fair enough. I had the brilliant idea of doing my own spin-off, "Stuff Orthodox Converts Like", but, alas, Lent begins tomorrow, and that sort of commentary is really not appropriate during a penitential season. You will have to wait until after Pascha to see why Orthodox converts like monks, antinomianism, and making fun of the West.

Chess is such a difficult game

2008-03-03T19:28:00.004-05:00

There's so many pieces.

Well, I've been playing chess again. I took I am Coach's chess exam to get a good gauge of where I stood in terms of playing facility, and I'm apparently playing a little over 1600 these days
(respectable, but not particularly good). Honestly, though, the best advice I got as a result of this was that I should be doing 80% playing and 20% studying, but I simply don't have the time or will to get a good game in. It's easier to spend 20 minutes on the train reviewing. Which is fair enough, because 20 minutes is too fast to play a serious game. Blitz will only ruin you. The results indicated that I was quite good at "standard positions" (that is, the typical textbook endgame positions), calculation, and endgames, in that order, which is what you'd expect from somebody who sits reading endgame manuals and twirling through long variations on the train. However, I did rather dismally at strategy and the middlegame. Though I know the theory and have worked a bit on it, that really is the sort of thing that comes with practice, with actually sitting at the board for a few hours playing a game several times a month. Despite all my tactical practice and bouncing around on that problem site, my tactical score was also fairly shoddy. That may be from a couple months' worth of rust, however. Time will tell.

UPDATE: I think this really has been helpful, because it does really show me that my work yields results. I was working on endgames, particularly standard positions, and my results indicated that I am strong in those. There we go. Action does, in fact, lead to results.

a love letter to SUMPRODUCT

2008-02-19T22:55:00.002-05:00

With shoutouts to INDEX, MATCH, and OFFSET.

All seriousness aside, it is amazing how much a smart application of a few simple functions in tandem can make you appear smart and efficient without requiring you to be so.

News for the curious

2008-02-18T22:15:00.004-05:00

My progress in Russian lit continues. I'm on Pushkin at the moment, just his short stories. I should do Onegin and Godunov, I really should, but I'm not. Which reminds me, I just noticed that the name of the band "Modest Mouse" is probably a play on Mussorgsky. My chess has waned slightly, but I'm back to playing a little again. I sort of stopped while studying for that exam and did not quite get back on the ball. I played on the train previously, but now that time is reserved for reading. Such is life. I've been thinking about breaking out my guitar and that book again, it's been a few years and the neck is slightly warped, but I should be able to manage until I can fix or replace the thing. I suppose instead of this new project I should be learning more financial mathematics and looking for a new job in case they don't give me enough giant sacks of cash at my current one. Well, fair enough. Maybe. But I already own the books, the guitar, the chess sets, and what-have-you. If it comes down to it, it won't cost me anything to lay them aside temporarily since I didn't just go out and buy them.

Started on Gogol, already confused

2008-01-01T19:10:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: In retrospect, I suppose the Russian role in the Greek Revolution wasn't that small, and then one considers the Russo-Turkish war immediately following it, so I suppose it makes sense that some provinicial who had some sort of military service could for some reason have paintings of figures from the Greek Revolution around the house. It's odd, but not incomprehensible.

I started on Gogol's Dead Souls because it quite fortunately arrived in the 12/31/07 post, but I am already slightly confused one of the characters. Mikhail Semyonovich Sobakevich (last name, of course, derived from "dog") is portrayed as being a bear whose furniture is essentially miniature versions of himself. What is incomprehensible: why does he have all those paintings of figures from the Greek Revolution? It seems rather random, despite the Russian involvement in the revolution. I have no problem with nonsense and randomness, but usually there is either some possible thread tying it together or it is completely nonsensical; what is hard to endure is something that may have some sense behind it which I cannot understand yet.

For Thou art our God and we know no other than Thee

2007-12-30T18:51:00.000-05:00

Having beheld the Resurrection of Christ, let us worship, the holy Lord Jesus, the only Sinless One! We venerate Thy Cross, O Christ, and Thy Holy Resurrection we praise and glorify; for Thou art our God, and we know no other than Thee; we call on Thy name. Come, all you faithful, let us venerate Christ's Holy Resurrection! For, behold, through the Cross joy has come into all the world. Let us ever bless the Lord, praising His Resurrection. By enduring the Cross for us, He destroyed death by death!

