If you wanted to comment out lines 20 to 40 of a file, use the following:
:20,40s/^/# /
Use
:set number
to enable visible line numbers.
Use vi to comment out (or do something else to) several consecutive lines…
May 17th, 2010Problem with “terminal too wide” been plaguing you on those farty old Solaris boxes for the last 6.5 years but you were usually too busy doing something else to stop it from ever happening again?
May 11th, 2010Well you can install VIM, or if that’s not practical (or if you’re not in the mood to install VIM and its required dependencies on the hundred or so boxes you log into), then the command “stty columns 120” will do ya.
Summit 2010 – dynamic permissi…
April 13th, 2010Summit 2010 – dynamic permission mgmt in luminis 5
My wife tells me she’s enrolle…
April 11th, 2010My wife tells me she’s enrolled me in a “rookie’s contest” at the male nude review around the corner.
@cbaci Hi, we’re on the fence …
April 11th, 2010@cbaci Hi, we’re on the fence about upgrading from 4 to 5 (based on advice from someone internal to Sungard who told us to wait ’til late 11
Sungard Summit – Luminis Kicko…
April 11th, 2010Sungard Summit – Luminis Kickoff session. Josh Horner giving a hands-on demo of Luminis 5.
Frank Zappa – Philly ’76 (2009 ZFT Release)
December 22nd, 2009I received this new dual-CD concert release in the mail today. It is nicely packaged in the “mini LP” format with some nice artwork/photos. There’s also a letter from Bianca Odin describing her experience with Frank. The ZFT (Gail) has thrown in some graphics pertaining to endangered animal and vegetable species, as well as the excerpt from the Declaration of Independence outlining the grievances against King George. There’s also some rant-y pseudo FZ lingo thrown in as well, where someone who is not FZ tries to write/speak like FZ. I can do without this stuff. But it’s Gail’s ball, she gets to play it as she sees fit, or, I’m presuming, she’ll take the ball home.
Since the ZFT couldn’t be arsed to include the track listing on their site (nice move guys!), here it is in all its glory. My commentary on the “highlights” follows.
CD1:
1. The Purple Lagoon
2. Stink-Foot
3. The Poodle Lecture
4. Dirty Love
5. Wind Up Workin’ in a Gas Station
6. Tryin’ to Grow a Chin
7. The Torture Never Stops
8. City of Tiny Lights
9. You Didn’t Try to Call Me
10. Manx Needs Women
11. Chrissy Puked Twice
CD2:
1. Black Napkins
2. Advance Romance
3. Honey, Don’t You Want a Man Like Me?
4. Rudy Want to Buy Yez a Drink
5. Would You Go All the Way?
6. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy
7. What Kind of Girl Do You Think We Are?
8. Dinah-Moe Humm
9. Stranded in the Jungle
10. Find Her Finer
11. Camarillo Brillo
12. Muffin Man
I don’t know the details of this show. Some nerd who’s heavier than I am will have to correct me. It sounds like this tour had Flo & Eddie, but their guitar player got killed in Utah three days before the show, so they weren’t on it. It sounds to me like Bianca Odin is standing in to fill that gap. I could be wrong about that though. This tour was in promotion of Zoot Allures, and was recorded the day after Zappa’s performance of Black Napkins on the Mike Douglas (which I’m pretty sure is the one where he played the Pignose amp, IIRC — which was totally freakin’ AWESOME, by the way!).
Overall the mix is very good, everything is very clear. Frank’s guitar (which in this era, and on this recording, is scorching!) sounds great. The tone is very full.
Purple Lagoon is only a part of what you hear on the brilliant version from Live in NY. It’s much slower too. Unfortunately it’s not complete, as I was pretty psyched to listen to a version that was slow enough to catch some of time sig changes as they pass by. I could listen to this track all day, so it was kind of a bummer it was so short. They did wind up closing the set (pre-encore and post-encore) with a bit more of the Purple Lagoon though, so he must have really been burning it in to get tight performances. Bonus for some very cheezy sci-fi movie special effects from Eddie Jobson (actually forgot he played with FZ).
This version of Torture is familiar. I can’t recall offhand if I’ve heard it on other releases (You Can’t Do That On Stage volumes perhaps?). Could just be deja vu because Torture appears on so many Zappa records. I love Patrick’s playing on this track. Zappa’s guitar solo is not familiar at all. It’s very cool. It starts out with kind of a Pink Napkins feel to it.
“Manx Needs Women”, which Frank introduces as “Mars Needs Women” is pretty cool. Like Purple Lagoon on this recording, it’s a lot slower than the one on “Live in NY”. It morphs into Titties ‘N Beer with some modified lyrics and renamed “Chrissy Puked Twice” with assistance from Bianca Odin.
A couple of band members take solos on Black Napkins. Bianca Odin does some nice singing on the track (singing double stops/diads in one part, it sounds like. (!) ) Eddie Jobson on violin, and a rare guitar solo from Ray White. Frank’s playing is also fairly incendiary on this track.
Daddy, Daddy, Daddy is a pretty interesting track since the only other version I know of is the one on 200 Motels (one of the first FZ albums I really got into).
