Month: October 2008

Heaven v. Hell

Here is my superficial philosophy cross-connect for the week.  I found this on Susan Stepney’s website.  She is a a Professor of Computer Science at the University of York in the UK.

Heaven:

  • The police are British
  • The cooks are French
  • The engineers are German
  • The administrators are Swiss
  • The lovers are Italian

Hell:

  • The police are German
  • The cooks are British
  • The engineers are Italian
  • The administrators are French
  • The lovers are Swiss

Now I am going to explain this entirely wrong (go ahead Roger, take my head off) but the Greeks had an idea that everything that existed, did so for a specific purpose.  And that the highest virtue in nature was to pursue that calling unto its utter perfection.  Doing so was, quite literally, “Good.”  Doing something counter to ones natural purpose was “Bad.”

It is amazing how subtle the difference between good and bad are.

Three More for the Fox

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

–John Kenneth Galbraith

Firefox is quickly becoming the one tool I cannot live without. While it works fine as a web browser, its plugin functionality has locked me in.  Now that I am using twitter fairly regularly, I wanted a quick and easy was to post tweets from within Firefox and, often, specifically related to the website I am visiting.  I found two:

  • TwitterFox — Is the most complete and easy to use twitter tool I have found.  Keyboard shortcuts for opening, viewing, and inserting URLs.  All URLs are auto-decoded and long URLs are automatically tinyURLed.  Even the pop-up box is attractive and unobtrusive.
  • TwitterBar — When you need an even faster way to tweet… simply type your tweet into the address bar of Firefox and put –post at the end.  POW, you have a new post.

Random Excerpts from “Just Courage”

Some notes from the book “Just Courage: God’s Great Expedition for the Restless Christian” by Gary A. Haugen:

“The sin of injustice is defined in the Bible as the abuse of power – abusing power by taking from others the good things that God intended for them, namely, their life, liberty, dignity, or the fruits of their love or their labor.  In other words, when a stronger person abuses his or her power by taking from a weaker person what God alone has given the weaker person -…”

-Gary Haugen

“Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker”

-Proverbs 14:31 NRSV

In-justice is a particularly egregious evil because the sufferer (the weaker person who is being acted on) isn’t suffering because of a random unfairness, an uncontrollable act of nature or bad luck; but because of the very intentional abuse and oppression of a stronger person.

“(caring for the poor of Africa…) is not a matter of charity; it’s a matter of justice”

-Bono

“…we can give all manner of goods and services to the poor, but if we do not restrain the hands of the bullies from taking it away, we will be disappointed in the long-term outcome of our efforts.”

-Gary Haugen

Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but in finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong.

-Theodore Roosevelt

Violence is just different. Violence is intentional. Violence is scary. And violence causes deep scars.

-Gary Haugen

Those who prey upon the poor are not brave. They only prey upon the poor when they think they can… Most fundamentally the predators (the instigators of injustice) are afraid of the truth.

-Gary Haugen

Justice is the aura of God. It is something every human understands, even from the time they are small children, but something that doesn’t exist as part of “the world.” In a universe that has absolutely no concept of fairness; every being on this planet, regardless of race, creed, or belief, screams out for justice. Those that pursue it are considered the greatest examples of mankind. Those who die for it are considered martyrs and saints. And those who stand in opposition to it will forever be judged on the wrong side of history.

“Ultimately we can choose to be safe or brave.  We cannot be both.”

-Gary Haugen

I May have forgotten to mention

“The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.”

–Sam Levenson

My beautiful wife and I will be having another child in early March. Thankfully all my previous children look like her and with God’s grace this child will be so fortunate. We are in the process of picking names, so if anyone has some suggestions (especially for boys names) feel free to post a comment.

I am Catholic and as such live by the rule of “whoever dies with the most kids win.”   So far, I am off to a good start!