The phrase in the title has been sticking in my head lately. It feels like it should come from the Psalms or at least something in the Scriptures, but I cannot quite find the reference. All my googling seems to turn up is this above hymn to the Resurrection and various other Orthodox sources which are clearly derivative. Even as vague a search as "you are our god" "know no other" (or with "Thou" appropriately substituted) does not have much luck. So, help on sources for this phrase (if any exist) would be appreciated. Obviously, the sentiment is found all over the Old Testament since it is the major theme of the work, but I want to find it expressed with these phrases in close proximity or in similar words.

Car ton bras sait porter l'épée, il sait porter la croix.

2007-12-29T11:46:00.000-05:00

I was surprised at how different the French is from the English. Well, I certainly do prefer the French.

Out of reading material

2007-12-28T20:12:00.000-05:00

I seem to have run out of light reading material. Just having re-read Brothers Karamazov over Christmas, I no longer have any books that I can merely sit down and read. Of course, I have my books that I am working through for various reasons, but nothing for mere enjoyment. I recently took up the idea of reading the Bible cover-to-cover once more to consolidate my knowledge of it and to make sure I've gone through it all, recalling the example of a Protestant blowhard from days of yore on some other internet site. He was a bitter ex-Catholic who would go on long expositional tirades, heavy on direct quoting of Scripture, light on interpretation, but what interpretation there was was pretty wild. It came to pass that he revealed that, not only had he not read the entire Bible, but that there were significant gaps in his reading and that his absurd habit of quoting came from the fact that he could easily search, cut, and paste using this one Bible web site. While, of course, I could indeed say that I had read the whole thing, it really is to my shame that, for all we cared, I might as well have been in the same boat as him. Anyway! That is neither here nor there: the important thing is that now I seem to have an intense awareness of just how often Og, king of Bashan, is mentioned in the Old Testament. I also laboriously read through wise books written for wicked men who desire not to be such anymore (and, hopefully, take the advice to heart). The only things it seems I have around besides these are 60's works on Catholic liturgical reform and novels I've either read too recently or novels I don't want to read. Everything else is simply not suited to light reading (unless I really do feel like cracking open The Exact Sciences in Antiquity again, but that part of my life is long past).

Accordingly, using my various bookstore gift certificates obtained during the holiday season, I ordered several Russian novels to work through. I plan on re-acquainting myself with 19th century Russian literature and then plowing through the Soviet era. However, I would like to take suggestions for future thematic reading projects and possible syllabi. Probably 3000 pages would be the most I could stand to pay attention for at the moment, though I could certainly go into more depth later.

FYI, here are the books I'm planning on reading now, with more additions when I finish these depending on what trajectory I want to take. Some have been read before, but I felt the need to reread, others have been left off because I did not feel the need to reread (most notably, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, and Fathers and Sons).

1. Brothers Karamazov - Just finished.
2. Tales of Belkin and other prose writings by Pushkin.
3. The Golovlyov Family by Shchedrin.
4. A Hero of Our Time by Lermontov.
5. Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Leskov.
6. Oblomov by Goncharov.
7. Dead Souls by Gogol.
8. The Complete Short Novels of Chekhov.

I shall also probably check out the new Pevear and Volokhonsky War and Peace, but that would be quite an investment. There may be a film component, as well, since Wajda did Siberian Lady Macbeth and somebody else did Oblomov, so I may as well watch after reading the novels.

So this is Christmas.