Fans of smoking blues guitar intros should check out Frank’s intro to What Kind of Girl Do You Think We Are? Uncharecteristically bluesy riffs from Frank, IMO. This is a nice track on this CD. The interaction between Frank adn Bianca is nice, and she has a great voice for this role.
Stranded in the Jungle is a track I’ve never heard. Fun little song. Cover?
Find Her Finer is pretty cool here, I like it with the greasier/funkier guitar that didn’t make it on the CD version (or is buried deeply in the mix). It’s a sparse track on the CD, but it’s got a nice, sparse feel to it here too.
General impression: It’s great to hear Patrick O’Hearn’s fretless throughout this recording. I liked hearing more of Ray White’s guitar. And it’s a unique recording in that Eddie Jobson and Bianca are on it, which isn’t that well-documented elsewhere. The show was pretty good, but I get a subtle impression the performance/show was kinda’ low energy Frank’s guitar playing starts off really fiery, and sounds amazing, but it doesn’t seem to really open up on any of the tracks. It’s also a bit of a disappointment that they didn’t cover more of the “hard” stuff in Frank’s catalog, esp. given some really great players in the band. This latter point seems to be the M.O. for the ZFT releases though. (Has the ZFT released a single thing that doesn’t have Dinah-Moe Humm on it? I know they have, I’m just saying, they do tend to focus on the commercial/accessible stuff. Do they not “get” the other stuff? What’s the deal?).
But these are minor gripes. It is indeed good to have a new full length Zappa concert to listen to, with a good, non-bootleg sounding, mix. This recording is a must for a diehard Zappa fan, but if you aren’t the biggest Zappa fan and you don’t already have “Live in N.Y.” or “You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol II”, or (god forbid!) “Roxy and Elsewhere”, then you simply need to run out and buy those first.
Happy holidays!
Reset sound in Ubuntu (Linux) without restarting
October 28th, 2009When messing around with lousy audio players like Amarok2, it sometimes happens that your sound system gets usurped by them when they crash (and boy do they ever crash a lot!).
The first thing to try is:
$ sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart
But that doesn’t always work, so you should see who’s holding on to who’s holding on to your sound system:
$ lsof | grep pcm
kill the processes that still have open files one at a time until you get your sound back.
Register your nick on IRC
October 28th, 2009# If you’ve never registered before (and if the server provides NickServ):
/msg nickserv register YOURPASSWORD YOUREMAIL
#Check your email for the confirmation, which should have something like this:
/msg NickServ VERIFY REGISTER YOURUID SOMECONFIRMATIONCODE
# Upon returning to the network:
/msg nickserv identify YOURPASSWORD
or possibly…
/nickserv identify YOURPASSWORD
It doesn’t smell good. But it …
October 7th, 2009It doesn’t smell good. But it smells better than it did. –Bradley Michael Fahrtz
Could use the assistance of a …
October 5th, 2009Could use the assistance of a zen master for a few years.
Stupid Unix Tricks: Creating Files
October 1st, 2009Typically I create files using the vi editor. vi, unlike just about any other editor in the *nix world, is ubiquitous –even when running in stripped down systems and in single-user mode, so it’s worth knowing how to use for basic editing. The great thing about vi is that the more you work with it (and spend time learning about it) the more you discover it can do to make your life easier. I will write more about this in another post.
In addition to vi, another way I quickly create files on *nix systems is with touch.
$ touch newfile.txt
This creates an empty file that you can later append info or edit, what have you. Touch can change an existing file’s timestamp without altering the original file’s contents too, in fact that may be touch’s raison d’etre, but I almost always use it to create new, empty files when I need to (or when I need to test the umask settings of the user I’m logged in as).
Another quick and dirty file creation method is with simple I/O redirection. To create a new, empty, file:
$ >newfile.txt
To create that file with a blurb in in,
$ echo blurb > newfile.txt
(newfile.txt will contain the world blurb), or
$ echo “Longer blurb with more words than the original one we created” > newfile.txt
(the sentence in quotes will be in the file. Note: with I/O redirection, the > character will overwrite/clobber the contents of the file on the “less than” side of the operator, so be careful when using this that “newfile.txt” or whatever you’re redirecting to doesn’t have anything important in it….or you can use >> to append, rather than overwrite/clobber the file.
This is cool, and you can do a lot with the echo command and escape sequences that will allow you to do some level of formatting with the contents of the new file. But if you need formatting why not use an editor, or editor-like functionality? Leaving vi and other editors aside, the simple cat command (short for concatenate) with some I/O redirection can be pretty cool, and not quite as overkill as the full vi editor (and perhaps a few less keystrokes from start to finish).
$ cat > newfile.txt
(creates the file, but you are still concatenating, so…)
type your message/write your script here
create a new paragraph if you like
get fruity with formatting if you need
^D (ctrl + D) to terminate with EOF (end of file)
Voila, you have a file with the contents you just typed in cat mode. It’s nothing fancy, but if you want to whip up a quick and dirty script, it’s one way to get started.
Pretty stupid stuff, huh?
2 new CDs today: 1) Krantz, Ca…
September 30th, 20092 new CDs today: 1) Krantz, Carlock, Lefebvre, and 2) Oz Noy – Schizophrenic.
