GKC's Favourite

A list of books (a beginning)

2012-01-31T15:32:00.009-05:00

There's a lot going on, as usual, and of course I'm spending a lot of time in late December of 2016 so I can't pay a lot of attention to what most of you call the "present" - but hopefully that will be done soon.

I'm also getting to play with some very interesting mathematics, which involves the solution of intersecting hyperbolae. It's a delight since it seems to unite in one place all of computer science, mathematics, and literature - what DOES the Doctor mean by intersecting hyperbolae anyway? A sort of star-crossed exaggeration? Hee hee! More on that soon, maybe - it has some very cool diagrams, and the math is fun - so I hope I can give you the proper lit'ry effect too.

But there was another little project which loomed up in my thought, since someone (I forget where, maybe at Love-to-Learn) was trying to collect titles of books for young people to read. This is a good idea, and I think I ought to try to do that myself.

So, while I have a brief moment, I will give you some of the titles I would recommend for inclusion in any good library.

Hmm, hmm, a difficult topic... there are so many good books. Well, let's start with the obvious ones, and we can always come back. I will put them into order by title so there won't be any debate about silly things like rank. Not all orders are TOTAL orders, and there are relations which aren't orders at all... but we must not get technical about that here, Doctor. aHEM! All right.

Admiral of Ocean Sea by Morison
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Carroll
Around the World in 80 Days by Verne
Ben-Hur by Wallace
The Brave Little Toaster by Disch (and its sequel, The Brave Little Toaster Goes To Mars)
A Christmas Carol by Dickens
The Dawn of All by Benson
The Everlasting Man by Chesterton (the cover of my paperback copy says: "More thrilling than any novel"!)
Ex-Cub Fitzie by Boyton
Father Brown stories by Chesterton
From the Earth to the Moon by Verne (it has a sequel too)
The Haunted Bookstore by Morley (and its prequel, Parnassus on Wheels)
Journey to the Center of the Earth by Verne
Kim by Kipling (also The Jungle Books)
Life of Christ by Ricciotti (and his History of Israel, Acts of the Apostles, Life of St. Paul, The Age of Martyrs)
Little Women by Alcott (and sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys)
The Lord of the World by Benson
The Mad Scientists' Club by Brinley (also their New Adventures, The Big Kerplop! and The Big Chunk of Ice)
The Man Who Was Thursday by Chesterton
Manalive by Chesterton
The Miracle of the Bells by Janney
The Napoleon of Notting Hill by Chesterton
The Neverending Story by Ende
The Nine Tailors by Sayers (and the other Lord Peter stories)
Orthodoxy by Chesterton
The Phantom Tollbooth by Juster
Robinson Crusoe by Defoe
Secret Agents Four by Sobol
Sherlock Holmes stories by Doyle
Sinbad and Me by Kin Platt
Swiss Family Robinson by Wyss
The Thirty-Nine Steps by Buchan
Treasure Island by Stevenson
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Verne (and The Mysterious Island which is a sort of sequel)
Who Is Bugs Potter? by Korman (and many of his other works)

All right, whoa! That's almost 50, quite enough for a start. Yeah, there are a couple non-fiction titles in there, but they're excellent and ought not be neglected. You can also add the books of the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Tom Swift series, and the dozen or so in the "Danny Dunn" series.

(There are also the Nero Wolfe mysteries, and those by John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie, and others of the great age of detective fiction, and others like the adventures of Alistair MacLean, though I hesitate to glob all those together; these require some discrimination - yet I should mention their names.)

Though some of these are a bit dated, they are all worth reading. (Yes, I have intentionally omitted Tolkien, but I have no time to elaborate on that today. The same with Wells.) Eventually I ought to do reviews, or at least add something to explain a little about their importance, but I can't do that today either. And maybe eventually I will provide a list of essential Reference Works.

Oh yes, one more item. If it was actually available, I would mention that huge thing the author calls the "Saga" - De Bellis Stellarum, but... oh, yeah, that's by me. Oh my. Maybe it will be done soon, and MAYBE some part of it will appear in some real, regular place where it can be bought! See, if I wasn't spending time writing this, I could be writing that. I'm not like Caesar or Aquinas or Chesterton who could write multiple productions at once. Wow, like textual counterpoint, or a verbal fugue, maybe? Intense! No, though I do come kinda close with my code generation, but (ahem) I'm not supposed to reveal such szekrets on a blogg. This will attract spies.

And if you would like to read some additional discussion about this topic, you can go here.

De Bellis Stellarum - a first hint of what is coming

2012-01-07T09:53:00.003-05:00

Announcing:

De Bellis Stellarum
A multi-part Saga
by Dr. Thursday

"It is between light and darkness, and everyone must choose his side."
-- the last words of G. K. Chesterton.
[Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 650]

On a cold day in November of 1845, a young engineer named John Fisher, an English-born descendent of Catholic recusants and now an American citizen, rescued a young woman from a collapsing bridge. Five years later, he chanced to encounter the formation of a great power of evil - and he swore he would do anything in his power to fight that rising darkness. His plans were laid, and over the next century and a half, the Battle of Light and Darkness went on.

And so - as the 21st century began, and the last of those entrusted with Fisher's Plan died, the responsibility for the Battle fell upon a handful of young men.

These went through a series of amazing adventures, culminating in the re-founding of an ancient order of chivalry, the restoration of a stolen and long-hidden treasure, and an unbelievable journey with an even more unbelievable companion to resolve a war that reached beyond our world.

Are you interested yet?

Well - stay tuned for more information. The Knights will come again.

* * *

I am sure you are wondering why I wrote this now, and not give a link to Amazon or at least to Loome Books. (Gulp!) It's to remind me of what's at stake, as I am about to embark on the most critical episode of the Saga, and I need your prayers if it's to be completed. And yes, I hope to arrange to have some part of it available in the near future - God willing.

Because, as Mark Weaver told his brothers, "Someone has to do the hard jobs."

From Darkness Into Light - an excerpt for 2012

2012-01-01T08:37:00.007-05:00

Happy Octave-day of Christmas!

It is also the feast of the Circumcision, and the start of the civil new year 2012.

And, I've already heard and seen silly whines from the Media about this so-called "Maya end-of-the-world" thing, which is, apparently, just the usual kick people get from seeing the odometer in their car turning to all zeros. There are several reasons why it is so unimportant: the Maya calendar was terribly inaccurate, as it was set up not to indicate any periodic action of the cosmos, but for the casting of horoscopes. Moreover, the "overflow" is just an end of the baktun denoted "twelve" - the famous "long count" will read 13.0.0.0.0 - but even funnier, there is still disagreement among archaeologists about the coordination between the "Long Count" and our own calendar. We might as well worry about the 2000th anniversary of the death of Caesar Augustus, which I believe is coming up. (Yes, I checked - it's August 19 in 2014.) Oh woe... (hee hee hee!)

Anyway, to reassure you, and to give you something exciting to look forward to, I will give you an excerpt from my 13-part forthcoming novel, From Darkness Into Light, a major component of my Saga. God willing, some part of this complex and lengthy adventure tale (also known as a "Boys' Book") will become available in this new year...

And I shall also remind everyone to pray for the defeat of evil in our world, and for assistance to those who are needy - and to be grateful for all the good things we have.

Paradoxically,
Dr. Thursday.

* * * * * * *
an excerpt from:

From Darkness Into Light
Part Ten: 13.0.0.0.0
(Fall 2015 part 1)

The third calendar of the Maya was the "long count" which reckoned the number of days since the mythical beginning of the Maya era, which was dated 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu for reasons unknown (equivalent to B.C. 3111).
Victor W. Von Hagen World of the Maya 177

Whoever put in order this computation of katuns, if it was the devil, he did it, as he usually does, ordaining it for his own glory.
Friar Diego de Landa, first Bishop of Mérida (quoted ibid 179)

Tuesday September 8, 2015

It was another hot day. Bernie had started his SCUBA class again, and the water was refreshing – but he was almost panting as he headed back up the hill. At least the clubhouse was pleasantly cool. After he grabbed a glass of water, he went into the computer room to check his e-mail. Marty was there, working on the Chandler Clock puzzle, while the two Gregs were doing homework. He glanced at Greg Weller's screen, and saw a list of very odd words.
"Imix, Ik, Akbal, Kan, Chicchan, Cimi... What the heck are those, Greg?"
"This is for Ancient American History. Those are the day-names of the Maya calendar."
Bernie peered at the list. "Oh yeah... the Long Count and all that. And the world was supposed to end in 2012, wasn't it? Late December?"
"Sure! You missed it, huh? Where were you?"
Bernie sat down at a computer and pulled up his calendar tool. "Around. Marty and I were seniors... let's see... December 2012. Was it the 12th?"
"No, but we thought that shoulda been the date – twelve-twelve-twelve. They said it was supposed to be the 21st."
Bernie examined the display. "Friday? Oh that was the last day of school before Christmas. Nope. Hey Marty, the end-of-the-world was scheduled but we missed it!" He laughed. "Rats. Maybe we'll catch it next time."
Marty turned towards the others. "What was that all about anyway?"
"The Maya had some really goofy calendars. One of them was called the Long Count – it was like those old adding machines, with five gears that ticked over as the days went past. They counted in twenties, so as the units gear turned past 20 days, the second one ticked over. The second gear counted to 18, so the third one would register a 360-day unit called a tun, kinda like their year. Those extra five days were unlucky..." He trailed off.
"Oh yeah. But what was supposed to happen in 2012?"
Greg Weller leaned back, staring up at the ceiling as he lectured. "It's the end of the baktun, that's a roughly 400-year interval. All four lower gears would reach their highest place, and then, as that last day of the baktun expired, they would all carry, and the fourth gear would make the fifth gear advance."
"Overflow! And it would go back to all zeroes?"
"Nah. That's what you would expect, given the way the fearmongers liked to whine about it, like good old Y2K. The Maya did expect all sorts of disaster on the last day of such intervals. But actually – it would be..." He dropped his voice, trying for a Boris Karloff effect. "Thirteen, zero, zero, zero, zero."
Marty snorted. "Oh big deal. Good old triskaidekaphobia strikes into Meso-America!"
"Yeah – of course that would really be the first day of the new world, if we survive the end-of-the world terrors... and if that's really the correct date in the first place! Our professor said it was based on somebody-or-other's correlation between the Maya Long Count and what he called our 'standard calendar' – and he said there's a group of historians who think they were off by a couple years: the Goodman-Thompson-Martinez correlation started with 3113 BC but the one used by von Hagen gives it at 3111 BC. And apparently they found another small error, so now they have a revised theory." He chuckled wryly.
"Sure they do – yet another doomsday bunch, always revising their predictions! So what's their latest guess?"
"The last day of the current baktun – the end of the world, 12.19.19.17.19 – comes this year, 2015, in late December – the 23rd."
Bernie and Marty looked at each other. John's birthday. "Yeah, right," Marty laughed. "That's John's birthday, it better not end then!"
"I once took a look at the math," Bernie chuckled as Marty went back to his work. "Remember, the Maya might have had a 'zero' but their so-called year was as lousy as the old Roman one – worse, since they never did any intercalations."
"Did any what?"
"Intercalations are periodic adjustments, like Leap Day, to deal with the fact that the day and the year aren't even units of each other. If we didn't have leap year, eventually we will have Easter in the winter, or Christmas in the summer. But Julius Caesar put in the major fix, and back in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII made it even more precise."
"I gotcha, Bernie!" Greg Weller nodded. "But the Maya didn't do intercalations, neither in their 260-day tzolkin nor in their 365-day civil year, so their 'new year' floats around the solar year. That means their calendars go out of sync with the seasons after a while."
"Why is that?" asked Marty, not bothering to turn.
"Uh... let's just say it was a good thing Columbus found them." Bernie chuckled again as he signed onto the e-mail program. "And not just because of their stupid calendar."
"And don't forget good old Bishop Zumárraga – right Greg?" Greg Jones spoke for the first time.
"Who's that?" Bernie said. (He knew, of course, but he wanted to hear their comments.)
"He was the first bishop in the New World. He ordered a printing press and by 1544 they were printing books. He was the one that St. Juan Diego came to see – with his tilma – and the roses – and the painting of Mary of Guadalupe!"
"Correct." Bernie nodded. "I don't know if you guys knew about this. I told Marty and John a while back..." He continued to elaborate. [Some details from earlier part of the story omitted]
When Bernie was finished Greg Jones said, "Wow, amazing! Too bad I can't put that into the paper I'm doing about the bishop. Greg's doing one about the Dark Side."
"Sounds good – we ought not forget our enemies," Bernie mused...

Copyright © 2011 by Dr. Thursday.

Blessed Christmas To You!

2011-12-26T08:33:00.002-05:00

With no time to write just now, I am delighted to recommend A Christmas Meditation - an amazing parable by a dear friend.

God bless us, everyone - at Christmas, and always!

And remember, Christmas only STARTS on the 25th of December.

The Catholic View of Death

2011-11-22T10:02:00.002-05:00

I have picked this little excerpt because it is one of the few places GKC mentions today's saint, St. Cecilia. It is also an excellent corrective, as so much of his writing is, for the modern and popular view. But see for yourself, and you will have a resource for the next time someone brings up the question of death and suicide:

Now, of course, as I say, a Catholic knows the answer; because he holds the complete philosophy which keeps a man sane; and not some single fragment of it, whether sad or glad, which may easily drive him mad. A Catholic does not kill himself because he does not take it for granted that he will deserve heaven in any case, or that it will not matter at all whether he deserves it at all. He does not profess to know exactly what danger he would run; but he does know what loyalty he would violate and what command or condition he would disregard. He actually thinks that a man might be fitter for heaven because he endured like a man; and that a hero could be a martyr to cancer as St. Lawrence or St. Cecilia were martyrs to cauldrons or gridirons. The faith in a future life, the hope of a future happiness, the belief that God is Love and that loyalty is eternal life, these things do not produce lunacy and anarchy, if they are taken along with the other Catholic doctrines about duty and vigilance and watchfulness against the powers of hell. They might produce lunacy and anarchy, if they were taken alone. And the Modernists, that is, the optimists and the sentimentalists, did want us to take them alone. Of course, the same would be true, if somebody took the other doctrines of duty and discipline alone. It would produce another dark age of Puritans rapidly blackening into Pessimists. Indeed, the extremes meet, when they are both ends clipped off what should be a complete thing.
[GKC The Thing CW3:307-8]

And that fits in quite well, not only with our previous discussion of the knights, but even with our larger study of Science. Consider this again: "...he does know what loyalty he would violate..." Think about it...

About being awake

2011-11-18T09:44:00.002-05:00

In my slow but on-going work on my Saga, I have had to consult some of the most unusual and rare references. It has been fun, and most instructive as well as surprising.

One of the most curious and rare references I am using is the Pontificale Romanum, which is the ritual book for bishops. It contains ceremonies like the various forms of ordination (lower orders, Deacon, Priest, Bishop); the consecration of a church or an altar, and many others. I was particularly interested in the ritual for the blessing of bells, which is surprisingly complicated and very beautiful - and perhaps another time I will say something about it. But there was something else which proved to be even more valuable, even as it blew me away.

For there is also a ritual called De Benedictione novi Militis = "On the blessing of the new Knight". (You can find an on-line edition here.) Wow. Talk about surprising! Yes, we could here go off into things like "just war" "capital punishment" or even "self-defence" - or about that most militant of psalms, the one everybody thinks is so peaceful, that begins "The Lord is my Shepherd" - which is quite fitting as a reminder to Bishops, since no real shepherd goes into Dark Valleys unarmed - but the Lord has His rod and His staff... and so we are comforted - which means strengthened.

Ahem. But I wanted to talk about that knight ritual. It is all very startling, but there is one bit which might be the most surprising of all. After the bishop taps the new knight three times with the sword - which is also blessed, and WHOA what a blessing it is! (Imagine a blessing for guns or fighter jets...) Sorry. After the three taps with the sword, the rubrics (instructions) run like this:

The Bishop with his right hand gives the new knight a light blow (slap), saying:
Exciteris a somno malitiae, et vigila in fide Christi, et fama laudabili.

(that is, roughly)

May you be aroused from the sleep of malice, and watch (be on guard, be vigilant) in the faith of Christ, and (in) praiseworthy reputation.

We may not be knights, but we ought to live like them: let us indeed be roused from the sleep of malice, and be watchful in the faith of Christ - which leads to a praiseworthy reputation.

And if you haven't picked up on the link from such a curious thing to Science-writ-large, you are still asleep. Take a GOOD LOOK again, and remember, you ain't gonna see very much of Reality if your eyes are closed...

No two ideals could be more opposite than a Christian saint in a Gothic cathedral and a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple. The opposition exists at every point; but perhaps the shortest statement of it is that the Buddhist saint always has his eyes shut, while the Christian saint always has them very wide open. The Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep. The mediaeval saint's body is wasted to its crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive.
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:336]

Or, as I have quoted many times before:

...the object of my school is to show how many extraordinary things even a lazy and ordinary man may see if he can spur himself to the single activity of seeing.
[GKC Tremendous Trifles 6]

You note he says "school" - this is a very Idea-of-a-University, Cardinal Newman sort of slant, you know: it's not just for Science, my dear literary and philosophical friends. Time to wake up and get busy...

The mysteries of light, or water - or Science?

2011-11-15T11:57:00.002-05:00

It's been nine years since John Paul II proposed the Luminous Mysteries for the recitation of the Holy Rosary. I've been saying them rather often, and so I've had an opportunity to consider them - that is, I've not only done the usual meditation which is the point of the Rosary, but I've also done what might be termed "meta-meditation" - I've tried to consider a little about the mysteries themselves, and their arrangement and structure. No, I'm not going to go into this meta-meditation today; there's no space on all the disk drives of Earth that will suffice. I just want to point out something interesting I just noticed.

Other writers have pointed out that these mysteries provide a channel for pondering the Sacraments, and somewhere I mentioned something about how these might also be termed "the Mysteries of Water" because of the significant role water plays in each one. And recently I said how the Rosary might be considered the "hand-held lab" for the Gospels - which might rally begin my suggestion that there is some amazing relation between this prayer and Science.

But it was today's gospel - the story of Zaccheus, which of course falls into that fantastic wild-card msytery, the Third Luminous, "the Proclamation of the Kingdom" - which really underscores the relation of the two. It came, as our priest noted, just after the healing of the blind man yesterday... which I think contains that sad plaint, "kyrie hina blepso = Lord, that I may see!" That was the same motive which made Zaccheus run to find a vantage point, since he was short. (yeah, I said it)

But that is exactly what Science is all about. It is the real reason for experiments. We want to see. We do things with great care, in the most stylized manner, according to rituals far more rigid than any athlete at "play" or any precise society manners consultant - and we do them over and over and over and over; we demand reproducibility from our equipment, our reagent suppliers, from our associates or assistants - or students - whose lab notebooks we inspect or correct; we expect assiduous attention to every possible detail. It is DILIGENCE... it is love, a bring desire for Truth.

Yes, these are the Mysteries of Science... We seek to know more about the One Who said "I am the Truth."

May St. Albert the Great, patron of Science, intercede for us as we work in this field, and may Mary, the Seat of Wisdom, enlighten our eyes to see...

A Blank, Empty, and Awesome Gift

2011-11-09T10:24:00.004-05:00

I had lunch with an old friend a week or two ago. He, like me, is a doctor, and we had an interesting conversation, as we always do. One of our unfinished conversations, begun some years ago, concerned the nature of Science, and its "Division and Methods" - I had promised him a copy of that famous study by St. Thomas Aquinas (his commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius) and had finally given it to him. We were also discussing my curious project - also now aged some many years, to which I am finally returning, and I remarked on the interesting relation between doing or PRACTICING Science and CONTEMPLATING the doing... so very astutely linked in Boethius' well-known The Consolation of Philosophy.

And as we talked, my friend the doctor said, "You ought to have a lab notebook... I have a spare one - we don't use them any more, it's all electronic now... I'll send it to you."

And he did. It's very nice: a fat thing much like the old "composition notebooks" we used in grade school, but with heavier covers, and about an inch bigger than a standard laser-printer page. It's all scored into grids - what some call "graph paper"... uh... about which I may have to tell some jokes one of these days. Ah, it's the sort of thing that makes me laugh, like when I (as a mathematician) hear people talk about GROUP therapy... hee hee! (Let's say the Rule together, shall we? A set and an operator which have Closure, Associativity, Identity and Inverse... these constitute a Group.) Ahem. Anyway, like the hairs of our head, every grid-lined page of this notebook is numbered - and yet there are TWO of each page, so you can make a carbon copy. The copy can go in your file, while the original stays bound in its place.

Ah, it sits there, so tempting - and my bottle of ink and my pen are waiting...

I debated posting this over on the Duhem Society blogg, since it is quite apropos of our discussion there on "the Scientific Method" and related matters, but I felt it would work better here. Another time I will say some more about this splendid gift - sure, it may sound very Chestertonian to contemplate a blank notebook with such admiration, but then why shouldn't we?

The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the thing he is doing. The painter is glad that the canvas is flat. The sculptor is glad that the clay is colourless.
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:244]

We scientists must also have a starting point - sometimes we call it providing a control, other times we speak of reducing the independent variables, or excluding the personal dimension or the biassed approach... and this is why we need as thorough a grounding in philosophy as we do in mathematics - or (and it will shock some of my readers) or in literature. Yes - for if you cannot read and cannot write, you can neither consult the Authorities, nor can you publish your results. And then you are not doing Science at all. You may be enjoying yourself, but that does not "constitute the thing" we are doing - no, not at all. Then the word is not Science, but Selfishness - or, in extreme cases, Solipsism.

I would like to write more on this - though it probably belongs over in the DS blogg. But I have some work to get to... and so... oh yeah. There is one other thing I must tell you. There was also enclosed a note which reads:

Remember, it goes:
(1) Date
(2) Title
(3) Materials
(4) Methods
(5) Results
(6) Conclusions

And remember, it's for Posterity!

Yes, indeed. I am truly grateful to be reminded - our work is for Posterity. Let us proceed with God's help, in our lab or office or home... and do all for the Glory of God, and as a work of love for our neighbors. Yes... let us not lose sight that even the most abstruse and theoretical studies can be for our neighbor's good, even for society:

It is wrong to fiddle while Rome is burning; but it is quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while Rome is burning.
[GKC What's Wrong With the World CW4:43]

What a great gift! Thanks, Doctor. Soon I hope to begin using the notebook, and I will surely bear all this in mind as I work. Now, ahem, ahem... where did I leave my lab coat?

Exspecto in resurrectionem mortuorum

2011-11-02T14:29:00.002-04:00

Do I believe in Ghosts?

Of course I believe in Ghosts! I say it every Sunday: Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. = "And I expect the resurrection of the dead."

Yes; you know the ancients had a real fear of ghosts, rather akin to the typical movie sort of thing. It's one thing to be startled by something unexpected - like a bump in the night, which might be the furnace or a passing truck or a dog burping - or a family member turning over in bed. But there was once a view that the dead had nothing but antipathy for us, and death "the great unknown" was a source of fear.

As the Pink Panther once said of a crushed "priceless Steinway":

Not any more.

Things changed that Sunday morning in spring about 2000 years ago, when the women went to the tomb and found the unexpected - and for the first time since creation Surprise had dawned on human beings - and it was found to be very good.

Well, that unexpected (though predicted) news began to have an effect on people, and it changed their attitude to death - so much so that even the art and labelling of graves and tombs were altered.

Evidence for this was found in a very ancient cemetery - a pagan cemetery - buried under St. Peter's in Rome:

...it contains an undoubted Christian grave. The name and the span of years are no longer preserved, only the words "Anno(s)" and the decisive, though somewhat mutilated "Deposita". The use of the word deponere for burial is for practical purposes exclusively Christian. The body is entrusted to the earth but only as a depository, that is, on condition that it may be recalled. This simple word thus encloses a belief in the resurrection of the body.
[Engelbert Kirschbaum, S. J. The Tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul 32]

Oh my.

You recall the parallel line in Chesterton... it's perhaps the most grand line of so many grand lines:

Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a god who knew the way out of the grave.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:382]

What a great epitaph:

Our God Knows the Way Out of the Grave!

May the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.

Some Things about Five

2011-10-29T10:00:00.000-04:00

Five is a very curious number, and not just because it is half of ten, or the number of digits on one human hand. It gets bad press in some circles since it seems (by certain views) to be unnatural. For example, by the Laws of Symmetry, when we are packing balls of various sizes, which is what God does when a crystal is formed, there are only 32 possible arrangements for them:

The restrictions placed on space lattices impose addtional restrictions on the motifs that populate the lattice points. The motifs themselves must outline units that fill all space. For example, 5-fold arrangements cannot exist in crystals for they will not pack together without leaving spaces between. It has been shown that there are a limited number of ways of rrangeing objects, such as atoms of a motif, about a point (in our example, a lattice point). Only 32 such ways exist; these are known as the 32 point groups.
[Hurlbut, Dana's Manual of Mineralogy, 5-7, emphasis added]

Ah, well. Of course we know our hands are not symmetrical - that's why we have to buy two gloves, and these are different, not only from each other, but within themselves - there is a "thumb" end and a "pinkie" end. You may say that our hands do not crystallize, and nod knowingly - that is true. The same goes for starfish, or for flowers with five points, or with other living things that have five-ish-ness about themselves.

Now, when it comes to symmetry in things that are NOT crystals, anything goes, and we have some wonderful things like the dodecahedron with its pentagon-shaped faces, or the icosahedron which seems to be a dodecahedon wearing a pentagonal pyramid disguise. (Hee hee) But without going into three-space, we have the pentagon, and its interior diagonals, sometimes called a pentagram. Here's both at once:

This sort of thing was used as a heraldic device - that is, something on a coat-of-arms, linke this:This symbol is known as the Five-Knot, and no less than J. R. R. Tolkien wrote about it in his fascinating hyper-annotated Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - in those days it was considered a holy emblem, suggesting the Five Wounds of our Lord, or other five-shaped ideas from the Bible. It's hilarious to think that some people now consider this a demonic symbol, but then others have gotten confused about Christ, or so it is reported - remember, "Your Master casts out demons by the prince of demons" [Mt 9:34] and so on. Here's what Tolkien had to say:

The pentacle was an ancient symbol of perfection which was used by the Pythagoreans, the Neo-Platonists, and the Gnostics. ... Throughout the Middle Ages it was a mystic symbol, and was popularly thought to have power to repel spirits. It was also called the endless knot, "because its interlacing lines are joined so as to be continuous, and if followed out they bring the tracer back always to the same point..." "In five ways, and five times in each way ... the five wits, the five fingers, the five wounds [of Christ], the five joys [of Mary] and five virtues."
[Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ed. by J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon, 91-2]

Usually the Five Joys of Mary were the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Assumption. And, just for completeness, here's some of the actual stuff from the Gawain story:

[The pentacle] was the sign Solomon set ere-while, as betokening truth, for it is a figure with five points and each line overlaps the other, and nowhere hath it beginning or end, so that in English it is called "the endless knot." And therefore was it well suiting to this knight and to his arms, since Gawain was faithful in five and five-fold, for pure was he as gold, void of all villainy and endowed with all virtues. Therefore he bare the pentacle on shield and surcoat as truest of heroes and gentlest of knights.

For first he was faultless in his five senses; and his five fingers never failed him; and all his trust upon earth was in the five wounds that Christ bare on the cross, as the Creed tells. And wherever this knight found himself in stress of battle he deemed well that he drew his strength from the five joys which the Queen of Heaven had of her Child. And for this cause did he bear an image of Our Lady on the one half of his shield, that whenever he looked upon it he might not lack for aid. And the fifth five that the hero used were frankness and fellowship above all, purity and courtesy that never failed him, and compassion that surpasses all, and in these five virtues was the hero wrapped and clothed. And all these, five fold, were linked one in the other, so that they had no end, and were fixed on five points that never failed, neither at any side were they joined or sundered, nor could ye find beginning or end. And therefore on his shield was the knot shapen, red-gold upon red, which is the pure pentacle.
[Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tr. Jessie L. Weston, 13-4]

There are all sorts of other things to be said about five, as I hinted about in my sadly truncated series of comments in Advent of 2008 about water: the typical molecule may be linked by hydrogen bonds to four others, thus water is really groups of five, like this:Someday I hope to post some more. I had wanted to post something as a study of what I call "The Five Verbs of the Gloria: Laudamus, Benedicimus, Adoramus, Glorificamus, Gratias-agimus... these are the five we-verbs which we chant in union with the Angelic Choir, and about which at least a fat book ought to be written. Oh, my - yet another project, yes, but at least with this posting I've managed to say something about five. Sure, even without knowing a lot about math, one could make a case about every number - that is what one expects as a Chestertonian, or even as a believer in God - it is predicted in the famous Apocalypse/Revelation that "all things in creation" [see Apo/Rev 5:13] will glorify God, which does not exclude mathematics... And five is linked to so many things in strange ways - this is helpful, not as a superstition, but as a reminder and a remembrance:

Per sua sancta vulnera gloriosa custodiat et conservet nos Christus Dominus. Amen.

By His holy glorious wounds may the Lord Christ guard and protect us. Amen.

That is from the ritual of the Great Vigil - and if you are wondering where the "five" is, all you have to know is that the priest says this prayer while he inserts five grains of incense into the Paschal Candle...

Problem Solving, the Wheel, and the Box - or when to divide by parallel fifths

2011-10-19T13:32:00.003-04:00

I often wonder what it is they mean when they talk about "problem solving skills" - as if these were some sort of magical trickery prohibited to all students below a certain age. It's especially funny, because when this comes up, as it does all the time whenever someone is trying to justify spending even more money on schools or colleges, they usually couple it with the old line about how children ought not learn the rudiments of arithmetic such as Long Division, since they ought to be learning something called "technology" and - let us chant it together - and problem-solving skills. (No, to my surprise when they say "technology" they do not mean learning automata theory, which is fun as well as useful - in fact it is the basis of ALL video games - nor Boolean Algebra, which is loads simpler than the regular kind.)

What a shame. It's like saying one ought not practice one's instrument, because music is a matter of "feeling" the intent of the composer. Harold Hill would be proud: "Now think, men! Think the Minuet in G..."

It's true one ought to grasp the intent of the composer - but that door can only be opened if one has the right key... (probably with a single sharp, ahem!)

Now, I could give four or five examples of problems which are quite simple to solve once one knows the method called "Long Division". They are not directly solvable on a computer - in fact solving them with a computer requires that knowledge. It's very funny - by depriving students of the ability to do Long Division, these teachers actually work against themselves. Ah, but as long as they can double-click, the world will be saved. Yes, yes.

So this is a whine-post, Dr. Thursday?

No... it's just a curious introductory tune, to try to get you to think about the box. People love that epigram about "thinking outside the box" - but you have probably never noticed the box before... and you would be very startled if someone told you to think outside the cylinder! Just what DO you mean by a problem-solving skill, and why do you exclude the very elegant and simple algorithm for long division from that category? Or is it merely that you've not noticed the box?

Another way of putting it is this: At Goodyear or Firestone or Dunlap or Pirelli, no one is permitted to say "let's not re-invent the wheel!" (Not when their business is selling wheels, and their adornments.)

Or, to vary the analogy, there are times when even the great masters of music used parallel fifths or octaves... knowing that one has to have a thorough grounding in the basics if one wants to re-invent the wheel, or think about the box-in-itself.

Yeah, yeah... Gosh, Doc, you are going to get really deep-and-mystical today, we can tell.

I am. You, see, I would like you to do some "sitting and thinking" as good old H.M. liked to say. (That's "Sir Henry Merrivale", the bald-headed detective in the novels of Carter Dickson, the pen name of John Dickson Carr.)

Let's just take the alphabet... not as we take it in English, but as a computer scientist takes it: as a collection of characters or symbols. Just for fun, I would like you to think - not OUTSIDE the box, but about the box.

Now, you could play the game like the molecular biologists who have found that their four-letter DNA alphabet of A, C, G and T isn't enough to spell out the words they are reading from their DNA sequence analysis. They were forced to invent tricks so that they could have veritable "chords" of letters - yes, just like in music - they let M stand for "either A or C", and S stand for "either C or G"... there's two and three-letter symbols, and N for any of the four. (Speaking as a musician, which I must do with some trepidation, it makes me wonder if these people are string musicians... but that is a pun and I will be banned from both the music and computing spheres, alas!)

Yes... these are the famous wild-cards of DNA sequence analysis, which form a Boolean Algebra... here's the Hasse diagram for it:

But let us not do something which is so practical as to enter into matters like cancer research, which if you don't know Long Division, will be a hopeless frustration... It's not like there's something called the ribosome - I mean, they like their problems to be practical, don't they? So let us just ask ourselves another question, and try a slightly simpler model.

Whenever we think of a word - I mean we computer people - we think of a series of characters from our given alphabet. This series is in most ways just like a train - specifically a freight train (also called a "goods train" in England.) It has a starting member: the engine, followed by a series of other members, which sometimes might actually be other engines, and at the end a caboose. (We note that there could be a caboose elsewhere, and in fact there could be a caboose at the start, though I suspect that is quite rare if not actually forbidden.) My intention is not to guess at such matters, but to call your attention to the BOX - no not the boxcar! Hee hee.

I mean the very curious fact that each car of the train has exactly two couplers - one at the front, and one at the back. The train can be organized in all sorts of ways regarding the particular length and order of the cars - but one car is not placed next to another, or on top of another - or any other arrangement, be it classically measured in purely real numbers, or quantized according to Planck or any other unit. It is strictly assembled, coupler to coupler, one following another after the first, until we reach the end. There are no chords in the composition of a train, except in the case of a collision, which is (alas) no longer a train, but a wreck.

Now, if you make the stunning leap from the railroad to the print shop and take up a handful of type instead of begging access to a switch engine and riding around a yard (oh what fun that could be!) you will find something much the same. Or, if you have no old-fashioned print shops, maybe you have an old "Scrabble" game around the house. You can have all sorts of fun sticking those letters together and making curious things... but even when you play with a crossword puzzle or any of its relatives, you will find yourself recurring to the analogy of the train and joining the letters end to end.