2007-12-25T19:14:00.001-05:00

I was going to produce another encyclical on how to be awesome (as I have done on numerous occasions in the past), but it is Christmas on certain degenerate calendars, so we can all be awesome today even if we do make certain mistakes. Very well: merry Christmas, to those of you who celebrate it today (including me)! Christ is born! To those of you who don't celebrate Christmas at all, you can get the hell off of this web-log.

the mystery of the archives

2007-12-09T21:34:00.000-05:00

Anyways, so I've been reading, with immense joy, the archives of my divers writings scattered throughout the Internets. Most of what I write is completely memorable to me, but, occasionally, I run into something completely mysterious. For some context, I jokingly wrote frequently while in school about dropping out and becoming a goatherd, marrying suddenly, being tricked into being a monk, other such matters. Now:

In other news, I realized I could never be a monk because there are certain genres of people who I absolutely cannot stand to be around and it would be just my luck that I'd probably be in a small monastery with at least one such person. I've read Thomas Merton's journals, it's inevitable! But, quite fortunately for me, I happen to be the sort of person who really ought to be married [at least, according to Woman].

This was from sometime around Christmas of '05. I have no idea whatsoever what "Woman" this could be referring to. Later citations of that idea attached it to St Paul's counsel and, until today, I thought that had always been the case. Reading the archives around that date, of course, would not be any help in jogging my memory, since every woman is referred to as "Woman". It is all a mystery, especially as I cannot recall any person with whom I would have had such a conversation, at least at that date.

Emodox

2007-12-07T21:20:00.001-05:00

This is not going to be my great treatise about the so-called "emodox", the terminally "emo" Orthodox Christians one sometimes sees (often converts, but not always). I am certain most religious traditions have their own equivalent. Some entire denominations of Protestantism encourage such a temperament in their forms of popular piety, in fact.

I was actually going to write more, but it would turn into uncharitable caricatures of specific British people, so I decided not to. So, I will spare you my thoughts but leave this post because "emodox" is such a great word. It must enter our lexicon.

That's right.

2007-11-21T19:08:00.000-05:00

This web-log just got more pretentious.

on dilettantes

2007-11-18T23:43:00.000-05:00

Honestly, prior to reading this post, I had considered affecting the usage of "might could" because it seemed so lovely to me, though I've never lived in or even been in a region where it would be colloquial. I took it as a sign of rootless dilettantism [sic], an attempt at appropriating a culture not my own, rather than a true appreciation of the semantic subtleties of the linguistic construction. I don't even know what my own voice sounds like or should sound like. I've been reading a self-help book to sort this out. I think most of the things I say are affectations, since I was taught utterly "standard" American English with an utterly unmarked accent, except for a few rural colloquialisms picked up from who-knows-where, namely, sometimes saying "gorsh" instead of "gosh" when flustered and having "bag" rhyme with "vague", though I've unfortunately begun overcompensating by making "vague" sound like the "normal" pronunciation of "bag", as my comrades in youth made fun of my pronunciation (so I didn't learn it from them, and, oddly, I didn't consciously change it until now, when nobody seems to care). I've noticed that when I read in public or drink excessively, I stop some yod-dropping and start broadening A's. But this is all quite a digression. So, anyways, if anybody knows what I'm supposed to sound like, please do tell, I'll be glad to conform to something.

In principio creavit Deus cælum et terram

2007-11-18T20:25:00.000-05:00

Previously I remarked that translating it otherwise (ie, "made" instead of the usual "created") probably wouldn't throw anybody off, but, I have reconsidered and would agree in light of the original Latin. Consider this a public retraction of a previous comment.

And the Antiochians agree with the Russian ranking of bishops and not the Greek.

Carry on.

looks like i'm already reaping the rewards

2007-11-08T22:14:00.000-05:00

After this morning's liturgy for the Archangel Michael and his posse, I come to work to find out that I'm getting a new better job in the new year. I'm already enjoying the benisons of my study, it seems. Well, I can't count my chickens before they're hatched, we haven't yet discussed remuneration. I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord. Of course, I'd say the same if I got canned today, though I might say I deserved it, too.

i shall not die but live

2007-11-07T17:15:00.000-05:00

As I said before the test, and it was true. By the grace of God, I have managed to survive my exam and probably have a decent shot of passing. Further, God has not yet seen fit to destroy me for my wickedness. "By the grace of God I am a Christian, by my deeds a great sinner..." So starts the book, anyway, and I think about it from time to time. Someday, I may be delivered from this body of death.

