Five Things Meme
Feb. 22nd, 2009 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kerravonsenComment to this post and I will give you five subjects/things I associate with you. Then post this to your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.
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lizamanynames gave me the following:
Christianity
There's so much I could say about this! Too much to say here. However, I guess some of the things y'all might want to know about me and Christianity would be How? Why? When? What?
When and How would be "always, because I was brought up that way", true, but I don't think that makes me an idiot or a fool. My parents aren't idiots or fools either. The fact that my father is an Old Testament scholar has given me a wonderful grounding in the Bible, and an appreciation of "the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text". Though, interestingly enough, fandom has honed my skills at exegesis, since any serious fannish discussion (especially in B7 and Doctor Who fandoms) requires one to make deductions from the canon, support one's assertions from the canon, to know the canon well. I still feel I don't know the Bible well enough, but I suspect I wouldn't feel I knew the Bible well enough unless I had memorized the entire thing from cover to cover. As it is, I bless bible software that enables me to do electronic searches of the text.
What? I consider myself non-denominational, though I suppose you could label me as Evangelical Protestant if you wanted to. Too conservative for the liberals, and too liberal for the conservatives. I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, but I don't believe that it is a science textbook. I do not believe that Science and Religion are enemies. I do not believe that one has to check one's brain at the door when one enters the Church. I do believe that homosexuality, adultery, incest and blasphemy are sins. I do not believe that the Earth was created in 5000BC (or whenever it was that Bishop whats-his-name dediced it was). I do believe that we are ALL sinners, including me. I believe in the power of prayer, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I believe that all denominations of the Christian Church have more in common than many think, and that what often divides us is merely different ways of talking about the same thing.
Why Christianity? Because it's true. Because it's real. Because it's the only thing that makes sense of the universe.
I was once challenged by an atheist to list the things that would make me disbelieve in God. It was an interesting exersize, because it made me clearer about why I do believe. Certainly, I do think the historical evidence of the Bible is compelling, but who knows, maybe we're all lunatics in this asylum.
What would get me to disbelieve? A thorough, convincing, non-divine explanation for:
1) Intelligence.
2) Conscience.
3) Beauty. Not the question of why beauty exists, but why we perceive things to be beautiful. There is no evolutionary, materialistic, survival-oriented reason for us to think that a sunset is beautiful.
Thinking about it, those three reasons are all related to the question of the existance of the Soul. Do we have a divine soul? I think we do. And if we do, then how could the material world be all there is?
Kerr Avon
Kerr Avon, computer programmer, cynic, my favourite anti-hero. In case you didn't know, he's one of the characters in the British SF TV series "Blake's 7", which was made in the late 1970s.
I identify with Avon, yeah, because he's a loner, and smart, and doesn't suffer fools. Of course I'm not as snarky, rude, or cynical as he is, but heck, we're both INTJ (okay, some people think Avon is INTP) and how often are there good supporting characters who are INTJ? Though that doesn't really count, because I identified with Avon long, long before I'd heard of Meyers-Briggs, though it wouldn't suprise me if I heard about Meyers-Briggs through B7 fandom.
But, no, I'm not a computer programmer because of Avon. Really. I'm not.
Ice Cream
It's all to help my diet, you know. I bought my lovely (and expensive) ice cream machine to help make my diet-food milkshakes more interesting, and to make low-calorie jelly more interesting, and to seek the improbable: a no-fat, no-sugar, low-calorie sorbet.
And experimenting is fun.
Narnia
My father read us the Narnia stories when we were children. Even before I could read. And he recorded them onto reel-to-reel tape, which meant that we were able to listen to them over and over again. (He did the same with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings). So Narnia, for me, is something that is just part of the pattern of my life, something that has always been there. I cannot be objective about it.
The Narnia stories are parables, and the worst thing one can do with parables is explain them. Narnia is fictional and fantastical, but it tells us about True Things, like love, and faith, and sacrifice.
Fic Archival
I'm not entirely sure what is meant by this, whether this is my creation of fic archives, or my use of fic archives, or just fic archival in general.
I run a small fic archive, though the only person who seems to update it nowadays is me.
But the biggest fic archive I look after is completely private: my enormous collection of downloaded fic by other people; the stuff I review on Net-Fic Reviews. When I first started, I just downloaded fic, put it in a folder on my computer, printed it out, and scribbled on it as I read. Then I composed the reviews, and added them to my review database. I can't remember when I started putting the fic in an archive, though initially that archive was just for fic I wanted to keep. Now I put the fic in the archive first, before I've read it, and delete it if I don't want to keep it or review it.
Being a programmer, I rolled my own archive. Oh, I tried AutomatedArchive for a bit, but it didn't do quite what I wanted, and I wasn't going to sit still when I could do something about it. But of course, like my websites, I keep on making "better" versions, for a given value of "better". Right now, I am using the PmWiki wiki as the foundation of the archive, with a bunch of plugins and custom configuration, and custom scripts.
So what did I want in a fiction archive?
1. Doesn't require the actual fic to be stored inside a database, but allows one to upload the story file and preserve it as HTML or plain text.