SO the question is: what sort of a thing could it be if the letters were - uh - sort of like the chemical elements? And some had one hand, or two, or three, or four, or more, or none - or could bind with double or triple bonds...

Yeah, Doc (you yawn) you probably need some more sleep. Or maybe a cup of coffee. Or another beer or two.

Thanks, most generous - don't mind if I do. But maybe it's a matter of thinking about the box, and knowing a little about the mystery of Long Division - which is a key to unlock these and other mysteries.

Ah do you know why? You DON'T? What a shame. Glad you have YOUR problem-solving skills... but I have some useful tools - yes, I even know how to do Long Division - and I've got some work to do.

More on this another time.

P.S. I am well aware that certain ideogrammatic languages permit a certain sort of overlaying of simpler symbols to form more complex ones. I am not referring to these; I want to consider the idea of a "molecular alphabet" which is not just the usual linear two-coupler railroad car sort of thing. These things have some curious properties, you know, just as the wild-card alphabet - or - gosh - or even regular numbers. Division, you know, is not commutative - but that's another sort of forbidden problem-solving skill, and I apologize if it's not in your toolkit. It should be... it comes up in other realms besides mathematics.

Translations and Elements and Access to Specimens

2011-10-16T10:00:00.002-04:00

I had an interesting idea to tell you - and by the time the "posting window" finally opened it had evaporated. All I can tell you is that it had something to do with the "Five Regular Solids" - that is, the tetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron, the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron - which I have recently been preparing models of, for a curious young man whom I see every so often on his way to school. I don't know if you've ever tried to make them - it may be worth your expending some energy the next time you are looking for an interesting little crafts project. I am thinking of making another set to use for a future Christmas project... hm. Very interesting... as you know, I pay attention to words and numbers and their inter-relation, be it of the classical (psephy) or modern (ASCII) approach... But I have no time to explore that just now.

Rather, I was pondering the idea of translations and their variants, especially as this touches critical matters like the Five Regular Solids, or the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. No, this is NOT a moan or a critical post - it is an observation about two translations I have noted of Biblical passages. Each has had a profound impact on me as I think and ponder my work or my writing - and I feel you ought to know about both. And no, I am not going to analyse them, or explain their other versions. I prefer you to consider them as they are.

The first is just a vrey brief phrase from the Divine Office:

Dedicate yourselves to thankfulness.
[cf Colossians 3:15]

The other is from the "Jerusalem" edition of the Bible:

...the elements fight for the virtuous.
[cf. Wisdom 16:17]

There was some chance alignment here - and somehow it was spurred on by the fact that just now the sun is shining on me as I sat at my computer - and then I recalled this sparkling gemstone from a wonderful book:

Considered as a collector of rare and precious things, the amateur astronomer has a great advantage over amateurs in all other fields, who must content themselves with second and third rate specimens. ... [he] has access at all times to the original objects of his study; the masterworks of the heavens belong to him as much as to the great observatories of the world.
[burnham, Burnham's Celestial Handbook, 5, emphasis added]

And then I recalled St. Francis and his Canticle of the Sun, and Chesterton's audacious literary analysis of the Gospels:

Even in the matter of mere literary style, if we suppose ourselves thus sufficiently detached to look at it in that light, there is a curious quality to which no critic seems to have done justice. It had among other things a singular air of piling tower upon tower by the use of the a fortiori; making a pagoda of degrees like the seven heavens.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:332]

In fact, Burnham's thesis applies a fortiori to the sun. We humans have access at all times (that is, during the daylight hours!) to this most original object of study - that is, our local star, "Ole Sol" the Sun. Not for nothing does St. Francis seem to exalt it as a sort of Christian god... but of course you will note that he does not praise the sun, but God Who created the sun. And if we want to begin to grasp even in some faint fashion the amazing wonders of that creation, and the gift which is ours in our local star, we need to go and enjoy it, or at least read about it.

One little item - which ties into that mystical quote from Wisdom - is the curious fact that one of the chemical elements was disccovered on the sun before it was discovered on earth. Yes - the element we know as helium, which is just the Greek for "the sun-element", proclaimed its presence by its spectrum - certain lines of color (or of darkness) which could not be traced to any known element on earth! True, helium was later found to be present on earth; it can be obtained from certain natural gas deposits. But it is astounding to remember that the presence of helium was announced not in any test tube or chemical reaction apparatus, but from beams of light: it was (as Chesterton once pointed out in the case of the writer Alice Meynell:

She could always find things to think about; even on a sick bed in a darkened room, where the shadow of a bird on the blind was more than the bird itself, she said, because it was a message from the sun.
[GKC Autobiography CW16:269]

And with that observation, perhaps I have given you a little hint about something else... but for today, I will let you do your own sitting and thinking. Perhaps then you will also dedicate yourselves to thankfulness...

Alert - Longest Advent coming up!

2011-10-11T10:54:00.004-04:00

Just a quick note to call your attention to the fact that this year our Advent will consist of 28 days - that is, four full weeks:

So you ought to plan accordingly. Note also that 28 is a perfect number:

28 = (1*28) = (2*14) = (4*7)
and
28 = 1 + 2+14 + 4+7

as well as triangular:

28 = 1+2+3+4+5+6+7

which means there's all sorts of possibilities for fun, be it psephy or otherwise.

A note: "psephy" was a sort of game, sometimes used for attempting to foretell the future or gain insight into mystical writings. In several ancient languages (such as Greek), the symbols of the "alphabet" were also used as what we now call "digits". Thus, any given word could be converted into a numerical value, which (by some views) was thereby related to other such words. Its most famous instance is found in Apocalypse/Revelation 13:18 in the "number of the Beast" 666, which has been given a whole long list of meanings. Very few people seem to recall the number of Christ, which is in some ways more interesting - it is "alpha omega" (see the same book, 1:18) which in the old Greek notation comes out to what we now write as 801.

Something simple

2011-10-05T11:27:00.005-04:00

Well, maybe not so simple. But it was something I needed, and of course, since I could not lay my hand on a convenient reference, I decided to go through the exercise of finding out for myself.

What?

Nothing more exotic than the "central angle" of a tetrahedron.

So... first, let us take a regular tetrahedron...

with its corners (vertices) labelled P,Q,R,S.

The length of all six edges is s. Each of its faces is an equilateral triangle with side s and angle 60°, or p/3 radians.

Here you see the face PQR with its altitudes shown in red:

Note that the altitudes bisect the angles and the sides, and are perpendicular.

Since this is equilateral, and the altitude RA is the side opposite to the 60° angle with the hypotenuse of length s, the length of RA is given by:

|RA| = s*sqrt(3)/2

We also have a 30-60-90 triangle PMA, where the side opposite to 60° is s/2.

Each of the segments PM, QM, RM are the radii of the circumscribing circle of the triangle. Their lengths are the same, and is:

|PM| = s*sqrt(3)/3

The lengths of the segments from the center M to each edge is:

|AM| = s*sqrt(3)/6

As a check we see that

|RM| + |MA| = s*sqrt(3)/3 + s*sqrt(3)/6

or, since RM and MA are colinear,

|RA| = s*sqrt(3)/2

Now, let us go back to our tetrahedron and put in those medians in red, and some other lines from the center C to each vertex in green:

We know that C is in a vertical line between M and S. Consider the triangle AMS, where A is the midpoint between P and Q. We know that it is a right triangle with its right angle at M; we also know (from above) the length of AS is s*sqrt(3)/2. We also know the length of AM, which is s*sqrt(3)/6, and so by the Pythagorean theorem, we can determine the altitude a of the tetrahedron, which is the length of SM:

|SM|² + |AM|² = |AS|²

Substituting, we get:

a² + (s*sqrt(3)/6)² = (s*sqrt(3)/2)²

This reduces to:

a = s*sqrt(6)/3

Next, we consider the triangle PCM. This has a right angle at M, and we know the length of PM to be s*sqrt(3)/3. We note that the length of PC is equal to that of SC - all these are the radii of the circumscribing sphere for the tetrahedron. We also note that the altitude SCM of the tetrahedron is colinear, so |SM| = |SC| + |CM|.

To simplfy things, let us call

r = |SC|

and

w = |CM|

, thus

r + w = a = s*sqrt(6)/3

Solving for w, we have:

w = a – r

Then, again by the Pythagorean theorem, we have:

r² = w² + |PM|²

Applying the value of |PM| and the above equation for w, we get:

r² = (a – r)² + (s*sqrt(3)/3)²

Now, it's just algebra to solve for r...

r² = a² – 2*r*a + r² + (s²/3)

2*r*a = a² + (s²/3)

but we also know that a = s*sqrt(6)/3, so we can reduce this to:

r = s*sqrt(6)/4

Recall that r is the radius of the circumscribing circle.

Now, consider the central triangle SCP, its two legs are radii and equal to r. The third leg is an edge of the tetrahedron which is given as s. Now, a line from C to the edge PS will bisect PS at a right angle. The central angle in SCP (at C) is twice the angle between that bisector and the radius PC, which means the desired angle is twice that which has a sine given by (s/2)/r. That is, the central angle q is given:

sin(q/2) = (s/2)/(s*sqrt(6)/4)

sin(q/2) = sqrt(6)/3)

As expected, the s term vanishes, since the central angle is independent of the size of the tetrahedron.

To complete the exercise, the angle q is approximately 109.471 degrees.

Wow. That was fun. Now, it's time to go and use that fact.

Maybe another day I'll tell you what it's for.

Oh yes. I expect that someone, somewhere is wondering whether this post has anything to do with yesterday's. As strange as it must sound, it does.

Searching in Reverse: the Rosary and Science

2011-10-04T09:54:00.003-04:00

No, this is not a posting about my doctoral dissertation, which really did accomplish what the TV version of "The Cat In The Hat" called Calculatus Eliminatus, or finding where something is by finding out where it isn't. (Yes, I really did that, and it was useful for biologists, and not just yet another goofy academic exercise - but more on that topic some other time.)

Rather, it's about how I found out someone is hunting for something by seeing that someone used one of the so-called "search engines" to come here, looking for something called "Scientists and the Rosary".

Possibly they were hunting for the famous vignette told about Louis Pasteur, quoted in Key To Happiness Oct 1986; see here. I have not yet encountered the original source of this, so for the moment it is just another story - but it sounds like something that did happen.

Or perhaps they were curious about the great Andre Ampère, who was also known to say the rosary (a vignette about him was told in Key To Happiness for Sept/Oct 1990), as was Allesandro Volta - his dedication to the rosary is documented in Kneller's important work, Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science, available from Real View Books.

A very interesting point ought to be made here: the names of these two great Catholic scientists appear on uncountably many things all over the world. A certain dead musician (I use the term very loosely) once claimed to be more famous than the One Whose birth has fixed the naming of the very year - but that dead musician's name is not more ubiquitous than Volts and Amps. But let us proceed.

Now... it is remotely possible that the ones who were searching for "Rosary and Scientist" were not so much seeking such vignettes, be they legends or accurate descriptions. Perhaps they were seeking some sort of commentary... that is, What Does a Scientist Think Of When He Says the Rosary? or, perhaps, What Sort Of New Things Does a Scientist See When he Brings His Sort of Training To Assist In His Praying, Specifically the Rosary?

Oh, I wish I had the time to write these texts... though I expect they would be large. And perhaps you will wish I had saved this post for Friday... or perhaps had planned out an actual series of lectures - er, I mean postings - for this blogg about such topics!

Well... I can't promise anything. Like most of us, I get very busy, and there is hardly time to turn a quick AMBER concordance of GKC's use of the word "dragon" into a post (like I did last week). But since I think of myself as a scientist, and I do say the rosary, I ought to at least make an attempt. I know I did something back in 2005 called "Light From the Rosary" - but that only goes so far, and six years have passed, with a steady accumulation of new details and data and insights. There was also an Advent series on the analogy between the 20 mysteries and the 20 amino acids, which was done in 2006; see my index for the specific entries, it also gives the links to "Light From the Rosary".

It's a rich field for study - far richer since the addition of the Five Luminous Mysteries in 2002. I think I may have mentioned in one of those collections that the Luminous Mysteries might just as well be called "The Aquatic Mysteries" or "The Mysteries of Water" because of the critical role water plays in each one. But more importantly, there is a lot to see just in the very idea of the rosary as "the Hand-held Gospel" - it is a truly scientific thing, a way of developing one's mental focus to consider a topic or series of topics, slowly and solemnly, but without the dangers of trying too hard, or getting lost in the details or all the other risks encountered in less well-developed methods. Please note: I do not suggest that there be "mysteries of Science" though if the atheists were serious about their faith they would have such things, just as Comte proposed things like "Darwin Day":

A feeling touching the nature of things does not only make men feel that there are certain proper things to say; it makes them feel that there are certain proper things to do. The more agreeable of these consist of dancing, building temples, and shouting very loud; the less agreeable, of wearing green carnations and burning other philosophers alive. But everywhere the religious dance came before the religious hymn, and man was a ritualist before he could speak. If Comtism had spread the world would have been converted, not by the Comtist philosophy, but by the Comtist calendar. By discouraging what they conceive to be the weakness of their master, the English Positivists have broken the strength of their religion. A man who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. It is absurd to say that a man is ready to toil and die for his convictions when he is not even ready to wear a wreath round his head for them. I myself, to take a corpus vile, am very certain that I would not read the works of Comte through for any consideration whatever. But I can easily imagine myself with the greatest enthusiasm lighting a bonfire on Darwin Day.
[GKC Heretics CW1:87]

Comte had a complete new religion, or rather, a new Church; for it was modelled throughout on the Catholic Church. It had a liturgy. It had a calendar. I believe it had vestments. I am sure it had saints' days dedicated to Darwin or Newton. I do not know in what the ceremonial consisted, or what were the vestments worn. Perhaps they all wore tails on Darwin Day. Perhaps they celebrated Sir Isaac Newton by dancing round an apple-tree and pelting each other with apples. I do not know exactly what was done in Comte's cathedral, indeed, I do not know whether anybody ever went to Comte's cathedral, even Comte. But certainly Comte founded, whether or no Harrison followed, the strict system of a regular religion externally very like the Roman religion, except that it was to worship Humanity instead of God.
[GKC ILN Jan 27 1923 CW33:30-31]

Again, I am not suggesting anything of that sort. I do not mean to apply "the scientific method" (about which I am also trying to write over on the blogg of The Duhem Society) to the rosary, or anything like that. I am simply thinking of several interesting ideas I have noticed as I say the rosary, considering this very simple (but powerful and profound) technique for exploring the Gospels - that is, the Life of Christ - yes, as a scientist.

We forget that a Scientist (writ large, as Father Jaki so often wrote) is not rigidly a "way of thinking"... it is something much simpler. It is a WAY OF SEEING. It means somehow factoring one's own self out of the viewpoint, and at the same time, seeing as much as one can see: especially those things that others don't see. And then, of course, telling others about it. A scientist is not a philosopher, whose gravest risk is turning into a navel-gazer. Nor is he a literary man, whose writing might be pulled up and down and all around, like a buoy on the tide, just to satisfy the current market. Being a scientist means being humble... as I said, having the will to remove one's own self, one's own bias, in order to get the view of Reality. Now, it is a wonderful paradox that the best sort of philosophy, the best sort of literature, the best sort of every Art (writ large) must also do that very same thing - but then that is why all those disciplines can rightly be called sciences as well, since they all seek Truth.

In this case, then, to apply one's scientific powers to the Rosary (or the Gospels, as the two are interconvertible)... excuse me... I think I mean to say "to the recitation of the rosary " - which is of course interconvertible with "to the reading of the Gospels". The idea of having a rosary at all is very simple, and is even more clear in this age of hand-held devices. We might not be able to carry our labs around with us. But most likely we keep a fairly good internal vision of our current work. In the same way, we might not own a copy of the Gospels to carry around with us - though again (let us hope) we keep a fairly good representation of the major events of that Real Story. The rosary is a discipined way of perusing that mental image... it is simultaneously Art and Science - the vivid imagination and the accurate memory and the skill of reasoning power all conjoined, and applied to the most fascinating thing that Is.

The funny thing, as you will see if I do get to write more, is that the more science one knows, the more one sees about the Gospels.

And vice versa - which is in keeping with those mystical words of our Lord:

Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you. [Mt 6:33]

Hey scientists - don't you think it's about time we start some sort of new exploration? You think it's all done? Ha. You ain't seen nothing yet. Open your eyes, time for a surprise... You don't have to wear a lab coat to pray, but you might want to get a rosary to keep in your pocket, and use while you're waiting for that experiment to complete. Other great scientists carried one... who knows what may result!

PS: I am well aware that there are Christians who will be delighted in anything which leads to a greater knowledge of the Life of Christ, and yet may have some issues about the rosary as such. It is very likely that I will address some of those concerns... but my purpose is to UNITE, not divide, even if certain sorts of divisions (in the classical sense of distinguo = "I distinguish") are required as we proceed. But if my plan goes well, it may be helpful to understand just what it is a serious Catholic does when he does such a curious thing, and actually THINKS about what he is doing, and why. May God guard and guide us, and bring all who love Christ into the unity He prayed for. {Jn 17:20-24]

Do you see the dragons?

2011-09-27T19:08:00.004-04:00

You may know there are real dragons in our world, such as those called "Komodo"... (see here for more!) but dragons are even more real if you don't look quite so hard for them.

Every Chestertonian knows that famous line, one of the most gorgeous of all GKC's "verbal fireworks":

The Dragon is the most cosmopolitan of impossibilities.
[GKC quoted in Ward Gilbert Keith Chesterton 40]

There are also other useful facts to be acquired, such as this:

If there was a dragon, he had a grandmother.
[GKC "The Dragon's Grandmother" in Tremendous Trifles]

And this, a succinct guide to Story, should you need one:

In every romance there must be the three characters: there must be the Princess, who is a thing to be loved; there must be the Dragon, who is a thing to be fought; and there must be St. George, who is a thing that both loves and fights.
[GKC Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens CW15:255]

Three more, just for the delight of the thing:

An allegory nowadays means taking something that does not exist as a symbol of something that does exist. We believe, at least most of us do, that sin does exist. We believe (on highly insufficient grounds) that a dragon does not exist. So we make the unreal dragon an allegory of the real sin.
[GKC William Blake]

St. George knew very well what all real soldiers know; that the only way to be even approximately likely to kill a dragon is to give the dragon a heavy chance of killing you. And this method, which is the only one, is much too unpleasant to be talked about.
[GKC ILN May 12 1906 CW27:187]

When we dip into an old book, say of what some call the Dark Ages, what strikes us most is that the mystical part is rational, while the scientific part is mad. From Dante to the most dingy page of secondary scholasticism, it is the faith that seems to be sane and the facts that seem to have gone all crazy. Some quaint old scribe will often write something like this: "We know by divine revelation that love causeth all mothers to care for their young; but this appears to be contradicted by experience, for experience tells us that the dragon bites off the tails of all infant dragons at the fourth full moon." Or we may read: "It is of the nature of the mercy of God to provide grass to be the food of horses; but some have denied this, urging that the Three-Legged Horse of Tartary, that standeth on one leg in the attempt to eat the birds as they fly, is an object apparent to our senses." Now it is a complete error to suppose that the mediaevals thought lightly of the authority of the senses - and still more of an error to suppose that they thought lightly of the authority of the reason. Every mediaeval writer repeated to the point of monotony that the rights of the reason must be respected, and that it was among the rights of the reason to deal with such things of the senses. The only explanation is that they had fallen into the habit of accepting some of their facts at second-hand, and still thinking of them as facts even when they were fables. In other words, it must be conceded that mediaeval philosophy allowed itself to drift into one of the commonest errors of modern popular science. They said lightly enough, "We see the dragon," without stopping to specify who saw the dragon. All our popular science is based on the same principle.
[GKC ILN Apr 7 1923 CW33:77]

Iron

2011-09-14T15:00:00.000-04:00

(a prose meditation in the style of St. Francis for the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross)

"Behold the Iron of the nails on which hung the Savior of the World."
[paraphrased from the Good Friday liturgy]

...if we were even to print the words without a capital G, as if it were the cult of some new and nameless tribe, many would realize the idea for the first time. Many would feel the thrill of a new fear and sympathy if we simply wrote "the story of a god who died for men." People would sit up suddenly and say what a beautiful and touching pagan religion that must be.
[GKC The Thing CW3:237]

...a religion really has survived out of ancient Roman times. But nobody notices it, because it is not secret but public; because it is not cruel but humane; and because in that antique Italian idolatry, it is not the priest but the god that died.
[GKC The Resurrection of Rome CW21:455]

O Iron, thou gift of God... how splendid you are!

So stable, so strong, with thy 26 protons, 30 neutrons, brewed up in the plasmic stew of distant stellar furnaces, the deepest point in the "stability valley" of the isotopes of the chemical elements.

And so useful to the cosmos, to our planet, to life both biological and supernatural.

Thou art the core upon which our earth rotates, from whose motion spans forth a huge magnetic field warding off the dangerous charged particles which spew continually from our sun...

Thou art the central atom caged within a porphyrin ring, like a virtuoso dancer among a troupe of carbons and nitrogens, one electronic hand held aloft to gently tug along a molecule of oxygen, even from the lungs to the furthest toes of man or mole or giraffe or whale...

Thou for Romans form the clavus, the spike, which signifies firmness (for ferrum is related to firmus firm ) and an attribute of Necessity; the nail driven every Ides of September (that was yesterday) into the wall of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus at Roma, thus marking the passage of time...

And once, as a Roman nail, thou didst hold more... thou, O Iron, became the firm core of creation itself, the carrier of a new life-breath, and henceforth marked the pivot of all human time which not even the threat of Y2K could abolish...

Three spikes of iron, upon which was suspended the price of the cosmos...

Crux fidelis, inter omnes
Arbor una nobilis,
Silva talem nulla profert
Fronde, flore, germine:
Dulce ferrum, dulce lignumm,
dulce pondus sustinent.

Faithful Cross! above all other,
One and only noble Tree!
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit thy peers may be;
Sweetest Wood and sweetest Iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on thee.

[Venantius Fortunatus, Pange lingua gloriosi; tr. J. M. Neale; from The Hymns of he Breviary and Missal, by Matthew Britt, OSB]

A Famous Date

2011-09-11T12:11:00.003-04:00

"...a date that ought to be among the most famous in history - September 11, 1683..."
-- H. Belloc, The Great Heresies

"...part of what historians call 'the specious present' for Muslims."
-- in an essay by W. Cinfici in The Annotated Lepanto

It was a Tuesday in the fall of 2001, 08:01 by the big red master clock in the corner of the Control Room of Astron Cable and Technology Group, a small cable television company located in the city of North Belloc, Pennsylvania, about an hour west of Philadelphia. Joe Outis checked over the four big display screens which showed the status of the hundreds of computers in the Field - computers which played the commercials on some 40-odd cable TV networks. Normally scheduled for nights, Joe had the day shift today, having swapped with Al, who was home with his wife and new daughter. All the displays showed normal status - all the telltales were green, so things were running fine. The ever shifting eyes of CUSTOS the system guardian were placid. In a long row of equipment racks below the four big screens, 48 black-and-white monitors showed the various cable networks, a random flashing collage of entertainment and information. Nothing abnormal there. Joe nodded to Jeff, his supervisor, who was talking on the phone, then he went out to the lunchroom to get some coffee.

Joe nodded to co-workers he passed - some in the halls discussing current projects, some sitting in their cubicles talking to customers.
"Ain't seen you for a while, Joe - on days now?" someone asked.
"Just while Al's out this week," he explained. He got some donuts from the vending machine, helped himself to the coffee, and headed back to the Control Room.

Joe was looking over the displays again when Bill from Traffic came in pushing a cart loaded with dozens of video tapes. "Whole lot of spots today, Joe," he said.
"A little early in the week, aren't they?" Joe asked. Bill only shrugged and left the room without a word. Joe shrugged too, then pushed the cart over to an encoder, and began the boring task of converting the tapes into the electronic form for satellite distribution to all the remote locations where they were needed.
He had just put in the first tape when Jeff came over. "Hey, Joe - I have a meeting with my boss, so it'll just be you in here for a while. Everything looks fine right now, but 'Doc' said to let him know if PUMP goes down - he's back in the lab if you need him."
Joe nodded and Jeff left for his meeting. It sure was great to have someone around who took care of the machinery. Joe had talked to "Doc" several times, day or night - he was the developer of the company software, and PUMP was the main satellite transport program, so named because it was the "heart" of their system. Joe didn't even have to watch anything; the CUSTOS monitor had a special audio alert to warn him if something failed. He sat back and began the encoding.

Tape followed tape as Joe worked. Then a woman's voice stated: "Attention: Pump is not running." Joe got up and looked at the big screens - sure enough, the CUSTOS eyes were red, as was the little telltale for PUMP. He took a quick scan over the rest of the displays - everything else looked as it should - then grabbed the cell phone and headed back to the lab.

* * *

Joe went into the lab - it was kept colder than the Control Room because of all the racks of test equipment. The Doctor, in a white lab coat, stood by one of the racks, talking with Ian his boss - they were looking at a new piece of equipment, connected to a row of 16 tiny tv monitors.
"Hey, Joe," Ian said. "What's up?"
"Pump just went down, and Jeff said to let Doc know."
The Doctor nodded. "Thanks Joe - yeah, I had to fix something, and I expected this. Just hold on while I..." He turned to a keyboard and typed furiously.

"Hey, what's that?" Ian asked. "Looks like a plane just hit one of the world Trade Towers."
Joe peered intently at the little screen.
"Some kind of disaster flick? the Doctor commented, busy with the machinery.
"Nah - it's one of the news networks," Ian said, switching the machinery to bring that network to the lab monitor. He turned up the volume and an announcer was talking about the strange event which had just occurred.
"This is strange," Ian said. "How's that PUMP situation?"
"Just ready now," the Doctor said. "It's already corrected and running fine."
"C'mon Joe, Doc; let's get over to the Control Room," Ian said. "Something's going on.

* * *

The three went back into the Control Room. As he glanced at the 48 little monitors, Joe knew something was going on. The same strange shot - a glimpse of a plane, then smoke billowing - was appearing on several different networks.
"Put it up on the big screen," Ian ordered. Joe sat down at the main console and pressed buttons, then adjusted the volume. On the big screen the horrible view was even more intense and nearby - it was strange to think that they were only a couple of hours drive away from it.

Then the view changed - another plane had hit the other tower. The reporter said something about a third plane hitting the Pentagon, and there was some report of yet another plane crashing somewhere in Pennsylvania.

Joe shivered slightly, not just from the cold of the Control Room. He looked up at the Doctor, who had made the sign of the cross. He's Catholic, Joe thought to himself. He heard the main door click open, and Jeff came in, followed by several members of higher management. No one said anything - all eyes were intent on the strange view being shown on the big screen.

But duty calls, Joe thought to himself. On one of the desk computers, he flipped through the various monitoring displays. Everything seemed to be running normally, except that there hadn't been any cues for some time. Joe understood - when the networks go to live coverage, they do not send the "cue" signals to indicate a time when a commercial could be played - and the machinery was dutifully reporting this unusual state. There was nothing to be done - something historic was occurring, and lesser matters were of no importance. Looking over the 48 monitors, Joe was surprised to see even the music-video networks were showing live coverage from New York - he had never seen so many networks all showing the same thing.

From among the higher management came a whiney pompous voice - "What a terrible thing. I am surprised that such things occur."

The room was silent for a moment, then Joe heard the Doctor's voice. "As Chesterton once said, 'I am never surprised at any work of hell." [GKC, "The God of the Gongs" in The Wisdom of Father Brown]

But he did not stop there. "Ian, I'm going home. I'll be at church - if you need me, I have my cell. God bless us all, and protect us."

"Amen," Joe murmured.

Epilogue

The next day, Joe was in the Control Room when the Doctor wandered in and sat down at a computer. He seemed to be mumbling to himself, though Joe knew that was normal behavior. He started some program running and began typing.
"Let's see... barry of 13 gules and argent..."
"How's everything, Doc?"
"Fine, fine. Everything OK here?"
"Yeah."
"Good," the doctor replied. "A canton azure..."
Joe shrugged. "Real strange not seeing any planes flying..."
"Sure is. Yesterday coming home from church I heard some Air Force jets scream over our city. OK, now, I need a mullet - ah, that's just a pentagon..." Joe shivered at the word, "... but visiting alternating vertices..."

Joe asked "What's going on, Doc?"
"Oh, nothing... just a little addition I thought of last night... You have a piece of scrap paper around?"
"Sure." Joe handed him a piece of paper and a pencil.
"Six by five, five by four..." the Doctor chanted. "How nice. That's why God made DO-loops... er, I mean FOR loops," he corrected himself, somewhat embarrassed. "I guess my age is showing," he chuckled.

Joe sat back, watching the code that seemed to pour out of the fat man's fingers. "How the heck do you know what you're typing? I can't even see the cursor."
"Oh, you get used to it. And anyway, this sort of thing practically writes itself..." he murmured. "They assign this in first-semester ... oh, I guess not. People don't have enough geometry any more. Or trig," he shrugged. "There. All done. Now let's try it."
He pressed a key, and the usual WATCHER screen appeared, which Joe knew was the main monitoring program which "watched" all the hundreds of field machines.

But the screen was different. Instead of a quippy Latin quote appearing in the upper right hand corner (Joe had the translations somewhere, he was always losing it) there was an American flag!

"Hey - the Latin isn't there!"

"Just for the next 10 seconds or so; the flag alternates with the Latin. I thought it was a good idea to have an American flag in here somewhere." The Doctor looked over at Joe with a certain meditative look in his eye.

Joe nodded. "Yeah. That's a really good idea. I'll put that one up on the big screen." He pressed buttons. In moments, the doctor had installed the revised program on all the other monitoring computers.

"It's not just flags, of course," the Doctor said, getting up. "There's work to be done."

Joe nodded. "Oh, yeah."

Yes, that's really how the flag got into WATCHER, which you can see in the above screen-shot.

Author's note: I posted this some years back on the old ACS site. It is no more than a fictionalized recounting of my own experience ten years ago. (Who did you think that Doctor who quotes Chesterton could be? Oh yes.

Novena for Mary's Birthday

2011-08-31T09:34:00.002-04:00

Please join in nine days of prayer to prepare a birthday present for Mary...
It's the highest form of technology: the use of the human faculties to communicate with our Maker in Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving, and Supplication.

You might wish to spend some time in meditating on the Gospels by means of that very scientific method called the Holy Rosary... or choose your own method.

You might also like to ponder this wonderful poem of Chesterton:

"A Little Litany"

When God turned back eternity and was young,
Ancient of Days, grown little for your mirth
(As under the low arch the land is bright)
Peered through you, gate of heaven - and saw the earth.

Or shutting out his shining skies awhile
Built you about him for a house of gold
To see in pictured walls his storied world
Return upon him as a tale is told.

Or found his mirror there; the only glass
That would not break with that unbearable light
Till in a corner of the high dark house
God looked on God, as ghosts meet in the night.

Star of his morning; that unfallen star
In the strange starry overturn of space
When earth and sky changed places for an hour
And heaven looked upwards in a human face.

Or young on your strong knees and lifted up
Wisdom cried out, whose voice is in the street,
And more than twilight of twiformed cherubim
Made of his throne indeed a mercy-seat.

Or risen from play at your pale raiment's hem
God, grown adventurous from all time's repose,
Of your tall body climbed the ivory tower
And kissed upon your mouth the mystic rose.
[from GKC's The Queen of Seven Swords]

"The Elements Fight For the Virtuous"

2011-08-29T10:05:00.003-04:00

I am happy to announce that I have finished Part XIII, "The Elements Fight For the Virtuous", of From Darkness Into Light. Just to tantalize you, here is a sample.

Bernie turned around and looked up at the choir loft. He almost expected to see the four missing girls there – but instead, he saw four very old women in habits – one at the organ, the others clustered directly behind it.

It was a gorgeous experience to hear. Their plain, youthful voices were so perfectly balanced with each other it might have been one rich voice chanting alone. When it was over, the three went up to the choir loft and greeted the sisters.
"We live next door," the sister at the organ told them after they had introduced themselves. "We're so glad Father still permits us to live there, and to come here to do our Office! So few people come any more, even during Lent... We're glad you stopped in; you must have a great devotion to St. Joseph." She shut off the organ, then slid off the bench and turned – she was a very small woman, even shorter than Marty. "I'll come downstairs and let you out..." She signalled the other sisters to remain, then led the way to the other door.

The three followed her down the old wooden stairs – but at the bottom Bernie said, "But Sister, these doors weren't locked..." He looked, but to his surprise, they were now closed securely.
"Certainly they are; we've had to be so careful, as we've had some strange visitors here recently..." Her face was stern, and Bernie expected her to ask how they had gotten inside the church, but instead she lowered her voice. "We found threats against the Blessed Sacrament..."

The three looked at each other anxiously. "Threats?"
"Yes." From a pocket she took out a sheet of paper around which she had wrapped her rosary, and handed it to Bernie. "This one was taped to the altar today..."

Carefully Bernie untwisted the paper and opened it. Greg Weller gasped when he saw the bright red symbol – the double-loop with its eight trigrams encircling a five-pointed star –
the same symbol that had marked the destroyed furnace at North Belloc Steel. Bernie and Marty stared at each other. «We've come to the right place», Bernie muttered.
"You've seen such a thing before?" the sister asked.
"Yes, though it hadn't been done on a color printer like this. They're terrorists, they caused the destruction of a furnace over at the Steel recently. And now..."
As he looked again at the wrinkled paper, he saw something was printed at the bottom...

(Bernie would never repeat its exact words; he only said it was "something vile against the Eucharist.")