NO SHAVE NOVEMBER

2007-10-31T21:37:00.000-05:00

I shaved off my beard because I am too wicked to deserve a beard, but this post serves as a reminder about NO SHAVE NOVEMBER, which I will participate in.

too wicked for my beard

2007-10-27T22:03:00.000-05:00

The beard has returned (to rave reviews), but I really think it should be shaved (in shame, of course), because I am too wicked to deserve a beard (or a Blog). A compromise: I shall shave and then let it grow out again and VOW TO ALWAYS LIVE WORTHY OF THE BEARD. I hope, Dear Reader, we can live like this.

In case you're wondering...

2007-10-14T15:03:00.001-05:00

...I'm too wicked to have a blog.

Birthday

2007-09-08T17:37:00.000-05:00

Looking back, I only seem more wicked as the heavens complete each cycle around the earth.

etiquette

2007-08-06T21:17:00.000-05:00

Q: Why do you dress up when you go to the opera?
A: Because I'm not an ass.

This is, surprisingly, the answer to a lot of etiquette questions. Or, at least, "Because I want to at least pretend I'm not an ass."

ATTN: BREWING INFIDELS

2007-08-04T20:57:00.001-05:00

Please to not be putting "a subtle hint of orange and coriander" in your beers. Just say no to orange and coriander.

1552

2007-07-21T11:06:00.000-05:00

So now I'm over the big hump on that graph. I suppose the next goal is 1600. No correlation to real ratings! I sort of bounded up on it in one day. The increase corresponds exactly to my receipt in the mail of back issues of Šahovski Informator in the mail (like $3 off of Amazon.com!). Coincidence? I think not.

What else I received in the mail which may have contributed to my virtue: OCTPOB. Apparently the man who plays Father Anatoly is like a rockstar in Russia.

Also: Emir Kusturica's When Father Was Away on Business. Another Kusturica film about betrayal. Interesting note is that the chess set they use did not have a cross on top of the king, a feature noted in at least one other Yugoslavian chess set of the era, I wonder if that's a common feature from that time.

I am ready for Science

2007-07-13T04:39:00.000-05:00

Because of some conversations I had about the very subject, I was looking at some things I used to read and write (the above link is something I read and not, alas, something I wrote). I suppose it is a bit narcissistic, but I find myself to be an avid reader of myself. At times (viz: recently) my output has slowed or been incomprehensibly boring, and on this web-log I refrain from most of the interesting types of narrative that make my diaries most worthwhile. I suppose I took inspiration from reading through the edited journals of several great men and realizing what a delight it is to read their thoughts. I thought, surely I could do the same, and started writing my own, to my great delight. I realize that you, Dear Reader, may not enjoy the exercise as much as I do. As long as I don't have any delusions about being the next Montaigne, I think things will be "all right". I don't know, why not have a series of "The Best of GZT: Seasons 1-5"? Why not? I've been promising it since Season Three. Watch this space for further details.

celebrating rebellion against our lawful rulers appointed by Almighty God Himself

2007-07-04T15:46:00.001-05:00

I'm celebrating by, in a quick burst, bringing the rating up to 1525 and the ranking up to 667th. Hard work pays off? I suppose we can let bygones be bygones and simply enjoy the day off, no discussing the monarchy today. But I thought you all would, of course, be glad to hear of my continued rise through the ranks of the mediocre.

1500

2007-07-01T18:51:00.000-05:00

So I was writing about my goals for chess earlier and I just hit 1500 at CTS after doing all the mates-in-one in the Polgar book in one sitting a couple times. Of course, this just means that my next big goal is 1550 and my next minor goal is 1510. NOTE: no correlation to real ratings. I noticed some web-logging discussion of correlations of CTS ratings to real ratings, such as Mousetrapper's anecdotal data, but I would discourage such speculations. I mean, yes, the people rated over 2000 on CTS are pretty intense, and even people rated 1700 are fairly intense, but I highly doubt that I'd be at even 1500 in real ratings at the moment, much less 1500+200 or 1500+300 as some people's discussion seems to suggest! It's a number to note and not take much stock of. The only real numbers that matter are the ones involved when you crush the ego of your opponent. There is some value to CTS ratings: they measure one narrowly-defined set of skills which might be valuable to have and having a higher score is better than having a lower score.

