So my grandmother's funeral was today at some local church - modern evangelicals. My only comment is that the church doesn't have a cross anywhere in the interior (they have a cross on the outside at the insistence of the architect that there must be at least one cross somewhere). Apparently they wanted it to be used as a community center as well, and therefore making it churchy would drive some people away. Or something.
It would, perhaps be a stumbling block or foolishness to have a cross, see.
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
St Augustine
On some other forum, somebody asked about choosing a patron saint. Namely, since he had led a wayward life but repented, he felt a special kinship to Blessed Augustine. However, since he's "not a saint in the Orthodox Church", he was wondering what other saint he could choose that had a similar story.
Fortunately, this is easily answered: St Augustine is indeed a saint in the Orthodox Church. Now go forth and sin no more. Alleluia. If any should deny this, read The Confessions, do 100 prostrations, and report back.
However, backing up again, it's still a good question: what other male saints are there that were into drinking and having sex before their conversion? I mean, perhaps one could assume that, historically, anybody who converts late in life (eg older than 16) was into that sort of thing (gasp), but these things get mentioned hagiographically, right?
The problem is not so hard when it comes to women: there are plenty of repentant prostitutes (aside: this reminds me that there are also not that many male lawyer saints, the second oldest trade - only Moses, King David, and Emperor Justinian seem to have much to say about the Law). Granted, there is something different about doing it for money (what are they supposed to do now that they have quit their job?) rather than recreationally.
Anyway, I don't have much to say. I mean, there are always the complicated political saints, like King David, who certainly had their share of wine, women, and song. But, uh, even several long minutes of thinking and a little bit of googling failed to produce an Augustine-like example of a man who did some debauchery for a while and then turned around and became a saint. I mean, St Silouan the Athonite has a moment. I'm sure others did, too, but it's not talked about much. St Moses the Black was a thief and a murderer, probably more than that, as well. So, there we go. I am open to other suggestions, but the list seems short.
Fortunately, this is easily answered: St Augustine is indeed a saint in the Orthodox Church. Now go forth and sin no more. Alleluia. If any should deny this, read The Confessions, do 100 prostrations, and report back.
However, backing up again, it's still a good question: what other male saints are there that were into drinking and having sex before their conversion? I mean, perhaps one could assume that, historically, anybody who converts late in life (eg older than 16) was into that sort of thing (gasp), but these things get mentioned hagiographically, right?
The problem is not so hard when it comes to women: there are plenty of repentant prostitutes (aside: this reminds me that there are also not that many male lawyer saints, the second oldest trade - only Moses, King David, and Emperor Justinian seem to have much to say about the Law). Granted, there is something different about doing it for money (what are they supposed to do now that they have quit their job?) rather than recreationally.
Anyway, I don't have much to say. I mean, there are always the complicated political saints, like King David, who certainly had their share of wine, women, and song. But, uh, even several long minutes of thinking and a little bit of googling failed to produce an Augustine-like example of a man who did some debauchery for a while and then turned around and became a saint. I mean, St Silouan the Athonite has a moment. I'm sure others did, too, but it's not talked about much. St Moses the Black was a thief and a murderer, probably more than that, as well. So, there we go. I am open to other suggestions, but the list seems short.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
More rhetorical flourishes: "It's not a (blank), it's a (blank)."
This is a very popular rhetorical flourish in some circles. "It's not a religion, it's a relationship." "It's not a democracy, it's a republic." "I'm not a Christian, I'm a follower of Christ." "It's not a bug, it's a feature." In most cases, this does not say anything at all about what they are arguing and instead means that they have secret, special definitions attached to those words that are somehow meaningful to their argument but which are not the common, everyday meanings. I find the most useful thing to do is to ask what those words mean to them and what they are trying to say with this statement.
Playing with definitions is not a terribly interesting thing to do in philosophy - at least, not in this way. If there are "standard" definitions, use those. If there are not, pay attention to what definitions are being used and where, as otherwise you will not be sure what you are saying. But arguing about the definitions does not get you anywhere when you are making your own statements.
Of course, this is not a blog, it is a web-log. I am not bending on that one.
Playing with definitions is not a terribly interesting thing to do in philosophy - at least, not in this way. If there are "standard" definitions, use those. If there are not, pay attention to what definitions are being used and where, as otherwise you will not be sure what you are saying. But arguing about the definitions does not get you anywhere when you are making your own statements.
Of course, this is not a blog, it is a web-log. I am not bending on that one.
Saturday, December 07, 2013
More in the matrix algebra scheme of things.
A document with some more handy relations.
I hate BLAS/LAPACK interfacing so much. And there are, like, two pages that talk about it on the internet. I might have to change that.
EDIT: I wrote, like, 6 wrappers for BLAS/LAPACK functions today. It was painful. There are two websites that talk about this on the internet (and the lecture notes I have from my statistical computing course). That's it. Two. Everybody else, of course, has figured out how to use the C library interfaces and therefore don't think about it. It's also annoying because, you know, if I chained these things together instead of wrapping each individual function, it would be much more efficient. That's why they were made in the weird way they were. But doing it that way involves a lot of magic and debugging.
I hate BLAS/LAPACK interfacing so much. And there are, like, two pages that talk about it on the internet. I might have to change that.
EDIT: I wrote, like, 6 wrappers for BLAS/LAPACK functions today. It was painful. There are two websites that talk about this on the internet (and the lecture notes I have from my statistical computing course). That's it. Two. Everybody else, of course, has figured out how to use the C library interfaces and therefore don't think about it. It's also annoying because, you know, if I chained these things together instead of wrapping each individual function, it would be much more efficient. That's why they were made in the weird way they were. But doing it that way involves a lot of magic and debugging.
Thursday, December 05, 2013
A note for later: efficient calculation of big covariance matrices
This answer is helpful. Now, this may not be the most efficient way to calculate the sample covariance of a large data frame, but it's a fairly well-optimized (all BLAS) and fairly easy method which avoids the numerical difficulties of the various naive methods. Then, say, if you want to decorrelate, DPOTRF and DTRTRI or something will get you the proper matrix.
More on why public funds for sports stadiums are a bad idea
Pretty much all economists agree. It's not as strong of a consensus as the consensus of climate scientists about climate change caused by humans (answer: yes, it is happening and it is caused by human CO2 emissions, among other things), but it's still strong. Far stronger than any other political conclusion I am aware of.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)