Bernie could see Greg's muscles flexing as he read the terrible words; Marty almost swelled in size as if he was mobilizing himself to action. "What can we do, Sister?" Bernie asked confidently.
She turned a very sad face to them. "We can offer no physical defense, of course, but we are steadfast in our prayer. Obviously our presence next door is a deterrent..."

She got no further. There was a sudden loud thump on the main doors, and they shook as some outside force battered upon them.
Then they heard a man outside – his voice had an oriental accent and a powerful carrying quality: "Bernie – Bernie Brown – we know you're in there – we saw you enter. We'll soon have these doors open, and then..."

(There was more to the statement, but this too Bernie would not repeat.)

The doors shook again – then they heard a similar noise from somewhere at the other end of the church.
Bernie turned to the sister, who had turned pale. "Quickly, Sister! Go back to your convent and lock your door. We'll defend this place...
"But... Bernie, if they enter... the Sacrament..."
"Go! We'll do what we can. Call the police."
"But the priests aren't here, they're on retreat, they won't..."
"The police," he repeated clearly. "Please go!" Gently he pushed her towards the stairs – then, as the doors shook again, and that ugly voice called another vile threat, she ran.

"Well?" Marty asked, his cellphone in his hand. "No signal – they must have some sort of jamming device..."
The door shook a fourth time, creaking ominously.
"I don't see how we can keep them out," Bernie said. "Those doors won't last much longer. The most we can do is delay them – and hope the police get here quickly."
"And pray that the convent still has a land-line!" Greg added grimly.

[don't you just hate it when they cut it off at the exciting part?]

Queen of Scientists, Queen of Engineers

2011-08-22T10:35:00.004-04:00

As so often happens with my other work, I manage to annoy or at least worry just about everyone at once: the literati and the techs, the pagans and every sort of Christian, the believers and the unbelievers.

You sigh and ask: "All right, Doctor, what is it you're doing now?"

Well... (hee hee!) for some time now I've added two entries into the famous "Litany of Loretto" - that interesting and exquisite list of titles of Mary, the mother of God. I've always liked it, and for many reasons - one of them is its mystic ordering, its "sections", some of which have repeated parts (Virgin..., Mother.., Queen...) and others which do not. Such diverse things as freight trains or DNA or the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements or the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics - seem to underlie the scheme. Of course we Chestertonians already know that "The greatest of poems is an inventory." [GKC Orthodoxy CW1:267] and the idea of making an "inventory" - as limited as it may be - about the glories of Mary is most definitely poetic.

Of course you may already know the famous epigram De Maria nunquam satis = "Of/about Mary [there is/ one could say] never enough." It is, of course, true simply because she is God's most excellent creation, and in speaking of her we speak of Him - but I am not here to study that line, or show how it relates to the clause in the Nicene Creed that states: Per quem omnia facta sunt - that is, "Through Him [Christ] all things were made." It is part of the mystical meditations possible to scientists where in we can begin to examine every branch of science and engineering in new ways, as they relate to the Real Story of our Salvation. Chesterton has a fantastic insight into this truth in his The Everlasting Man as it pertains to literature - I refer to the exceedingly rich paragraph on CW2:380 that starts "To sum up" - the key line of which might be this:

It met the mythological search for romance by being a story and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story.

There is a satisfaction in literature because of the Real (or True) Story of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. But at the same time, the tech fields are not ignored - no, they are exalted as well. For every part, every subsystem of the entire universe, also finds its satisfaction in that Story - or, if we want to transpose terms, we could say that Experiment. God Himself revealed that He considers it so, when (at the conclusion of His work He examined the entire System (which we call the Universe) and saw it was VERY good. [See Gen 1:31]

But that term is also right, because an experiment is (1) something experienced and (2) something immediately present and (3) a sort of trial - and all those things are most definitely true, whether one talks about the Cave of Bethlehem or the Hill of Calvary...

(Shhh! Come very close to the screen, so I can whisper the secret.)

Or the empty tomb.

And so, while it is right and just to claim Mary as the Queen of patriarchs and prophets, of apostles and martyrs, of confessors and virgins, we may also (at least in private) claim her as queen of writers and musicians and artists, of farmers, fishermen, and hunters, of miners, builders and teachers - and scientists and engineers. All things are to be united in everlasting kingdom of Christ - we must therefore obey our Queen who told us "Do whatever He tells you." [Jn 2:5]

Queen of Scientists, pray for us.
Queen of Engineers, pray for us.
Help us do whatever He tells us.

Why 153 fish?

2011-08-15T09:40:00.002-04:00

Recently I was asked what the great author on biblical archeology, Giuseppe Ricciotti, had to say about the famous catch of 153 fish mentioned in John 21:11. It would be so easy to digress into all sorts of topics - fish (borh real and symbolic) miracles, numbers - and the mysterious thing called "psephy" - which was an ancient sort of magic/horoscopic/predictive/symbolic thing by which a given word was converted into a number, or vice-versa. (The famous example for this is 666, the "number of the beast" from Rev/Apoc 13:18.) But for today, the feast of the Assumption, I will merely quote Father's words and let it go, since they suffice:

Why this number, 153? Obviously, because when the Apostles counted the catch, as fishermen usally did, they found they had 153. Ancient commentators discovered mysterious mystical meanings in the number, and since their explanations were didactic in purpose there is nothing to be said against them. For example, St. Augustine noticed that 153 is the sum of all the numbers from one to seventeen: 1+2+3+ ... + 17 = 153) and hence it is the sum of the first ten numbers, representing the Decalogue, plus the seven successive numbers, representing the gifts of the Holy Spirit that help men to observe the ten commandments. Others saw in it the conversion of the Gentiles (100) plus that of the Jews (50) plus the belief in the Trinity (3). Such were the mystical meanings the ancients found. Those modern scholars who see nothing but allegory in the fourth Gospel would have another fine opportunity to demonstrate their theiss in this number as they did in the case of the seven husbands of the smaraitan woman and the porticoes of the pool of Bezatha and the brothers of Dives, but they have not done anything about it. Or better, they have perhaps done too much, because so many and such absurd solutions have been proposed that the most recent scholars have concluded, more reasonably, that the number represents a riddle. It is impossible not to discover a riddle when the sensible explanations are rejected.

[Ricciotti, The Life of Christ, 663-4, note on § 636, emphasis added.]

Postscript: I heartily recommend this and the other books by Father Ricciotti - they are excellent, and well worth your time in finding, buying, reading, and re-reading.

A further note: since 153 is the sum of the integers from 1 to 17 - that is, (17*18)/2, it is a "triangular number" - which is yet another bit of symbolism. You can make a perfect triangle if you stack that many beer cans together. Hint, that requires six cases plus another nine cans.

The Mystery of Carrying a Heavy Burden

2011-08-13T10:14:00.002-04:00

As I was praying the Fifth Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary - the mystery of the Crucifixion - I was thinking of the nails, and how their iron was formed in a stellar furnace, and recalling that hymn from the passion that says:

Crux fidelis, inter omnes
Arobor una nobilis:
Silva talem nulla profert
Fronde, flore, germine:
Dulce ferrum, dulce lignum,
Dulce pondus sustinent.

That is:

Faithful Cross! above all other,
One and only noble Tree!
None in foilage, none in blossom,
None in fruit thy peers may be;
Sweetest Wood and sweetest Iron!
Sweetest weight is hung on thee.
[Britt, The Hymns of the Breviary and Missal 127]

Now, I had to go hunting in my Cassell's and Lewis and Short, and found that the Latin noun ferrum = iron is not really related to the verb fero, ferre, tuli, latum = to carry. (The verb has a short e; the noun a long e; the root behind iron seems to be the one which also gives us "firm".) And yet, there is some correspondence, even if only by transference. (No pun intended.)

Certainly, the mystery of carrying, like the mystery of iron, is worth some pondering. I recall somewhere - I think it is in Out of the Silent Planet, the first part of Lewis's Space Trilogy, how he complains (through his "divine" Martians) that we humans spend so much of our time worrying about carrying things. This is so wrong - but I am not trying to produce a debate over the strange distortions of Lewis. No; not when I can turn to much more profound truths - like blood.

The entire circulatory system - the blood, the heart, the collection of blood-carrying vessels - is designed for carrying things. It seems that the very scheme of life - that is, life for nearly all multi-cellular creatures - requires a lot of worry about carrying things. Indeed, this is certified by histology and anatomy in very strong terms:

As a mammalian embryo advances through the stages characterized by cleavage, morula, blastocyst and germ layers, it satisfies all its metabolic needs by simple, diffusive interchanges with the fluid medium in which it is immersed. But as the embryo continues to gain size and begins to take form, a functioning circulatory system becomes necessary in order to make use of the required food and oxygen obtainable from the mother's blood. Hence it is that the heart and blood vessels are the first organ system to reach a functional state. [Arey, Developmental Anatomy 375]

In order for a being to attain its proper size, it requires a functioning transportation system. And, as we know, at the center of every molecule of hemoglobin the oxygen-carrying vehicle, there is an atom of IRON.

Now, there is a lot to say about that, and a lot needs to be said - about iron, about hemoglobin, about the erythrocytes (the red-blood cells), about the heart, about the circulation. But I will just say one more thing for now.

There is a reason for using this term "mystery". For the iron nails of the cross were serving not as ferre = to carry - which implies motion, but as firmo = to hold fast. At the same time, they did indeed carry something.

On the cross of Calvary, it was iron that carried His blood to us.

Yoo-hoo, Earth – D2-E2-C2-C1-G1!

2011-08-01T10:04:00.007-04:00

Oh truly hilarious! Over the weekend I watched that old movie called "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", with its homage to the horn theme from the fourth movement of Brahms' First Symphony: D2-E2-C2-C1-G1, and that huge Christmas-tree ornament "mother ship" thing. Speaking of themes, it was of course the usual theme of "Man's Search for a Redeemer" - so honest and human and traditional and entirely Christian. But this isn't that sort of commentary - I don't have time to do the analysis, but speaking as a Chestertonian, I find it very suggestive. (See GKC's The Everlasting Man if you want more details - maybe another time I will write more about that.) No: I will say one more thing about it, since it's worth pointing out. It's one of the very first lines, and I always think about it as I consider the Third Joyful Mystery of the Rosary - except (like Chesterton) I've shifted things just slightly:

The Son came out at night and they [the angels] sang to him.

It's hard to get more deeply Christian than the Nativity.

There are a few scenes I particularly love, like when our electric company Field Tech hero is driving around through the Indiana night, gets lost, and stops at a railroad crossing to check his maps. Yeah, there's more to say about that, but I merely mean the setting itself... it's an awesome picture.

Though there are two (or three) other bits about that scene. He's there, lost, fumbling with his map and then a car comes up behind him and he waves it around - and we see the lights shift as the car passes him (the driver yelps, of course) - but that's just so we understand the next little bit. Then another set of lights comes up, and he waves it around again - but this time the lights rise up. Ahem. Very funny. Of course it then shines its super-bright beam at the truck, presumably zapping our hero with his "urge to get to Devil's Tower"...

Speaking for all my multitudes of extra-solar, galactic, and intergalactic friends, I find this so insulting. These beings have presumably crossed interstellar space, have all sorts of sophisticated technology - and an implied compassion for us - yet they cannot deal with English, nor with any human tongue, spoken or written? They're willing to handle our curious spherical coordinate system of latitude and longitude (that's how the government guys know to get to Devil's Tower too) but they can't bring themselves to say it very plainly. Oh well.

It's easy enough to say that God didn't tell the Magi "Go to Bethlehem" but just sent them a star as a guide... but these are supposedly superior alien beings, with nothing but open arms for us! It's funny, one of the places where Father Jaki can make one laugh is his quoting others on the idea that the typical extraterrestrial would be more likely to view humans as a "protein reservoir"...

Addicts of ETI research hardly ever think of the dark lining behind the silvery facade of their expectations. The most frightful of those dark hues is not that, instead of distant cousins ready to fraternize with us, we might contact an alien species that would take our bodies for a convenient protein reservoir and live up thereby to the Darwinian principle of universal struggle.
[Jaki The Savoir of Science 121]

But can an evolutionary theory, in which all is matter, provide logical ground for the emergence of mind as a form of living matter which is not subject to the law of speciation? That law means the inexorable rise of barriers among the different species. A chief of those barriers means the breakdown of biological altruism. While more often than not members of the same species do not feed on one another, members of one species all too often constitute the basic food for members of another species. There is a profound biological wisdom in the remark, now three decades old, by the Nobel-laureate physicist, C. N. Yang, that we should not try to answer an eventual radio message from another planetary system.
[Jaki, God and the Cosmologists 188]

If they came, they would have achieved an enormous technological superiority over us. But whether they speak English or not, they will be found to be a different species, another product of a universal grim struggle for survival. As such products, they would readily use us either as slaves or, what is more likely, a convenient source of protein.
[Jaki "Christ, Extraterrestrials, and the Devil" in A Late Awakening and other essays]

Wow, either slaves or "a convenient source of protein" (brrr) Well, we know that to be quite classical, and even more recently, Lewis has anthropophagy in his The Silver Chair and so does Tolkien in Lord of the Rings, and so we might link... Ah, but let's not wander off the subject. Ahem!

Let us return to the movie. Oh yes, the scene at the railroad. Well, everything electric shuts off or malfunctions, and junk flies around the cab of his truck - then the saucer cruises down the road and he peers out - suddenly, way down the road it beams its light again, but all it hits is a stop sign. Oh well. Then his truck comes back to life, and he yelps again. It's a great, funny scene - and afterwards it turns out he's sunburned on the side of his face where he looked out to see what the heck that bright light came from. Yeah, the next thing EPA or OSHA or is it the CDC will do is require little warning labels inside our cars: "Avoid Overexposure To Alien Brain Waves Beams Which Implant Urges to Visit Devil's Tower. Take Sunblock With You At Night." Or something. Hee hee.

Another scene I like is the one where the four little hot-dogging flying saucers (flown by teen-age pilots, I expect) are cruising the rural roads of Indiana, playing "catch-me" with the police. Of course the police go racing after them, which is a bit curious. But the great bit is when the saucers make the toll-gates rise on their way to Ohio, and THEN, as they hit a curve around a hill, they take the tangent to it (thereby revealing their knowledge of differential calculus) and fly off into space. One of the unfortunate police cars attempts to follow them, but he has neglected to enable his anti-gravity mode. Oh well. (In the book, the officer only sustains minor injuries, though his car is totalled.)

Finally, there's that scene when the "mother ship" shows up. Only the most embarrassingly silly of aliens would be caught flying such a thing! Please, do you think energy is free? What's the point of all those lights? Sure it looks nice, but let's be practical. And don't tell me they're part of the interstellar drive... I know that everyone requires that sort of flashy stuff for television, but it's rather disappointing. Now, I happen to like the album covers from "Boston" - which show proposals for taking that city into space. Maybe that's the idea... It' very nice, but it would seem a bit easier to not have lights so as to not give away your presence, if that's what you're worried about. I think it was in grad school that we concocted our own version of the Star Trek "Prime Directive":

No High Technology In Front Of The Natives!

It's far too easy for them to guess about things once they've seen it done... not always, but - ah well. Interstellar empires have crumbled because of slips like that. It was a famous line from World War II, but it's true in intergalactic commerce as well:

Loose Lips Sink Ships.

Ah, so where was I? Oh, yeah, the horn theme. Another oddity. The aliens know our latitude/longitude, and they also know our penchant for simple multiples of frequencies - the stuff that great music from Buxtehude and Jungen and Soler, from Gregorian Chant to rock-and-roll... Especially rock-and-roll, which seems to be built around the tonic and dominant and subdominant... Neither the movie nor the book explained what those notes were supposed to be, unless they were just intended to be a sort of alien "Yoo-hoo!" or "Anybody home?" - kind of a planetary doorbell in reverse. I know a college fraternity that used to have a "whistle" so you could catch a brother's attention from across campus - quite handy, though nowadays they'd just send a 146-character twit or a txtmsg, or equivalent. Hee hee.

But really, D2-E2-C2-C1-G1 as a cosmic doorbell - now that is something wonderful, and very Chestertonian. You may know he has a wonderful essay about it - here's just a bit:

a door-knocker is so full of significance that any person of quite average intelligence might write volumes of poems about it. It is - to name but a few of the things beyond question - the symbol of courtesy, the guardian of the home, the declaration of the proposed meeting between man and man, the salute to the rights of the individual, the sign of the bringing of news, the herald of happiness, the herald of calamity, the iron hammer of love and death. That we have a knocker on our doors means almost everything that is meant by the whole of our ritual and literature. It means that we are not boors and barbarians; that we do not call on a man by climbing into the window or dropping down the chimney. It means all that was ever meant by the old fairy stories, in which a horn was hung up outside the castle of the giant or the magician, so that the daring visitor might have to blow it, and utter in echoing sound the thing that he dared.
[GKC "The Pessimist and the Door-Knocker" in Lunacy and Letters]

So in this case the aliens came and tooted their horn - sort of like the teen motorhead crusing by his buddy's home some summer evening - honk-honk-honk - HONK HONK. (The last two notes are bass brass fortissimo, as played by the "mother ship".) It's funny too, because that melodic phrase works as a harmony to the famous Dresden "Amen": D-E-F-G-G, though I don't expect to ever hear the CE3K/Brahms tune in church.

Anyway, I had a good time watching it and a few good laughs, and found some interesting things to think about.

And in case you are wondering: Do I think there are aliens? No, I don't believe there are - but there could be. However, I don't think they would be quite like those imagined in CE3K. Of course, they may have an excellent explanation for these things - I don't deny it. It's the sort of thing that wants a sequel - just like "E.T." Which reminds me, I've got to finish off my own intergalactic adventure one of these days, and then, once it's been made into a movie someone can write a goofy commentary about. Maybe I'll write it myself - AFTER I've written the conclusion. Oh well.

Little Novena

2011-07-29T11:22:00.002-04:00

Please join in praying the "Little Novena" from St. Ignatius (Sunday July 31) through St. Dominic (Monday August 8). Choose your own prayers; I will be doing the usual "Novena to the Holy Spirit". There are plenty of difficulties out there, and we know who our Enemy is... but we have better weapons. Let us join together in prayer, and wage war against the powers of Darkness.

St. Ignatius of Loyola, pray for us.
St. Dominic, pray for us.
St. Joseph, terror of demons, pray for us.
O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, in Whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, have mercy on us.

Only Four Times in Two Centuries

2011-07-07T09:55:00.002-04:00

Unfortunately I did not get to post this earlier, but perhaps it is a more suitable posting for today, the great Nones of July, which is such an important date in my Saga... Ahem.

As you may have noticed, last week's Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus fell on July 1. This is quite rare - even more so since no solemnity normally occurs within this seventh month. In fact, it is so rare that this arrangement occurs only four times in the period 1900-2100:

In 2011 and 2095, Easter occurs on April 24, so the Sacred Heart occurs on July 1.
In 1943 and 2038, Easter occurs on April 25 - the latest possible date - and so the Sacred Heart occurs on July 2.

Indeed, that week was a rather busy one this year there were four solemnities within nine days:

Using the old calendar:
June 23 Corpus Christi
June 24 St. John the Baptist
June 29 Sts. Peter and Paul
July 1 Sacred Heart

Using the Vatican II calendar:

June 24 St. John the Baptist
June 26 Corpus Christi
June 29 Sts. Peter and Paul
July 1 Sacred Heart

But that sort of alignment is not quite as rare; I'll leave it for a homework problem for you.

Now, about the Nones. Why is that important? Well, I mustn't say too much, but the seventh is the day between the birthdays of Bernie (July 6) and Marty (July 8), two of the Saga's major characters. There are a few numeric alignments - though not numerological ones - scattered around my Saga, just as there are in the Bible. Some of them matter, some don't, and some are just for fun - Father Ricciotti hinted that is the real fact behind the famous 153 fish - but just like with the Bible you'll have to wait until you get to discuss it with the Author.

Of course this day is important to me for other reasons - it is the day I check off how many times I've ridden around the sun. After doing a rough back-of-envelope calculation, it looks like I've been riding for more than 32 billion miles, which sounds like a long journey, though it is just over a thousandth of the way to the nearest extra-solar star. Oh well, if I wanted to get there, I would have taken something faster. Hmm - as Marty would say, that sounds like a plan - though I was planning to spend some time in Quayment, but now...

So if you want to know where I am later today, you may need a telescope - or expect to pay that nasty extra-system charge if you try calling my cellphone. Hee hee.

Forüt!!!

2011-06-28T10:04:00.002-04:00

Yes, audacious traveller - it is the 28th of June - but alas, I am not in Iceland to begin that greatest journey of all science fiction - the Journey to the Center of the Earth.

It is well worth our fixing this day in our calendars - there are plenty of science fiction stories, plenty of mysteries. People may recall March 25 as a most holy and grand day, the day of the downfall of the Powers of Darkness - the day the Ring went into the fires of Orodruin - Oh, you mean that date is Something Else too, celebrating an even greater triumph of an even smaller person over an even greater darkness? Why yes, that is the day on which the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity came to dwell among us as a single-celled human male cell, and over time grow into adulthood. (For only God can make Adam's "No" as fruitful as Frodo's.)

Or they may recall the birthday of the famous Boy Who Lived, July 31, which is also the great feast day of the "Fire Man" of the Faith: the soldier of Loyola who gave up - not his soldiering, but his entire life - for the Greater Glory of God.

Yes, there are plenty of important dates in fiction - though too many science fiction stories use French-Devolution style dates, which no one could possibly celebrate. When's the 10th of Messidor, anyway? Or Stardate 5762.6? It's "Once Upon a Time" or "Long long ago in a Galaxy far far away". At least some of us know what A.U.C. means, or A.M., or even A.H., if one sets one's calendars by such markers. From my studies, it appears we're not too sure about the starting date for the Long Count of the Maya, a detail I've taken advantage of by using 13.0.0.0.0 as part X of From Darkness Into Light. (That's part of my Saga, if you really want to know.)

Really, it's fine to have alternative calendars. One of Chesterton's more insightful lines was in connection with such things:

A feeling touching the nature of things does not only make men feel that there are certain proper things to say; it makes them feel that there are certain proper things to do. The more agreeable of these consist of dancing, building temples, and shouting very loud; the less agreeable, of wearing green carnations and burning other philosophers alive. But everywhere the religious dance came before the religious hymn, and man was a ritualist before he could speak. If Comtism had spread the world would have been converted, not by the Comtist philosophy, but by the Comtist calendar. By discouraging what they conceive to be the weakness of their master, the English Positivists have broken the strength of their religion. A man who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. It is absurd to say that a man is ready to toil and die for his convictions when he is not even ready to wear a wreath round his head for them. I myself, to take a corpus vile, am very certain that I would not read the works of Comte through for any consideration whatever. But I can easily imagine myself with the greatest enthusiasm lighting a bonfire on Darwin Day.
[GKC Heretics CW1:87]

More on this some other time.

Fiction is a handy tool, and never more handy when the reference books give you convenient details all ripe and ready to combine... It was too tidy when I read this:

Whoever put in order this computation of katuns, if it was the devil, he did it, as he usually does, ordaining it for his own glory.
[Friar Diego de Landa, first bishop of Mérida, quoted in Von Hagen, World of the Maya 169]

And we know how Dante put his journey to the center of the spherical earth to culminate on the night of Holy Saturday of 1300. (Yeah, he was writing in 1320 or so, demonstrating that people knew this truth long before Columbus. Actually the Greeks knew; sometimes I think it's the Media who don't know.)

A personal aside. Like Dante, I saw the Southern Cross at midnight between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday... it was a profoundly moving moment.

But while we do not know exactly where Dante descended - and few may wish to follow him where he led, despite the far better 2/3s of his work which follows his Hell - we DO know where Arne Sakneussemm descended, and the date, which was June 28... and we ought to recall it as a great day, and celebrate with appropriate festivities. (For more on Verne's story, see here.)

June 28 is also Frances Blogg's birthday - the dear wife of G. K. Chesterton - she of course was his favourite Blogg, which accounts for... for something. And it was also the day they got married, so perhaps it is suitable to think about difficult journeys and great real-life adventures which are stranger than fiction.

Finally, tomorrow is the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul - on which we shall begin our special novena, which ends on the Nones of July. Please join us in prayer, as there are many needs and difficulties and turmoils in our world, and we need to unite in prayer, whether we work in the depths of the earth or interstellar space...

As Hans the guide said: Forüt!!! Forward! Let us be audax - audacious - for our life is an adventure, and with prayer we may hope for a great and good ending.

From Darkness Into Light (just a taste...)

2011-06-20T09:53:00.003-04:00

I decided to provide just a taste of what has been going on here, in case you think I sit around all day doing nothing and watching my computer look for prime palindromes. Hee hee! See what you think.
--Dr. Thursday

"Right now, there's just two things that I'm wondering about," Bernie said, still sitting by the window with his eyes closed.
Now Marty turned. "What, Bernie?"
"First, whether you really can see through that tunnel. And second, just what happened with old Davey-Jack Ludlow and this Vatican Treasure."
"Oh yeah."
John had also turned. "We'll have to stop in the library tomorrow – they have a copy of Dr. Greene's dissertation. That might give us some clue – I wasn't able to learn much from the web. But I can tell you this. If you meet me at the campus gate tomorrow about 4, we'll try to find out about that tunnel. And, unless you guys are too tired for a story, I can tell you the little I know about Davey-Jack."
Marty nodded with glee. "Oh yeah! A pirate story!"
Bernie rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a pouch. "Hey, I'll make some popcorn..."
John grimaced as he went back to his chair by the window. "None for me, thanks; I'll just have some water."

Bernie soon had the popcorn ready; all three had bottles of water. John brought out his dumbbells so he could do some lifting.
"All right. Here's the picture. We've known the Ludlow name in our family for a long time. They've been wealthy for generations, but they always had a certain – let's call it a kind of shadow – on their character. I dunno if there was something odd that happened long ago: maybe one of them was doing some counter-espionage during the Revolution, something like that. Somehow 'Ludlow' came to be linked with 'Chander' – like the black pieces and the white pieces in chess. And you've already heard how Chandler fits in: the founder of Howell, the railroad man..." He broke off somewhat uneasily.
"Sure; he and Fisher... people say a lot of 19th-century American engineering should be credited to them."
"That's one way of putting it, I guess," John said, even more uneasily. "But anyway, Ludlow. He..."
Marty interrupted. "You know, he was the one who did that ASP a few years back; he left a lot of money to our town hospital, and huge chunks of it to a group of students – including Bernie's brother Steve. The two of us might not be going here except for him."
"The ASP? That was Ray – F. Ralston Ludlow, as I recall. Yeah, he was the 'white sheep' of the family. There's others around, but I better not go into that current stuff now, it's risky." He gulped some water. "Anyway, Davey-Jack Ludlow. He was born sometime in the mid 1820s, I guess, since he was in his mid-30s when the War Between the States began, and yes, he was a sea-captain. He had been on a voyage to Europe when South Carolina seceded... and supposedly that was when this theft (or whatever it was) occurred, when he got this treasure. The story I heard said that he stole it from other thieves."
John paused for moment, pumping iron slowly as he considered his next words. "According to the story, his mother was a serious, reverent Catholic; one of her sons had entered the priesthood. But Davey-Jack had been away from her for too long, learning his ropes on one of his uncle's ships. On those sea voyages, this uncle had been dabbling into the works of some distorted philosophers – writers from the period a friend of mine calls 'the Endarkenment' – and this must have infected his nephew..."
John pumped iron violently for another interval. (Bernie felt John's last sentence was incomplete, and he noted how John was biting his lip.) Finally, he set the dumbbells down, took another swallow of water, and continued.
"Even so, Davey-Jack retained some respect for some things, if only as a form of superstition. The story said that he was in a little tavern in an Italian port when he heard two men talking about the theft: it was not just the value which tempted him, or the idea of doing these crooks out of their gains. He had heard them bragging that it was the Church's gold, and they had gotten relics as well as gold. They figured on selling them..." he hesitated. "Uh, they would sell them somewhere for a nice amount, since there were people who did dark things..." He shivered and blessed himself.
Impressed, Bernie and Marty did the same. "I start to see why St. Michael is so important to you," Marty said, indicating John's icon of St. Michael on the wall over his desk.
John smiled with delight. "You do? Oh, yeah. It's nice, isn't it? ... There may be another way of looking at it: Davey-Jack hadn't quite lost his religion; he merely ignored the parts of it he found inconvenient. And more importantly, he knew... uh, the sort of thing that was practiced by some people, especially in, uh, certain parts of Europe. They liked to get relics and sacred vessels..." He stopped and sighed. "Anyway, he managed to con the thieves, and he got their booty. But, instead of returning the treasure, or at least its sacred portion, he finished his business there, and headed back across the Atlantic."
He had been pumping his dumbbells again, but irregularly; now he put them down and sucked down most of his water. "I've seen a letter from him. And this is why I – why anyone would have some doubt about his true stature in history. The rumors always call him 'pirate' – but it might be that he should be called 'naval hero'. I'm sure you know the story of Dunkirk during the early days of World War II, how the little people of England set out in their little boats across the Channel, to rescue their army. There are others who were in the Merchant Marines who did other sorts of service for America... I wonder if, despite his failings, his undoubted greed, that he did not somehow do a like service, perhaps an even greater one, and not just for a single country."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because he kept sacred things out of the hands of men far more evil than he was."
Bernie nodded grimly. "Yeah, that's true. I've heard about some of those dark things – things that still happen in some dark corners."
John twitched at those words, but said nothing.
Bernie paused to drink some water, then asked, "So what happened to the relics? You started to say something about a letter you had seen."
"Oh, yes. The letter was to Joseph Chandler."
Their eyes were wide. "Really?"
"Yes. Part of it was missing – the part with the date – but since it mentions Howell, we know it's from after 1866. It was rambling, what some call 'sophomoric' – Davey-Jack was a widely travelled man, fluent in several languages, and with a good deal of worldly experience, but he did not have a literary mind, and his writing was often, ah, salty. He was very happy with Chandler's founding of the school, and he hoped his son would attend there once he was old enough."
"His son!"
"Sure; he married soon after his return to America – it was his second marriage. His son was named Brian Jonathan, but they called him Jonny. He... uh, but let me finish the letter, then I'll tell you more about Jonny. The important bit of the letter was the P.S., and I will quote that for you verbatim:

My dear Chandler. I write this much later. Since I wrote the above, a man we both know has come. You know the office he holds. He requests my services and my ship, for pay – and as you know I am not in a position to refuse. I have told you about my last European adventure, and what came from it, and where it went. There was a part, by far the more valuable, which I retain. I am sending it to you by the man who brings you this letter. We had spoken of such things once and I know you are the right man to deal with them. If Jonny is brought up right, perhaps he will not fall as I have. Perhaps he will follow his uncle to something higher. You must determine what to do in his case. I am also sending wherewithal so you can make provision for him. But let Rose have the roses, when she is old enough to hear the story. And pray for me.
Your servant. D. J. L."

John was silent for a short interval. Then he sighed and shook his head. He picked up the dumbbells again and began to pump vigorously.
"Where did he go?"
"On another voyage. He never came back."
Bernie let out his breath, and nodded. "Yeah, that's what I figured you were going to say."
"Sure; and that's why the further details of the story are lost."

[from my From Darkness Into Light: Part I Bernie and Marty Go To Howell. Copyright © 2010 by Dr. Thursday; all rights reserved.]

Does a Hobbit weigh a hobbit?

2011-06-17T14:10:00.002-04:00

Ah, words - as King Azaz sighed in The Phantom Tollbooth.

As I was paging through Black's Law Dictionary I was astounded to spot this:

HOBBIT. A measure of weight in use in Wales, equal to 168 pounds, being made up of four Welsh pecks of 42 pounds each. Hughes v. Humphreys, 26 Eng. L. & Eq. 132.
[BLD 864]

Amazing. I guess a hobbit who weighed a hobbit would be a fairly chunky one.

Also, speaking of strange units to be discussed at the next meeting of the ISO:

RASUS. In old English law. A rase: a measure of onions, containing 20 flones, and each flone is 25 heads. Fleta, lib. 2, c. 12 § 12.
[BLD 1427]

So a Rase is 500 onions. I guess we'll soon speak of a megarase as 500,000,000 onions, and so forth; a centirase is just 5, and 2 millirases is a single onion. I feel so happy to know these units: flone, rase, hobbit. It is a good thing.

Question for homework: would a rase weigh a hobbit?

I know there was other stuff to tell, but the papers got away. And besides all my other stuff, I have to get back to Quayment - or Stirling. I forget which. Bye.

Driving to Quayment

2011-06-15T09:46:00.004-04:00

Dr. Thursday drove to Quayment? Huh? Sort of like J. K. Rowling taking a train to Hogwarts, or J. R. R. Tolkien sailing to Middle Earth?

Well, no. I didn't drive to an imaginary town from my Saga. I am not quite that far gone. Not yet. But I did drive into Another State, and in the general direction of the region where Quayment lies - actually I guess I was somewhere in the area of Blueville, if you know where that is, just a way up the Hardystone from Quayment, which of course is on the Atlantic, somewhere south of Philadelphia. And I did see a sign that said "Bay Bridge" and had some other experiences which reminded me of the Saga.

Also last weekend, I decided to spend a little time in building a family tree program to handle all my characters. Here's just a sample:
Lots of fun. (If you are wondering who those "Z" people are, they are sort of place-holders for characters whom I have not yet been introduced to!)

Guides and Searches

2011-06-10T09:40:00.001-04:00

Every so often people tell me to "goggle" something or other... which verb apparently has become synonymous with "search" - as in "over/through/by means of the INTERNET". I rarely do; the so-called free tools provided are poor and almost never work - they respond with items that do not match, or repeat multiples of items that are identical. Of course the basis of such searches is inappropriate, not to say blatantly disorganized - one might as well "search" for a phone number in the Bible. Oh my. I find all this quite sad, since "searching" is one of the things I do - or have done. However, they are trying - I don't know what they are trying, but they are trying. I often wonder if they ever studied automata theory! Hee hee. But there is another problem, which we might consider - and find not something annoying, but something reassuring.