EDIT: 1530 would put me in the top third of active players, so I'll take a week off and shoot for that.

What I'm up to

2007-06-10T22:16:00.000-05:00

Still more chess. I thought some people might be vaguely interested to hear this stuff, the others will be driven off by boredom. There are only 5 readers here, anyway.

Oddly, Iowa seems to have a more accessible chess scene, just by number of tournaments and the existence of regularly-meeting chess clubs I could find, than Chicago, unless somebody would care to enlighten me. Enough so that I may plan trips home around tournaments in Iowa if I do get seriously back into things. I mean, there's North Avenue Beach, I suppose, but I'm looking for something structured where you could get in a G/60 or G/45 at minimum, hopefully downtown. I think the University's chess club may be open to people like me, but it would be on hiatus for the summer right now. I could look into playing with those random guys at that convenience store or McDonald's, but I'd feel awkward approaching them, just like at North Avenue. So for now I'm just dinking around the Chess Tactics Server, playing occasional blitz, and will soon have a nice little pocket chess game that plays at around 1750 for the bus ride, a couple G/15 every day on the bus or something should be helpful, but not ideal. Should I ever get that Windows box working again, I may be able to play some computer chess with reasonable time controls. Also working heavily on visualization exercises and, soon, endgames.

I seem to have hit a wall on CTS (fluttering around 1450, no correlation to real ratings), so I'm backing off for a few days and instead devoting my time to solving hard problems slowly. Then, Vukovic. Then, CTS with gusto. I will break 1500 (no correlation to real ratings)!

So, tactics, endgames, and visualization. There's a lot more to the game, but I figure that, at my current level of strength and rustiness, those will be the most valuable and pay the most dividends. Fortunately, they're also the easiest to make some quick headway into.

two things: chess and wings night.

2007-06-03T23:01:00.000-05:00

I am addicted to the Chess Tactics Server. Specifically, I'm trying to climb as I prepare to make my glorious comeback in the world of chess. Right now I'm at 1445 and in the top 50% and my end goal is to scrape my way over the big hump at 1500. I started rather low and had to fight my way up 10 points at a time. It's hard to climb over 1300 if you start down there with a low RD because they give you lots of easy problems to solve quickly and very few of a rating level that makes real gains possible, so you have to fight for every .05 points or whatever, solving a dozen easy problems flawlessly in no time and then nailing the one reasonable problem you do get.
I encourage everybody in the HP area to make it to Wings Night at The Pub tomorrow, even if you are vegetarian or a teetotaler, even temporarily. When else would I see you? ANSWER: never.

usage notes

2007-05-26T10:16:00.000-05:00

How to speak correctly.

Ukraine, not the Ukraine.
Czechia, not "Czech Republic". This isn't absolute, and even the official government web pages backed off from that usage in 2005, but it's a shame. Mr. G. Z. T. is on a one-man crusade to revive it and will defenestrate anybody who disagrees.
"How do you do" during introductions is not a question and should not be intoned or answered as such.
A recent editorial decision at The Panheresy was made to always say Godspeed and never good luck nor other such degenerate secularized benedictions save in contexts with enforced laïcisme. The Panheresy encourages you to do the same.

fingers in ears

2007-05-22T23:17:00.001-05:00

"Life, life, eternal life?"

because nick asked for it

2007-05-15T22:07:00.000-05:00

I am forced to admit that I once got something worthwhile from a log. But anyways: this was brought up because I got tricked into agreeing to go to some dance performance like Charlie the Unicorn and I think I need somebody to chaperone me as both dancing and the theatre are immoral. Any takers?

Useful advice if taken with humility

2007-04-29T21:34:00.000-05:00

A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back. Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.