Guys, if you had a dream that …
September 30th, 2009Guys, if you had a dream that Wolverine arrived on a unicorn and gave you a rectal exam while singing a show tune, would you share it on fb?
New semester, a month or so later
September 30th, 2009Taking classical mythology this semester. I love the subject. I love it a lot more than I love all the work that’s involved in getting these theogonies, aetiologies, characters, stories, events, art history, etc. jammed into my cranium however.
I think it didn’t help that I was in the grips of a crippling Diablo 2 addiction when the semester started (had to do something between Summer and Fall semester!), and that I misread the first week’s reading assignment and got behind and have been behind up until now. I took the first test this past Monday. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I failed to follow the instructions properly on my take-home essay which counts for 27% (or so) of the total grade of the test. I have no idea how the professor will handle this. I think my work shows that I had a good familiarity with the reading I omitted from the paper, but he could just as easily (and rightfully) ding me for the whole thing for not following the instructions well…something that’s becoming a theme for me here.
What do you want? I’m still a freshman. O yeah, and that reminds me. I’m still a freshman. That means I have like 15 years left before I finish this degree, given my blistering 1-2 class-per-semester pace.
At least the D2 addiction seems to have subsided some. My l33t hammerdin, smiter, barb and zons languish unplayed in like a week. Now when I avoid homework, I work at improving the guitar playing that’s fallen into disuetude the last several months –that or I watch crappy movies I don’t even want to watch from my Netflix queue (which was depleted of movies I actually wanted to see within about 2-3 months of signing up for Netflix several years ago).
Lecture Notes from Theology 1050 (04/27/2009)
April 27th, 2009THL-1050 – Professor Ruscil
04/27/2009 – 16:30
2 Quizes Wednesday – Regular Quiz on The Search for the Historical Jesus (10 Questions) and one on the research project (10 Questions)
Finish research project – re-read paper on requirements- Learn more about the Qumran community
Finish Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time – Find 4 Portraits of Jesus
Handouts:
· Ruscil’s Summary on Christology
· Jesus as Lord
Final:
· Dialectical Theism, Panentheism, Dualism – Pick 1 for essay
· Quest for H.J., or Gospels – Pick 1 for essay
Today’s Lecture – Christology Cont’d
High / descending Christology – The starting point: A pre-existent, divine being comes down from heaven to perform a blood sacrifice. This category doesn’t exist for this language today. This is based on Greek philosophy/metaphysics.
The defining event: Incarnation (Christmas), the embodiment of the divine in the person of Jesus
In the earliest church, the one thing that was given was that he was a human being (mostly recognized around Easter). The Greeks however left out the human aspect of Jesus.
Critiques:
1) Over-literalize the mythic language of high Christology
· Jesus becomes extra terrestrial, alien, superhuman
2) Jesus is pre-packaged with a human identity with full knowledge of his death (but what of self-actualization, his own freedom?)
· Jesus becomes an actor with a script
3) High Christology sets up an equation of equal identity - God = Jesus and Jesus = God (The church condemns this as a heresy)
· Monophysitism – One nature (and that is divine, — a heresy)
4) Resurrection loses its significance under H/C (because it becomes proof of the starting point)
Low / ascending Christology – The starting point: Jesus was fully human like any human
How Christian interpretation of Jesus ascends to “divine language”?
The defining event: resurrection (Easter) – performs a function, it transforms Jesus – transformed physicality
Only through the resurrection that Jesus now shares/participates in the life of God
This Jesus whom you’ve crucified has become lord and Christ through resurrection of the dead. Beforehand, you would not consider him those things.
St. Paul: Just as through Adam all died, through Jesus all will be reborn (paraphrase)
Divinity of the pre-Easter Jesus:
1) Points to a radical relationship between Jesus and God; God’s self-giving (said earlier that this is the whole point of revelation) was so complete that it transformed Jesus on every level.
2) As a human person Jesus doesn’t possess divinity in and of himself
· Only in virtue of his relationship with God is Jesus divine
3) Jesus’ divinity points to the capacity of all human beings to share fully in God’s life
· Jesus is the focus of the locus – inclusive of all people
· Grace/Holy Spirit – divinizes us
· Jesus recreates the new human person by breathing on them (as God breathed Adam to life)
Lecture Notes from Theology 1050 (04/22/2009)
April 22nd, 2009THL-1050 – Professor Ruscil
04/22/2009 – 16:30
Handouts:
1) Low Christology/High Christology
2) A low ascending approach to Christology (has no title page)
3) Theme handout (by Ruscil) about the gospels
Response paper due Monday:
The quest for the hist. Jesus
Or The Gospels
Final Exam: Tuesday May 05 11:45AM – 1:15 (or so)
2 out of 3-4 essay questions (your choice)
Gospels as Literature
Apologetical reasons for why the 4 titles were given to the gospels. They were chosen to give an air of legitimacy to the gospels.