The problem, as Chesterton perceived, is not that one cannot search by hand (or eye)... but that one may be searching for something which abounds in the storehouse being explored. It is dangerous to search for a single whisp of hay in a haystack - to say nothing of a barn full of haystacks.

BUT! This is not a bad thing. Sometimes, it is a very good thing. (I might take advantage of this opportunity to do a critique of Gobble, but I have no time, and I would want payment, since that is my profession.)

For example, just consider this from Chesterton:

...it is the test of a good encyclopaedia that it does two rather different things at once. The man consulting it finds the thing he wants; he also finds how many thousand things there are that he does not want.
[GKC "Consulting the Encyclopaedia" in The Common Man]

Now, in my never-ending search for Something Good To Read, I have often fallen back on cookbooks - which can be a lot of fun. Or, to take the advice of the great Christopher Morley:

One who loves the English Language can have a lot of fun with a Latin Dictionary.
[C. Morley. The Haunted Bookshop]

You better believe it. I could produce a daily blogg-entry if I had the time, just taking snips from Lewis and Short about the amazing links from Latin to English. But there's more.

Recently I had recourse to the Fourth Edition of Black's Law Dictionary, a huge tome nearly of the size of the great Liddell and Scott Greek Lexicon. Ah, fascinating. Among other things it has a number of excellent legal maxims, most in Latin, which are well worth our consideration, and perhaps I will tell you some later. One is so good I have surmounted it on the title page of the next installment of my Saga, but I must not spill the beans now! Hee hee.

But there were two words I happened to notice which are worth mentioning. One was "MUGGLE":

MUGGLE; MUGGLE HEADS. Marihuana is popularly known among the criminal element as "muggles" or "mooter," and addicts are commonly known as "muggle heads." State v. Navaro, 83 Utah, 6, 26 P.2d 955

Very interesting. I found another word which linked Rowling to Tolkien, but I have misplaced the reference so will defer it for today.

But there was one which rather leaped out: a word akin to those used in the famous chimney song in "Mary Poppins". Actually there were three words, all related: "Chimin. Chiminage. Chiminus." The last was defined as "the way by which the king and all his subjects and all under his protection have a right to pass..." Of course this has an amazing ramifiction into Chesterton and other such matters. Let me just give you two references as a starting point for meditation:

Then I remembered what it was that made me connect such topsy-turvy trespass with ideas quite opposite to the idea of crime. Christmas Eve, of course, and Santa Claus coming down the chimney.
[GKC Manalive "The Two Curates; or, The Burglary Charge"]

The chimney is indeed a chiminus, the royal road:

The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.
[GKC Heretics CW1:142]

Quite simply amazing what these lawyers come up with - Mary Poppins, and the royal road that leads down from heaven into the home of the Common Man. As Bert the chimney sweep says, "It's a doorway to a plyce of enchantment..." Ah.

Another day I will tell you some more interesting things that I found which I did not want... they are as amazing as that incredible sequence of three machine instructions that made no sense to me which I found when I was disassembling something back in college... it was a fantastic discovery, and maybe I will tell you that also. Serendipity is yet another one of the signatures of God.

Just for fun: a TWEET little sonnet

2011-06-05T14:27:00.003-04:00

I was thinking about stupid modern things, and people who don't like reasonably generous size stories or other forms of literature, and a Certain Magazine which thinks Brevity is the Sole of Wit - or something. Of course this problem is around 800 years old, as we know "Gaudent Moderni Brevitate" = "The moderns rejoice in brevity" which was the beginning of a famous discussion of music from 1325. (De Handlo, I think, is the author's name.)

Anyway, as you know, my Saga is NOT brief. But then I do not like that goofy playrite named Slopskeer either. (Not only could he not rite, he couldn't spel. Hee hee.) Ahem. So, just for fun, I asked a friend about this "twit" thing, and how many characters were permitted, and I was told, 140. So I guess we have a new quantity-word: a "twit" (or "tweet") is four less than a gross. Eau que! I can handle that. I guess eventually we'll see the ISO add it to the universal constants, if they can ever get to an agreement... I wonder what the metric version will be, and whether there will be a platinum-iridium reference Twit in a sealed glass case over in Paris... oh my the fertility of the fun! Another day for that.

Well, since that goofy playwright wrote sonnets too, I decided to try to produce a sonnet which could fit into a Twit. Obviously, I could not abide by the usual beats-per-line thing, but then no real poems have that, just as it is not a poem if it does not rhyme. (I call those other things "poem-like substances" - as in Homer and the Roman dudes, etc. Too bad, they might have been famous if their stuff had rhymed. (hee hee!) But those gaggy modern things I simply use and then flush.) But this post is not a comment about poems. It is a laugh. I did manage to make a little something, and unless I counted wrong, there's just 139 characters here. See what you think. I give it twice: once in the twit-condensed form, and again with some white space tomake it readable. You know, leaving white space out is not very modern at all, the Greeks and Romans and even the ancient Egyptians did that. Oh my. Anyway, here's a tweetable sonnet for your amusement:

They exhort/TWEET:/Short/& sweet./A word/Misplaced/Unheard/Disgraced/Sad/Empty gigs/Bad/Dead twigs./Thank God for fitter/Pens than TWITTER.

[Dr. Thursday June 5 2011]

They exhort
TWEET:
Short
& sweet.

A word
Misplaced
Unheard
Disgraced

Sad
Empty gigs
Bad
Dead twigs.

Thank God for fitter
Pens than TWITTER.

[Dr. Thursday June 5 2011]

And... if you think it horrid, just take it as a challenge... try it yourself.

Science and the Ascension

2011-06-02T10:31:00.002-04:00

I had a debate as to whether to post this on the Duhem Society blogg or here. It is cases like this when we can thank God for George Boole, and so we can say "YES" to such "or" types of questions. Hee hee. (That's the famous trick we computer scientist use when asked if we want ice cream or cake. We reply, "Yes".)

Anyway, this is just a short excerpt but it is intense as usual. So read it and think about it, and get busy.

Now the whole of the rationalistic doubt about the Palestinian legends, from its rise in the early eighteenth century out of the last movements of the Renascence, was founded on the fixity of facts. Miracles were monstrosities because they were against natural law, which was necessarily immutable law. The prodigies of the Old Testament or the mighty works of the New were extravagances because they were exceptions; and they were exceptions because there was a rule, and that an immutable rule. In short, there was no rose-tree growing out of the carpet of a trim and tidy bedroom; because rose-trees do not grow out of carpets in trim and tidy bedrooms. So far it seemed reasonable enough. But it left out one possibility; that a man can dream about a room as well as a rose; and that a man can doubt about a rule as well as an exception.

As soon as the men of science began to doubt the rules of the game, the game was up. They could no longer rule out all the old marvels as impossible, in face of the new marvels which they had to admit as possible. They were themselves dealing now with a number of unknown quantities; what is the power of mind over matter; when is matter an illusion of mind; what is identity, what is individuality, is there a limit to logic in the last extremes of mathematics? They knew by a hundred hints that their non-miraculous world was no longer water-tight; that floods were coming in from somewhere in which they were already out of their depth, and down among very fantastical deep-sea fishes. They could hardly feel certain even about the fish that swallowed Jonah, when they had no test except the very true one that there are more fish in the sea than ever came out of it. Logically they would find it quite as hard to draw the line at the miraculous draught of fishes. I do not mean that they, or even I, need here depend on those particular stories; I mean that the difficulty now is to draw a line, and a new line, after the obliteration of an old and much more obvious line. Any one can draw it for himself, as a matter of mere taste in probability; but we have not made a philosophy until we can draw it for others. And the modern men of science cannot draw it for others. Men could easily mark the contrast between the force of gravity and the fable of the Ascension. They cannot all be made to see any such contrast between the levitation that is now discussed as a possibility and the ascension which is still derided as a miracle. I do not even say that there is not a great difference between them; I say that science is now plunged too deep in new doubts and possibilities to have authority to define the difference. I say the more it knows of what seems to have happened, or what is said to have happened, in many modern drawing-rooms, the less it knows what did or did not happen on that lofty and legendary hill, where a spire rises over Jerusalem and can be seen beyond Jordan.
[GKC The New Jerusalem CW20:315-6]

AND please remember: tomorrow begins the Great Novena, the one made at the express direction of Jesus Himself... please join us in prayer, as there are many problems and difficulties which so desperately need the aid which only the Holy Spirit can give!

Speaking of the "End of the World"...

2011-05-29T10:58:00.002-04:00

I just finished reading Benson's The Dawn of All, which is the second of his two "apocalyptic" novels. The other is Lord of the World Note carefully: they are NOT related as part 1 and part 2, but rather as left-hand versus right-hand!

I highly recommend both of them. "Dawn" has some marvellous surprises, especially touching on science and faith - so much so that I had to comment on it on The Duhem Society.

Light at the end of the baktun

2011-05-27T09:40:00.000-04:00

Someone said the world ended last Saturday. Oh well, I was away. Apparently there are still some Mayans around who do that sort of thing - they were so into fortune-telling that they needed to have some built-in pre-scheduled catastrophe. Yes, this would be End-of-the-World Number Five for them. Doom, doom. It's sort of like Invader Zim and GIR singing the Doom song, or like those drums that the Fellowship heard still beating in Moria after - uh - afterwards.

Well, during my research for my Saga I decided to look briefly into the Maya Long Count - it's funny - and I found that one of the interpretations comes out to have the end of the baktun on December 23, 2015, which fits in very well with something in my adventure. Of course, as you may expect, the world doesn't end for our heroes... but I must not spoil it for you.

And so, this episode of my Saga is called "13.0.0.0.0" from the Maya Long Count when the current baktun ends. A baktun is 20*20*18*20 = 144000 days or about 400 years - no, not exactly, of course, since they didn't believe in intercalation. For the Mayans the "end-of-the-world" thing comes around every so often - the only wheel they had were imaginary ones like this, and I think this one will be end-of-the-world number five, but who's counting! That sort of periodic Doom is sort of like good old Y2K, the famous computer-disabling comet that hit back around the start of 2000, or 2001 if you don't believe in zero. Of course I had a Whole Bulb of Garlic on my computer, so by the magic of the internet, we were safe. Yeah, that makes two or three end-of-the-worlds for me already! Wow. But let us get back to my story.

This episode "13.0.0.0.0" is Part X in From Darkness Into Light, the volume in my Saga covering the years from the fall of 2013 until Christmas of 2016 - that is when Something Happens. No; not the end of the world. (hee hee) It's rather the start of something - something exciting.

And speaking of exciting stuff, here is the latest prime palindrome found by my busy little computer...

11064077077046011

But that's not the end of the world either; we know there are always more primes, though I don't know whether or not there will be more prime palindromes. I'll leave that for you to work out.

And if you decide you can't wait for my book to come out locally, you can always drive down to Quayment and ask at any bookstore. They'll have it.

On light and darkness - and complex numbers and other joys

2011-05-23T15:00:00.002-04:00

It is one of those strange things - truths - that the names of two of the darkest and most hateful men who ever existed are now associated with something grand, silly, happy, light, and laughable. No, not Darwin and Marx. Not even Nietzsche and Kant. I mean Calvin and Hobbes.

(Note: I have only a vague idea what the real C&H taught - I recall something about going to hell, and not as Dante, who apparently had a "just visiting" card - just as I very quickly forget an error in software once I have corrected it. Of course there are philosophers specializing in pathology who have to know such errors, just as there are pathologists for medicine or for engineering. But the study of Error Writ Large is a special sort of subject, not usually suitable for blogging, at least not today. And I did want to start a discussion on error, but I didn't have time. Maybe some other year. But let us proceed.)

There are many useful insights for a computer scientist in C&H - or even for a Chestertonian. People moan about "complex numbers" - but Hobbes easily disposes of this to Calvin by explaining they are things like "eleventeen" and "thirty-twelve". These sound complex to me, and I regret to state that few mathematicians have risen to the heights which could enable them to even speak these words, much less state theorems about them. More's the pity. We need more such advances.

Another one of the deep insights into methodology - indeed, a classic in proof-techniques - occurs in the famous lesson of the Opposite Pole, one of the important concepts found in what is likely Calvin's greatest single contribution to humanity: that is, the game of Calvinball, which is on a par with Chesterton's "Gype". [See his autobiography, CW16:211]

I do not have the time to dig out the precise bibliographic reference to the item, but the insight is simple to state. It occurs when Hobbes accuses Calvin of "not declaring" that he touched the Opposite Pole. Calvin states "Obviously I declared it oppositely: by not declaring it."

Genius... pure genius.

Well. It was just this insight I was seeking recently when I was trying to decide how to handle a... er... a certain situation in my Saga. It was one of those situations involving Enemy Powers, obviously calling for the charism which in Holy Orders is classed under the Minor Order called "Exorcist".

Now, as I have noted previously I have a copy of the Roman Ritual, so there was no difficulty regarding the formal method. However, for a number of reasons - some dramatic, some artistic, some a kind of paternal concern - I didn't want to let Certain Matters come into direct view.

So I decided to wield Calvin's "Opposite Pole Technique", and declare it by not declaring it. There's some theatric term which might be used... ah yes: "it [the gory part] happens off-stage."

Strange to say, this made the whole effect a good deal more creepy than I expected.

On contemplating this, two different GKC quotes come to mind:

After a pause the priest spoke again in his mild manner. "Admiral," he said, "will you do me a favour? Let me, and my friends if they like, stop in that tower of yours just for tonight? Do you know that in my business you're an exorcist almost before anything else?"
[GKC "The Perishing of the Pendragons" in The Wisdom of Father Brown]

This inverted imagination produces things of which it is better not to speak. Some of them indeed might almost be named without being known; for they are of that extreme evil which seems innocent to the innocent. They are too inhuman even to be indecent.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:253]

I don't delve into this to shock or annoy, but just the OPPOSITE: to suggest that there are good artistic ways of handling such matters so that they do NOT shock. No one needs that sort of detail... and yet the effect will be Calvinistic and Hobbesian in the extreme.

Hee hee!

GKC, the mathematician's delight

2011-05-19T11:43:00.002-04:00

I have mentioned previously - at least I think I have - that I intensely dislike the idea of my computer running around loose. I do not want it spending its time as it chooses: I am its absolute master, and I wish it to be working at doing MY bidding, not at what the designers of its operating system have chosen to assign it for its idle time.

Of course, as a Chestertonian and a fortiori a Catholic Christian, there is NO SUCH THING as "idle time" - all times and events are sacred, and we can be holy and busy with the praise of God as we stroll vaguely down the street (in the public's view). But I am not speaking about the Chestertonian view of having "nothing to do" - a line from his Autobiography which was so striking it even got stuck into a "Calvin and Hobbes" comic:

For my own part, I never can get enough Nothing to do.
[GKC Autobiography CW16:202]

Sorry, I cannot find the citation for the C&H comic; I will hunt that later.

Now (ahem!) I was saying something about my computer. I want it to keep busy, and at useful work. So I have recently chosen to have it work on finding the prime palindromes which have 17 digits... yes, a lovely little task for a healthy young machine with nothing better to do. Recently it found that
10704969896940701
is prime... what a good little machine. I would give it a treat, but my cookies won't fit in that little slot. Besides, I think it has enough cookies, even if Goggle sometimes says they are disabled. Hee hee.

I took a quick glance to see if Chesterton ever talked about primes. He mentions the Prime Minister a lot, but I know very little about England, and didn't know they have public servants to treat of number-theoretic matters. How advanced. I've seen GKC mention binomials and triangles and several other tech math things, but... well. I guess not.

However I found the word "prime" in an interesting context, which is quite relevant to the matter:

There are some things of which the world does not like to be reminded, for they are the dead loves of the world. One of these is that great enthusiasm for the Arcadian life which, however much it may now lie open to the sneers of realism, did, beyond all question, hold sway for an enormous period of the world's history, from the times that we describe as ancient down to times that may fairly be called recent. The conception of the innocent and hilarious life of shepherds and shepherdesses certainly covered and absorbed the time of Theocritus, of Virgil, of Catullus, of Dante, of Cervantes, of Ariosto, of Shakespeare, and of Pope. We are told that the gods of the heathen were stone and brass, but stone and brass have never endured with the long endurance of the China Shepherdess. The Catholic Church and the Ideal Shepherd are indeed almost the only things that have bridged the abyss between the ancient world and the modern. Yet, as we say, the world does not like to be reminded of this boyish enthusiasm.

But imagination, the function of the historian, cannot let 60 great an element alone. By the cheap revolutionary it is commonly supposed that imagination is a merely rebellious thing, that it has its chief function in devising new and fantastic republics. But imagination has its highest use in a retrospective realization. The trumpet of imagination, like the trumpet of the Resurrection, calls the dead out of their graves. Imagination sees Delphi with the eyes of a Greek, Jerusalem with the eyes of a Crusader, Paris with the eyes of a Jacobin, and Arcadia with the eyes of a Euphuist. The prime function of imagination is to see our whole orderly system of life as a pile of stratified revolutions. In spite of all revolutionaries it must be said that the function of imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange; not so much to make wonders facts as to make facts wonders. To the imaginative the truisms are all paradoxes, since they were paradoxes in the Stone Age; to them the ordinary copy-book blazes with blasphemy.
[GKC "A Defence of China Shepherdesses" in The Defendant]

Huh? you ask. What does that have to do with integers that have no integer divisor other than themselves and one?

READ IT AGAIN.

"...the function of imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange; not so much to make wonders facts as to make facts wonders."

Even if you are not a mathematician, there ought to be a wonder about primes (which are perhaps very dull facts), even little ones... But this is nothing more than the song of the old Psalmist, as orchestrated through the classical trivium and quadrivium: "The heavens declare the glory of God..." For it was the arrangement of the quadrivium (by at least some medievals) to begin to organize the idea of number and its application: hence:

number in itself is arithmetic
number in time is music
number in space is geometry
number in space and time is astronomy

We'll talk about this arrangement another time. Right now it's lunchtime and then I have to go see if my computer deserves another "Good Boy!"

Stunned

2011-05-11T09:40:00.003-04:00

Normally, I don't do this - post in the middle of my other business. But I was looking for something and (as usual) found something else.

In this case, I found a very STUNNING passage in what I think is a very important essay of GKC. It's not the usual GKC - or perhaps I ought to say it is the essential GKC. It is mysterious, and yet fully natural, quite practical and gloriously theoretic... in the old Greek sense which derives from a root which means "to see"...

It is the sort of thing which underlies so much of his fiction - but also his non-fiction, and the sort of thing that one might expect to find used as a plot device... alas, it is too Catholic, or something... it will take a LOT of meditation to grasp this one. But I think I ought to let you read it, and ponder it for yourself...

Often when riding with three or four strangers on the top of an omnibus I have felt a wild impulse to throw the driver off his seat, to seize his whip, to drive the omnibus far out into the country, and tip them all out into a field, and say, "We may never meet again in this world; come, let us understand each other." I do not affirm that the experiment would succeed, but I think the impulse to do it is at the root of all the tradition of the poetry of wrecks and islands.
[GKC ILN Oct 24 1908 CW28:205]

Here is revealed the "man behind the curtain" - the backstage mechanisms, the "source code" (as we techs call it) which underlies GKC's Manalive and other works. For example:

The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.
[GKC Heretics CW1:142]

Now, let us go and do likewise.... I do not mean (I beg you!) to go abusing bus drivers or airline pilots, or to go invade a random home in the style of Santa Claus - but by understanding this scheme, and THEN by synthesizing this device into new fiction. It suggests so many fertile fields for our work.

And speaking of work... see you later.

On errors, or on being wrong (a brief introduction)

2011-05-10T14:40:00.004-04:00

Among the many fun things one can do when one reads is to find cool quotes that would make good slogans to hang in your lab or office or classroom. Like this famous one from a well-known physicist:

One of the severest tests of a scientific mind is to discern the limits of the legitimate application of scientific methods.
[James Clerk Maxwell, "Paradoxical Philosophy" (1878), in The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, edited by W. D. Niven, II (Cambridge, 1890), p. 759. Quoted by S. L. Jaki in The Relevance of Physics and elsewhere]

It would spare us much nonsense, of many forms - but I am afraid people would not know who Maxwell was, or why he said that, or what he meant.

It's funny to think about science as having "limits" - but it is wrong to think there aren't any such things. Yes, WRONG - as in being in error. Perhaps it is because we don't like to think about being wrong... yet that links in to subjects like chivalry - or what we might call personal integrity and such matters.

There is no better test of a man's ultimate chivalry and integrity than how he behaves when he is wrong...
{GKC "The Real Dr. Johnson" in The Common Man 120-1]

Ahem...

Er...I am sorry. I was going to write more on this, but found I cannot take the time - so for now I will leave this brief introduction as a starting point. Eventually we must come back to this: it is a matter of pedagogy: of knowing how (and what) we must teach... and one thing we ought to teach is this idea of limits and boundaries - and of errors. It is a good thing to know how we've gone wrong, as it might help us to avoid the same mistake.

PS A friend of mine at grad school once said "it's hard to avoid making the same mistake once" - but actually it is possible. That's why we have education in the first place. We try to keep our students from making most of the mistakes of the past, and point out ways of recognizing such things. It's funny to think of the pathology of epistemology - which we might call the history of heresies - but then it is a useful device. Physicians learn to recognize diseases of the body - we ought to learn to recognize at least some of the diseases of thought:

"Well, that's all I can tell you about the new religion," went on Flambeau carelessly. "It claims, of course, that it can cure all physical diseases."
"Can it cure the one spiritual disease?" asked Father Brown, with a serious curiosity.
"And what is the one spiritual disease?" asked Flambeau, smiling.
"Oh, thinking one is quite well," said his friend.
[GKC "The Eye of Apollo" in The Innocence of Father Brown]

In brief:

Christianity spoke again: "... If you were a philosopher you would call it, as I do, the doctrine of original sin. You may call it the cosmic advance as much as you like; I call it what it is - the Fall."
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:321]

On a Priest and Boys' Books (and a prayer)

2011-05-05T14:08:00.003-04:00

This morning I was in a place I was also in on this very day, 48 years ago.
While I was there I did the exact same thing... though on that day, there was but One Species, today there were Two... this was a profound moment, and deserves meditation - and while I can write many things here on this blogg, there are some things which would take more space than the world contains... and I don't mean as in world = earth, I mean the Greek sense, where world = cosmos.

Afterwards I spoke briefly to the priest, and he said how sad it is that people only think of the few (very few) bad priests, and not of the large number of good priests. He wondered why there are not many stories about good priests...

It is a challenge. Of course in my Saga I have some good priests and even a pair of good bishops. (I must not mention the Pope just now; you will learn why eventually. Oh will you be surprised!) Some of these face severe difficulties, of course, but I have no writing time to waste on bad priests.

Why, you ask?

The answer happens to belong to my own discipline, as well as to my own interests. It is also in Chesterton:

It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:306]

It is far harder to write a computer program without errors than to write one that contains errors. It is far harder to paint a picture, or compose (or play) a musical work, that contains no blemish than to achieve one without blemish... The same is true for stories. It is easy enough to write a story, but a real story must possess certain attributes... it must share somehow in the One True Story...

Our great guide in writing, indeed in Catholic writing (which is also simultaneously catholic), that is G. K. Chesterton, pointed out this important and very dramatic link - a link which suggests something:

that other great essential of the schoolboy protagonist; which is accidental and even improbable presence on a tremendous historical occasion. All who love boys' books as they should be loved know that Harry Harkaway, as well as crossing cutlasses with an individual smuggler or slaver, must also manage to be present at the Battle of Trafalgar. The young musketeer from Gascony, however engrossed by duels with masked bravos or loveletters to Marguerite de Valois, must not forget to put in an appearance at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
[GKC "The True Romance" taken from Daily News 1911 and quoted in A Handful of Authors]

Huh? you ask. What link is there?

Obviously, the link is that one's hero ought to be present at a tremendous historical occasion.

Well? What historical occasion was more tremendous than the crucifixion on Calvary?

Is not the priest there, like the hero in the boys' book? Is he not in persona Christi, and hence on Calvary? Is he not at once the priest, the altar, and the Lamb of sacrifice? "Yes, my son, God will provide the lamb for the sacrifice..." Was it not this that Moses (the archpriest of the Israelites) discussed with Christ when he appeared with Elijah at the Transfiguration? (As to why Elijah was there, we shall consider that at length another time.)

So now we have our formula, direct from Chesterton, and properly founded upon scripture and tradition, as well as upon common sense. (The Church, we know, is wedded to common sense; see GKC on that too.) As in the cases of software, or music, or painting, it now only requires the time and resources to synthesize it, to bring it to its completion. But it takes that initial ignition... that spark of the creation which for us is subcreation.

Let, therefore, the Spirit come, and direct His chosen writer (whoever it may be; I am not clamoring for another assignment here!) and may He inflame that one to write a modern priestly adventure according to the great tradition... good stories about a good priest. Amen.

Prime Fun

2011-05-05T13:40:00.002-04:00

Just a little thing for you today... a HUGE little thing.

Often when I am here doing my work - that is, my OTHER work, my writing on the Saga - I am distressed to see that my computer is sitting idle while I am busy.

I find this very disturbing. Why should it sit there and twiddle its digital thumbs (oy, what a redundancy!) while ***I*** am busy struggling to organize my thoughts? So I thought to myself, what little chore might I set it to working on while I am busy?

I debated this; there are too many things where I would mistrust my machine if left to its own devices. (hee hee) So I decided upon prime numbers. These are safe, lots of good healthy fun for a young speedy and carefree machine.... Very well, I said: I will have it find me some prime numbers. Big prime numbers. (The little ones I can find for myself.)

Alas. I wroght my code too well. It soon found all the primes up to its 32-bit limit - that is, the last "number" which it "knows" how to deal with easily: 4294967295. There are over 230 million such primes, and the largest is 4294967291. The smallest is 2, but I found that one all by myself. In fact I had to explain all that to it when I started, since it didn't understand me when I typed in "Find me some primes." Hee hee. What a stupid machine. Fast but stupid.

So now I have a nice little file, some 800 megabytes long, full of all of them. It is a wonder to behold. After that rather fun little project I let the computer relax while I debated the next project. Then I had it begin the exploration of the next bunch of numbers which it still knows how to handle, though not as readily: the 64-bit integers which go up to 18 followed by eighteen zeros. (That's larger than the largest known whale.) Now of course there is not enough disk space on the planet - such things remind me of that line at the end of St. John's gospel (Jn 21:25) ... hee hee - so I stopped that after a while.

Then I decided on another something: prime palindromes. That would be fun too! Let's see: 11, 101, 131, 151, 181... Wow. So I dashed off another little demand, that is, instructions for my computer to keep it busy and off the streets. And so, over the weekend, it finished examining all those primes with 15 places in base ten which are palindromes: that is, from

100 000 323 000 001
up to
999 999 787 999 999

In the meantime, I found out why there can only be one prime palindrome with an even number of places... but - uh - this blogg-box is too small to contain my proof. Hee hee hee. (How's that, Mr. Fermat?)

Yes. I could have it do the 17-place ones next, but I am not sure what I choose to assign it. There are so many fun questions... But whatever I select will be fun for me, and entirely safe for this little machine.

Unless (shh!) unless there are still some spies around.

You know as well as I do that old saying we herd back in grad school:

"SPIES LIKE BIG PRIME NUMBERS."

So perhaps I ought to encrypt this posting.

Nah. But you can if you want to. And if you need some large primes, I know where you can get some. Heh heh. (Hey buddy. Want a prime?)

Now, back to work.

Annoyed! or, time for some fun

2011-05-03T10:38:00.004-04:00

Well, not quite. But once in a while I get tired of hearing yet another elementary lesson in computer programming which demonstrates recursion by the famous happy function, the factorial:

Given a non-negative integer x:
if x<2 then x!=1
else x*(x-1)!

So people write



int fact(int x)
{
if(x<2)return 1;
else return x*fact(x-1);
}

Of course, real programmers never write that. They have a healthy respect for recursion. Also, they know that one can give an explicit form of the recursive definition:

x! = PI i (as i varies from 1 up to x)

However, as I wrote some time ago on the old ACS blogg, we know that computers are not very good at mathematics, especially simple mathematics like addition or multiplication. Though as we know, they are exceedingly fast, if you do not expect too much of them! They are machines, not brains. But we must appreciate such things - our cars or our computers or even our food - as they are, not as what we wish they might be. Fantasy is only possible for realists.

And so, in order to help you stay grounded in the real world, and keep from taxing your machinery, I hereby provide you with all the factorials you will need, at least until some future generation of machines come out with larger integers. (Yes, I am well aware that one can write code to handle arbitrarily large numbers, but that's not relevant here.)

As much as I despise "C" (which I always felt was a grade), I use it often, and there are many dialects which have been degraded from it. So I present my offering to you in "C"...



/* 
We assume BIGINTEGERTYPE is a sixty-four bit integer type.

This array contains all the factorials from 0! to 20!, which is the largest that can be stored in a 64-bit variable. 

Also note that 12! = 479001600 is the last that fits in 32 bits.
*/

BIGINTEGERTYPE fact64[]=
{1,1,2,6,24,
120,720,5040,40320,
362880,3628800,39916800,479001600,
/* these are larger than 4294967295 which is 2-to-the-32 minus one...*/
6227020800,87178291200,1307674368000,
20922789888000,355687428096000,6402373705728000,
121645100408832000,2432902008176640000};

There you are! Have fun, and please don't hurt yourself playing with those huge numbers. Observe lab safety techniques, and be nice to your lab mates.

Yes, just in case you were wondering:
1. the biggest factorial that fits into a 32-bit integer is 12!
2. the biggest factorial that fits into a 64-bit integer is 20!

Some other fun things, especially if you have bothered to pay attention in other classes:

1. 2²⁰ is 1048576, just over a million. So, when you play Twenty Questions, you are able to "sort" among over million items (assuming certain binary properties, etc).

2. Since (2⁶⁴) is 18 446 744 073 709 551 616,
a handy way to remember an approximation is "three coulombs".
That is, since a coulomb is 6*10¹⁸, 2⁶⁴ is three times that, or 18*10¹⁸

3. 20! is a third of a coulomb, that is 2*10¹⁸.

4. 24! is just over a mole (that is 6*10²³)

5. pi seconds is (approximately) a nano-century.

6. the ratio of
(inch to mile)
is approximately the same as
(astronomical unit to light-year)

Why I am writing my Saga (according to Cardinal Newman)

2011-04-28T13:05:00.003-04:00

In my usual pre-lunch search for Something Good To Read, I happened to find an anthology I enjoyed in my younger years called A Treasury of Catholic Children's Stories, edited by Ethna Sheehan. Of course in those days I would never had thought to read the "Foreword" or any sort of introductory matter, but I have learned a little as I grew older.... though in general I still mistrust them.

(An aside: there is a good reason for this. Sometimes, unthinking authors, or even more unthinking friends of authors, will GIVE AWAY secrets about how the story ends... this is among the worst of sins...)

But today I read the Introduction, and was startled to see Cardinal Newman quoted - and a very excellent quote it was. Immediately I went to hunt up the source (since there was no reference provided) and to my satisfaction I found it. It happens to provide a succinct explanation of why I am writing my Saga... yes, another and very different view, which happens to be just as true as the Chestertonian one I posted previously. Here it is:

By "Catholic Literature" is not to be understood a literature which treats exclusively or primarily of Catholic matters, of Catholic doctrine, controversy, history, persons, or politics; but it includes all subjects of literature whatever, treated as a Catholic would treat them, and as he only can treat them.
[Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, The Idea of a University Part II University Subjects. III. English Catholic Literature. § 1 in its relation to religious literature]

Wow. Of course it has to be so. A Catholic has to be "catholic" - that is universal, and will naturally (or should this say "supernaturally"?) unite all subjects in praise of the One Truth.

Or, to put it another way, it comes down to that same old question: how come there aren't any CATHOLIC engineering stories, or science fiction stories, or "Boy's Books" like the Brinley "Mad Scientists" and all that? Huh? Why isn't there a story that has rock musicians and cable TV, and computers, and secret stuff, and complex codes, and railroads and pipe organs and hidden treasures, and all sorts of secret societies (but GOOD ones) - and drug lords, and engineers who say the rosary, and scientists who go to Mass, and really creepy villains, and young men with REAL VIRTUES, and sweet young ladies, and good priests, and serious adults, and REALLY WICKED bad guys... and ALL THE FALLEN STRUGGLES OF OUR WORLD...

AND HOPE AND EXCITEMENT AND LAUGHS AND THRILLS AND SURPRISES?

WELL???

Ah. I decided I would not be frustrated any more, and I would not sit around and WAIT. As I am so used to from work, when no one else is willing to write the necessary software, why then, like the Little Red Hen, I merely say I will have to do it myself.

Because (as our hero Mark Weaver says) SOMEONE HAS TO DO THE HARD JOBS.

Oh man... sorry. I guess you are drooling now, drooling with the intellectual hunger for Something Good To Read. Well.... if you cannot bear the suspense, head for Quayment, where they have several parts of the Saga already available. If you need directions - uh... well. You can always ask at Loome, they might be able to help. And if you can't be patient a little longer, you'll have to start writing your own.)

GKC: "The Priest of Spring"

2011-04-26T10:31:00.002-04:00

The Priest of Spring
by G. K. Chesterton
from A Miscellany of Men

The sun has strengthened and the air softened just before Easter Day. But it is a troubled brightness which has a breath not only of novelty but of revolution. There are two great armies of the human intellect who will fight till the end on this vital point, whether Easter is to be congratulated on fitting in with the Spring - or the Spring on fitting in with Easter.