Let it be said that I do not object to the judicious application of the rod if I should ever deserve it.

les fleurs

2007-04-28T22:10:00.000-05:00

La planète suivante était habitée par un buveur. Cette visite fut très courte mais elle plongea le petit prince dans une grande mélancolie:
--Que fais-tu la? dit-il au buveur, qu'il trouva installé en silence devant une collection de bouteilles vides et une collection de bouteilles pleines.
--Je bois, répondit le buveur, d'un air lugubre.
--Pourquois bois-tu? lui démanda le petit prince.
--Pour oublier, répondit le buveur.
--Pour oublier quoi? s'enquit le petit prince qui déjà plaignait.
--Pour oublier que j'ai honte, avoua le buveur en baissant la tête.
--Honte de quoi? s'informa le petit prince qui désirait le secourir.
--Honte de boire! acheva le buveur qui s'enferma definitivement dans le silence.
Et le petit prince s'en fut, perplexe.
Les grandes personnes sont decidement très très bizarres, se disait-il en lui-même durant le voyage.

ATTN: UPSING INFIDEL WHO TRIED TO DELIVER MY PACKAGES ON APRIL 17TH

2007-04-26T21:48:00.000-05:00

YOU SUCK.

I had two packages due to come on April 17th: a couple shirts that were on sale and a book I need to prepare for my second actuarial exam about a month from today. I also had orders delivered almost every other day that week to the exact same address because they were ordered from the same vendors. YET, the delivery man on the 17th said an exception occurred, the address I am at does not exist or something, so he'll send a postcard to that address (which doesn't exist? I never received it) with instructions on what to do and then return my packages to the sender! So here I am, it'll be two weeks after I was supposed to get my packages when I finally do get the book I need, two weeks of precious studying time. I had packages delivered by UPS to that very address every other day that week! Is the problem with my address? I AM THINKING NO. IT IS WITH THE MAN WHO TRIED TO DELIVER MY PACKAGES ON APRIL 17TH. I AM POSTING THIS ON ALL MY BLOGS BECAUSE HE SUCKS SO HARD.

Him that cometh to me...

2007-03-31T16:35:00.000-05:00

...I will in no wise cast out.

I opened the foreword of Wisdom from Mount Athos and that was the first sentence. An appropriate quote for Palm Sunday, I should say.

Happy Annunciation!

2007-03-25T13:16:00.000-05:00

Time to celebrate in the proper way! That and reconsidering the relation of God to man, reconciliation to the fallen world, etc etc. OK I love sandwiches.

ATTN: BLOGGER SOFTWARE INFIDELS

2007-03-20T22:46:00.000-05:00

YOUR LOGGING SOFTWARE SUCKS. It did not let me put footnotes in my comment on Gabriel's web-log. Here is the comment I would have posted on his log:

Fortunately, I think most modern readers¹ will read The Ladder quickly, pick up a couple good moral lessons in each chapter, and end up with something interesting to say². All things considered, a profitable read. Maybe not the best use of the book, but not the worst use of their time³. Then again, I can definitely see that there are some pathological sorts who aren't terminally shallow but rather terminally emo for whom the prohibition would do some good, lest they fall into despair⁴. I'll never understand them, I suppose, so I guess I'll just have to call them interesting and leave it at that.

1: Myself included. I'm pretty shallow.
2: This is crypto-Protestantism, perhaps not in spirit, but labelled as such because it's what Protestants do whenever they sniff around the boutique.
3: Unless they write a log about the interesting tidbits and post it to the internets.
4: Or, worse, one of those schismatic groups that can only be found 1000 miles away from their present location, so they become too pious to go to church.

on advising people looking for an Orthodox parish

2007-03-17T15:19:00.000-05:00

At this discussion board I occasionally frequent, completely new inquirers sometimes post saying, "I'm thinking of visiting an Orthodox parish this Sunday, it's called St X in $CITY. Does anybody know anything about it?" The correct response is not, as some people apparently think, "That doesn't, upon a cursory examination, look like it's a bunch of schismatic liberal fakers pretending to be Orthodox. They're Greek, though, so you'll probably suffer extreme culture shock."

Proper Response: either silence or, "I once stayed a month in that town and the people were amazing," depending on what the case is. If nobody else pipes in and you know it's not a bunch of schismatic liberal fakers, you can say, "Sounds great, I'm glad you'll be going there," or something else generally supportive.