2. Doesn't rename the story file. (AutomatedArchive renamed them)
3. Deals with multi-chapter stories in a sensible fashion -- this one is a tricky requirement, because there are conflicting needs which require trade-offs.
a) One simple table, with one record per story-file is a simpler data-structure, but this requires a lot of redundancy, as one has to repeat the story information for each chapter
b) Two tables, one for stories, one for chapters; but this is more complicated data, and is more complicated to enter the information.
c) One simple table, with one record per story, and multi-chapter stories simply are not allowed to be in separate files, or they must have a hand-written index file which is updated with each new chapter. I did this for a while, in one of the versions of my archive, but it didn't lend itself to automation.
4. Deals with story-series in a sensible fashion; this is a similar problem as for multi-chapter stories.
5. Enables one to browse the archive by author and by fandom, rather than only having a search interface; Author and universe indexes generated from the data, without having to do them by hand.
What I have now enables all that; each story is represented by one wiki page, and each story is automatically added to multiple "category-groups": Author, Universe, Title, Series, Unread, Ranking, which are the equivalent of auto-generated indexes. But because each story is a wiki-page, then I can add extra stuff to it, such as my reactions to the story when I'm reading it, and hence, reviews. Then I can extract that data, for all the stories which have a Status of "Needs Reviewing", tidy it up, and put into my NetFic Reviews database; it makes things so much easier. I solve the multi-chapter problem by using the "Attach" function of PmWiki, where you give an Attach: link, and that enables one to upload the file into the uploads area, and you end up with a direct link to that file; one just does this for each chapter rather than being forced to have just one file.
I've also written an additional script which, given a URL, will download the story, strip extra formatting from it (if it is from one of a set of archives where I know the format, such as Teaspoon), extract story information from it, offer an incomplete wiki page for one to edit corrections into, adds the wiki page to the wiki, and moves the story file into the wiki uploads area. It's pretty cool.
lizamanynames gave me the following:Christianity
There's so much I could say about this! Too much to say here. However, I guess some of the things y'all might want to know about me and Christianity would be How? Why? When? What?
When and How would be "always, because I was brought up that way", true, but I don't think that makes me an idiot or a fool. My parents aren't idiots or fools either. The fact that my father is an Old Testament scholar has given me a wonderful grounding in the Bible, and an appreciation of "the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text". Though, interestingly enough, fandom has honed my skills at exegesis, since any serious fannish discussion (especially in B7 and Doctor Who fandoms) requires one to make deductions from the canon, support one's assertions from the canon, to know the canon well. I still feel I don't know the Bible well enough, but I suspect I wouldn't feel I knew the Bible well enough unless I had memorized the entire thing from cover to cover. As it is, I bless bible software that enables me to do electronic searches of the text.
What? I consider myself non-denominational, though I suppose you could label me as Evangelical Protestant if you wanted to. Too conservative for the liberals, and too liberal for the conservatives. I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, but I don't believe that it is a science textbook. I do not believe that Science and Religion are enemies. I do not believe that one has to check one's brain at the door when one enters the Church. I do believe that homosexuality, adultery, incest and blasphemy are sins. I do not believe that the Earth was created in 5000BC (or whenever it was that Bishop whats-his-name dediced it was). I do believe that we are ALL sinners, including me. I believe in the power of prayer, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I believe that all denominations of the Christian Church have more in common than many think, and that what often divides us is merely different ways of talking about the same thing.
Why Christianity? Because it's true. Because it's real. Because it's the only thing that makes sense of the universe.
I was once challenged by an atheist to list the things that would make me disbelieve in God. It was an interesting exersize, because it made me clearer about why I do believe. Certainly, I do think the historical evidence of the Bible is compelling, but who knows, maybe we're all lunatics in this asylum.
What would get me to disbelieve? A thorough, convincing, non-divine explanation for:
1) Intelligence.
2) Conscience.
3) Beauty. Not the question of why beauty exists, but why we perceive things to be beautiful. There is no evolutionary, materialistic, survival-oriented reason for us to think that a sunset is beautiful.
Thinking about it, those three reasons are all related to the question of the existance of the Soul. Do we have a divine soul? I think we do. And if we do, then how could the material world be all there is?
Kerr Avon
Kerr Avon, computer programmer, cynic, my favourite anti-hero. In case you didn't know, he's one of the characters in the British SF TV series "Blake's 7", which was made in the late 1970s.
I identify with Avon, yeah, because he's a loner, and smart, and doesn't suffer fools. Of course I'm not as snarky, rude, or cynical as he is, but heck, we're both INTJ (okay, some people think Avon is INTP) and how often are there good supporting characters who are INTJ? Though that doesn't really count, because I identified with Avon long, long before I'd heard of Meyers-Briggs, though it wouldn't suprise me if I heard about Meyers-Briggs through B7 fandom.
But, no, I'm not a computer programmer because of Avon. Really. I'm not.
Ice Cream
It's all to help my diet, you know. I bought my lovely (and expensive) ice cream machine to help make my diet-food milkshakes more interesting, and to make low-calorie jelly more interesting, and to seek the improbable: a no-fat, no-sugar, low-calorie sorbet.