The only two things that can satisfy the soul are a person and a story; and even a story must be about a person. There are indeed very voluptuous appetites and enjoyments in mere abstractions - like mathematics, logic, or chess. But these mere pleasures of the mind are like mere pleasures of the body. That is, they are mere pleasures, though they may be gigantic pleasures; they can never by a mere increase of themselves amount to happiness. A man just about to be hanged may enjoy his breakfast; especially if it be his favourite breakfast; and in the same way he may enjoy an argument with the chaplain about heresy, especially if it is his favourite heresy. But whether he can enjoy either of them does not depend on either of them; it depends upon his spiritual attitude towards a subsequent event. And that event is really interesting to the because it is the end of a story and (as some hold) the end of a person.

Now it is this simple truth which, like many others, is too simple for our scientists to see. This is where they go wrong, not only about true religion, but about false religions too; so that their account of mythology is more mythical than the myth itself. I do not confine myself to saying that they are quite incorrect when they state (for instance) that Christ was a legend of dying and reviving vegetation, like Adonis or Persephone. I say that even if Adonis was a god of vegetation, they have got the whole notion of him wrong. Nobody, to begin with, is sufficiently interested in decaying vegetables, as such, to make any particular mystery or disguise about them; and certainly not enough to disguise them under the image of a very handsome young man, which is a vastly more interesting thing. If Adonis was connected with the fall of leaves in autumn and the return of flowers in spring, the process of thought was quite different. It is a process of thought which springs up spontaneously in all children and young artists; it springs up spontaneously in all healthy societies. It is very difficult to explain in a diseased society.

The brain of man is subject to short and strange snatches of sleep. A cloud seals the city of reason or rests upon the sea of imagination; a dream that darkens as much, whether it is a nightmare of atheism or a day-dream of idolatry. And just as we have all sprung from sleep with a start and found ourselves saying some sentence that has no meaning, save in the mad tongues of the midnight; so the human mind starts from its trances of stupidity with some complete phrase upon its lips; a complete phrase which is a complete folly. Unfortunately it is not like the dream sentence, generally forgotten in the putting on of boots or the putting in of breakfast. This senseless aphorism, invented when man's mind was asleep, still hangs on his tongue and entangles all his relations to rational and daylight things. All our controversies are confused by certain kinds of phrases which are not merely untrue, but were always unmeaning; which are not merely inapplicable, but were always intrinsically useless. We recognise them wherever a man talks of "the survival of the fittest," meaning only the survival of the survivors; or wherever a man says that the rich "have a stake in the country," as if the poor could not suffer from misgovernment or military defeat; or where a man talks about "going on towards Progress," which only means going on towards going on; or when a man talks about "government by the wise few," as if they could be picked out by their pantaloons. "The wise few" must mean either the few whom the foolish think wise or the very foolish who think themselves wise.

There is one piece of nonsense that modern people still find themselves saying, even after they are more or less awake, by which I am particularly irritated. It arose in the popularised science of the nineteenth century, especially in connection with the study of myths and religions. The fragment of gibberish to which I refer generally takes the form of saying " This god or hero really represents the sun." Or "Apollo killing the Python means that the summer drives out the winter." Or "The King dying in a western battle is a symbol of the sun setting in the west." Now I should really have thought that even the sceptical professors, whose skulls are as shallow as frying-pans, might have reflected that human beings never think or feel like this. Consider what is involved in this supposition. It presumes that primitive man went out for a walk and saw with great interest a big burning spot on the sky. He then said to primitive woman, "My dear, we had better keep this quiet. We mustn't let it get about. The children and the slaves are so very sharp. They might discover the sun any day, unless we are very careful. So we won't call it 'the sun,' but I will draw a picture of a man killing a snake; and whenever I do that you will know what I mean. The sun doesn't look at all like a man killing a snake; so nobody can possibly know. It will be a little secret between us; and while the slaves and the children fancy I am quite excited with a grand tale of a writhing dragon and a wrestling demigod, I shall really mean this delicious little discovery, that there is a round yellow disc up in the air." One does not need to know much mythology to know that this is a myth. It is commonly called the Solar Myth.

Quite plainly, of course, the case was just the other way. The god was never a symbol or hieroglyph representing the sun. The sun was a hieroglyph representing the god. Primitive man (with whom my friend Dombey is no doubt well acquainted) went out with his head full of gods and heroes, because that is the chief use of having a head. Then he saw the sun in some glorious crisis of the dominance of noon on the distress of nightfall, and he said, "That is how the face of the god would shine when he had slain the dragon," or "That is how the whole world would bleed to westward, if the god were slain at last."

No human being was ever really so unnatural as to worship Nature. No man, however indulgent (as I am) to corpulency, ever worshipped a man as round as the sun or a woman as round as the moon. No man, however attracted to an artistic attenuation, ever really believed that the Dryad was as lean and stiff as the tree. We human beings have never worshipped Nature; and indeed, the reason is very simple. It is that all human beings are superhuman beings. We have printed our own image upon Nature, as God has printed His image upon us. We have told the enormous sun to stand still; we have fixed him on our shields, caring no more for a star than for a starfish. And when there were powers of Nature we could not for the time control, we have conceived great beings in human shape controlling them. Jupiter does not mean thunder. Thunder means the march and victory of Jupiter. Neptune does not mean the sea; the sea is his, and he made it. In other words, what the savage really said about the sea was, "Only my fetish Mumbo could raise such mountains out of mere water." What the savage really said about the sun was, "Only my great-great-grandfather Jumbo could deserve such a blazing crown."

About all these myths my own position is utterly and even sadly simple. I say you cannot really understand any myths till you have found that one of them is not a myth. Turnip ghosts mean nothing if there are no real ghosts. Forged bank-notes mean nothing if there are no real bank-notes. Heathen gods mean nothing, and must always mean nothing, to those of us that deny the Christian God. When once a god is admitted, even a false god, the Cosmos begins to know its place: which is the second place. When once it is the real God the Cosmos falls down before Him, offering flowers in spring as flames in winter. "My love is like a red, red rose" does not mean that the poet is praising roses under the allegory of a young lady. "My love is an arbutus" does not mean that the author was a botanist so pleased with a particular arbutus tree that he said he loved it. "Who art the moon and regent of my sky" does not mean that Juliet invented Romeo to account for the roundness of the moon. "Christ is the Sun of Easter" does not mean that the worshipper is praising the sun under the emblem of Christ. Goddess or god can clothe themselves with the spring or summer; but the body is more than raiment. Religion takes almost disdainfully the dress of Nature; and indeed Christianity has done as well with the snows of Christmas as with the snow-drops of spring. And when I look across the sun-struck fields, I know in my inmost bones that my joy is not solely in the spring, for spring alone, being always returning, would be always sad. There is somebody or something walking there, to be crowned with flowers: and my pleasure is in some promise yet possible and in the resurrection of the dead.

Quite Unnaturally Joyful

2011-04-24T09:19:00.002-04:00

I offer, for your delight, what I consider to be the VERY BEST of all Chesterton's writing: the stunning view of what Christianity looked like when it first appeared to the ancient Romans... and how it still looks today. I, for one, had a silly grin on my face last night and this morning as I went up to eat the body of the dead God... you see, I am quite unnaturally joyful - for the dead omnipotence has broken out of the tomb and risen again like the sun.

Or, to put it another way: "My God knows the way out of the grave." [cf. GKC CW2:382] What a great epitaph that is!

Happy, happy, happy, unnnaturally joyful Paschaltide to you and yours! Amen. Alleluia!

--Dr. Thursday

Atheism became really possible in that abnormal time; for atheism is abnormality. It is not merely the denial of a dogma. It is the reversal of a subconscious assumption in the soul; the sense that there is a meaning and a direction in the world it sees. Lucretius, the first evolutionist who endeavoured to substitute Evolution for God, had already dangled before men's eyes his dance of glittering atoms, by which he conceived cosmos as created by chaos. But it was not his strong poetry or his sad philosophy, as I fancy, that made it possible for men to entertain such a vision. It was something in the sense of impotence and despair with which men shook their fists vainly at the stars, as they saw all the best work of humanity sinking slowly and helplessly into a swamp. They could easily believe that even creation itself was not a creation but a perpetual fall, when they saw that the weightiest and worthiest of all human creations was falling by its own weight. They could fancy that all the stars were falling stars; and that the very pillars of their own solemn porticos were bowed under a sort of gradual Deluge. To men in that mood there was a reason for atheism that is in some sense reasonable. Mythology might fade and philosophy might stiffen; but if behind these things there was a reality, surely that reality might have sustained things as they sank. There was no God; if there had been a God, surely this was the very moment when He would have moved and saved the world.

The life of the great civilisation went on with dreary industry and even with dreary festivity. It was the end of the world, and the worst of it was that it need never end. A convenient compromise had been made between all the multitudinous myths and religions of the Empire; that each group should worship freely and merely give a sort of official flourish of thanks to the tolerant Emperor, by tossing a little incense to him under his official title of Divus. Naturally there was no difficulty about that; or rather it was a long time before the world realised that there ever had been even a trivial difficulty anywhere. The members of some Eastern sect or secret society or other seemed to have made a scene somewhere; nobody could imagine why. One incident occurred once or twice again and began to arouse irritation out of proportion to its insignificance. It was not exactly what these provincials said; though of course it sounded queer enough. They seemed to be saying that God was dead and that they themselves had seen him die. This might be one of the many manias produced by the despair of the age; only they did not seem particularly despairing. They seemed quite unnaturally joyful about it, and gave the reason that the death of God had allowed them to eat him and drink his blood. According to other accounts God was not exactly dead after all; there trailed through the bewildered imagination some sort of fantastic procession of the funeral of God, at which the sun turned black, but which ended with the dead omnipotence breaking out of the tomb and rising again like the sun. But it was not the strange story to which anybody paid any particular attention; people in that world had seen queer religions enough to fill a madhouse. It was something in the tone of the madmen and their type of formation. They were a scratch company of barbarians and slaves and poor and unimportant people; but their formation was military; they moved together and were very absolute about who and what was really a part of their little system; and about what they said, however mildly, there was a ring like iron. Men used to many mythologies and moralities could make no analysis of the mystery, except the curious conjecture that they meant what they said. All attempts to make them see reason in the perfectly simple matter of the Emperor's statue seemed to be spoken to deaf men. It was as if a new meteoric metal had fallen on the earth; it was a difference of substance to the touch. Those who touched their foundation fancied they had struck a rock.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:295-6, emphasis added]

The Iron Horseman

2011-04-14T10:31:00.002-04:00

This past Tuesday we recalled that day when our country was torn. It is a very hard topic to ponder, and yet - since I have LIVED in the 1800s for some time - I have had to consider that topic at length. No; I am not here to argue about it - about that war, about slavery, about States' Rights, the Industrial Revolution, Regionalism, or any of the multitude of matters which link to that terror. For one thing, I had too many friends on both sides, too many friends who were right and wrong, too many who suffered... No; I have another Purpose. (Which word makes some of the attentive Tooks among us sit up and take notice!)

You see, God is so powerful, He can even bring good out of evil. I take advantage of this idea in my Saga; as you shall learn eventually, something important happens during that War. Later (in 1875) Mary Fisher wrote a poem, and I thought I might anticipate my own story a little by posting it now. Yes, it has some hints; no, it will not spoil your surprise, but merely intensify it.

The Iron Horseman

Virgo respice,
Mater, aspice,
Audi nos, o Maria!
Tu medicinam
Portas divinam
Ora, ora pro nobis.

-- "O Sanctissima" 4th verse

He dreamed, and so a plan was made,
He acted, thus the rails were laid:
Dug from earth and born in fire,
Going further, building higher:
Iron turning, upon an iron road
Nor war nor death their motion slowed.

His smiling face, his hand that worked
From honor left no task unshirked;
"Ite ad astra" was his dream,
His carriages all yoked to steam.
And so to cultivate the ground
A place for study he did found.

A nation torn, yet still he toiled,
From evil plans his heart recoiled
And engineered a greater plan
To bring aid to the heart of Man:
Locked within his triple steel:
The Good perform; the Truth reveal.

O distant son who runs the thousand miles,
He waits to give his warmest smiles.

"MMF 1875"
(by Mary Mortimer Fisher; written after Joseph Chandler died)

For Nonae Aprilis: a Puzzle from the Saga

2011-04-04T10:01:00.004-04:00

Since tomorrow is the Nones of April, I thought it would be fun to show you one of the many puzzles contained in this vast Saga which I am writing. I was going to give you the relevant text, but I decided against it. Hence I don't expect anyone to "solve" it, but at least it might be fun to think about. It was also a lot of fun to write the program to produce this sort of image, and I would tell you more about that too, but again it would give away certain important details which must remain secret for the time being.

[From "I See Him But Not Now", Part VII in From Darkness Into Light by Dr. Thursday. Copyright © 2011 by Dr. Thursday.]

More about my Saga

2011-03-24T09:28:00.002-04:00

Sooner or later you will probably wish you had Something Good To Read... especially if you like Chesterton, and Norton Juster and Bertrand Brinley and Walker Tompkins and... oh yes, and Franklin Dixon and Carolyn Keene and Victor Appleton II, and Doyle and Sayers and Stout, and so on: adventures "for boys" as they say, though such stories appeal to all sorts of people, even OLD people, and even GIRLS. (hee hee)

It is partly that desire of having Something Good To Read - perhaps I should say MAINLY that desire - which urges me to write the thing I call "the Saga". It is NOT named from the Norse term, but from the Latin: saga is the nominative plural for sagum, a military cloak - which seems appropriate to me since it is about the Battle. You know, the War - the BIG war. The one that we're still fighting, against the Dragon, the ancient serpent. Of course there's a lot of other fun stuff in it, since it is a STORY, not a textbook, or a catechism, or a study of some vaguely allegorical sort, or a scaffold for me to build elven tongues upon, etc. It's not set in Middle Earth, it does not have a Platform 9.75 or a wardrobe without a back - but rather than spending money on a model train layout, I have decided to play with the middle-Atlantic States, and have revised their geography to provide me with a "toy train layout" I wanted to have. (By the way. it's fun; you should try it.)

The Saga is chock full of all the modern things like trains and cellphones and computers and even space travel, but also it has relics and pipe organs and industrial sabotage and kidnapping - and young men trying to get through college. Oh yes, and secret societies, too. Several. VERY secret. (Don't you want to know more about them? You will find out, someday.) But Chestertonians know that there are healthy reasons for having such secrets, just like the reason why I don't tell you exactly what happens in the Saga: because it is better for you to find out in the right way and at the right time, like the wrapping conceals a Christmas present:

The man who tells the truth about a detective story is simply a wicked man, as wicked as the man who deliberately breaks a child's soap-bubble - and he is more wicked than Nero. To give away a secret when it should be kept is the worst of human crimes; and Dante was never more right than when he made the lowest circle in Hell the Circle of the Traitors. It is to destroy one human pleasure so that it can never be recovered...
[GKC ILN Nov 7 1908 CW28:210]

Ah yes... But even a Christmas present might be considered in its SIZE and WEIGHT (cf Jaki's favourite scripture verse, Wisdom 11:21) and maybe (if possible) lifted and shaken to see if it rattles, since maybe it has PARTS which will have to be put together, or played with, and isn't just a sweater, or SOCKS... (hee hee)

And so, I shall not break the Great Law of Fiction in telling you that my Saga has parts, and yes, you may find it fun to play with. Also, I happened to spot an interesting GKC paragraph which seemed quite relevant to this matter, and I decided to let you see it. It gives a little more of the underlying basis for my work:

Our own countrymen, and the men of other countries, loved to claim like Virgil that their own nation was descended from the heroic Trojans. All sorts of people thought it the most superb sort of heraldry to claim to be descended from Hector. Nobody seems to have wanted to be descended from Achilles. The very fact that the Trojan name has become a Christian name, and been scattered to the last limits of Christendom, to Ireland or the Gaelic Highlands, while the Greek name has remained relatively rare and pedantic, is a tribute to the same truth. Indeed it involves a curiosity of language almost in the nature of a joke. The name has been turned into a verb; and the very phrase about hectoring, in the sense of swaggering, suggests the myriads of soldiers who have taken the fallen Trojan for a model. As a matter of fact, nobody in antiquity was less given to hectoring than Hector. But even the bully pretending to be a conqueror took his title from the conquered. That is why the popularisation of the Trojan origin by Virgil has a vital relation to all those elements that have made men say that Virgil was almost a Christian. It is almost as if two great tools or toys of the same timber, the divine and the human, had been in the hands of Providence; and the only thing comparable to the Wooden Cross of Calvary was the Wooden Horse of Troy. So, in some wild allegory, pious in purpose if almost profane in form, the Holy Child might have fought the Dragon with a wooden sword and a wooden horse.
[GKC TEM CW2:288, emphasis added]

In my case, it's an Iron Horse and the sword is made out of... ah but I can't reveal that today. However, I insist that my writing (whether tool or toy) is NOT an allegory, even though it may be very wild, and will no doubt be considered quite profane in form, though I intend it for some pious purpose. But then I am using tools (or toys) which most people use for software development to produce fiction, and you might expect that sort of anomaly.

P.S. I can assure you, though I take advantage of my technical apparatus and training, the Saga really IS a story, and not software. And just in case you are wondering whether this Saga will ever be completed, I cannot guess. All I can say at present is that it continues to enlarge as we approach the major events of the adventure... So be patient, and keep praying.

Eleven Years Ago

2011-03-02T10:32:00.002-05:00

About 11:30 in the morning on Thursday March 2, 2000, two of our headends in "A Certain Town In Central Pennsylvania" went live, playing local spots on cable networks for "A Certain Big Cable Company". The 30-second commercials were stored as MPEG-2 files, each taking about 20 megabytes of storage. They were delivered by satellite from our headquarters in a suburb of "A Certain Town in Southeastern Pennsylvania", using software which was designed according to Chestertonian techniques, and based on the dogmatic methods of the Thirteenth Century: in particular on recent papal encyclicals such as Centesimus Annus by John Paul II which was cited in the source code for PUMP, the main spot transport program. This method became known to everyone there, to account reps and to Field Techs and, yes, even to Upper Management, as "Subsidiarity" - and people used to stand at the huge glass windows and watch the WATCHERS as PUMP did its work...

For five and a half years, that machinery ran, delivering and playing an astronomical number of TV commercials and quite efficiently too, and keeping everyone aware of what was happening as it happened. It was exciting while it lasted...

Even now, the satellite dish that we used

is still there, behind the building where our headquarters used to be, though that software and the machinery and so much of that advanced technology is gone...

But the memory of the successful workings of those five-and-a-half years shall last: much as the Trees of Valinor, in dying it has given rise to fruits of light: to both fiction and nonfiction. I told you Subsidiarity is dramatic; what did you expect - a poem?

Moreover, the Feast Day of Subsidiarity on March 2 shall endure, since the concept is embedded in Scripture, and His words shall never pass away:

"I am the vine; you are the branches... apart from Me you can do nothing." [See John 15:5]

And though it does not beam out into space as the cues and the schedules and the logs and the spots and the CUSTOS packets once did, I send my thanks to those who worked with me to make it happen... that gratitude also endures.

As this is not a bissextile year...

2011-02-22T13:51:00.003-05:00

Today, being February 22, the feast of the chair of St. Peter in a non-bissextile year, we begin our traditional novena in commemoration of the Papacy and of Subsidiarity.

It would take me far more disk space than anyone is willing to allocate for free if I were to begin to set forth a proper discussion of how Subsidiarity and the Papacy are interconnected, and why they ought to be honored together. They are; it is not simply a matter of Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum or Pius XI's Quadragesimo Anno or John Paul II's Centesimus Annus - nor even of John XXIII's Pacem In Terris. It is something inherent in the office, as it is inherent in the priesthood: it is a matter of right order, and the setting into functional arrangment of huge organizations, indeed, of organizations of cosmic size.
And such huge organizations need to be organized exceedingly well, and there is no other scheme of organization which can excel subsidiarity, either from a technical or efficiency standpoint, or (what is more important) from the view of fairness, justice and moral good in the social realm. (It's also simple, which is a critical trait for such things. The fact that it is also dramatic is a matter I must defer to another time.)

But I am already taking too long. I am still seeking a publisher for my book. (See here for an introduction.) Once it comes out, you will know more about the inner details. (Just two quick examples: what personal virtues would you expect to be required in such a system? And why? Also: what happens when things go wrong in that system? I have answers to these and more.)

However - I am sure you are curious to know why I begin on this feast, and not end on it? That one happens to be much easier to answer. It is because March 2 is the "Feast Day of Subsidiarity" - the day on which my system for local ad insertion (providing transport and playback and all ancillary functions like monitoring) went live, back in 2000 - a system which implemented subsidiarity in a visible and indeed study-able manner. Even before that year, March 2 was a famous day, and one which I will explain in my book. (But that is a surprise I am saving.)

For today, I would simply suggest that you add a prayer for Benedict XVI - today, and each day until and including March 2. And also for every organization, large or small, for management and for workers, for all which could benefit from this grand scheme of "thirteenth century metaphysics"... that is, of putting things into their proper order.

Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam.
You are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church. [Mt16:18]

St. Peter and all holy popes, pray for our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, and for the flock he guides, and bring us home to our Father's house. Amen.

Why I am writing my Saga (according to GKC)

2011-02-11T10:58:00.002-05:00

In my search for dragons - eh? You can't envision me, wooden sword in hand and a stewpot on my head, stumbling through a forest looking for dragons? No? Ah well, how little you know of me. In fact, I've dealt with a variety of dragons - even some human ones - and... well, perhaps I ought not mention that here. Some of them are still alive, and some even read bloggs. It's amazing how annoying they find computer scientists, especially those who know how to spell DNA and work magic by satellites and read Chesterton and Jaki. But I have my attic and cellar sprayed every full moon with Dragon-B-Gon® and I run "Professor Norbert's Anti-Drag"® twice every nanosecond on all of my computers, so I am not too worried.

As I was saying, in my search for dragons, I came upon an excellent condensation - a sort of hand-held explanation, or miniature outline, explaining what is necessary in a Story. Yeah, I know it says "romance" but it means "adventure" and hence it really means "Story". It is a lot like what Glen Larson said in a commentary he made about his "Knight Rider" series, the need for humor, adventure, and heart. But here GKC specifies a different trio, and I think it is very interesting. What was startling to me was the hint that he had a clue about why I might be writing my great Saga... But read it for yourself, and then you decide.

In every pure romance there are three living and moving characters. For the sake of argument they may be called St. George and the Dragon and the Princess. In every romance there must be the twin elements of loving and fighting. In every romance there must be the three characters: there must be the Princess, who is a thing to be loved; there must be the Dragon, who is a thing to be fought; and there must be St. George, who is a thing that both loves and fights. There have been many symptoms of cynicism and decay in our modern civilisation. But of all the signs of modern feebleness, of lack of grasp on morals as they actually must be, there has been none quite so silly or so dangerous as this: that the philosophers of to-day have started to divide loving from fighting and to put them into opposite camps. There could be no worse sign than that a man, even Nietzsche, can be found to say that we should go in for fighting instead of loving. There can be no worse sign than that a man, even Tolstoi, can be found to tell us that we should go in for loving instead of fighting. The two things imply each other; they implied each other in the old romance and in the old religion, which were the two permanent things of humanity. You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it. You cannot fight without something to fight for. To love a thing without wishing to fight for it is not love at all; it is lust. It may be an airy, philosophical, and disinterested lust; it may be, so to speak, a virgin lust; but it is lust, because it is wholly self-indulgent and invites no attack. On the other hand, fighting for a thing without loving it is not even fighting; it can only be called a kind of horse-play that is occasionally fatal. Wherever human nature is human and unspoilt by any special sophistry, there exists this natural kinship between war and wooing, and that natural kinship is called romance. It comes upon a man especially in the great hour of youth; and every man who has ever been young at all has felt, if only for a moment, this ultimate and poetic paradox. He knows that loving the world is the same thing as fighting the world. It was at the very moment when he offered to like everybody he also offered to hit everybody. To almost every man that can be called a man this especial moment of the romantic culmination has come. In the first resort the man wished to live a romance. In the second resort, in the last and worst resort, he was content to write one.
[GKC Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens CW15:255-6]

In spite of defects such as dragons

2011-02-07T12:46:00.003-05:00

Huh? Who said that?

Do you really have to ask? Er... no, it wasn't Tolkien. Nor Hagrid.

This is an awesome phrase, and it ought to be a blogg-name, except I have the Best Blogg name, at least from Gilbert Chesterton's perspective. Hee hee.

Anyway, I mentioned dragons because the dragon has shown up again, in a very strange place, and I was wondering just how many tmes GKC uses the word. According to AMBER, "dragon" or "dragons" appear nearly 500 times, which is a healthy number. There are some great quotes, and some which I may decide to use elsewhere.

One of my favorites, which I based a story upon, is this:

"A man cannot deserve adventures; he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs."
[GKC Heretics CW1:72]

But here are some more, just to delight you:

If there was a dragon, he had a grandmother. [Tremendous Trifles]

The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. [Ibid]

[While GKC was making cutouts for his toy theater, he noted:] Plato, who liked definite ideas, would like my cardboard dragon; for though the creature has few other artistic merits he is at least dragonish. The modern philosopher, who likes infinity, is quite welcome to a sheet of the plain cardboard.
[Ibid.]

A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales - because they find them romantic.
[Orthodoxy CW1:257]

...life was as precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstacy because it was an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity. The goodness of the fairy tale was not affected by the fact that there might be more dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a fairy tale. The test of all happiness is gratitude...
[Orthodoxy CW1:258]

And, finally, this mighty excerpt, GKC's miniature summary of his philosophy:

I felt in my bones; first, that this world does not explain itself. It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard. The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art; whatever it meant it meant violently. Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them.
[Orthodoxy CW1:268]

And I for one, am grateful to find such a close and Chestertonian link between dragons and drinking beer.

First post on the first day of a prime year...

2011-01-01T10:41:00.002-05:00

So, what do I want to write? Something about God? Or computers, or molecular biology, or astronomy, or the elements? Or Chesterton, or Jaki, or Duhem? Or on the design of our new university? Or an awesome fictional story?

Or all of the above?

Please God I will get to all these sometime this year.

All right, just a few tiny bits to hint at the direction of things:

"That their hearts may be comforted, being instructed in charity and unto all riches of fulness of understanding, unto the knowledge of the mystery of God the Father and of Christ Jesus: In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."
[St Paul to the Colossians 2:2-3]

"You are the Portal to life immortal - pray for us, o pray for us, o Mary."
[from the English version of O Sanctissima quoted from memory]

"If your mind needs a tonic of iron and wine, and a thorough rough-and-tumbling, try ... The Man Who Was Thursday by Chesterton."
[Roger Mifflin's notice in his bookshop; quoted by Christopher Morley in The Haunted Bookshop 20]

"Ten minutes exposure to the imagination of Theodore Tibbetts would blow the dust out of any one's mind."
[Note: Ted Tibbetts is eleven. See Lee Kingman, The Saturday Gang 30]

"...we forget that free speech is a paradox."
[GKC Robert Browning 174]

"If there was a dragon, he had a grandmother."
[GKC "The Dragon's Grandmother" in Tremendous Trifles]

"I have returned healthy and safe. How did you fare? If you have drowned, inform me."
[Pierre Duhem to a sailing friend quoted by SLJ in Uneasy Genius: the Life and Work of Pierre Duhem 57]

"My opinion was asked concerning the scientific part of the problem. Then, I told squarely all these good Catholic philosophers that If they obstinately continued talking of science without knowing of it a single word, the freethinkers would hold them up for ridicule; that in order to speak of questions where science and Catholic philosophy touch one another, one must have done ten or fifteen years of study of the pure sciences, and that, if they had not become men with deep scientific knowledge, they must remain silent... The idea, once launched, will advance..."
[Pierre Duhem writing to his mother. Ibid. 114]

"Science was for Duhem such a sacred cause, hardly a crime if Galileo, Darwin, Freud and many others deserve perennial accolades for their devotion, in the teeth of much opposition, to the cause of science as they saw it. In fact, so sacred was that cause to Duhem - who, it is well to recall, chose physics as his life career after having been seized as a youth by an ideal view of it- that he never recoiled from taking great personal risks for that cause."
[Jaki on Duhem, Ibid. 161]

"...if the work was useful in God's eyes He would not let it go unfinished."
[Pierre Duhem about his masterwork, Le Système du Monde. Ibid. 196]

"There are three essential elements I use in my shows: humor, adventure, and heart."
[Glen Larson, paraphrased from memory; said in a documentary about his "Knight Rider" show]

"We need to write in 25 words or less why we want to found this new school. If we can't do the Ambrosian just now, at least we should have a college of Liberal Sciences to go with all the ones that do Liberal Arts."
[one of the Bridge Builders, private communication]

"Hey Doc when are you going to finish this Saga you've been talking about since the last millennium? C'mon!
[from many of my anxious and hungry readers]

764 138 474 831 467 is a prime palindrome.
[from my computer]

"Somebody has to do the hard jobs."
[Mark Weaver in The Three Relics (by Dr. Thursday)]

Wow-squared. Better fasten your seat belts. And this isn't even a leap year.

Welcome 2011

2010-12-31T21:21:00.003-05:00

A
2 0
+
1 1
W

Christus heri et hodie
Principium et Finis
Alpha et Omega
Ipsius sunt tempora et saecula
Ipsi gloria et imperium
per universa aeternitatis saecula.
Amen.

Christ yesterday and today,
The Beginning and the End,
The Alpha and the Omega,
His are the times and the ages,
To Him be glory and dominion
Through the universe of unending ages.
Amen.

Also see the amazing poem called New Year's Chimes by Francis Thompson, one of my favorites and one of the spectacular and spiritual poems I know of.

One more thing... 2011 is a prime number.

A Gift from the Treasury of F. Ralston Ludlow

2010-12-22T10:24:00.004-05:00

As those who have been to Quayment may know, one of the greatest bibliophiles in the town is Ray Ludlow. No one was quite sure of his age, but in the middle years of the first decade of the 21st century, he was definitely over 70. Strange stories were whispered about him, which focussed on an ancestor, one "Davey-Jack", from the mid-1800s, reputed to be a PIRATE... Everyone knew Ray was wealthy, but they also knew that he was generous and friendly, and seemed to bear a secret sorrow which no one was able to penetrate.

People like to consider various memories as they prepare to celebrate Christmastide: hopefulyl they review the great story of the Coming of Christ by re-reading the prophecies. They stimulate their compassion with heart-touching stories of conversion like A Christmas Carol and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, with their intensely Pauline power. (Ever think that St. Paul was the apostle to whom we owe the story of the birth at Bethlehem? It seems most likely... but leave that for now.)

Finally, they conjure up appetizers of various forms, be they of food or of music or of decoration - the Whos had their strange and mystic things for walls and floors and ceilings, and every blessed window and every blessed door - and I hope you do not miss them in your own homes. You will find the glories of Christmas scenery and adventure in books like A Christmas Bower or even in movies like "The Bells of St. Mary's" and "Desk Set" and "Come to the Stable" and "Little Women". There is the whole genre of Santa story which is nothing more than the metaphor for God's gift-giving, transposed for seasonal and stylistic purposes to the North Pole.

But there is another form of appetite to be whetted: not only the artistic, the musical, and the gustatory. There is also the sense of STORY. We know from Chesterton that fundamental insight into the true Christian basis for all Story, the same basis Jaki studies for Science. But the GKC quote is overlooked, so I will give it to you now:

...the sanity of the world was restored and the, soul of man offered salvation by something which did indeed satisfy the two warring tendencies of the past; which had never been satisfied in full and most certainly never satisfied together. It met the mythological search for romance by being a story and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story. That is why the ideal figure had to be a historical character, as nobody had ever felt Adonis or Pan to be a historical character. But that is also why the historical character had to be the ideal figure; and even fulfil many of the functions given to these other ideal figures; why he was at once the sacrifice and the feast, why he could be shown under the emblems of the growing vine or the rising sun. The more deeply we think of the matter the more we shall conclude that, if there be indeed a God, his creation could hardly have reached any other culmination than this granting of a real romance to the world. Otherwise the two sides of the human mind could never have touched at all; and the brain of man would have remained cloven and double; one lobe of it dreaming impossible dreams and the other repeating invariable calculations. The picture-makers would have remained forever painting the portrait of nobody. The sages would have remained forever adding up numerals that came to nothing. It was that abyss that nothing but an incarnation could cover; a divine embodiment of our dreams; and he stands above that chasm whose name is more than priest and older even than Christendom; Pontifex Maximus, the mightiest maker of a bridge.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:380]

Tolkien may not have quoted it in his essay on Fairy-Tales, but he should have. And someday, when someone writes A Little Summa on the Story or some other such study of the topic, it will serve as a major starting point.

Ah, the Story...

It will do no damage to the lore of the great Saga (in which Ray plays a minor and often hidden role) for me to reveal one of his secrets. Among other things, he maintained a shelf of what are often called "Boys' Books". These are by no means reserved to the young male of the species; they delight girls also, and there is no age restriction! But we have no time to examine the matter; we are busy preparing for Christmas!

And so, for your delight, please explore just an excerpt from Ray's catalog of delights. If you have read these, savor the delight from memory, and perhaps go and read them again.

Ah - but if you have NOT read them - oh lucky and thrice blessed! Go, quickly, and seek them. Seek them for yourself, for your loved ones, for children or (even more) for parents and for teachers. Let the delight wax unrestrained in the humor and adventure and heart...

The Mad Scientists' Club by Bertrand Brinley
New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club by Bertrand Brinley
Secret Agents Four by Donald Sokol
Ex-Cub Fitzie by Neil Boyton, S.J.
Countdown by Rev. Kurt Becker
SOS at Midnight by Walker A. Tompkins (and sequels)
Sinbad and Me by Kin Platt
The Mystery of the Haunted Mine by G. D. Shirreffs
Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang by Ian Fleming
Septimus and the Minister Ghost Mystery by Stephen Chance
Spacehounds of IPC by E. E. "Doc" Smith

Danny Dunn stories by J. Williams and R. Abrashkin (series; especially do NOT miss Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy with its reference to Chesterton, though CAUTION it does contain a spoiler.

