CutAndPastify.bs

Guessworks Venture Capital is enchanted to announce the investment of $11.2 million in the innovative tech startup CutAndPastify, which has developed a fast efficient method of code development.

CutAndPastify's CEO says that he expects revenues next year to be in the range of zero to infinity, probably on the lower end.

More details at CutAndPastify.bs

Craigster

In the days when Rob Schneider's SNL office pest roamed the earth, some Craigs like myself bore the nickname Craigster.  Thanks merciful heavens that now when brandified that nickname sells lobster tails and not sanitary napkins or suppositories.

2013 and Mayan "year" 13.0.0

Everyone thinks this will be a great year according their wish-predictions from last week, but the triskadecaphobic (sic) index is high, as it is also Mayan 360-day year 13.0.0 now, as we all learned during last month's Mayan calendar tutorials.

Some show on NPR last week would have us name 1913 as the end of the cultural 19th century because of atonal music scandals, and then fateful 1914 (such a beautiful summer...) should count as the first _real_ year of the 20th century in the cultural timeline.

According to a numerological conceit I thought up in the early 1980's, the years that mark cultural mileposts are the ones that add up to 1, many of which seem meaningful to my willfully biased reckoning, 1945, 1954, 1963, 1972, 1981, 1990, 1999, 2008... there seems to be some predictive power in this foolery if we consider the last couple of ticks in the count.  This scheme puts 2013 at the midpoint in a cycle.

But why should the nature of things conform to year counts?  Because art (or at least artifice) improves reality.  Reality smells of dirt and disillusion, it is cold wind in the face, it takes more patience than we can afford if we want to have our nightly comforts, say I with prissy prose....

If you think it's going to be a good year, you can make it so, just don't let down your guard as per reality, as it is defined in its sourpuss sense.

Reading in parallel

I have a Kindle Fire, which is especially useful for bedtime reading with the lights out, so I only read it at the days end, lately the Histories of Livy, an almost free download and pure Roman propaganda.  When I take it to the toilet I often switch over to LanguageHat postings or archives.   On my smart phone I read my history and language newsgroups.  At my laptop I read some other type of webbing.  This modern niching of reading devices leads one to multitask ones reading without really trying.

The benefit turns out to be ones thinking is hybridized or made a salad, modes and ideas go bump.

The detriment is slow progress on any one text.  I'm far too distracted by this device or that to focus on one text.  It took me six months to get through Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on the Kindle Fire at bedtime - though it's been surprising how fast six months goes in the aarpic years.

The ancient and the modern have a pleasing dialogue when viewed from the ease and comfort of the modern, if the crush and weight of the modern hasn't disabled your distance vision.

The Holy Spirit is the Third Estate of the Trinity

There isn't a lot of support in the Xian canon for the Trinity, any mention 'Holy Spirit' is used for Trinitarian enthusiasts.  Romans 5:5, " And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who is given to us", is it "which is given to us"?  The Holy Spirit here and elsewhere seems to mean more the high spirits of the religious feelings rather than a personification who possesses one like a ghost.

I Corinthians 12:13 "We were all baptized into one Spirit to become one body whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were given one Spirit to drink." This clearly means identification with the esprit de corps, and is not a reference to some sort of being of quasi-being or quark of God.

Galatians 4:6 "Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his son into your hearts."  But the canonical Holy Ghost is not a Spirit "of" his son, it's awkward wording for a trinitarian reading, the Spirit is "the spirit o' the son", a feeling not an entity.  

See what I mean?  These are weak props violating the strict sense of the concept of monotheism.

I think the Holy Spirit was deified to enthrone the original enthusiastic element of the early church in what was becoming a more hierarchical organization, to say that their experience in communion was a significant aspect of the whole.

The Arians and other Unitarians did not see the logic behind Trintarianism, because it wasn't logical; it was an emotional projection, a loss of logic to mysteries of faith, and its fun magical wonders.  It is a backwash from the pagan religions and philosophies of the Mediterranean, Egyptian elaborations and Hellenic sophistries, back into the strict monotheism of the Jewish religion.  The Gentiles came from backgrounds that allowed for flexible God grouping.  So the Son of Xian belief grew from being a human son of Mary, an itinerant teacher, to a celestial being every bit as important as old Yahweh and of one substance, and the communion of the faithful was subsequently added part and parcel to this fusion.  This is the politics of the Trinity.  Jesus is the newer Yahweh, not just for Jews, and as proof that Gentile congregations were blessed, the Holy Spirit represented evidence that of presence.

Just writing about this 3-in-1 logic is work.

But the Holy Spirit visits the faithful, palpably for the imaginative faithful, through intoxicating group enthusiasms, and through the wonders of voices in the head and the like.

One more citation.  I Corinthians 12:1-11:
1 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be uninformed. 2 You know that when you were heathen, you were led astray to dumb idols, however you may have been moved. 3 Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says "Jesus be cursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit. 4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one.  7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 To one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the workings of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. 

Like what the Iroquois term Orenda.  You may translate that as "The Force" if unacquainted with the beliefs of the older Haudenosaunee, who maintained independence and empire from upstate New York through the Midwest during the period 1620-1781 when the whites were encroaching from over the ocean.

Semi-gloss everything zen.

I've had good luck with using White Semi-Gloss enamel paint on all trim and built-ins.

I now contend that every surface in a basement, barring the floor, is handsomer sporting WSG, the brighter the better, as it throws lights and radiates energy in the feng shui sense.

Every filthy, ragged surface, every shelf and workbench, every old coal bin, behind the washer and dryer, every purposeless wood or pipes, all crannies, suffused with decades of spider webs, lint, debris, sawdust, grunge, mold, and oil, will magically shine after WSG.

If anybody tries this with gloss, please post pix.

Smart sewage

I see a future soon of being able to know everything about the circulation and use of water resources in the home. Automatic flushing toilet and urinals have been a success story since you no later have to touch unspeakably germ-infested flush handles in public places. 

But with the new sensing technologies. smart plumbing is on the way. Using flow detection coupled with wireless devices all water outlets in the home can be monitored for usage in real-time with web presentation, and smart septic systems will be able to capture information about the materials entering the system and have it remotely evaluated using fecal and urine analysis biotech, and track the chemical balance in the septic tank, report and respond with smart bacteria and nanobots to maintain maximum decompositional environments. 

Is this conceivably a possible porthole for invasions of privacy if somebody can hack into your pipes and download information about what you have been flushing down your toilet? Yes, perhaps what happens in the toilet should stay in the toilet - but I predict once again we will willingly give away our privacy in exchange for the benefits of being wired; we already all carry electronic bracelets called smart phones that track us 24/7 and apparently spy on our usage more than we know, according to recent news about stealth tracking apps installed without our knowledge.