Under no circumstances, save when they have actually run into them, mention bizarre vagante groups. I also recommend against FM-G's "12 things..." guide because it really sucks, but, lacking better material, it may be acceptable. Part of the problem with it is the problem with the first response: acting like the whole thing will result in a giant case of culture shock because it's bizarre and foreign. Grant that the thing might be bizarre and foreign. Don't treat it like it is. Orthodox worship is natural to the people who do it, it's what they do. Present it as such. Essentially say, "Here is what Orthodox worship is like, it's not weird, they're doing what they do: it's what they do." To say, "Here is what Orthodox worship is like, I know it looks really weird to you, but you might get used to it someday or something," is a grave mistake.

I hope this short note helps correct some of the errors I have seen others fall into. Be glad that these things you (perhaps not you, Dear Reader) fall into are mere misstatements and blunders, and not sins, as is the case with my failings.

various things

2007-03-10T12:45:00.000-05:00

1. Lent always makes me realize I'm a gravely wicked man, but usually it has more to do with me than with Lent intervening. I watched The Robe the other day, it was a bit schmaltzy, but the corny stylized repentance of the man who had Christ nailed to the cross was edifying to someone [viz, me] in my state of mind.
2. The new jorb is going fine, I'm going to have to learn SAS and data mining and that sort of stuff. I don't know a bloody thing about programming or databases (well, not quite true on the former, but I maintain a studied ignorance of the latter, since it's what my dad does for a living). This'll give me a jump on it, I suppose, I won't need to know it for a few months.
3. I was thinking about awesome names for children, and then I realized all the ones I'd been thinking about were the names of the children of St Nicholas II the Passion Bearer. Except for Olga, it doesn't quite sound the same in English, though I suppose the tsar and his wife already knew that, since they spoke to each other primarily in English, so why should I not consider that name as well? So it'll be in the pot if I should ever be so blessed as to have four daughters (purely academic at this point).
4. Pokey, I love the future.
5. I need new glasses. Glasses that say, "I will analyze your data and I am very young, but not so young you shouldn't give me giant sacks of cash. Trust me, I am a trained professional." My current ones have the eccentric mathematician thing going for them, but they're quite scratched and still a bit crooked from that time I was in a car being hit on the head by a 4-yr-old for a few hours until they broke. They exude the "I'm a poor math student" vibe.
6. I will be in church tonight.
7. I'm a bit annoyed that the new "blogger" is not capable of autoformatting numbered lists.
8. Internal corporate stylesheets dictate the use of "e-mail" rather than "email". I am so very happy.

I'VE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE

2007-03-04T22:59:00.000-05:00

AND FIND MY WAY AGAIN. I'VE LOST MY WAY AGAIN.

today's gospel...

2007-02-15T13:50:00.000-05:00

For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed!'

...could be construed as an argument about contraception/"childfree" marriages in these last days.

everything is superfantastic

2007-02-14T23:20:00.000-05:00

I had a grand day. I got the jeorb I interviewed for [see charm school and other posts], I took the drug test in time [I not ready to face that], skipped the current jaerb [may interfere with my zvonar ambitions], went to vespers, had dinner with this girl [my "valentine", I suppose], tried that dratted Goldschlager with apple juice, I'm going to have the first week of Lent completely free before starting the new jorb, and I had a magnificent slice of veggie pizza for lunch today. Brighter than nothing, smarter than nobody. Things are quite fine. And tomorrow: the divine liturgy horribly early in the morning and skipping work again. There is nothing better in this world. This is gzt, signing out.

I will drop out and become a zvonar!

2007-02-13T01:37:00.000-05:00

So I spent a lot of today downloading free mp3s of Russian bell music, they're all over the internets, and I decided that I must drop out and become a zvonar. I bet I'd get a great hat. So much better than the workaday life I've got going now.