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
The Scarlet Pimpernell by Baroness Orczy
The Miracle of the Bells by Russell Janney
The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne

There are many more, but this may serve as a start. And if you want to learn more about Ray and this treasure, look for The Tree of Virtues at any Quayment bookstore.

GKC on the real meaning of Christmas

2010-12-15T15:43:00.002-05:00

Christmas is a fact, and could not possibly be dissociated from the two words that make it up.
[GKC ILN Dec 30 1922 CW32:514]

Some Advent Stuff

2010-12-04T10:12:00.003-05:00

I am sorry I have not been posting very much recently - and here it is, almost the second week of Advent! Oh my. Well, I have some tasks which are keeping me from writing all the things I wish I could be writing - I can only type so fast, and there are only - how long does this planet take to rotate again? Oh whatever. Anyway, here are some of my past works which you might investigate, until I get some time to write more new stuff for this blogg. I will, God willing, but I have other duties which do not pertain to this blogg... If you get to Quayment, be sure to look for my published works. Someday they may get to your town as well.

--Dr. Thursday

From Advent 2005: A Jesse Tree
(Note: 2005 was the longest possible Advent; this year is one day shorter, so you can omit one of the prophet items from the middle. Even if you don't want to make the ornaments, you may find the texts interesting. Try drawing your own - that's even better.

11/27/2005
11/28/2005
11/29/2005
11/30/2005
12/01/2005
12/02/2005
12/03/2005

Week II
12/04/2005
12/05/2005
12/06/2005
12/07/2005
Note for Immaculate Conception
12/08/2005
12/09/2005
12/10/2005

Week III
12/11/2005
12/12/2005
12/13/2005
12/14/2005
12/15/2005
12/16/2005

The Greater Feria/O Antiphons
Note for the O Antiphons
12/17/2005

Week IV
12/18/2005
12/19/2005
12/20/2005
12/21/2005
12/22/2005
12/23/2005
12/24/2005

Christmas Day!
12/25/2005

Advent 2006: The Amino Acids and the Mysteries of the Holy Rosary

Introduction

(alpha by amino acid)

Alanine - Joyful 2
Arginine - Luminous 2
Asparagine - Sorrowful 5
Aspartic Acid - Sorrowful 2
Cysteine - Sorrowful 1
Glutamic Acid - Sorrowful 3
Glutamine - Sorrowful 4
Glycine - Luminous 3
Histidine - Glorious 3
Isoleucine - Joyful 5
Leucine - Joyful 4
Lysine - Luminous 5
Methionine - Joyful 1
Phenylalanine - Glorious 1
Proline - Glorious 5
Serine - Luminous 1
Threonine - Luminous 4
Tryptophan - Glorious 4
Tyrosine - Glorious 2
Valine - Joyful 3

(by mystery)

Joyful:
First: Annunciation - Methionine
Second: Visitation - Alanine
Third: Nativity - Valine
Fourth: Presentation - Leucine
Fifth: Finding in the Temple - Isoleucine

Luminous:
First: Baptism - Serine
Second: Wedding at Cana - Arginine
Third: Proclamation of the Kingdom - Glycine
Fourth: Transfiguration - Threonine
Fifth: Eucharist - Lysine

Sorrowful:
First: Agony in Garden - Cysteine
Second: Scourging - Aspartic Acid
Third: Crowning with Thorns - Glutamic Acid
Fourth: Carrying of Cross - Glutamine
Fifth: Crucifixion - Asparagine

Glorious:
First: Resurrection - Phenylalanine
Second: Ascension - Tyrosine
Third: Descent of the Spirit - Histidine
Fourth: Assumption - Tryptophan
Fifth: Coronation: Proline

The End of It

If you like poetry, you might try this:

Ass, Ox, Sheep

Finally, if you want something unusual:

How To Make Seven-Sided Snowflakes

Two Modery Peoms

2010-12-02T11:36:00.003-05:00

Sorry, I have been too busy to write. Or not busy enough.

But since I saw Meredith's recent modery poem and had to comment about it, I felt it only just that I give others the same opportunity. I've had other things to do recently and no time, so these are not quite fresh, but perhaps you will enjoy them.

Where do you buy fresh diced cerium in your neighborhood?

I like to sit, singing the weasel song, as if they're cheese on the night beaches.

When it wasn't furry enough, you had to go over the third wall to get the pruning liar off the elephant.
[Feb 17 2010]

One steering wheel, sauteed in pencil-based metaphors, won't fit the lavender ellipse tonight, at least they didn't the last time either.

He's made plenty of chocolate books, enough to threaten several streets of martial envy, but all the onions are still bolted to the stairs.

I hear the tuba walking around again; it's just over the seventh camel.

[Feb 17 2010]

Note: If you get the feeling this is some sort of complex inside joke (or possibly some sort of extremely clever esoteric encryption scheme) you may be right. Please don't spend any time worrying about them.

Four stories

2010-11-21T10:46:00.004-05:00

Happy feast of Christ the King!

Just in case you are searching to find "something good to read"

Loome posted four of my short stories about that famous American booktown called Quayment:

The Story of "Driftwood"

The Story of "Serendipity"

The Story of the Wreck of the Argent Eagle

The Story of How Mark Earned a Dragon

I neglected to post these links previously. Now you have them.

CQT #2, or, an interesting discovery!

2010-11-18T14:03:00.001-05:00

I must tell you, quite briefly, of an interesting discovery, one which I did not expect to find. I presume that you have read Chesterton's curious collection of stories called The Club of Queer Trades - and I also presume that you found them enjoyable.

Well, taking those two points as given, I have some good news. No; possibly, I have great and wonderful news. I have just finished reading another collection of short stories called Parker Pyne Investigates by Agatha Christie. There is no attribution - but Mr. Pyne and his business is very clearly a derivative, and I think if you read them, you will understand what I mean. They do not stand alone, but appeared to me very distinctly as followup episodes to those of Basil Grant.

It is possible that you may disagree once you try them. But I think you will enjoy them, and may find the same Chestertonian quality there. At the very least please try "The Case of the City Clerk"...

Dancing, Angels, Needles, Getting to the Point

2010-11-18T13:59:00.002-05:00

I will start today's study with what may seem a totally pointless excerpt:

The eighteenth century writers overdid the rounded and complete phrase; the writers of twentieth century overdo the broken and suggestive phrase. The former seems heavy and turgid to the latter; the latter would seem simply half-witted to the former. But the real interest is not of this sort in the case of either. The real interest is in certain fundamental ideas, and even ideals, that are behind the difference. Even in the loosest comedy, even in the most conversational repartee, the men of the Age of Reason had the classical ideal, which is the ideal of completeness. The point of the repartee was a point in the sense that it was an end; as the point of a needle is the end of a needle; as the point of a sword is the end of a sword. Indeed, as it happens, the needle of epigram did sometimes end with the sword of destruction. The eighteenth century epigram might end with a duel, but it did not end with a dash. It was a not an unfinished sentence; it might be a slander, but not half a slander. Now the fragmentary character of much modern dialogue arises from an idea of spontaneity; an idea which has its spiritual value, but is at least quite contrary to the classical ideal of completeness. The modern dramatic person is so spontaneous that he starts speaking before he knows what he has to say, or whether he has anything to say.
[GKC ILN Nov 5 1932; thanks to Frank Petta and my mother]

Though I am even worse than a twentieth-century writer - I am, in fact, a writer of the twenty-first century - I do have a point to this, and you may see it before the end - if you are able to keep from laughing in the wrong places.

You will recall that in the last three weeks we have seen Mary in the house of Elizabeth and Zachary - and so, after three months, she returned to Nazareth.

Now the image of Mary going down the road - both coming for her visit to Elizabeth and going back - is foreseen in the travels of the ancient Israelites who bore the Ark of the Covenant with them on their journey. It is an awesome parallel, more exalted than any simile or metaphor: the profound thing which the Church calls "a type": in the old Ark was kept the Law; in the new Ark was kept the Law-Giver. How profound and awesome this is to think about. You may recall, perhaps, this unusual and mysterious poem by Chesterton:

"The Holy Of Holies"

"Elder father, though shine eyes
Shine with hoary mysteries,
Canst thou tell me what in the heart
Of a cowslip blossom lies?"

"Smaller than all lives that be,
Secret as the deepest sea,
Stands a little house of seeds,
Like an elfin's granary."

"Speller of the stones and weeds,
Skilled in Nature's crafts and creeds,
Tell me what is in the heart
Of the smallest of the seeds."

"God Almighty, and with Him
Cherubim and Seraphim,
Filling all eternity
Adonai Elohim."
[GKC CW10:50]

Though his parents were at best "nominal" Christians, I still like to think of GKC speaking with them, and the eerie snapshot of them we get in a most unlikely place:

When your father told you, walking about the garden, that bees stung or that roses smelt sweet, you did not talk of taking the best out of his philosophy. When the bees stung you, you did not call it an entertaining coincidence. When the rose smelt sweet you did not say "My father is a rude, barbaric symbol, enshrining (perhaps unconsciously) the deep delicate truths that flowers smell." No: you believed your father, because you had found him to be a living fountain of facts, a thing that really knew more than you; a thing that would tell you truth to-morrow, as well as to-day. And if this was true of your father, it was even truer of your mother; at least it was true of mine...
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:360]

And lest you find yourself uncertain of GKC's meaning of that poem, I should tell you that Adonai Elohim are titles or names of God.

But that idea - God is in the heart of a seed? Can we mean that?

Of course. But I am not trying to get to a matter of ontology, a detailed point of metaphysics here. I want to take it as a parallel to Mary's Divine Pregnancy, where God really was hidden in an exceedingly tiny form. Which may sound like a paradox, but then this isn't a Chestertonian invention. Remember, it was Mary who said "My soul magnifies the Lord." [Lk 1:46]

Clearly, the Being Who has no physical dimension cannot be properly said to occupy space - which is why, like the so-called "squaring of the circle" we have misunderstood the puzzle in the famous "angels dancing on the head of a pin". Ah, that old puzzle, so much more fun to play with than those of Zeno or Cantor, neither of whom seemed to have lived, for Zeno never moved and Cantor never shaved, or perhaps his wife shaved him. (If you do not understand, you will have to wait for an explanation, as I am late today and cannot afford an aside!)

I knew GKC spoke on this, and had to play some games in order to find out where. Here is one, which is well worth your consideration:

Superficially one would fancy that complexity of civilisation and subtlety of thought would go together, but they do not. It is really easier to think with delicacy and exactitude if the materials are popular and plain. It is easier to count with counters than to count with the various fragments of a jig-saw. It is easier to point to things with a stick than with a bundle of sticks. It is easier to argue exhaustively about the squaring of the circle over a halfpenny and a halfpenny stamp than to illustrate the same point by comparing Trafalgar Square and the Coliseum. It is notable that nearly all the old typical enigmas of the intellect on which sages sharpened their wits were presented under the emblem of some common or even domestic object. The needle on which all the angels of the schoolman were to dance was presumably a common sewing or darning needle. The Accumulating Heap which has delighted so many sophists was originally, I suppose, a heap of salt on the table, or of sand by the sea. Achilles, perhaps, can hardly be called a common or domestic object, but the tortoise has a claim to that description: moreover, the problem can be as well discussed under the old figures of the tortoise and the hare. It is easier to consider the other great calculation of progress in the form of a climbing frog; and another under such primary symbols as corn, a river, a fox, a goose, and a man. The question of the frog was probably first debated by some solitary philosopher or hermit, in a quiet region and a simple age, actually watching the struggles of the frog. The setting of the second problem bears witness to its origin among agricultural persons, yokels and countrymen who have more time to think. All the subtleties of Political Economy begin with words that might be the beginning of some great primitive epic poem, "There is a man on an island."

The entangled conditions of an elaborate civilisation like ours are not favourable to carrying thought to a fine point. We are in no danger of discussing how many holy angels can dance on the point of a needle. We are so inordinately proud in reflecting how many poor devils are engaged in making the needle that we never think of that object in the more exquisite relations to space or measurement.
[GKC ILN Oct 7 1911 CW29:165-6]

Suggestive, indeed. But far more relevant and impressive is this:

In the good old days of Victorian rationalism it used to be the conventional habit to scoff at St. Thomas Aquinas and the mediaeval theologians; and especially to repeat perpetually a well-worn joke about the man who discussed how many angels could dance on the point of a needle. The comfortable and commercial Victorians, with their money and merchandise, might well have felt a sharper end of the same needle, even if it was the other end of it. It would have been good for their souls to have looked for that needle, not in the haystack of mediaeval metaphysics, but in the neat needle-case of their own favourite pocket Bible. It would have been better for them to meditate, not on how many angels could go on the point of a needle, but on how many camels could go through the eye of it. But there is another comment on this curious joke or catchword, which is more relevant to our purpose here. If the mediaeval mystic ever did argue about angels standing on a needle, at least he did not argue as if the object of angels was to stand on a needle; as if God had created all the Angels and Archangels, all the Thrones, Virtues, Powers and Principalities, solely in order that there might be something to clothe and decorate the unseemly nakedness of the point of a needle. But that is the way that modern rationalists reason. The mediaeval mystic would not even have said that a needle exists to be a standing-ground for angels. The mediaeval mystic would have been the first to say that a needle exists to make clothes for men. For mediaeval mystics, in their dim transcendental way, were much interested in the real reasons for things and the distinction between the means and the end. They wanted to know what a thing was really for, and what was the dependence of one idea on another. And they might even have suggested, what so many journalists seem to forget, the paradoxical possibility that Tennis was made for Man and not Man for Tennis.
[GKC The Thing CW3:167-8]

It would be fun to talk about Purpose, or about how this excerpt speaks to my own discipline of computer science, or relates to Subsidiarity... but we are trying to get to some point here, and I do NOT mean that as a pun.

You see, it is very easy to talk abstractedly about abstracts. You might as well put and advertisement into the newspaper, or post a want-ad through MONSTER or some such thing:

Required: Angels. Must be capable of dancing. Please submit your resume with skillset and relevant references, etc, etc.

Hee hee. Ah yes. As I was saying, it is easy to be abstract about abstractions. You don't need to fill out W-4's for angels, even if they are most capable dancers. However, if you want human dancers and expect them to dance, you will need to deal with a lot more than the question of how much room you will give them to dance upon.

And that is the point, (sorry if this seems like a pun) the point of the Ark. Maybe angels never danced anywhere near human sewing implements (Did you know some people argue that it was the head of a PIN, not a needle? A fitting topic for another heresy and subsequent formation of yet another Christian sect, oh my.) But one thing is sure: when David danced "with all his might" before the ark of the covenant, he took up some room. [See 2 Kings 6:14]

So, too, did Jesus - and by the time He had been in the womb for three months, He began to dance as well. We have made only a faint start, in our hasty and brief discussions, at the relevance of the Incarnation, but this, like the whole "paradox" thing, is a matter for accepting, not for abstract argument. When physical beings dance, they take up room. Their matter matters. We can discuss things like the electromagnetic force or the Exclusion Principle and all that some other time, if you feel it necessary, but I don't. You don't need to know what those things are in order to understand how to dance. The issue is farmore important than the abstraction, though it comes down to the same things as Zeno's "motion is impossible" or Cantor's fuss about infinity, or the ancient Greek struggles of "squaring the circle" - and that last is more to the point (no pun) than the others, since it relates to something which CAN be done, though not in the way the puzzle is expressed: just as it is true that a Virgin can be pregnant with a Son, without any of the natural means by which that occurs. (If you do not understand, you need to re-read what Gabriel said about how nothing is impossible for God [Lk 1:37] You also need to find out exactly what "squaring the circle" means, and why it is both possible (as a mathematical idea) and impossible (in its original Greek form).

Oh yes. This seems so abstract, doesn't it? But it is not. It is just as realistic, as practical, and as relevant as farming or automotive mechanics or electricity or ... sewing. And it is all encapsulated in this elegant and brief commentary on one of the most difficult matters in Christianity, one directly tied to the matter of Mary and her Divine Pregnancy, to the "fruit of her womb":

As to Transubstantiation, it is less easy to talk currently about that; but I would gently suggest that, to most ordinary outsiders with any common sense, there would be a considerable practical difference between Jehovah pervading the universe and Jesus Christ coming into the room.
[GKC The Thing CW3:180]

The Eucharist is, in the most literal sense, the fruit of Mary's womb... No wonder David danced before the ark; no wonder we still use his song-lyrics at Holy Mass.

PS: some other time, perhaps, we can talk about "squaring the circle" and who found its ultimate proof, or about Zeno, or even about Cantor. And also then I might give you my own answer, which is not the one you will usually hear, to the puzzle about the angels dancing on a needle (or pin) - which is, of course both the point and THE END.

Something of an Else

2010-11-16T15:23:00.002-05:00

Ah, there are certain priceless verbal jewels, and my title is one of them. It comes from something I read in high school, quoted in Science Digest for June 1972, a magazine my chemistry teacher let me borrow:

Here is something of an else. If water from the ocean is mixed with vapor it is lighter than air. It's the oddest truth.

The article was called YOUNG SCIENTISTS TACKLE MYSTERIES OF THE DEEP" by Harold Dunn - a grade school teacher collecting youngsters' malapropisms for 20 years. (These were transcribed for me by my mother, who assisted me in so many ways.)

Today I have Something of an Else to tell you.

As you may know, I dislike it when my computer has free time, so I assign it various projects. One of them is... ah, but perhaps I better not say.

However, one of the results I think I may reveal is this.

The number
399 999 959 999 993
is prime, and also a palindrome.

As that young scientist observed so long ago, it's the oddest truth.

Chesterton, Mary and St. Paul???

2010-11-11T13:11:00.004-05:00

Today marks the third of the nine weeks of our studies of Mary's Divine Pregnancy, as we follow the Life of Our Lord through Chesterton's writings.

I had a chore this morning and was able to devote a long time in meditation upon the matter. I garnered some interesting insights, but it is doubtful how I can reduce them to words... at least I can write something about them, and some of them may be of utility. They arose from my hope to bring St. Paul into the picture - which must sound very strange. It is likely that Saul of Tarsus did not exist at the time when Mary visited Elizabeth and assisted her.

(An aside: Even great Church Fathers debated on whether Mary was there for the birth of John the Baptist, though my own belief is that she was there. it is the simplest explanation for our possession of the Canticle of Zacharias, the Benedictus, chanted in the hinge-hour of the Morning Office. But let us return to St. Paul.)

It is not my own idea about St. Paul, though perhaps I am expressing it in a bolder sense than others have. I seem to recall reading something in a book by Dom John Chapman, (whose works were brought to my awareness by Fr. Jaki) or maybe it was Fr. Giuseppe Ricciotti, most of whose splendid works I have read. In particular there is one on St. Paul and another on that book of the Bible, the sequel to the Gospels, which we usually call "Acts" - though he points out the original Greek title omits both articles, so we ought to call it "Acts of Apostles". Hm. It must be there, unless it was in his Life of Christ. But the idea is very simple. We all know there are four Gospels: those according to Matthew, to Mark, to Luke, and to John. We also know (if we are attentive) that only two of those are Apostles: Matthew (also called Levi) and John; the others were at most disciples. But they were very special ones, acting rather like Watson for Holmes: Mark was the sidekick secretary to St. Peter, and Luke served St. Paul in the same way. And that is very clear if you read that book called "Acts", which suddenly changes from a third-person narrative to "we did this" and "we sailed there" and so forth - and the we can be no other than the author Luke and St. Paul. Now, since the gospel of Luke is merely a record of that which was preached by his primary, we are led (kicking and screaming, perhaps!) to the conclusion that we owe the Gospel stories for the first three Joyful mysteries - the Annunciation, the Visitation, and the Nativity - to St. Paul.

Now what does any of that have to do with Chesterton?

It is rather simple. Speaking as a mere layman, a tech and a scientist - but also as a story-writer, and a reader of GKC, I have a distinct impression of St. Paul as what we would now call a Media Personage. Maybe not quite an anchorman, or a editorial columnist, or a talk-radio host... but a Publisher, a Broadcaster: one who would boldy go into the Areopagus and be "in your face" with his listening audience - willing (indeed!) even to quote their own material back at them.

Oh yes; maybe you didn't know? That trick where Scholastics like Aquinas quoted their opponents, Chesterton quoting Shaw or Benedict XVI quoting Nietzsche - that's quite Biblical. St. Paul quoted Pagan authors to the Pagans. See Acts 17:28 where St. Paul quotes a poem on Minosses (written by Epimenides of Crete in the sixth scentury BC) and Phenomena of Aratus and Hymn to Jupiter of Cleanthes, poets of the third century BC. [See Ricciotti, Acts of the Apostles 276]

The evidence I might assemble is vast, and I do not have the time today to give you anything but a hint of how the argument proceeds. It takes the famous "Analogy of the Body" from St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (1Cor12, argued also in Romans 12) and see this as paralleling Chesterton's mighty (and as yet unstudied) Mystical Anthropology: the true study of Homo cadens, Man the Fallen:

Man is a contradiction in terms; he is a beast whose superiority to other beasts consists in having fallen.
[GKC The Ball and the Cross, chapter 1]

But thereare two other Pauline texts which fit together and "close" (as the mathematicians say) the set: the two which speak of the mystery of Christ's incarnation. The one - ah so tiny and so precious, the single sapphire gleaming among his rubies, the humble voice heard, not as Luke recorded his fervent preaching, but as Paul himself wrote to the Galatians:

But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent his Son, made of a woman... [Gal 4:4]

And why does Paul remind us of this? It is quitelike Dickens, reminding us at the beginning of his Christmas Carol that Marley was dead. For if, as Paul told the Corinthians, he would speak of nothing but Christ and Him crucified, there cannot be a body to crucify unless He first took a body unto Himself:

[Jesus Christ] Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross. [Phil 2:6-8]

It is here, as we see St. Paul kneeling (as I envision him) by Mary, listening to her tell these three priceless stories, that we can understand his fire for Christ and Him crucified. Just as there cannot be an empty tomb without Calvary, there can be no Calvary unless there was first a Bethlehem - and that fiat in Nazareth.

No; I have not lost sight of Chesterton in my rambles through the New Testament - but remember I am seeing a harmony here, not a dissonance. I will leave you with something from one of Chesterton's ILN essays which may help illuminate the matter; it is another one of those immense surprises which joins many topics and yet is still really addressing the only One that matters - er - I should say, the only One Who matters. "You cannot evade the issue of God; whether you talk about pigs or the binomial theory, you are still talking about Him." [GKC Daily News Dec 12 1903 quoted in Maycock, The Man Who Was Orthodox] But that was an aside. Here is the excerpt:

Everybody knows that a new school of sceptics has recently appeared, especially in America; they call themselves the Behaviorists, and Mr. Harvey Wickham calls them the Misbehaviorists. So far as I can understand, their philosophy is rooted in a theory of physiology: the theory that thought is originally a sort of movement of the body rather than the brain. "There is nothing in the brain," I think one of them has written, "except a lot of neurons. We do not think with our minds. We think with our muscles." Those of us, that is, who are so old-fashioned as to think at all; for we have all seen vigorous representatives of the rising generation who suppose that everything can be done with the muscles, and whom nobody, not even a psychologist of the far-off nineteenth century, would accuse of merely using their minds. I am not especially concerned with the truth or falsehood of this fancy. While it is flourished, like the majority of such fancies, with a vague defiance directed towards orthodoxy or tradition, it really has no sort of importance for them. It is an excellent example of the rule about nearly all such new notions that are valued as new negations. The new scientific theory never does really deny the old religious theory. What it does do is to deny - or, rather, destroy - the old scientific theory. And it was precisely in the name of that old theory that religion was once to have been destroyed. The heretics never attack orthodoxy; the heretics only avenge orthodoxy on each other.

It does not matter to any Christian whether God has made a man to think with his brains or his big toe. But it did matter very much to the recent type of Materialist that a man could only think with his brains. He was perpetually basing all sorts of destructive arguments on an analysis of what he called the convolutions and the "matter" in the brain. He was as devoted as M. Hercule Poirot to The Little Grey Cells; but, alas! with far less brilliant and entertaining results. All that the Behaviorist does is, in every sense, to dash out the brains of the old Materialist. There is no question of his touching the soul, even the soul of an old Materialist, for that escapes him as completely as it does every other kind of material analysis, including that of the old Materialist himself. What he abolishes is not the soul, but the cells on which his predecessor depended for the denial of the soul. If ever we do really come to talk about a brilliant idea flashing through our biceps, or a curious and original theory creeping up the calf of our leg, it may sound to some a little funny, or even fantastic. It will not make the slightest difference to those who believe that God made an invisible spirit as part of an invisible order. But it will make nonsense of pages and pages of recent realistic literature, in which the crumbling grey matter proved that nothing but death awaited even the primary form of mind, or in which the soul was supposed to have been tracked to its lair and killed in a cell under the cavern of the skull. Libraries of nineteenth-century scepticism would become as much lumber; but the mystical passage in St. Paul about the glorified body would not be in the least affected either way. It would be amusing, to irreverent persons like Mr. Harvey Wickham, if men ever began to look for the Differential Calculus in their deltoid muscles or to conceal a joke somewhere near the joint of the elbow. But it would only contradict the man who said that all truths were in the human skull or all jokes a decay of brain-stuff; not the man who says that jokes come from man, or that man and mathematical truths come from God.
[GKC ILN July 5 1930 CW35:335-337]

Vir and Vis - Closer Than in the Dictionary

2010-11-04T11:52:00.001-04:00

I was going to call this something like "A Bold and Manly Incarnation" but that didn't give quite the image, so I went to those two Latin words, vir which means "man, the male" (as opposed to homo which is "man the species") and vis which means "force, power, strength".

I deal with this here, while we are considering the mystery of the Visitation (Luke 1:39-56) since there are two incarnations going on at this point: our Lord and John the Baptist. Two great men, manly men, powerful men. I must also point to the word "virtue" and note that it descends to us fromt he Latin virtus, which is connected to the first of our title's pair, even though one might expect it to be linked to the second. (In case you are wonderined the two Latin terms of our title themselves arise from different predecessors, at least according to my references.)

Why would I bring up "man" or "power" in such a context? Jesus is only a very few cells, though in the three months He and Mary reside at Zachary and Elizabeth's, He is clearly a Man:

At three months the progressive modeling of the external genitalia has attained characteristics that are recognizable as distinctively male or female.
[Arey, Developmental Anatomy, 335]

This may seem entirely inappropriate to bring up in such a context - or perhaps it provides a most grand and mystical insight. Indeed, if you are able to locate an authentic text on human development, you will be astounded, and it will provide much for your meditation: for example, just 3 weeks after the Annunciation, the Sacred Heart of Jesus began to beat - a beat which continued until 3PM on Good Friday... another time I may provide some more for you about this. But let us resume today's topic.

You will, perhaps, recall one of my favourite GKC quotes (oh how many I have! Like my best friends, I have many, how can I rate one ahead of another?) which comes from his letter to his fiancee, Frances Blogg, July 8, 1899:

... I am black but comely [Canticle of Canticles 1:4] at this moment: because the cyclostyle has blacked me. Fear not. I shall wash myself. But I think it my duty to render an accurate account of my physical appearance every time I write: and shall be glad of any advice and assistance...

To return to the Cyclostyle. I like the Cyclostyle ink; it is so inky. I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud. It is just the same with people.... When we call a man "manly" or a woman "womanly" we touch the deepest philosophy.
[quoted in Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 108-9]

Ah, the deepest philosophy. Now, what does this "manly" quality have to do with the larger topic, that of the Incarnation?

Ah.

That happens to be presented by GKC himself in the firey "Blatchford Controversies" which you can find in CW1:

Now when Christianity came, the ancient world had just reached this dilemma. It heard the Voice of Nature-Worship crying, "All natural things are good. War is as healthy as the flowers. Lust is as clean as the stars." And it heard also the cry of the hopeless Stoics and Idealists: "The flowers are at war: the stars are unclean: nothing but man's conscience is right and that is utterly defeated."
Both views were consistent, philosophical and exalted: their only disadvantage was that the first leads logically to murder and the second to suicide. After an agony of thought the world saw the sane path between the two. It was the Christian God. He made Nature but He was Man.
Lastly, there is a word to be said about the Fall. It can only be a word, and it is this. Without the doctrine of the Fall all idea of progress is unmeaning. Mr. Blatchford says that there was not a Fall but a gradual rise. But the very word "rise" implies that you know toward what you are rising. Unless there is a standard you cannot tell whether you are rising or falling. But the main point is that the Fall like every other large path of Christianity is embodied in the common language talked on the top of an omnibus. Anybody might say, "Very few men are really Manly." Nobody would say, "Very few whales are really whaley."
[GKC "Why I Believe in Christianity" CW1:384-5]

Amazing, isn't it? Indeed, very few men are really Manly - but we have a standard, a measure, even though at this point in our study, both Jesus and John are yet hidden from our view.

Indeed, He is hidden - and yet His presence is acknowledged. Elizabeth herself asserts that presence: since Mary "proceeded in haste", and even allowing for travel time, we expect that she was barely a month pregnant: something unknowable without modern biochemistry. Yet Elizabeth proclaims her as mother. [Lk 1:43]

I am well aware of how close I come to one of the Great Secrets, which we must not speak of - this one in particular which all know, and on which most preserve its dignity by keeping silent. I must, however, give you GKC's own relevant words, even as it comes close to this grave matter, for it is something we need to speak about:

In the dull, dusty, stale, stiff-jointed and lumbering language, to which most modern discussion is limited, it is necessary to say that there is at this moment the same fashionable fallacy about Sex and about Property. In the older and freer language, in which men could both speak and sing, it is truer to say that the same evil spirit has blasted the two great powers that make the poetry of life; the Love of Woman and the Love of the Land. It is important to observe, to start with, that the two things were closely connected so long as humanity was human, even when it was heathen. Nay, they were still closely connected, even when it was a decadent heathenism. But even the stink of decaying heathenism has not been so bad as the stink of decaying Christianity. The corruption of the best...

For instance, there were throughout antiquity, both in its first stage and its last, modes of idolatry and imagery of which Christian men can hardly speak. "Let them not be so much as named among you." [Ephesians 5:3] Men wallowed in the mere sexuality of a mythology of sex; they organised prostitution like priesthood, for the service of their temples; they made pornography their only poetry; they paraded emblems that turned even architecture into a sort of cold and colossal exhibitionism. Many learned books have been written of all these phallic cults; and anybody can go to them for the details, for all I care. But what interests me is this:
In one way all this ancient sin was infinitely superior, immeasurably superior, to the modern sin. All those who write of it at least agree on one fact; that it was the cult of Fruitfulness. It was unfortunately too often interwoven, very closely, with the cult of the fruitfulness of the land. It was at least on the side of Nature. It was at least on the side of Life. It has been left to the last Christians, or rather to the first Christians fully committed to blaspheming and denying Christianity, to invent a new kind of worship of Sex, which is not even a worship of Life. It has been left to the very latest Modernists to proclaim an erotic religion which at once exalts lust and forbids fertility. The new Paganism literally merits the reproach of Swinburne, when mourning for the old Paganism: "and rears not the bountiful token and spreads not the fatherly feast." The new priests abolish the fatherhood and keep the feast - to themselves. They are worse than Swinburne's Pagans. The priests of Priapus and Cotytto go into the kingdom of heaven before them.[cf Mt 21:31]
[GKC The Well and the Shallows CW3:501-2, emphasis added]

Yes, alas, there are people today who dislike hearing about pregnancy, and yet how else did they arrive here on earth? Let us return to our scene, the old Jewish mother and the young Jewish mother, both rejoicing in their fertility, so much so that Mary could sing how she achieved something as impossible as her Divine maternity: the mystery of the Magnificat: her soul made even God Himself look bigger. (Don't you think of Mary when you see those silly inscriptions on your car's mirrors: "objects appear larger than they are" or whatever it is. Hee hee.)

Moreover, the unborn John "leaped for joy" as Mary's greeting was heard by Elizabeth [Lk 1:44] What does that mean? It was simply an acknowledgement of the presence of the Unborn God-Man, hidden in the tabernacle, the Ark of the New Covenant, which is Mary. And the leap is "type" for any and all acts of adoration, acts which are among the most manly of all possible actions for a man:

The crux and crisis is that man found it natural to worship; even natural to worship unnatural things. The posture of the idol might be stiff and strange; but the gesture of the worshipper was generous and beautiful. He not only felt freer when he bent; he actually felt taller when he bowed. Henceforth anything that took away the gesture of worship would stunt and even maim him forever. Henceforth being merely secular would be a servitude and an inhibition. If man cannot pray he is gagged; if he cannot kneel he is in irons.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:244]

Now, you may recall that last week I quoted the famous bit from Orthodoxy which links this scene to the fairy tale called "Cinderella": the phrase exaltavit humiles = "He has lifted up the humble" from Mary's Magnificat [Lk 1:52] Today, we see in this same scene another verse from the same context, but this time about another fairy tale:

There is the chivalrous lesson of "Jack the Giant Killer"; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such.
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:253]

I have just one more item to present, and it ties off both the Blatchford matter as well as the one I alluded to with the excerpt from The Well and the Shallows, and yet unites the sense of the manly character - the Power of the Man - to that necessary trait of Christianity which gives us the term "Church Militant": the idea that we Christians (both male and female) are at War - with "the world, the flesh and the devil":

These can be called the essentials of the old orthodoxy, of which the chief merit is that it is the natural fountain of revolution and reform; and of which the chief defect is that it is obviously only an abstract assertion. Its main advantage is that it is the most adventurous and manly of all theologies. Its chief disadvantage is simply that it is a theology. It can always be urged against it that it is in its nature arbitrary and in the air. But it is not so high in the air but that great archers spend their whole lives in shooting arrows at it - yes, and their last arrows; there are men who will ruin themselves and ruin their civilization if they may ruin also this old fantastic tale. This is the last and most astounding fact about this faith; that its enemies will use any weapon against it, the swords that cut their own fingers, and the firebrands that burn their own homes. Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church. This is no exaggeration; I could fill a book with the instances of it. Mr. Blatchford set out, as an ordinary Bible-smasher, to prove that Adam was guiltless of sin against God; in manoeuvring so as to maintain this he admitted, as a mere side issue, that all the tyrants, from Nero to King Leopold, were guiltless of any sin against humanity.
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:343-4]

Mary: Queen of Science, Queen of Fairy Tales

2010-10-28T10:52:00.002-04:00

With this essay - and indeed with the next several - I shall be getting into hotter and hotter water. Of course we know what Chesterton said about that:

I believe in getting into hot water. I think it keeps you clean.
[GKC ILN March 10 1907 CW27:142]

And, as you may be able to tell from my title, this will be some very hot water, since it will get into two extremely debated matters: Mary and Science.