Authorship, here’s what we can say:
· We know for a fact they’re 2nd generation x-tians, not eye witnesses
· Greek, gentile communities
· Well educated (93%-95% illiteracy back in that time)
The formation process of the gospels
Gospels: snapshots of a developing tradition:
3 distinct layers to the gospel
1) The life setting of the Historical Jesus – 27-30CE The historical words and actions of Jesus himself)
2) The life setting of the early church – 30-70CE The oral tradition, the first major development
5 needs of the early church
a) Apologetics – justify or defend faith in an executed/crucified criminal
b) Faith crises in the community had to be addressed – stories get developed and shaped according to the contemporary issues taking place in the church
c) Catachesis and paranesis – stories have to be told in such a way that they automatically teach people (catechetical). Stories exhort faithful to lifestyles.
d) Liturgical needs of the early church (ritual & worship) - ritual shapes the stories (last supper)
e) Proclamatory needs – stories had to supply the confession of faith
3) Life setting of the evangelists – 70ce-110ce – writing down the gospels
Evangelists – selecting, arranging, redacting, editing, omitting, adding to the stories from stage 2.
John sees Jesus as the lamb of God, used the timing of his sentencing and death to parallel the Passover sacrificing of the lamb, but leaves in a historical truth about the breaking of the legs of the 2 thieves that were crucified with Jesus (Jesus was already dead, so they pierced him with the spear).
So in short, these 3 stages are important b/c you can see how the gospels have been changed from stage to stage, lending further credence to the gospels as literature and to the contemporary view of the gospels
Anti-semitism is more a reflection of the early church than it is of Jesus’s/x-tianity’s view points.
(Aside, for catholics: 1963 – Pontifical Bible Commission: “The Historical Truth of the Gospels”
· 3 stages of development comprise our Gospels
The Synoptic Problem
Synopsis, Greek, “having similar perspective”
Literary interdependence between Mt, Mk, & Lk
Mark’s gospel is most likely the first to have been written (it is widely believed today) and the other two were heavily influenced by (or plagiarized from) Mark.
This is where the Q document comes in (It’s a theory), stands for German Quelle = source. It only has saying of Jesus. (The document is not known to actually exist, or at least it isn’t known to be in anyone’s possession) Earliest strands of teaching (Jesus as wisdom teacher, eschatological coloring). The Our Father is supposed to be here, as are ideas from the Sermon on the Mount
2 Source theory regarding the synoptic problem:
Mark and the Q Document
4 source theory adds 2 more sources:
Luke had his own private source, unknown. Particular Lukan material
And Matthew’s private source
Lecture Notes from Theology 1050 (04/20/2009)
April 20th, 2009THL-1050 – Professor Ruscil
04/20/2009 – 16:30
Dead Sea Scrolls Quiz: Next Wednesday, 04/29
The last topic that will be due next Monday: Historical Jesus and the way we approach the gospels: What do you think of the search for the historical Jesus? Or pick a stage of the research, 2 parts, 3 pages typed. 1st Page summation, next 2-3 pages, explain the topic.
Read Borg book by a week from this Wednesday.
Cont’d from last week (Stage 2, after Bultman):
You can’t start with a reconstructed, purely objective Jesus because no such thing exists. The first stage seekers of the hist. Jesus thought it was possible. The 2nd stagers say you can’t, you have to start with the gospel and the interpretations.
2nd Stage:
A) Bultman – No quest simply b/c there are no resources to come up with the quest. The gospels are not historical, eye witness, accounts.
· The gospels simply don’t allow for the historical reconstruction.
· Existential Jesus, if the Jesus spoken about in the gospels or by ministers affects you in some way, that’s all you need.
· Fideism
Problem with his approach is that he goes too far in cutting the tie between history and faith. If you really believe in Jesus and have authentic faith, there should be no unwillingness to learn about Jesus. It shouldn’t adversely affect your faith.
B) Albert Schweitzer (early 1900s) – Historical reconstructions are no good.
· Book: Quest for the Historical Jesus
· Previous researchers were missing an authentic context for Jesus
· The Historical Jesus is irrelevant for today (because contexts are so determinative)
· The identity of Jesus should be understood not as a revolutionary, but as THE eschatological prophet of the 1st century – preaching the arrival of the End of Times, the arrival of the Eschaton.
· Tragic hero, terrible miscalculation
· Schweitzer believed Jesus got into trouble on purpose, with the belief that God would intervene and bring about the End of Time before he was killed.
· In 300 years, Jesus’ religion is accepted as the state religion of the Roman empire that killed him, thus Jesus affects all of Western civilization
Stage 3 – Characterized as a complete turnaround from Stage 2. (1950s – present)
· Renews the quest
· We can get “snapshots” of the historical Jesus from the gospels, but never a complete picture
· Accepts the discontinuity (of the hist. Jesus & Ch. Of faith) that the 1st stage talked about
· The Christian interpretation is grounded in the historical words and deeds of Jesus himself
· There is enough history in the gospels (implicit Christology)
· Whenever Jesus mentions God, he uses the Aramaic word “Abba” (tr. As Dada, or Daddy)
Ernest Kasëmann and Joachim Jeremias – X-tian interpretation is based historically in Jesus
1) Eschatological prophet preaching a “coming Kingdom”, which had a political meaning. If God’s breaking into history with God’s Kingdom, what would become of Caesar? (Rome eliminated/crucified all Messianic pretenders)
· The proclaimer became the proclaimed.