River of Fire

2007-02-11T21:18:00.000-05:00

When Thou, O God, shalt come to earth with glory,
And all things tremble,
And the river of fire floweth before Thy judgment seat,
And the books are opened, and the hidden things made public,
Then deliver me from the unquenchable fire
And make me worthy to stand at Thy right hand, O Righteous Judge.

lessons from charm school

2007-02-09T13:07:00.000-05:00

Do not show up for an interview red-eyed and hung over. Do not attempt to cure the hangover with the hair of the dog immediately before the interview.

irony

2007-02-08T11:05:00.000-05:00

This girl at work, she studied religion in school, when somebody asked her if she was religious at all, she said, "No, too much violence for me." But: her second major was politics. She is avidly political and has Marxist sympathies, not to mention her probable support of "abortion rights".

ran across one of my favorite "convert" articles

2007-02-06T23:53:00.000-05:00

On this subject, one of the main reasons why some converts do not stop being converts and so do not become Orthodox is because they do not have a job. The need to earn your daily crust, to be with other people, is an excellent way for people to start living (as opposed to just thinking about) their Faith. This can avoid what is called the temptations from the left and the right. Temptations from the left are laxism, weakness, compromise, indifference. Temptations from the right are censorious judgement of others, the stuck-up zeal of the Pharisee, 'zeal not according to knowledge'. These temptations are equally dangerous and equally to be combatted. Both waste an enormous amount of time and energy on sideshows like the discussion of irrelevant issues like ecumenism, rather than praying. Being in society is the way in which we can get to know ourselves, see our failings and avoid being sidetracked into theoretical concerns.

Includes other gems such as:

Finally, as I have already said, there is nothing so boring as sin. I am always surprised when people come to confession and expect me to remember their last confession. I always forget boring things. One of the best confessors I ever met was almost totally deaf. After I had said my piece, most of which he had not heard, he gave me some of the best advice I have ever received.

Really worth the price of admission. And later, my own favorite bit of advice:

It is inevitable that you will not get on with everyone in your parish all the time. Such is human nature. But it is not a reason for walking out, slamming the door, not remaining Orthodox. Perhaps you are spending too much time at church outside the services? Yes, we do have coffee and tea after the service, but you are not obliged to stay. Some of the best Orthodox do not! Perhaps your relations with the other parishioners are too close? Are these people you would be with in any other situation? If you have no interest at all in common, other than having a common faith, why spend so much time with them? Spending too much time with people with whom you have little in common in terms of character and tastes is a recipe for friction. After all, you're not married to them.

The sobriety of this article truly is what got me through some rather boring or uncomfortable patches, though some would argue all it did was make me horribly cynical and antisocial. Whatevs.

a modest baseball proposal

2007-02-05T20:39:00.000-05:00

Re-raise the mounds to the 1968 levels. I readily admit that the last two decades have produced some of the finest pitchers in history. While luminaries such as Greg Maddux, Roger Clemens, and Pedro Martinez proved that it is still possible to post multiple years with ERAs below 2.00 despite the boom in modern offensive production, the league average is well over 4.00. When Pedro Martinez posted a 1.74 ERA in 2000, the second-best was Clemens' 3.70. In the interests of returning baseball to a proper equilibrium, the obvious solution is to raise the mound back up to 18 inches to offset the improvements in modern offensive technique. Sure, kids like to see dingers, but the refined and educated prefer 1-0 pitchers' duels. They are even better when spun from the fingers of a wizard like Mr Maddux, but I'm willing to accept some diminution of actual pitching quality in those duels in order to see more of them simply because there usually isn't that much to appreciate in a typical 8-5 game. Discuss?

Into the fray!

2007-01-28T17:50:00.000-05:00

Up and over we go, through the wave and undertow! So it turns out that jorb interview is tomorrow and not Tuesday, which throws me into a little bit more disarray. I certainly do hope I get it, because, while I'm a rather [extremely?] brilliant fellow with the will to do what it takes to get what must be done completed, I don't exactly have much experience besides an occasionally impressive degree or even particularly good references.

ecce nova facio omnia

2007-01-27T16:34:00.000-05:00

Et absterget Deus omnem lacrimam ab oculis eorum et mors ultra non erit neque luctus neque clamor neque dolor erit ultra quae prima abierunt

Et dixit qui sedebat in throno ecce nova facio omnia et dicit scribe quia haec verba fidelissima sunt et vera

Et dixit mihi factum est ego sum Alpha et Omega initium et finis ego sitienti dabo de fonte aquae vivae gratis

Qui vicerit possidebit haec et ero illi Deus et ille erit mihi filius