Last week we touched upon the Incarnation. Mary spoke twice in that scene, and we barely treated her last words, her fiat, the greatest message of all time. Today, we shall touch her first line - "How can this be?" in order to proceed into the next scene, that of the Visitation.

That question - "How can this be?" - which is not so much a challenge as a request for details, suggests something quite scientific to me. But for now I will defer a lengthy discussion, since there is far more lengthy matters to address. I shall also defer an examination of Father Jaki's insights into the liturgical connections between the Annunciation and the Visitation, and how a change to the schedule (as unwieldy as it would undoubtedly be to implement) would aid in addressing the grave evils of today, namely, abortion. (If you wish to know about this, see his essay "Christ, Catholics and Abortion" which appeared in Homiletic and Pastoral Review 85/6 (March 1985), pp. 7-15, and was reprinted in SLJ's collection Catholic Essays.) However, I must bring up a certain aspect of his discussion, which somehow escapes observation, and we as Chestertonians know how critical it is to see clearly. I will give you Fr. Jaki's own words:

As for Mary's "proceeding in haste," the Greek spoudazein leaves no room for any slowness or tarrying. What St. Luke says implies therefore that at most a few days after the Angel's visit to her, Mary was on the road. Since quite possibly she traveled on a donkey, the less than a hundred miles from Nazareth to Ain Karim could not have taken her more than ten days.
[SLJ Catholic Essays 67 citing Lk 1:39]

There is something dramatic about that, and it forms the first part of my exploration.

Science, alas, is so misunderstood these days, and it seems to parallel the misunderstanding of Christianity, since the errors fall on both the "too much" and the "too little" sides - but we are not arguing that matter here. Science is, however, a difficult topic to address "in the large" and has been so for some seven centuries, if not longer. Scholars such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Hugh of St. Victor, and Henry of Langenstein considered ways of organizing the various disciplines, and as recently as the 1850s we find Blessed John Newman examining the place of the sciences in a Catholic University. Again we cannot deal with this important topic today - though we are now much closer to my topic!

You see, we all "know" what science is, right? We might even have a popular song about it:

Lab coats and test tubes and monkeys in cages
Radar and radon and stained notebook pages,
Oceans and stars and the tension of springs:
These are a few of a scientist's things...

Ahem. (Or would you prefer a chorus of "How Do you Solve a Problem like Maria"? Hee hee.)

But just what does "science" mean?

You can find this written up in various places, but I would like to try it another way. Science really consists of two parts, and you don't need a lab coat for either one. The first is the humility to stare in contemplation of That Which Is Real, observing it as best you can, in every way that you can - for by that means you will acquire the truth. (Note, this means you have your EYES WIDE OPEN. You are not navel-gazing. See GKC for more on that in Orthodoxy CW1:336. I must report that the same matter is indirectly examined in Jaki's Science and Creation.) Granted you may need to build tools to see more, and perhaps you might need to wear a lab coat - but the point is that you are LOOKING at the Real World, and not into your own imagination.

And the second part is this. Once you have found truth, you must be its apostle, that is, to Go Forth and Teach: to proclaim the truth you have found. It's not "science" until it is taught to another. This might happen by your writing careful notes, or by a journal article, or by a public lecture, by a doctoral dissertation and its defense, or even by teaching your children about the stars and the trees. But when one has "done" science, it is a DISCOVERY - and a discovery isn't really a discovery until others know about it. (We could veer off here and examine this further, but this isn't the time for that.)

It seems to me very fitting that the scene of the Visitation should present something of that drama of science: Mary knew something, and there was only one other person who could conceivably (no pun intended) be able to handle the topic: her cousin Elizabeth.

By this point you are wondering where Chesterton comes in. The problem is that, as in the case of the Annunciation, GKC doesn't mention the Visitation explicitly, though he gets at it another way, as you shall shortly see. I happened to investigate GKC's use of the word "Elizabeth" and in over 400 appearances, it never refers to the mother of John the Baptist. It was actually funny to think how strange someone who relies on "word search engines" (or whatever they are called) would feel when he comes across a sentence like "It seems highly probable that Elizabeth did not plot to kill Mary." [GKC The Thing CW3:291] but in that instance the names refer to English political figures, not biblical ones.

You can say that this idea of proclaiming your science begins to smack of popular journalism, if not mere advertising, and not the dignified intellectual thing which the lab-coat-clad scientists mean by "Publication of One's Results". But then they are really the same thing, and a good thing, too. This is what our Lord wanted when He told his disciples to "Go Forth and Proclaim the Good News". Or, if you like a more dramatic touch, see St. Paul writing to the Romans:

How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? [Rom 10:14]

It is strange to report that in Mary's case, her news was received even as she greeted her cousin:

And it came to pass that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the infant leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost. And she cried out with a loud voice and said: Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. [Lk 1:41-44, emphasis added]

As you will note from the emphasized words, Elizabeth was aware of Mary's discovery, which would have otherwise been impossible. A pregnancy of a few days is hardly detectable even now.

Now you will say (again) where is Chesterton in all this? I think you have missed my point about the journalism and the reporting - and possibly you have missed the point about the nature of evangelism, which is one of the great links between science and religion. Besides, if this isn't working, you will find it even more difficult to delve into the next part of this amazing matter, which links science to fairy tales.

Of course, you think to yourself, this must be connected with that chapter called "The Ethics of Elfland" which Martin Gardner reprinted under the title "The Logic of Elfland" in his 1957 collection called Great Essays in Science. (See Jaki's Chesterton a Seer of Science for more on this.) Or you are pretending that (as so many people do these days) that science really is magic, or magical - or something beyond human understanding. I can't go into why that is wrong, and how grave an error Arthur C. Clarke committed in his epigram about the indistinguishability of technology and magic. (Rather, I won't do it here and now, as I have already written it, and please God it will get published soon.)

But there is more, and I am going to tell you about it, for this is where Chesterton's powerful insight comes into play. And indeed you are right, it starts with GKC's writing excerpted by Gardner, of which this is the critical part for us today:

But I deal here with what ethic and philosophy come from being fed on fairy tales. If I were describing them in detail I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise from them. There is the chivalrous lesson of "Jack the Giant Killer"; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. For the rebel is older than all the kingdoms, and the Jacobin has more tradition than the Jacobite. There is the lesson of "Cinderella," which is the same as that of the Magnificat exaltavit humiles. There is the great lesson of "Beauty and the Beast"; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the "Sleeping Beauty," which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep.
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:253]

Here, here, here, as Martin Gardner (may he rest in peace) discerned, is True Science. Here is the great link from ancient childhood fairy tale to modern mature technology - and it is found in the scene we are examining today.

For in this simple Latin phrase, "exaltavit humiles" which means "He has lifted up the humble." [Lk 1:52] we find the mystery of science itself: You can only have Science if you specifically choose to be humble and submissive before Reality. (Otherwise you have a lie, and things will quickly become distorted and broken and useless.)

This idea comes up in other places, and Chesterton remarks upon them. The obvious corollary is this:

The statement that the meek shall inherit the earth [Mt 5:4] is very far from being a meek statement. I mean it is not meek in the ordinary sense of mild and moderate and inoffensive. To justify it, it would be necessary to go very deep into history and anticipate things undreamed of then [at the time of the Sermon on the Mount, that is] and by many unrealised even now; such as the way in which the mystical monks reclaimed the lands which the practical kings had lost. If it was a truth at all, it was because it was a prophecy. But certainly it was not a truth in the sense of a truism. The blessing upon the meek would seem to be a very violent statement; in the sense of doing violence to reason and probability. And with this we come to another important stage in the speculation. As a prophecy it really was fulfilled; but it was only fulfilled long afterwards. The monasteries were the most practical and prosperous estates and experiments in reconstruction after the barbaric deluge; the meek did really inherit the earth.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:323-4]

Perhaps that was an aside, but it seems to me that it helps to understand the paradox we are considering.

That fragment from Orthodoxy, written some 14 years before GKC became a Catholic, is not the only place where GKC considers the matter. Here is a more enlarged view, written after his conversion:

[My idea is that] what represents good in this world must be first concrete and second compact. The idealists and the professors of abstractions can never understand it being concrete. The imperialists and the greedy megalomaniacs can never understand it being compact. The pearl of great price, in the parable, is as valuable as a field or a kingdom, but it is not as vast as a field or a kingdom. On the other hand, it is quite a mistake to suppose that because it is not more vast than the field, it is not more solid than the sky. The pearl is a possession, it is a positive and solid thing, it is an incomparably precious and priceless thing, only it is a small thing. But a thing; not a theory. And here indeed my thoughts began to drift towards deeper parallels where I dare hardly follow them, or at any rate follow them here; for the great supreme riddle or mystery which concentrates on that high place, or gathers against that citadel, in sunlight and lightening, all the blessings and curses of the world, is indeed the doctrine that what is most divine does truly offer itself as something as material and as small. Perhaps a truly great thing always tries to grow small; and there is hidden here a mystery of microscopic ambition. For though the Magnificat magnifies the Lord, it is only just after the Lord has minimized Himself. And there is here a mansion within a mansion, a new Bethlehem or House of Bread, and in the smallest of the tabernacles something yet a little more than a child.
[GKC The Resurrection of Rome CW21:445]

There is another, and far more mystical reference to the matter. I fear it will be misunderstood, but I give it to you anyway:

Thus, the first thing that such people will probably tell you today is that Christmas is really a Pagan festival; because many traditional features of it were taken from Pagans. What they do not seem to see is that, in so far as this is in any sense true, it only proves that the ancient Pagans were much more sensible than the modern Pagans. There are many psychological truths about such a human habit, which are hidden from those who talk day and night about psychology; but who do not really care about any psychology except what they call the psychology of salesmanship. The old Pagans knew that such a ritual must be old, that it must be religious, that it must be concerned fundamentally with simple elements like wood or water or fire, but that it must also be, in a queer way of its own, revolutionary: exalting the humble or putting down the mighty from their seat. That was expressed in a hundred ways, both among heathens and Christians. The Saturnalia was made for a society of slaves; but it gave one wild holiday to those slaves. The medieval Christmas had to exist in a feudal society; but all its carols and legends told again and again a story in which angels spoke to shepherds and a devil inspired a king. An ancient revolt is enshrined in an ancient ritual. Now the reason why Christianity found it quite easy to absorb these Pagan customs is that they were in this way almost Christian customs. The man who does not see that the Saturnalia was almost Christian is a man who has never read the Magnificat.
[GKC "The Winter Feast" in The Apostle and the Wild Ducks]

Ah, but Doctor, just what does that have to do with Science, you ask.

Well... I hesitate to present this, since it is dramatic, and I feel something lies unstudied here, something which Father Jaki would thrill to pursue. Yet such is Science... there will always be more. So please read this and see for yourself:

Science boasts of being based on Nature; and Protestants, when they were Protestants, boasted of being based on the Bible. Christian Rome boasts of being built on Pagan Rome; or surmounting and transcending, but also of preserving it. From the thousand carven throats of the city, from the hollow wreathing horns of the Tritons, from the golden mouths of the trumpets, from the jaws of flamboyant lions and the lips of rhetorical attitudinizing statues, from everything that can be imagined to speak or testify, there is as it were one solid silent roar of exultation and victory: "We have saved Old Rome; we have resurrected Old Rome; we have resurrected Pagan Rome, save that it is more Roman for not being Pagan." There is no question of hiding the connection between the two epochs; the new epoch emphasizes every point at which it touches the old. Nearly every Christian Church is carefully built on the site of a Pagan temple. In one place it distinguishes a particular church by combining the name of Maria with that of Minerva. In another place it preserves the seven niches of the Pagan Planets for seven corresponding Christian Saints. Up on the rock of the Ara Coeli the little broken altar of the temple of Augustus is carefully preserved, like a relic, inside the larger Christian building; that men may remember how even a heathen looked in that place for an altar of heaven. There is no question of the Church disguising Pagan ideas as Christian ideas, for there never was any disguise about the matter. The heathen things the Church preserved she preserved openly. The heathen things she destroyed she destroyed openly. If on the whole she destroyed first and preserved afterwards there was a frank and rational reason, as we shall see. And she preserved some things and destroyed others for a reason which these dismal rationalists cannot use their reason enough to understand. Science finds its facts in Nature, but Science is not Nature; because Science has coordinated ideas, interpretations and analyses; and can say of Nature what Nature cannot say for itself. The Faith finds its facts and problems in humanity, even heathen humanity; but the Faith is not merely humanity; because it brings to it principles of life and order and understanding, and comprehends humanity as humanity cannot comprehend itself.
[GKC The Resurrection of Rome 357-8]

What is the revolt in Science? GKC said it simply: Science can say of Nature what Nature cannot say for itself. Such is the result of that other phrase from Mary's canticle, which GKC considers elsewhere, and which I shall leave you to ponder:

The meaning of "Cinderella" is something infinitely deeper and more elemental than any cheap formula of the dignity of modern labour or the value of Smiles and Self-help; it is a cry out of the ancestral heart of humanity. It is one of those cries so profoundly common that only religion has answered it. It is one of those things so human that nothing but the superhuman will satisfy it. "Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles." Cinderella is not set high because she is industrious; she is set high because she is low, or, at any rate, because she is lowly. The ugly sisters are not put down because they are idle; they are put down because they are up; at any rate, because they are uppish. When men are enraged against tyrants, it is always and most justly against their pride, which is a sin - not against their misgovernment, which may be an accident. Well, here is an instance of the difficulties of ethical instruction. "Cinderella" seems a piece of very ordinary nursery gossip. "He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek": surely that might be called simple Bible teaching.
[GKC ILN Jan 26 1907 CW27:384 citing Luke 1:52]

A Bit of Latin: atqui sciebat

2010-10-26T10:21:00.002-04:00

Today let us see how GKC uses a line from Horace. Horace, you may know, wrote a number of Odes, those odd Latin rhymeless poems. You may recognize several famous phrases which come from Horace: carpe diem, in medias res, aurea mediocritas, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori and others. One which I particularly enjoy - and which it is said applied to our Mr. Chesterton - is parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus: "The mountains labor, it gives birth to a ridiculous mouse", which was proposed as an allegory on the discrepancy between GKC's size and his voice.

Today, let's see a very curious phrase from Horace's Ode 5 in Book III, which says:

Atqui sciebat quae sibi barbarus totor pararet

that is:

Nevertheless he knew what the barbarian torturer was preparing for him.

This may sound a bit strange, but it refers to a Roman hero named Regulus. He was captured by the Carthaginians during the Punic War and released as an emissary to the Roman Senate to plead a peace treaty. Instead Regulus argued against this, urging the Senate to work until Carthage was destroyed. He nobly returned to captivity, knowing full well what his fate would be at the hands of Carthage...

We might, if we had time, examine this interesting topic of Rome and Carthage and the Punic Wars, which (even more than America's Civil War) people have discussed for more than two millennia. We must also recall that for GKC, Carthage symbolises a "certain attitude about children" which is still prevalent in our world... but we shall consider that under another article. (See his discussion in "The War of the Gods and Demons" in The Everlasting Man if you wish to know more.) But let us return to today's excerpt.

It appears in an interesting context, which was printed just a little over exactly one hundred years ago, in one of Chesterton's amazing critques of the disciplines. Father Jaki, the great historian of science, might have just as readily written a book titled Chesterton a Seer of History, and perhaps someone ought to try it. This essay is a great starting point:

We most of us suffer much from having learnt all our lessons in history from those little abridged history-books in use in most public and private schools. These lessons are insufficient - especially when you don't learn them. The latter was indeed my own case; and the little history I know I have picked up since by rambling about in authentic books and countrysides. But the bald summaries of the small history-books still master and, in many cases, mislead us. The root of the difficulty is this: that there are two quite distinct purposes of history; the superior purpose, which is its use for children; and the secondary or inferior purpose, which is its use for historians. The highest and noblest thing that history can be is a good story. Then it appeals to the heroic heart of all generations, the eternal infancy of mankind. Such a story as that of William Tell could literally be told of any epoch; no barbarian implements could be too rude, no scientific instruments could be too elaborate for the pride and terror of the tale. It might be told of the first flint-headed arrow or the last model machine-gun; the point of it is the same: it is as eternal as tyranny and fatherhood. Now, wherever there is this function of the fine story in history we tell it to children only because it is a fine story. David and the cup of water, Regulus and the atqui sciebat, Jeanne d'Arc kissing the cross of spear-wood, or Nelson shot with all his stars - these stir in every child the ancient heart of his race; and that is all that they need do. Changes of costume and local colour are nothing: it did not matter that in the illustrated Bibles of our youth David was dressed rather like Regulus, in a Roman cuirass and sandals, any more than it mattered that in the illuminated Bibles of the Middle Ages he was dressed rather like Jeanne d'Arc, in a hood or a visored helmet. It will not matter to future ages if the pictures represent Jeanne d'Arc cremated in an asbestos stove or Nelson dying in a top-hat. For the childish and eternal use of history, the history will still be heroic.
[GKC ILN October 8 1910 CW28:609-10]

There is one other, a rather passing allusion, but I give it to show how GKC used it in another medium:

SWIFT: Mr. Wilkes, I heard you remark that you were not a coward. I am very willing to believe it; but I may have the occasion to ask you to prove it.
WILKES (standing up): Sir, I am firm as Regulus. Do you propose to read me one of your own pamphlets? Atqui sciebat quad sibi barbarus - Well though he knew of what an American is capable -
[GKC The Judgement of Dr. Johnson CW11:255]

Clearly fighting words... but you will need to read the play (or see it staged) if you desire to know more.

GKC's rhymeless "poem"

2010-10-25T09:57:00.002-04:00

Some time ago someone asked Does Anyone Care About Poetry?

And apparently someone does.

Someone - a disbeliever, alas - was wondering about the "poem" Chesterton wrote which did not rhyme. I know how odd that sounds - but he did, and it's hilarious. I posted it quite some time ago, and I expect you might find it else where - but here is the link again in case you lost it.

Just to counterbalance, here are two of my favorites of his which DO rhyme.

Alpha and Omega - and Omicron?

2010-10-21T10:47:00.002-04:00

Oh my. (hee hee!) Although I try to plan things in advance it often seems futile. However, every so often things do work out to form some mystical pattern, far greater than even I could imagine. (I speak as both a computer scientist and as a writer of fiction.) For example: I just checked the calendar, and after today there are exactly NINE Thursdays until Christmas. This numerical synchrony to the usual period of human gestation will permit a handy way of dealing with the various matters of the Gospels from the time of the Annunciation up to the time of the Nativity. At first this nine-week "novena" of Thursdays may seem far too short. It is - I admit it. In fact, in beginning to gather my thoughts about the Incarnation and Chesterton's own comments about it, I decided that there could be an entire book on just this one topic... There is so much work to do, yes.

But let us proceed.

If you count today you see there are ten weeks. That is in keeping with the usual designation, seen in both the Bible (e.g. Wisdom 7:2) and in modern science:

The average time for delivery is ten lunar months, or 280 days.
[Arey, Developmental Anatomy 105]

Granted, by application of the "fencepost" rule (an important dictum of computer science) today's essay ought to represent the Incarnation, and thus in ten weeks, the 30th of December, I should address the Birth itself - and so that shall be my plan.

(I am fully aware that there are gospel events which precede the Incarnation - that is, the Annunciation. Specifically, there is the "lesser annunciation" to Zachariah about John the Baptist... but I shall address this in one of the weeks to come.)

But here I must note a curious thing: as far as I am able to discern, Chesterton does not mention the Annunciation itself directly, though this comes very close:

...the cult of Mary is in a rather peculiar sense a personal cult; over and above that greater sense that must always attach to the worship of a personal God. God is God, Maker of all things visible and invisible; the Mother of God is in a rather special sense connected with things visible; since she is of this earth, and through her bodily being God was revealed to the senses. In the presence of God, we must remember what is invisible, even in the sense of what is merely intellectual; the abstractions and the absolute laws of thought; the love of truth, and the respect for right reason and honourable logic in things, which God himself has respected. For, as St. Thomas Aquinas insists, God himself does not contradict the law of contradiction. But Our Lady, reminding us especially of God Incarnate, does in some degree gather up and embody all those elements of the heart and the higher instincts, which are the legitimate short cuts to the love of God. Dealing with those personal feelings, even in this rude and curt outline, is therefore very far from easy.
[GKC The Well and the Shallows CW3:461]

Of course I may have missed some allusion - it is easy enough to do. But there does not seem to be any literal statement about Gabriel or Mary - or even some allusion to her fiat voluntas tua. There are, however, plenty of allusions, direct and indirect, to the Incarnation: that is, to the Great Mystery that God was Made Man, which is what the Incarnation means, and which happened directly upon Mary's affirmation to Gabriel by her fiat.

Obviously, this is significant - or at least in one particular way it is. It seems to be an application of GKC's own rules about secrecy, which I have mentioned often. [see GKC ILN Aug 10 1907 CW27:523 et seq] But it is also another part of his technique, wherein he resembles the Gospel of St. John: that is, he omits things others have written, and discourses on things others have neglected. Of course it is possible that he hesitated to address this great event, perhaps from some personal delicacy, or for some other mystical reason - but for now, let us decide that he has addressed it by his grand and powerful comments about the Incarnation which you will find scattered all over his many books and essays.

The Annunciation is indeed a mystery which makes even a bold and adventurous writer hesitate. However! Listen to this:

...the event [of the Incarnation] had fulfilled not merely the mysticism but the materialism of mythology. Mythology had many sins; but it had not been wrong in being as carnal as the Incarnation.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:308]

I am aware that you will say, "but that is from his Christmas chapter! Yes, indeed. But you see Christmas is predicated upon the Annunciation! Predicated in the most full and complete sense, not merely grammatical nor logical. We do often confuse the term, and call Christmas the "feast of the Incarnation" - but we are not being abortionists here; we are not pretending that God was made man in the cave of Bethlehem. He was visible there for the first time, yes - and that is what follows in GKC's very next line. And here we understand a bit of GKC's hesitancy. The Annunciation was of a mystical privacy: it concerned Mary alone, and even Gabriel - that high angel, chosen to carry the greatest message ever to exist in all of literature or information processing - yes, even Gabriel was abased to be a "medium" - the air which shakes with a voice, a paper and ink, or a telephone wire or a radio wave... It was not Gabriel who accomplished anything on that day, and he would be first to admit it! We do not understand the poetry of joy in the inanimate, or grasp how air or a paper or a wire or an energy wave might rejoice in its service to the Laws which God arranged for its existence... but here we see an Angel, at the other end of the scale of Being, acting merely as a phone line or a telegram form or a piece of stationery - to act for God, and rejoicing to serve, even in this lowly manner. But also, and here is indeed the great mystery - he was also privileged to act for Mary. It was not God's invitation which was the great message he was to carry. No. It was her fiat - her acceptance. No other message in all the cosmos has, or can have, such importance. Now you understand why I said Christmas was predicated upon the Annunciation.

I might as well give up here. This sort of digression into Praise of the Media could form yet another book, even if all I do is quote and comment on Chesterton's own thoughts. Ah, Doctor, you say: but didn't GKC speak against Fleet Street? (That is the famous London thoroughfare of newspapers and printing houses. When you see GKC say "Fleet Street" you might understand it as we now say "The Media".) Well - only in the sense that a greater writer - St. James - spoke against the wrongful uses of the tongue, that is, of human speech. The mystery of speech, like that of writing and print, is a great gift - why else did God make lies sinful? (And even there we know that fiction is permitted! You see how vast a topic this opens - and indeed we shall hear more on it.)

But let me try to return to the topic... and let me try to find a text other than The Everlasting Man which we shall be mining steadily as time goes on - indeed there are many, as I told you. Behold this remarkable excerpt:

...it is best perhaps to take in illustration some daily custom we have all heard despised as vulgar or trite. Take, for the sake of argument, the custom of talking about the weather. Stevenson calls it "the very nadir and scoff of good conversationalists." Now there are very deep reasons for talking about the weather, reasons that are delicate as well as deep; they lie in layer upon layer of stratified sagacity. First of all it is a gesture of primeval worship. The sky must be invoked; and to begin everything with the weather is a sort of pagan way of beginning everything with prayer. Jones and Brown talk about the weather: but so do Milton and Shelley. Then it is an expression of that elementary idea in politeness -equality. For the very word politeness is only the Greek for citizenship. The word politeness is akin to the word policeman: a charming thought. Properly understood, the citizen should be more polite than the gentleman; perhaps the policeman should be the most courtly and elegant of the three. But all good manners must obviously begin with the sharing of something in a simple style. Two men should share an umbrella; if they have not got an umbrella, they should at least share the rain, with all its rich potentialities of wit and philosophy. "For He maketh His sun to shine..." [Mt 5:45] This is the second element in the weather; its recognition of human equality in that we all have our hats under the dark blue spangled umbrella of the universe. Arising out of this is the third wholesome strain in the custom; I mean that it begins with the body and with our inevitable bodily brotherhood. All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. Those who will not begin at the bodily end of things are already prigs and may soon be Christian Scientists. Each human soul has in a sense to enact for itself the gigantic humility of the Incarnation. Every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind.
[GKC What's Wrong With the World CW4:93-4]

Next time you hear someone say "a fine day" or "looks like rain" or any such thing - please recall this excerpt, and then you will feel a surge of mystic emotion as you also touch the mystery of the Annunciation: you have acted like God, descending into the flesh to meet mankind! Oh, why is there no poem, no hymn, on this? Is it that this is too terrifying? Or is it that we have not yet begun to love our neighbor as ourselves?

I gave this essay a very strange title, since I happened one day to start chuckling about the hilarious "metric system" letters of the Greek alphabet, and as I thought about the Incarnation, I happened to see a curious truth. Now, you no doubt know that our Lord says "I am the Alpha and Omega" in Apocalypse/Revelation - three times, in 1:8, 21:6 and 22:13. You may also know that unlike English, the Greek letters have their own spelling: in a curiously Chestertonian paradox those letters are also WORDS. We rarely "spell" our letters, but the Greeks do: the thing that looks like A is spelled "alpha" and the circle with a horizontal bar is spelled "theta" - the one GKC called Saturn [Autobiography CW 16:60] Now there is something very curious about this particular title of our Lord... the odd fact that in the Greek, the first letter is spelled out, but the last letter merely stands by itself. Incidentally, in all three cases, the two letters have the Greek article: thus our Lord's phrase might be written "I am the alpha and the (big) O."

Ah, the Big O. Yes, this is the meaning of the letter omega. We who are scientists hear the metric prefix "mega" meaning a million or 10⁶, and you may have heard it in the form of "megabytes" or other such things.

Now, if you are a child (or at least childlike) you will undoubtedly ask "if there is a Big O, is there also a Little O?" Yes, there is - and it is called omicron. Here you find the opposite metric prefix, "micro" meaning a millionth, or 10^–6.

What does this have to do with anything? Is this somehow a prelude to a "Metric Christ"? Well... yes, in a sense. Aristotle (or some other Greek) speaks of man as the metron, the measure - as GKC says "Man is the microcosm; man is the measure of all things; man is the image of God." [TEM CW2:167] And this idea of measure is some of the reason behind the ISO and the metric system and all that. It means a consistent way of dealing with reality:

A man might measure heaven and earth with a reed, but not with a growing reed.
[GKC Heretics CW1:117, see Ezechiel 40:3 et seq]

But now, because of the Incarnation, there is something more in this truth: something which does not destroy measure, but ratifies it:

...there is a permanent human ideal that must not be either confused or destroyed. The most important man on earth is the perfect man who is not there. The Christian religion has specially uttered the ultimate sanity of Man, says Scripture, who shall judge the incarnate and human truth. Our lives and laws are not judged by divine superiority, but simply by human perfection. It is man, says Aristotle, who is the measure. It is the Son of Man, says Scripture, who shall judge the quick and the dead.
[GKC What's Wrong With the World CW4:51]

I am not done. God help me, I hope I shall never be done... I may know the truth of A* (the symbol from computer science which collects all possible finite strings formed from a finite alphabet) - and yet hope for Heaven to use them to proclaim the wonders of the Incarnation. And you thought I was a verbose writer, a producer of lengthy blogg-postings? Indeed, I am, but there is good reason for it. I may have used the word "unspeakable" - but it merely stands for a helplessness of trying to compress many thoughts into words which another can read. It is not philosophy but science: we are also evangelists, our discipline compels us to proclaim the truths we have acquired at such labor and cost. Imagine, then my shock as I discover that this also has been declared by Chesterton, and likewise bound to my topic! It is true, and I shall leave you with it to meditate upon:

Whenever you hear of things being unutterable and indefinable and impalpable and unnameable and subtly indescribable, then elevate your aristocratic nose towards heaven and snuff up the smell of decay. It is perfectly true that there is something in all good things that is beyond all speech or figure of speech. But it is also true that there is in all good things a perpetual desire for expression and concrete embodiment; and though the attempt to embody it is always inadequate, the attempt is always made. If the idea does not seek to be the word, the chances are that it is an evil idea. If the word is not made flesh it is a bad word.

Thus Giotto or Fra Angelico would have at once admitted theologically that God was too good to be painted; but they would always try to paint Him. And they felt (very rightly) that representing Him as a rather quaint old man with a gold crown and a white beard, like a king of the elves, was less profane than resisting the sacred impulse to express Him in some way. That is why the Christian world is full of gaudy pictures and twisted statues which seem, to many refined persons, more blasphemous than the secret volumes of an atheist. The trend of good is always towards Incarnation. But, on the other hand, those refined thinkers who worship the Devil, whether in the swamps of Jamaica or the salons of Paris, always insist upon the shapelessness, the wordlessness, the unutterable character of the abomination. They call him "horror of emptiness," as did the black witch in Stevenson's Dynamiter; they worship him as the unspeakable name; as the unbearable silence. They think of him as the unbearable silence. They think of him as the void in the heart of the whirlwind; the cloud on the brain of the maniac; the toppling turrets of vertigo or the endless corridors of nightmare. It was the Christians who gave the Devil a grotesque and energetic outline, with sharp horns and spiked tail. It was the saints who drew Satan as comic and even lively. The Satanists never drew him at all.
[GKC "The Mystagogue" in A Miscellany of Men]

A Bit of Latin: sic itur ad astra

2010-10-19T09:55:00.002-04:00

Today we again find Chesterton quoting Virgil's Aeneid. It is not an easy book to read - I (alas) read it in an English translation, as I am far from fluent in reading Latin. But even so - it is WORTH your time to read Virgil - just as it is worth your time to read Homer or Dante, in translations, even insipid translations.

Today's phrase is just four words: sic itur ad astra. The literal translation is something like "Thus, (the) way/journey to (the) stars". I have two or three other references but they are pebbles compared to the jewel I have to offer you today. Oh yes! Oh how I look forward to the day whenI might cross the Atlantic and visit those twin islands - and chief among my visits must be to the place Chesterton adorns with these glorious words. Indeed - he gives a dramatic and powerful translation of Virgil - one which magically beckons to me from across the Atlantic. It is a lengthy quote, but such a glorious jewel deserves this grand setting. Please read it slowly, with your imaginator turned up to eleven (or as high as yours may go):

The beauty of Edinburgh as a city is absolutely individual, and consists in one separate atmosphere and one separate class of qualities. It consists chiefly in a quality that may be called "abruptness", an unexpected alternation of heights and depths. It seems like a city built on precipices; a perilous city. Although the actual ridges and valleys are not (of course) really very high or very
deep, they stand up like strong cliffs; they fall like open chasms. There are turns of the steep street that take the breath away like a literal abyss. There are thoroughfares, full, busy and lined with shops, which yet give the emotion of an Alpine stair. It is, in the only adequate word for it, a sudden city. Great roads rush down hills like rivers in spate. Great buildings rush up like rockets. But the sensation produced by this violent variety of levels is one even more complex and bizarre. It is partly owing to the aforesaid variety, the high and low platform of the place. It is partly owing to the hundred veils of the vaporous atmosphere, which make the earth itself look like the sky, as if the town were hung in heaven, descending like the New Jerusalem.

But the impression is odd and even eerie; it is sometimes difficult for a man to shake off the suggestion that each road is a bridge over the other roads, as if he were really rising by continual stages higher and higher through the air. He fancies he is on some open scaffolding of streets, scaling the sky. He almost imagines that, if he lifted a paving-stone, he might look down through the opening, and see the
moon. This weird sense of the city as a sort of starry ladder has so often come upon me when climbing the Edinburgh ways in cloudy weather that I have been tempted to wonder whether any of the old men of the town were thinking of the experience when they chose the strange and splendid motto of the Scotch capital. Never, certainly, did a great city have a heraldic motto which was so atmospherically accurate. It might have been invented by a poet - I might almost say by a landscape painter. The motto of Edinburgh, as you may still see it, I think, carved over the old Castle gate is, "Sic Itur ad Astra": "This Way to the Stars."

This element in a city is not a mere local oddity, or even a mere local charm. This abrupt sublimity, this sharp and decisive dignity, is in some sense the essential element of a city which is a city at all. The true nature of civic beauty is extraordinarily little understood in our own time.
[GKC "The Way to the Stars" in Lunacy and Letters]

Beginning a New Series: GKC on the Gospels

2010-10-14T10:03:00.002-04:00

So... it's Thursday and you are wondering - will Dr. Thursday be continuing his weekly columns now that the ACS blogg is gone?