2) The gospels portray an interpreted Christ, not simply a historically factual Christ (the gospels as literature). These are faith interpretations/illustrations of what Jesus is all about.
Eschatological Age of Salvation:
· Outpouring of a “New Breath”
· A restoration of all the broken relationships (abba experience, hanging around with sinners, prostitutes, tax man, etc. )
· A new Israel, a new covenant made between God and the chosen people (“this is the cup of a new covenant.” 12 apostles, like the 12 tribes of Israel)
· A healing of humanity (from sickness, disease, even death) – Jesus’ ministry to the sick (bodies being healed was symbolic for the Jewish people, who were not like the Greek dualists. The broken body being healed is significant to them). Exorcisms
· The resurrection to new life – resurrection
· The battle of Armageddon, the final battle between good & evil
Baptized in the Jordan: political, when the Jews take the promised land, they go in through the Jordan. The sky opens up and immediately The Spirit is upon him. He then goes into the desert, a battle with the Devil (good vs. evil), Jesus wins (and makes it to Burning Man).
The Gospels:
As literature, their function. The word itself is derived from the Greek euaggelion, Latin euangelium. Eu = good. “The good message”, “the good news”. Has been made Lord and Christ.
The literary genre of the gospels – technically are sui generis, but fundamentally they should be understood as “faith proclamations”. They are meant to be understood as tools of evangelization. There is a spin, the spin is faith. By believers for believers.
The lense: post-resurrectional lense. X-tian faith as we know it didn’t start until his resurrection, after Easter. Post-Easter/Retrojected faith into the gospels.
Authorship of the gospels, through textual criticism (textually), the authors never identify themselves, the gospels should be considered anonymous pieces of literature.
Lecture Notes from Theology 1050 (04/15/2009)
April 15th, 2009THL-1050 – Professor Ruscil
04/15/2009 – 16:30
Final topics deal with Jesus and the gospels.
2nd model of revelation, scripture and gospels are no longer taken literally. Through history, through scientific inquiry, we can find out who Jesus was. Revelation is seeing/hearing about God through the mediator, through his/her language, voice, world view, etc. Same applies to Jesus in learning about him through his (contemporary) followers.
The Jesus of History vs. The Christ of Faith (started in the Enlightenment)
History:
· Jewish, Galilean peasant, carpenter
· Flesh and blood person
· Finite, mortal
· Person of history: 6BCE-30CD; dead and gone
Faith:
· Son of God, Messiah, Lord, 2nd person of trinity
· Pre-existent divine being (most attributable to the Greek world/philosophy)
· (homoousious – “same substance”)
· Still present today
The quest for the historical Jesus, a movement that bypasses the church for historical, critical inquiry
3 Stages:
Stage 1
1. Devoted to tying to disprove the continuity (last 1700s) [Hermann Reimarus]
· Emphasis: discontinuity betw. The historical Jesus and the Christ of faith.
· Reimarus said of Jesus: he was a political revolutionary (who failed)
· Isolates the message: the “Kingdom of God”, he was not preaching himself (the proclaimer became the proclaimed)
· Christ or the Hebrew messiah are the same term (Gk Christos). Christ means literally “the anointed one”
· Gospels: are unreliable documents of Jesus because they were products of deceit, a deliberate hoax that Jesus’ defeated followers perpetrated to continue his failed religion
Strength of this phase: contemporary scholars believe in discontinuity
Kingdom of God
The political message from Jesus was radical, which has been “whitewashed”
2. In response to Reimarus, D. F. Strauss (1800s)
· Jesus’s identity: a humble rabbi teaching the Jewish faith
· The Gospels: Mythic interpretations of Jesus (fictional stories narrated as history/truth to convey religious truth about Jesus
3. Adolph Harnack (1900s)
· Jesus: a teacher of ethics
· Gospels: “supernatural histories”
· Must be de-mythologized
· Rationalize all the miraculous
· Walking on water: a foggy night, the disciples didn’t know where they were, Jesus is actually on the shore and they are not far from the shore (but think they are).
Stage 2 (1900s)
Emphasis: Futility of “Quest”
A. Rudolf Bultman (father of Form Criticism)
· Jesus’ identity is unknown
· The reason why: The Gospels are not to be understood as historical accounts of the man Jesus, they are not history as we know it. They were standardized over the years, like the annunciation of Mary.
· Existential Jesus: when Christians hear Jesus preached in church (or elsewhere) and it effects their lives, that is all you need to know.
….
Stage 3
To be cont’d
Issues:
1. Is there continuity between the historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith?
2. Judgments about Gospel literature – what is the purpose/function of the Gospels?
3. Re-interpretations of Jesus’ ministry & life
4. Reconstructions of the life of Christ
Lecture Notes from Theology 1050 (04/01/2009)
April 1st, 2009THL-1050 – Professor Ruscil
04/01/2009 – 16:30
Test (Mon – 20 Questions - 10 T/F & 10 Mult Choice + Bonus):
Foundational myth handout, all the *tologies (There is a lot of material in this category!)
- Reforming our imagination
- Science and Original Sin
- Evolution Evil & Original Sin (something like that)
Dualism
- Christians in the know
Panentheism
- Mystery of Suffering Evil
- Thinking about God
Dead Sea Scrolls, Q Document, Gospel of Thomas
Redaction criticism, “what is unique about the document in comparison to others?”
source criticism
Resources & Authors, introductions to gospels, introductions to the new testament, dictionaries of the bible, etc.
See the back of the 1-pg handout for a list of authors to check out, make sure the dates are as late as possible, since many of the sources from the ‘50s and ‘60s are outdate now.
Panentheism
Traditional Approach
· Since the Enlightenment, miracles are based on causality –
· Criteria: cause and effect (all unexplainable events must be a miracle, wherever science can’t give an explanation, it must be miraculous).
Critiques:
· Based on causality; knowledge of science
1. Sets up an either/or scenario – God becomes little more than a physical cause – God’s direct intervention
2. An unexplained event does not/shouldn’t warrant the conclusion of God’s intervention (Creates a “God of the Gaps”)
3. Miraculous cannot be statements of fact but rather statements of faith
Contemporary Approach:
Panentheism – God is omnipresent
· Miraculous events are concrete, historical manifestations of the self-giving of God, which is always already intrinsic to the world
· Miracles are like getting a very minor glimpse of what God’s already doing, kind of analogous to radio waves which are always there, but not heard until a radio tunes into them
· The criteria for a miracle: Not about the empirical, is more about the religious meaning of an event
· God’s actions are always mediated (I can only work through you) – God’s actions take place through people, through events, even through things. The physical is permeated with the transcendent
· Rather than either/or scenario, this sets up a both/and scenario – God works through the natural, physical processes
· Two simultaneous causes
1. God is always primary cause
2. But works through secondary causality (what we refer to as the laws of nature, physics)
· God’s actions are going to have the appearance, on the empirical level, of common, ordinary events.
Lecture Notes from Theology 1050 (03/30/2009)
March 30th, 2009THL-1050 – Professor Ruscil
03/30/2009 – 16:30
Next Monday – 2nd Quiz, same format (T/F & Mult. Choice), next Wed. we’re not going to meet.
Final quiz, end of April, finish reading Borg book by then.
Start thinking of a topic for the research project, from 7 topics. 1 of the gospels (matthew, mark, luke or John), outside the bible, the gospel of Thomas, or the Dead Sea Scrolls (a general outline), or the Q document. Type of research is more or less the background information, not about the document itself. Form criticism, redaction criticism, authorship, dating, historical circumstances behind the document.
Today: Dialectical Theism, how Trinitarian theism ties in
DT is trying to move away from supernatural, classical, theism, which is influenced by Greek philosophy. DT = if we can let go of the idea that God is the miraculous, superstitious, god that intervenes in man’s affairs. DT = A god who is very present to creation, but is not in complete control, actually powerless, defenseless in the face of evil. God granted full freedom/autonomy to his creation, which created his self-limitation. God can’t be in control, otherwise freedom wouldn’t be real.
Process Theology
A God who in the beginning is not yet God but is in the process of becoming (a different type) God (than he was in the beginning). A trinitarian God.
· A God that needs to self-actualize, self-actualization of the trinitarian dimension.
· The 2nd dimension of God (acc. to x-tianity) (“person”) à”God’s capacity to relate with & co-exist with “another”. (We’re not talking about Jesus here)
1. Creation becomes the “condition for the possibility” for an authentic relationship with another.
2. Freedom & full autonomy is a pre-requisite for relationships
3. God becomes vulnerable, defenseless, & limited in relationship to creation.
4. God’s dependence on creation for self-actualization means that the creation/human beings become co-creators, therefore there is RISK involved for God.
5. God’s self-limitation creates the opening for evil – many free agents alongside God in creation – consequences of freedom results in evil.
6. Jesus is the first, concrete manifestation of God’s goal for creation
7. Creation is a continuous activity of God – God creates in order to redeem (or in order to come into union with that creation). Redemption is the crown of creation. Creation continues until the final goal is met.
If God doesn’t have this power but is subject to the freedom of the material world, how do you talk about God’s involvement in the world, and should people be praying for God to accomplish things in the world (if he’s vulnerable)?
Pan entheism
Greek, pan = “everything”, theos = “god”, + en = “within” = Everything is within God, God is within all things, working through, with, and in, always in the context of freedom.
God is not separate from creation, he is within.
God within everything (immanence)
· But always more than created reality (transcendence).
· Connecting to sacraments, the created has the capacity to manifest the sacred
· God’s mode of acting/presence in the world is incarnation
· Connecting to Christology – Jesus is the climax of God’s incarnation activity
Lecture Notes from Theology 1050 (03/25/2009)
March 25th, 2009THL-1050 – Professor Ruscil
03/25/2009 – 16:30
New Topic: A Contemporary Image of God
A synthesis of all previously covered topics
Two poles
Transcendence <—————– God —————–> Immanence
Transcendence:
(Deism)
- Classical Theism (AKA Supernatural Theism) [theism = belief in God, the opposite of atheism]: This model always emphasizes God’s distinctness, God’s separateness (aloofness) from the world (Greek origin)
- Of the attributes attributed to God, omnipitence is the one most often emphasized here, the puppeteer, God is pulling all the strings/in total control
- Also God’s immutability is also emphasized
- God’s impassibility (the etymological root is “passion”, suffering) – God cannot suffer or be affected in any meaningful way by anything outside God. Therefore, God cannot be affected by creation.