Well, I cannot promise anything about the future. But I have several plans. Two different Chesterton series for this blogg - no, I ought to be realistic. I have considered one, which might be titled "GKC on the Gospels" - a kind of slovenly Diatesseron knit together from GKC's own works. Don't you just delight in that word "Diatesseron"? It is merely a fancy Greek-rooted term meaning "Through the Four" - that is, the four Gospels. I don't mean to perform the same task as Aquinas in his Catena Aurea, which links annotations from throughout the Church Fathers to the entire four Gospels; GKC never planned on accomplishing such a thorough commentary, but then again we may be surprised once we get started. Nevertheless, I don't actually expect to find coverage for the entire Gospel story, but there is plenty of material. Curiously, it divides quite elegantly along the seams of the OTHER four: the four sets of Mysteries of the Holy Rosary: the birth, the public life, the passion - and what comes afterwards. But only God knows if I will be able to get very far, it is very ambitious, and deserves someone with more time than I have. But at least I will start... So let us begin, as the Holy Mass once did, and always ought to, with that great scientific invocation for divine assistance:

V. Adjutorium nostrum + in nomine Domini.
R. Qui fecit caelum et terram.

Where, then, among the Four should I begin?

Hm... if I use that high-tech reference of Professor Dodgson and begin at the beginning... that is, I begin with the first chapter of the first Gospel - ah, the genealogy according to Matthew. It starts with Abraham and descends, going forwards through history. There is another in Luke, which ascends - that is, it goes backwards, and continues the list all the way back to Adam, and thus to God. There is always some fuss about these when they come up during Holy Mass. There are a fair number of tongue-twisting names, and most of them are obscure. There are some conflicts; serious scholars (those who actually study things and not simply try to destroy them) think that there may be omissions. But we are not trying to get to that level of scholarship here - we are trying to see what Chesterton said - or might have said - about the Gospels. And in this particular case, I think he said something astounding - something I have quoted previously in other contexts, but I think applies in its utmost sense to this particular fragment of Christ's story:

"A Social Situation."
We must certainly be in a novel;
What I like about this novelist is that he takes such trouble about his minor characters.
[GKC "The Notebook" quoted by Maisie Ward in Gilbert Keith Chesterton 63]

Astounding. But then the thought within that mystic line is also borne out by a kind of parallel numismatic reference:

For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value in any of them is that they bear the image of the King.
[GKC Charles Dickens CW15:44]

In this case, we see a perfect Chestertonian inversion: from these genealogies we see that Christ the King bears the image of a long list of unknowns, of whom we now know nothing more than their names.

Certainly it is paradoxical that we find the great names like Abraham or David along with the total unknowns. We find clear sinners - again like David - and we get glimpses of the intrusion of world history, like those linked to "the time of the Babylonian Captivity".

But let us apply the usual scheme of Chestertonian optics - let us "zoom out" to see what else is in our view when we think of genealogy. Why - look at this!

It is curious that the romance of race should be spoken of as if it were a thing peculiarly aristocratic; that admiration for rank, or interest in family, should mean only interest in one not very interesting type of rank and family. The truth is that aristocrats exhibit less of the romance of pedigree than any other people in the world. For since it is their principle to marry only within their own class and mode of life, there is no opportunity in their case for any of the more interesting studies in heredity; they exhibit almost the unbroken uniformity of the lower animals. It is in the middle classes that we find the poetry of genealogy; it is the suburban grocer standing at his shop door whom some wild dash of Eastern or Celtic blood may drive suddenly to a whole holiday or a crime.
[GKC Robert Browning 7-8]

You know I am no lit'ry scholar, but I do read. And just a week or so ago I happened to look up a famous line from a Sherlock Holmes story for use in my Saga:

Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.
[ACD "The Greek Interpreter" in Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes]

There is hint of the same thing in Tolkien's The Hobbit - I don't recall an elegant line to quote, but you may recall how it is suggested that the very common and ordinary and unadventurous Bilbo Baggins may have inherited something remarkable from his Took forebearers... I am not suggesting that Christ inherited something remarkable - unless you call it the trait of "Common Man"-liness. Then again, that quality is the most remarkable of all. It surely leads to adventures - as we shall see in future installments of this study.

Here is another, almost incredible view - one which links so AWESOMELY to some of my own present efforts:

But whether or no everybody ought to have a sword, I feel sure that everybody ought to have a shield; I mean in the sense of armorial bearings. Here again is an instance in which the great revolutionary movement erred in equalising by extinguishing instead of by extending. The real error of the feudal tradition was not in having too much heraldry, but in having too little. For, properly understood, heraldry is one of the simplest ideas of humanity. In a certain sense, indeed, heraldry is humanity. It is what Mr. H. G. Wells called mankind in the making; it is life considered as a tissue of births. The genealogical tree is really a most common or garden sort of tree. It is only the tree of life; a mere trifle. The feeling of interest in one's own family is one of the most natural and universal feelings; it has nothing particularly oligarchical, or even aristocratic about it. And when the philosophers discovered that all men were important, they ought obviously to have discovered that all families were important; and even that all pedigrees were important. Nor can I see any reason why the genealogical tree should not bear flowers as well as fruit; why there should not be colours and emblems and external beauty to express the variations of the social group. The art of heraldry degenerated because it was turned from a real art to a sham science.
[GKC ILN Jan 1 1921 CW32:154-5]

Again, we must never lose sight of the fact that while we must exalt the Common Man, we must simultaneously exalt the Common Family... it is that mystic tree which Chesterton proclaims:

If we are not of those who begin by invoking a divine Trinity, we must none the less invoke a human Trinity; and see that triangle repeated everywhere in the pattern of the world. For the highest event in history, to which all history looks forward and leads up, is only something that is at once the reversal and the renewal of that triangle. Or rather it is the one triangle superimposed so as to intersect the other, making a sacred pentacle of which, in a mightier sense than that of the magicians, the fiends are afraid. The old Trinity was of father and mother and child and is called the human family. The new is of child and mother and father and has the name of the Holy Family. It is in no way altered except in being entirely reversed; just as the world which is transformed was not in the least different, except in being turned upside-down.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:186-7]

It gives me a most profound emotion to remind you that in computer science we always draw our trees like family trees - that is, with the root at the top of the page.

There is another excerpt I wish to give - it carries some sense of its context, but is definitely worth your pondering:

I say that the society does not fit into any of our social classifications, liberal or conservative. To many Radicals this sense of lineage will appear rank reactionary aristocracy. And it is aristocratic, if we mean by this a pride of pedigree; but it is not aristocratic in the practical and political sense. Strange as it may sound, its practical effect is democratic. It is not aristocratic in the sense of creating an aristocracy. On the contrary, it is perhaps the one force that permanently prevents the creation of an aristocracy, in the manner of the English squirearchy. The reason of this apparent paradox can be put plainly enough in one sentence. If you are really concerned about your relations, you have to be concerned about your poor relations. You soon discover that a considerable number of your second cousins exhibit a strong social tendency to be chimney-sweeps and tinkers. You soon learn the lesson of human equality if you try honestly and consistently to learn any other lesson, even the lesson of heraldry and genealogy.
[GKC Irish Impressions]

But there really is one single idea which is suggested by these genealogies - an idea which (in the old translations) resides in the verb "begat", now given a new dignity by "was the father of". Of course this mystery is one of the Three Great Human Secrets GKC studies in his famous essay [ILN Aug 10 1907 CW27:523 et seq] - the secret which ALL know, and which I therefore need not mention literally. It happens to be a most argumentative matter, and GKC talks about it in several places - some of which we shall see eventually. (If you need one, please see The Well and the Shallows CW3:501-2.) But for our study today, I shall conclude with his introduction to that same book:

The explanation, or excuse, for this essay is to be found in a certain notion, which seems to me very obvious, but which I have never, as it happens, seen stated by anybody else. It happens rather to cut across the common frontiers of current controversy. It can be used for or against Democracy, according to whether that swear-word is or is not printed with a big D. It can be connected, like most things, with religion; but only rather indirectly with my own religion. It is primarily the recognition of a fact, quite apart from the approval or disapproval of the fact. But it does involve the assertion that what has really happened, in the modern world, is practically the precise contrary of what is supposed to have happened there.

The thesis is this: that modern emancipation has really been a new persecution of the Common Man. If it has emancipated anybody, it has in rather special and narrow ways emancipated the Uncommon Man. It has given an eccentric sort of liberty to some of the hobbies of the wealthy, and occasionally to some of the more humane lunacies of the cultured. The only thing that it has forbidden is common sense, as it would have been understood by the common people. Thus, if we begin with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we find that a man really has become more free to found a sect. But the Common Man does not in the least want to found a sect. He is much more likely, for instance, to want to found a family. And it is exactly there that the modern emancipators are quite likely to begin to frustrate him; in the name of Malthusianism or Eugenics or Sterilisation or at a more advanced stage of progress, probably, Infanticide. It would be a model of modern liberty to tell him that he might preach anything, however wild, about the Virgin Birth, so long as he avoided anything like a natural birth; and that he was welcome to build a tin chapel to preach a twopenny creed, entirely based on the text, "Enoch begat Methuselah", [Genesis 5:21] so long as he himself is forbidden to beget anybody. And, as a matter of historical fact, the sects which enjoyed this sectarian freedom, in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, were generally founded by merchants or manufacturers of the comfortable, and sometimes of the luxurious classes. On the other hand, it is strictly to the lower classes, to use the liberal modern title for the poor, that such schemes as Sterilisation are commonly directed and applied.
[GKC The Common Man 1-2]

A Bit of Latin: arma virumque

2010-10-12T09:32:00.003-04:00

I don't expect to be able to maintain this "Bit" posting with any regularity, but I promised this one back when I wrote on the ACS blogg, so here it is.

I seem to recall that I was talking about the name "Smith" (or rather GKC was), as I quoted that wonderful encomium from Heretics. Just for your reference, there is a parallel essay which appeared in The Daily News and was reprinted in The Apostle and the Wild Ducks, and in my notes I find there is a link on the topic in the essay "What I Found In My Pocket" (Gollum would be curious...) which is in Tremendous Trifles. Anyway, in both the AWD and the Heretics you will find GKC quoting these two Latin words: arma virumque.

If Virgil's Aeneid had been a papal encyclical, that would be its title, since those are the first two words of his epic tale... did you ever realize that the Aeneid is a SEQUEL to Homer? Oh yes. But let us just explain the words and leave the cross-links for another time.

Actually you need the third word in order to make sense. The first line is:

Arma virumque cano...

which means:

Arms and the man I sing...

The man, of course is Aeneas. If you need help you can get your local Latin scholar to explain about the accusative, and about the enclitic -que which means "and". (What a cool trick.) And if you want to poke at a dull topic you can get into a lively discussion on how vir means "man-the-male" not "man-the-species". You can even go into some speculation about how the verb canere connects to lively-discussion-inducing words like "incantation" or "enchanted"... but also connects to "canticle" - which may cause some even more lively discussion.

You will also find these words in one other place, where GKC discusses them, rather than merely using them as an example or for classical support. They appear in his discussion of Shaw's play, "Arms and the Man":

No one who was alive at the time and interested in such matters will ever forget the first acting of Arms and the Man. It was applauded by that indescribable element in all of us which rejoices to see the genuine thing prevail against the plausible; that element which rejoices that even its enemies are alive. Apart from the problems raised in the play, the very form of it was an attractive and forcible innovation. Classic plays which were wholly heroic, comic plays which were wholly and even heartlessly ironical, were common enough. Commonest of all in this particular time was the play that began playfully, with plenty of comic business, and was gradually sobered by sentiment until it ended on a note of romance or even of pathos. A commonplace little officer, the butt of the mess, becomes by the last act as high and hopeless a lover as Dante. Or a vulgar and violent pork-butcher remembers his own youth before the curtain goes down. The first thing that Bernard Shaw did when he stepped before the footlights was to reverse this process. He resolved to build a play not on pathos, but on bathos. The officer should be heroic first and then everyone should laugh at him; the curtain should go up on a man remembering his youth, and he should only reveal himself as a violent pork-butcher when someone interrupted him with an order for pork. This merely technical originality is indicated in the very title of the play. The Arma Virumque of Virgil is a mounting and ascending phrase, the man is more than his weapons. The Latin line suggests a superb procession which should bring on to the stage the brazen and resounding armour, the shield and shattering axe, but end with the hero himself, taller and more terrible because unarmed. The technical effect of Shaw's scheme is like the same scene, in which a crowd should carry even more gigantic shapes of shield and helmet, but when the horns and howls were at their highest, should end with the figure of Little Tich. The name itself is meant to be a bathos; arms - and the man.
[GKC George Bernard Shaw CW11:416-7]

Fun things about GKC's writing

2010-10-07T10:09:00.002-04:00

Today is the fifth anniversary of the startup of one of my systems - the one we called "Denver" - and though it moved some 17,000 files inbound and 17,000 files outbound each day, it was not anywhere as interesting as the other system which performed Subsidiarity. But this is about me, and boring.

Far more important is today's feast, the feast of the victory of the navies of the West over the forces of the Turks in the battle of Lepanto - the victory attributed by Pope St. Pius V to the intercessory power of the Holy Rosary. I am sure you already know that Chesterton wrote a poem about it - and you may read it here.

At some point, I will try to get some thoughts together on the Rosary - this year marks the eighth since John Paul II proposed the "Luminous" mysteries, and since I have been doing them often recently, I ought to get some notes together for your consideration. There are some interesting ideas one can find in the serious exploration of the Public Ministry of our Lord, especially when put under the intense "Marian Magnifier" of the Rosary... Did you ever notice that we could just as easily call them the "Aquatic" or "Hydraulic" Mysteries? Er - those terms have their own very technical meanings, so maybe we might just say "the mysteries of water"... oh yes.

But I did promise you something fun about GKC's writing - and I have some odd things today. I got it from my computer. I mean, what good is a computer that just sits there and records your typing, or shows you the typing of other people? I still remember that hilarious line from "Back to the Future" where Marty's father-to-be says to Marty's mother-to-be, "You are my DENSITY". And I mention "density" because I was thinking about words, and how many letters a given word can have.

Oh, now, I don't mean that as a joke. Obviously a given word has as many letters as it has. It's grand that "four" has four letters, though it is really odd that "five" also has four letters, "six" has three letters and "three" has five letters. Oh well. But how many different letters are in a given word?

Consider the ratio of the number of different letters in a word to the total number of letters in a word - let us call that its "density". So a word like "cat" has three letters, and all three are different 3 divided by 3 is one - so the density of "cat" is 1.0. But a word like "noon" has four letters with only two different ones, so 2 divided by 4 is one half - the density of "noon" is 0.5.

The question before us, then, is what is the MOST dense and LEAST dense words in Chesterton's writing? (I don't bother asking about ALL words, let someone else do that project.)

After a little coding, the answers readily appear. (drum roll)

The least dense word in GKC's work as I presently have it is "senselessness" - which has four different letters in a thirteen-letter word, for a density of roughly 0.31.

There are a fair number of words which have density 1.0, but let us take the longest such words. There are still several, each has twelve different letters:

bluestocking
bodysnatcher
disreputably
exculpations
stylographic
voluntaryism
productively
recognisably
upholstering
unprofitably
ambidextrous
demonstrably
unprofitable
considerably

Very curious. Of course you can readily see that "ambidextrously" would have 14 letters, though GKC did not use that word. I wonder if there are any longer ones...

33 years

2010-09-19T10:13:00.002-04:00

It was 33 years ago today that I started work at my first job.

The computers have gotten bigger in some measures, smaller in others. The systems are better in some ways, and far worse in others. For the most part they are a good deal less expensive. Strange to report, the customers have stayed the same, and so have the challenges they propose. So have co-workers - who seem to remain friendly no matter what those challenges are. Management? Ah let us not speak of that - not today. For there really has never been a manager like the man I had at that first job - a man who wrote poems for each employee's birthday, who was Jewish and gave Christmas parties, who told jokes, even technical ones; an engineer, a businesman, a husband, a father, a friend...

Thanks, Sam.

Mary's Birthday Novena

2010-08-31T19:50:00.002-04:00

Please join me in a little novena in honor of Mary's birthday, September 8.
It starts today.

Just say one "Hail Mary" or the prayer of your choice, for the intentions of all who join us...

Note: I know this is posted late, but you can always join in late. Just double up for a day to keep your counting correct.

Five Years

2010-08-31T09:41:00.004-04:00

Today, or rather tonight, when today ends, will mark five years since the end of the cable TV ad insertion system which I developed and supported. It is the "nadir" of the year, five and one half years after the Feast Day of Subsidiarity, March 2, which was the day that system went live back in 2000. (And, as I have recently learned, that date is something more, which I shall reveal at the proper moment.) Why Subsidiarity? Because that is how the machinery worked. Our system used technology arising from thirteenth century metaphysics, from the papal encyclicals Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII and Centesimus Annus of John Paul II, which was quoted in the source code.

It was an amazing time: two thousand days, two hundred thousand spots encoded, sent to an average multicast of 7 headends, two hundred million CUSTOS packets sent back, played over 230 million times with a play rate of over 97 percent...

All gone? Not quite.

The spiral of cue-tones and CUSTOS packets which we flung out into space continues in flight through our galaxy, and so too the memory of the hard work and good times that happened there. Just as Tolkien told the story of how the Two Trees of Valinor are preserved in their final fruits: the Sun and the Moon, so too this system, a "tree" of headends, is preserved in my novel Joe the Control Room Guy and in my little volume about the inner workings of that system, Subsidiarity.

And in my lasting gratitude to my friends and co-workers.

"It was a long yesterday ago."

--Dr. Thursday.

PS Oh, I forgot to add the link to my poem about the company. If you read it carefully, you will discover a complete high-level statement of the inner workings of the place, and a lot more besides.

A question about Catholic Scientists

2010-08-21T10:03:00.002-04:00

I received a comment on this post about Catholic Scientists, wondering if I would extend the list. That is a great idea, and if I have time I will try to add some more. There is a real challenge in dealing with this subject, as anyone who has read Jaki - or even Chesterton - would be aware, but there is definitely a need for good books. Not only good books on science, but also books which give the truth about the role religion plays in science... and this is something I wish I had more time to treat. All I can say is I will do what I can, with God's help.

For the interim, I would recommend hunting for books like these:

These are obtainable from Real View Books:

K. A. Kneller, Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science: A Contribution to the History of Culture during the Nineteenth Century. This has an introduction by Father Jaki; it has a magnificent collection of short biographies of scientists, showing the role their faith played in their lives - many of them were Catholic.

S. L. Jaki, Chesterton a Seer of Science. A great introductory book to Chesterton, to Jaki, and to some of the critical issues of science, faith and related matters. Short but very meaty. I highly recommend it.

These next are out of print, but you might find them from Loome or other good used bookstores:
Jamss J. Walsh, The Popes and Science.
Jamss J. Walsh, Makers of Modern Medicine.

These are just off the top of my head, and will give you something to start with. There are others in print which are BY Catholic scientists, but I shall have to go through my records to list them; some are probably mentioned in the above-linked posting; I recall texts by Lavoisier on chemistry and Fabre on insects...

Since there is interest, I hope to proceed with this as time may permit.

Medieval "Twitter"?

2010-08-20T16:24:00.002-04:00

One of the funnier things to hear people whine about is my "lengthy" posts. But what is even funnier is the curious truth that this strange longing for shortness and conciseness is actually medieval. Or, to put it another way, the word "modern" is more than 700 years old.

The operative quote happens to be (from what I have read) a rather famous one. Here it is:

Gaudent brevitate moderni...

That is,

The moderns rejoice in brevity...

This comes from the text called Regule Roberti de Handlo, or "The Rules of Robertus de Handlo", a text on musical notation from about 1326. (I refer to the translation with commentary by Peter M. Lefferts.) With all the savings in text and time, I would think people would spend more time ornamenting their brevity, but alas this is not done. I'll consider becoming a twit when I see some illuminated posts, or perhaps one set to plainchant.

Meanwhile I'll rejoice in lengthiness. Hee hee!

Some odd links

2010-08-15T17:06:00.002-04:00

I got caught in front of a camera here.
And one of my poems made it here.

Of course if you prefer stories, there is a little series...

"Driftwood"

"Serendipity"

and there's more to follow.

Now What!

2010-08-03T13:49:00.004-04:00

Just the latest in a series of very curious experiments:

I hope I shall be able to tell you more about them someday. And that I won't get in trouble from any - er - government agencies by posting it. If anybody asks, tell them it's a new video game... hee hee.

Building an Excellent Adventure From a GKC Quote

2010-07-28T16:55:00.003-04:00

Wow... since I last posted here, I wrote a short story... nothing profound, of course, but just something entertaining. No "moral" at the end, no little aphorism to go around being burdened with. Instead, I rather started with the aphorism.

I took a very powerful line from Chesterton:

A man cannot deserve adventures;
he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs.
[GKC Heretics CW1:72]

and built it up into a story.

(If this reminds you of God making Eve, I understand. But then you see I am made in the image and likeness of a Maker... see Tolkien's essay on Fairy Tales for more on that.)

Anyway, the story is called "How Mark Earned a Dragon" and it came out very nice. (Yes, the "Mark" is Mark Weaver, one of the Weaver triplets from Quayment, the famous book town on the Atlantic.) I hope that you will get to read it shortly, but that depends on things beyond my control. I shall, however, keep you informed about it. Yes, it really has a REAL dragon in it...

(Image from the excellent Larousse Encyclopedia of Animal Life)

But I mustn't spoil it for you. No, I have no plans on writing about how Mark earns a hippogriff - if you want to, go right ahead. I'd like to read such an adventure!

News for the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel

2010-07-16T11:31:00.002-04:00

First, I got some good news yesterday about a personal difficulty and wish to thank God for it. Clearly someone was praying for me very hard - and I am grateful for that too. Please don't stop. For my part, I continue to pray for all who read this blogg, and even for those who don't.

Now, for some more exciting news. I have finished the next component of my great Saga: The Tree of Virtues, in which we get to hear some more about Quayment and the Weaver triplets, about Steve Brown and his two young associates, and a lot of other curious characters. Some very unusual juxtapositions of extreme high tech, of strange history, and even stranger historical secrets... all interwoven with an ever-growing drum-beat, rather like Ravel's "Bolero". Oh yes, a will and a lot of money, and a snake too, and something about a secret under St. Peter's Basilica. Quite exciting. No artwork yet, as this one required a good bit of software to be written first, but I hope to prod the Art Department into getting something together eventually. Right now there's a lot of editing to do, and I'm still waiting to hear back from my lab assistants who are the first to experience our new products... hee hee.

Also, I set up another fun tool in the hope of keeping my computer out of trouble. It is busy determining primes of 15 places which are palindromes... Oh boy! We all know from the Media how important these are to our planetary security, so we can all sleep better knowing that numbers like
100 000 323 000 001
are prime. (After all - we all know from movies that extraterrestrials can't read English, even if they understand our method of measuring latitude and longitude, and use the same diatonic system of music... let's all hum d-e-c-C-G together, shall we? Hee hee!)

Here's another, just for your own personal satisfaction:
115 731 626 137 511
So elegant. I grant you there is wonderful art to be found in sunsets (or sunrises, if you are up early enough for them) and in ocean waves and rain and roses and frogs and stars and galaxies, or even in the muscles of the hand or the retina of the eye. But let us not forget there are marvels in the numbers as well, just as there are marvels in words and even in thoughts... so generous is our God.

Let us therefore, as St. Paul says, "dedicate ourselves to thankfulness." [See Col 3:15 as translated in the Divine Office]

Oh no! Yet another secret organization!

2010-07-10T09:50:00.003-04:00

As I have told you in the past, one of the very few real accomplishments during my doctoral work (besides the actual research that helped biologists with their work on in situ hybridization) was a small and quite precious collection of humorous quips. Some of them were phrased by others, and I collected them; some of them were my own. One which seemed to phrase itself was the very nifty insight linking mathematics and espionage - that is, work in the dull realm of national security/top-secret/classified information - and the more exciting and dangerous world of integers and the operators which manipulate them... Yes, it is a thrill to recall the antics which went on in that battle-ground where I spent so much time - the battle-ground of applied and theoretical mathematics. We who study permutations liked to call it "Ah, Almost Alone" - and our battle there came to be enshrined in one famous line:

Spies Like Big Prime Numbers.

No, I never had a tee-shirt with those words... besides, it wouldn't do to advertise such a wonderful truth. Of course now that I know some really big primes like 1 000 000 000 039, I still don't feel any interest in being a spy, or having any dealings with spies. And despite my recent work on primes, which I performed just to keep my computer busy while I am doing other things, the market for big primes is not what it used to be.

But such clandestine dealings continue to creep into my world... at least my fictional world, which is a lot more fun, and a lot more exciting. Actually from what I hear about the real world, it's not the spies who like big primes any more, but bankers. It's hard to get very excited about a fat guy in a vest, sitting at a desk and murmuring yet another fifty-digit prime, which is probably his account balance, and not his secret id code. Ah well. But then that's why God invented Quayment, and Rutevia, and Mbognu, and all those other distant places which make our world so interesting.

Recently, due to the death of F. Ralston Ludlow, a famous wealthy bibliophile, I happened to learn of a very curious secret organization... I am not quite sure what their real name is, but I have managed to acquire a screen-shot of their logo:

As such organizations go, these people seem to be comparatively benign... yet their head - or perhaps I ought to call him their FACE, since all we've ever seen of him is his face, a young, handsome face that smiles. Ahem. As I was saying, their head (or face) certainly seems to have all the sinister attributes of the traditional leader of YABSSO - Yet Another Big Sinister Secret Organization... except of course for the fact that as yet we've only seen his face. It's quite creepy.

We must consider ourselves warned. Beware of this group "IC"! Beware of that laughing face. We don't know what he wants, or why, so let's assume the worst anyway.

I'm sure he likes big prime numbers...

Five-Five on Seven-Seven

2010-07-07T10:05:00.002-04:00

It's the Nones of July, and that means all sorts of things... It means, for example, that I've travelled about 32 billion miles. It's not very far considering Alpha Centauri is about 750 times further, but hey, you've got to start somewhere. Besides, if I'm going visiting, I hardly expect to go to Alpha Centauri, which is a very nice place - but everyone knows if you want beer, you head for Earth.

Anyway, I was going to post some excerpt or other, since that would be appropriate - but I cannot decide what to post. Maybe I will just write a little commentary. The Nones of July are an imporant date in my Saga, since it falls between the birthdays of Bernie Brown (July 6) and Marty Felsen (July 8), who were both born in 1995. It was in 2007 that they turned 12, the year of the Motu Proprio about the Latin Mass (usus antiquior) - which was also the day they first received the shirts bearing the coat of arms of the Order:
I know you are wondering about which Order this is, but I am afraid you will have to wait for the book to learn more. For your edification, here is the blazon:

Sable, a mullet radiated argent; a double tressure flory-counter-fleury Or.
Motto: ouk eimì mónos "I am not alone" (from Jn 16:32)

Of course from another part of the Saga called "Joe the Control Room Guy" we learn that July 7 is the birthday of the unnamed "Doctor" at AC&TG. He wears a lab coat and does their software development, which he says was derived from a papal encyclical. Hmm, I wonder what that could be about? (hee hee) It appears from at least one illustration of that book that this Doctor carries a magic wand....
but I didn't think one could earn the doctorate at Hogwarts. Perhaps he attended Domdaniel... actually it is more likely he attended the Ambrosian, which is a famous "Newman University" in western Pennsylvania. Actually, from the information I have available, it seems that the magic that was performed was very limited in scope - and it was performed only for the sake of solving very serious technical difficulties.

And no, contrary to rumor, he did not make tea-trays float in the air. That was NOT magic... but perhaps you ought to just get the book and find out for yourself.

Sts. Peter and Paul Novena June 29-July 7

2010-06-29T10:02:00.006-04:00

For today's feast, another sample from the Saga - the episode called The Psephy in the Dome.

Yes, you really can begin a novena today - Sts. Peter and Paul - for your special intentions.

--Dr. Thursday.

[very late on June 28, Mark's room on the top floor of the Weaver home]

"Die to self," Mark murmured as he got ready for bed. Then he heard a knock and the voice of his sister Mary, and he pulled on his robe.
"Come in."
"You OK? You were so quiet for so long – I thought maybe you had fallen asleep with the light on."
"No... I was... uh... kinda lost in another world."
"Oh, I understand," she smiled, and he stared at her curiously. "I wanted to talk..."
He sat on his bed, his arms around his knees."Sure. Have a chair."
She sat, her eyes downcast. "Mark, I'm still struggling... you think I'd have worked all this out long ago. But it's getting hard."
"What do you mean? The idea of going into Carmel?"
"Yes – well – no. The idea of saying good-bye to so many good things. Mom and Dad. You and your brothers. This house. The store. The town. The bay." She chuckled, but with an odd tone in it. "Even that horrible siren on the roof." Then she shook her head, her eyes beginning to well with tears. "Thy will be done, O Lord... It's rough, being attacked like this, with just three weeks to go!"

Mark stared, wondering. Could she know? Was the College behind all this? But he did what he had to do, even though he began to hear his own words being applied to himself: "Mary! Didn't you tell us – isn't it in the gospels, about seeking God's will and gaining a hundred times more what you give up? Are you in love? Is Ted? Aren't Mike and Joan, and Matt and Catherine, in love?"
"Yes. I am in love, Mark. I want to do this. But this part of the world – this little town, our family and our home and our store – is lovely."
"Sure it is. That doesn't stop when you go into Carmel. You add to it, not lose it!"
"I know that," she sniffed, pulling out a handkerchief and blowing her nose.
"Look, Mary – I understand what you're going through. I'm trying to make a decision about something too – something about the rest of my life."
She looked up, her eyes wide. "What do you mean?"
"I don't want to say just now, all right? It's kinda hard to – well, kinda unconventional, perhaps. But orthodox."
"Really?" Her whole face had changed, as the sky changes as the storm departs. "I'd love to hear more."
"Not just now. But here's an idea. Let's do a novena – I'll do mine for you, you do yours for me."
"For what?"
"That we'll know what we're to do. That we'll be given a sign."
"A sign? It's a faithless and evil generation that seeks a sign," she quoted. [see Mt 12:39]
"We're only asking for it, Mary, not seeking one. God can grant it or not; it's up yo Him. But in such a critical matter we ought to ask, in order to be sure that we are not making a mistake."
"That's a good point, Mark. All right. We'll start tomorrow, it's saints Peter and Paul."
"Great."
"Thanks, Mark. Good night."
"Good night – and thanks."

[nine days later...]

"You see this shirt?" He pointed to the one he was wearing, the blue one with the logo he had worn at Weaver's.
They nodded. He handed them something soft. "Now that you're twelve, you have to begin wearing it..."
"All the time?" asked Bernie.
"No. Just on the Nones of July."
"What's that mean?"
"It means the seventh of July. Today."
"Why?"
"Can't tell you that now. But I will, maybe soon...."

Dr. Grosjean stood and stared in amazement at the coat of arms on his shirt. "Sable, a mullet radiated argent within a double tressure flory-counter-fleury Or," he recited. "Motto, ouk eimi monos, from St. John 16:32: 'I am not alone'. I just can't believe it! The arms of the Order... and this is the Nones of July!"

[From The Three Relics, copyright © 2007-2009 by Dr. Thursday. Ask for it at any Quayment bookstore!]

A Sample from The Tree of Virtues

2010-06-20T19:37:00.003-04:00

One of the more cool bits, I think. I am sorry I don't have the artwork completed, but at least you can look at the music. It's not very good music, but then I mustn't give away the story...

--Dr. Thursday

Steve's eyebrows went up when he saw the contents. It was something very strange, but also very beautiful: it was a piece of parchment, inscribed with a Latin phrase and Gregorian chant notation. In the upper left was a huge and gorgeously colored capital letter O which began the verse:

Omnis vallis implebitur
Et omnis mons et collis humiliabitur

It was exquisite - but the other side was blank, and it gave the impression of having been excerpted from some larger work. Steve could read the Latin, and recognized it as coming from St. Luke's gospel, speaking about St. John the Baptist's work:

Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be brought low. [Lk 3:5, see Is 40:4]

But what it meant, why he had been sent such a thing, he did not know. He'd ask Chuck about it - besides it was time for lunch.

Chuck looked at it. "This is an amazing piece of art, Stever. Beautiful - sharp - cleanly and elegantly done. Except for one thing. Or two."
"What?"
"I don't think this music is a real setting. I mean," he shrugged, cleared his throat, and softly sung the verse. "There's something not right about it."
"Sure - even I can see that," Malcolm said. "I'm not familiar with Gregorian chant, but I've seen it before. And they use lots of other symbols than this does. These are all the same."
"Yeah," Chuck agreed. "That's one thing. Then, take a good look at that artwork for the capital O."
Malcolm held it close. "Hold on a second, guys! You know what this is? It's the circuit diagram for the filter in a power supply! Look..."
"Well, maybe," Steve said as he looked again. "Or just some fancy ornamentation. But those guys carrying the baskets..." He broke off. "Whoa. Baskets!" He tapped his fingers on the table as he counted: yeah, there were twelve baskets... "And that guy looks like a civil engineer at a transit - you can even see he's wearing a plumb bob on his belt. It's like a modern take on the prophecy."
"The painting itself looks new," Tony said. "That's real parchment, you can tell from the feel - but it looks like it was done with acrylic paint!"
Chuck shook his head. "I dunno, Chem Kid. We may have to take back your title, 'cause that sure looks like real gold leaf to me! But I know what you mean, it's way too clean. Damn good rendering, I'd say. It's probably by one of those modern artists like Alderman, done in the 'spirit' of the Middle Ages. If you don't want it, Stever, I'd love to have it for my room."
"Sorry Chuck - but if I find out where to get 'em, I'll order you a copy."