- The unmoved mover
- Comes from Greek philosophy, the ideal of perfection, metaphysics
Evil in this view = (if God is all-powerful) God IS able to prevent evil; yet evil does exist. Therefore for some reason God is unwilling to prevent/thwart evil.
Critiques of this view:
- Cancer, famine, war, etc. are of God
- Evolution does not support the view that God is in total control. Matter is self-structuring, the molecular world is self-engineering, randomness in nature, a great deal of chance, a great deal of molecular self-actualization.
- Survival of the fittest
- Freedom: If God really is in total control, does freedom make any difference? Predestination, the plan of God, is freedom just an illusion? If so, what of hell? Would nuclear destruction of the earth be stopped by God if it wasn’t his will, or if it happens, would it be his will?
Strength of this view:
- the providence of God -> God has the capacity to influence the outcome of human history.
Weakness
- no real acceptance of human freedom
Immanence:
(Pantheism)
- Biblical Theism (Hebrew origin)
- Emphasizes God’s presence (in the world) struggling with humanity against evil
- (Our) Experience of God in history (as a liberator, as a savior, Egypt, etc.) God’s saving power lies in historical events
Attributes:
- God is compassionate, merciful, and loving; God is actively involved in the world.
Weakness (in this view):
- If God is loving and compassionate,
- God is willing to prevent evil; but evil exists (nevertheless). Could it be possible that God is unable to prevent evil?
- What happens to God’ power b/c he seems so vulnerable and limited
Strength:
accepts (human) freedom
God (the center of these two poles, a contemporary view)
- Dialectical Theism:
- offers an image of God where God IS unable to prevent evil
- God creates to enter into a relationship, but freedom and autonomy are requirements in/demanded by an authentic relationship
- evil is the exercise of freedom/autonomy
- freedom is God’s limitation in relation to this world
- God depends on creation for its acceptance of God.
If there is a goal to creation, it has to take place in the context of freedom. If God brings creation to a specific goal; God MUST be involved.
God acts through human freedom, humans are co-creators with God.
God acts not through force, but through inspiration, through allurement, or through persuasion.
Lecture Notes from Theology 1050 (03/23/2009)
March 23rd, 2009THL-1050 – Professor Ruscil
03/23/2009 – 16:30
Reading handout on Gnosticism, a particular form of dualism that x-tianity battled with in the early (post-1st-c.) church (after the diaspora to Greece). Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities, ch 06
Next quiz: Mon. of “Holy Week” (Wed. class may be canceled that week). Covers all material covered since the mid-term. Review next Wed. (read all articles, more content than the first quiz)
2nd response paper assignment will be assigned then too.
Tonight: Compare and contrast biblical x-tianity to a type of dualistic, platonic x-tianity that x-tians inherited after moving to the Greek world.
To understand the message of what Jesus was about, the Jewish side must/should be understood.
The body has no understanding of categorical parts of itself. There is no dichotomy. Not a Jewish concept, this came from the Greeks.
Lord’s prayer, un-Greek. Asking for heaven to come down to earth (not for earth to go up to heaven)
If God grants life for either of these two groups, it will mean greatly different things. For Jews “something we can experience”, for the Greeks, “afterlife”.
The assumption of Mary, the feast is about Mary being assumed bodily, the symbol of x-tian discipleship, see #9 under Hebrew Spirituality below.
Hebrew Spirituality:
1. Make-up of humanity:
· Embodied persons (synthetic)
· Hebrew “bashar” –> difficult to translate, but “flesh” might be a way to approach it. “All flesh will see the salvation of God”. “Though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God”. Not really in the “meat” sense, but emphasizes our common, objective dimension that we share together. –> Human attributes like weakness, corruptibility (physical and moral), mortality, etc.
· Hebrew “nephesh” –> Again difficult to translate, but “personal self”, or “living beings”. “Self” – emphasizes the subjective dimension, not psychological, not an inner quality. –highlights relational dimension; emphasizes life. Both these (bashar and nephesh) refer to the totality of a person. They are inseparable, there is no dichotomy, one cannot be without the other.
2. Motto: I AM my body
3. Approach to life: living life to the fullest; embracing bodily life (Braveheart reference again given, eveyone’s going to die but not everyone lives).
· Quality = blessings of God (pleasures)
4. Human vocation –> to become fully human through your relationships / any diminishment of life = evil. (The glory of God is the human person fully alive.)
5. Sin = based on our behavior within relationships/alienation, etc.
6. Main human attribute –> heart, desire of the human person, or the will St. Bernard “What you love is what you will become”
7. The enemy of humanity: death (and any type of physical, emotional, or spiritual handicap that lessens human living)
8. Major Conflict: life vs. death –> Salvation must be an embodied reality.
9. Salvation/Redemption –> focus is on the totality of the embodied person –> “resurrection”/transformation of life, a completely transformed physical totality.
· Emphasize the sanctity of the body
Greek Platonic Spirituality:
1. Make-up of humanity: dichotomy of body to soul
· Body –> temporal, provisional, a shell
· Soul = The “real” you, the center of consciousness, the subject of a person, immortal (Socrates, don’t worry about my body, my soul will transcend. Kind of a cavalier attitude about death, as opposed to Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, much more grave (though hemlock vs. crucifixion is something to ponder)
2. Motto: I have a body
3. Subjugating bodily desires; needs; passions to the spirit;
· “Asceticism” –> denial of bodily need
4. To rise above & transcend physical, bodily life > soul is imperiled through body –> “apatheia” –> ideal of life > total detachment
5. Sin = what we do with our bodily life/ bodily life is context for sin
6. Main attribute –> knowledge or intellect. Salvation & knowledge go together.
7. Physical existence is the enemy; death is positive –> the release of the human soul from its prison of earthly life
8. Conflict: body vs. soul –> world is static, no chance of change, no hope, nothing new is going to happen in the world. –> Salvation is escaping.
9. Salvation –> emphasizes the the immortal/disembodied soul
· Focus is on the eternal (after-)life of the “other world”.
Amarok 2.x – HUGE Dissapointment
February 15th, 2009I was actually really psyched when I noticed the new Amarok when I upgraded my Ubuntu workstation to 9.04/Jaunty. I was expecting the same, great, feature-laden audio/media player I’ve been using for the last several years with a slick new GUI and tons more new features to mess around with. Unfortunately it seems it’s got all the same problems Amarok 1.x had, but most of the great features of Amarok 1.x that were good enough to make one overlook its flaws have been removed.
Here’s my first list of things that made this upgrade a huge downgrade for me:
1. It’s still slow and bloaty feeling with a large (>1TB) collection of audio and covers. I.e. still locking up and interrupting the current audio playing while doing CPU intensive tasks, like using “cover manager” to manage/view album covers. To their credit, so far, it seems that the collection tab searches are less prone to lock the system up. In fact, adding/removing/editing audio seems a little smoother. But then again, I haven’t been doing a lot of reorganizing since I started playing with the new Amarok, so the verdict’s still out. Update 03/03/2009 – The verdict’s in. It’s still crashing and interrupting when calculating new music (say 100-200MB of new music added to the overall collection). In fact, it seems much worse as it wasn’t even allowing me to play music while this was going on.
2. The 50 random tracks (from the entire collection) is gone. This is unforgivable! (And how hard could it have been to bring this over from 1.x? Silly.) In fact, the new Playlist menu is just plain confusing. It did actually seem to have a random tracks type functionality, but it only loaded like 8 tracks. And, figuring out what “repopulate” and “on” mean under “dynamic playlists” seems weird since you have to toggle between them. Not very intuitive at all.
3. I lost my previously customized (Amarok 1.x) playlists. Okay, so that’s deprecated. It still sucks. And those regexp-friendly playlists were one of my favorite features of Amarok — and something that distinguished Amarok from other media players. Yet, the Amarok site mentions wanting the new 2.x version to distinguish itself in a field full of competing products. Way to go!
4. The “statistics” tool that gives you overall collection stats is gone. Duh!
5. The new GUI isn’t that great. I added a few of the newer widgets to the center screen and they laid out oddly and overall the feeling is kinda’ squishy and not clean. I think the simple layout of 1.x Amarok with the ability to toggle “Context” on the left with more details was a very sleek and efficient look. I also prefered having the track list be central, not shoved over to the right frame –thereby not allowing you to have lots of fields in view (bitrate, year, date, title, artist, length, filesize, etc. etc.). Also, the widgets available by default, like the “lyrics applet” and “albums” fall squarely in the “who cares?” category. Were people really dying to have these weak applets added to the old Amarok?
So this upgrade is a huge disappointment for someone like me who has been a big fan of Amarok for 3-4 years. FWIW, their site mentions that since this is a complete re-write and since they’re using the new KDE4, they are forced to work around the limitations of the new systems and how they interact. They also indicated that many of the lost features will reappear with each new version of Amarok 2.x. I’m hoping for a speedy recovery since the new one is making me re-think my previous love of Amarok.
Update 03/03/2009 – It got so bad on the new Ubuntu that I couldn’t even play music anymore. Amarok kept crashing and restarting it (or X) wasn’t helping. I could load music, but not play it. The crash reports it was giving contained no useful information whatever.
Note: I have since used this version to better effect on Fedora 10 & 11. Maybe Ubuntu’s Gnome-centric nature is part of the problem. Perhaps the newer KDE stuff just isn’t that well integrated. (Yes, I’ve heard of and tried Kubuntu. It was 3-4 years ago and I was not impressed, and am not in the mood to try it again.) That being said, the new Amarok still seems feature-depleted in comparison to its 1.x predecessor. In fact, on my main workstation at home I’ve gone back to Ubuntu 8.10 and am feeling so much happier with the old Amarok.