And experimenting is fun.
Narnia
My father read us the Narnia stories when we were children. Even before I could read. And he recorded them onto reel-to-reel tape, which meant that we were able to listen to them over and over again. (He did the same with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings). So Narnia, for me, is something that is just part of the pattern of my life, something that has always been there. I cannot be objective about it.
The Narnia stories are parables, and the worst thing one can do with parables is explain them. Narnia is fictional and fantastical, but it tells us about True Things, like love, and faith, and sacrifice.
Fic Archival
I'm not entirely sure what is meant by this, whether this is my creation of fic archives, or my use of fic archives, or just fic archival in general.
I run a small fic archive, though the only person who seems to update it nowadays is me.
But the biggest fic archive I look after is completely private: my enormous collection of downloaded fic by other people; the stuff I review on Net-Fic Reviews. When I first started, I just downloaded fic, put it in a folder on my computer, printed it out, and scribbled on it as I read. Then I composed the reviews, and added them to my review database. I can't remember when I started putting the fic in an archive, though initially that archive was just for fic I wanted to keep. Now I put the fic in the archive first, before I've read it, and delete it if I don't want to keep it or review it.
Being a programmer, I rolled my own archive. Oh, I tried AutomatedArchive for a bit, but it didn't do quite what I wanted, and I wasn't going to sit still when I could do something about it. But of course, like my websites, I keep on making "better" versions, for a given value of "better". Right now, I am using the PmWiki wiki as the foundation of the archive, with a bunch of plugins and custom configuration, and custom scripts.
So what did I want in a fiction archive?
1. Doesn't require the actual fic to be stored inside a database, but allows one to upload the story file and preserve it as HTML or plain text.
2. Doesn't rename the story file. (AutomatedArchive renamed them)
3. Deals with multi-chapter stories in a sensible fashion -- this one is a tricky requirement, because there are conflicting needs which require trade-offs.
a) One simple table, with one record per story-file is a simpler data-structure, but this requires a lot of redundancy, as one has to repeat the story information for each chapter
b) Two tables, one for stories, one for chapters; but this is more complicated data, and is more complicated to enter the information.
c) One simple table, with one record per story, and multi-chapter stories simply are not allowed to be in separate files, or they must have a hand-written index file which is updated with each new chapter. I did this for a while, in one of the versions of my archive, but it didn't lend itself to automation.
4. Deals with story-series in a sensible fashion; this is a similar problem as for multi-chapter stories.
5. Enables one to browse the archive by author and by fandom, rather than only having a search interface; Author and universe indexes generated from the data, without having to do them by hand.
What I have now enables all that; each story is represented by one wiki page, and each story is automatically added to multiple "category-groups": Author, Universe, Title, Series, Unread, Ranking, which are the equivalent of auto-generated indexes. But because each story is a wiki-page, then I can add extra stuff to it, such as my reactions to the story when I'm reading it, and hence, reviews. Then I can extract that data, for all the stories which have a Status of "Needs Reviewing", tidy it up, and put into my NetFic Reviews database; it makes things so much easier. I solve the multi-chapter problem by using the "Attach" function of PmWiki, where you give an Attach: link, and that enables one to upload the file into the uploads area, and you end up with a direct link to that file; one just does this for each chapter rather than being forced to have just one file.
I've also written an additional script which, given a URL, will download the story, strip extra formatting from it (if it is from one of a set of archives where I know the format, such as Teaspoon), extract story information from it, offer an incomplete wiki page for one to edit corrections into, adds the wiki page to the wiki, and moves the story file into the wiki uploads area. It's pretty cool.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 08:42 pm (UTC)Feel free to meme me if you like.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 09:03 pm (UTC)I believe that all denominations of the Christian Church have more in common than many think, and that what often divides us is merely different ways of talking about the same thing.
YES. I really kind of wish more people got that, and that we could be productive in discussing such differences, to figure out all the places where we do meet and how to understand each other better instead of getting bent out of shape over semantics. (Though I am usually the one trying to get people to be as precise as possible in their use of words. *g*)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 05:40 am (UTC)If you're anal enough about anything, then throwing into a managed systems is a perfectly natural exercise. And you can replace 'fi
xk archive' with 'any text based content you like'wikis work really well for this kind of thing. and strangely enough, one of my other friends (
no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 06:25 am (UTC)Of course. Why do it by hand when you can get the computer to do it for you?
wikis work really well for this kind of thing
Ironically, I didn't even consider using a wiki until I started investigating wikis for work; then when I set it up there and people started using it, I could really see the power of it, and set the same wiki up at home.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-23 07:48 am (UTC)or, why do by hand, what you can do with a computer, that took you 3 times as long to make so, than doing it by hand would have originally.
::grin::
no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 07:40 am (UTC)A conscience can, I think, safely be considered a corollary of intelligence combined with sociality. Social animals must necessarily evolve behaviours that maintain group cohesion, and when that social animal is also intelligent towards the point of self-awareness, we should expect sophisticated emotional group-maintenance behaviours to be part of that repertoire. That would incorporate, amongst other things, a recognition of infractions by other members of the group but also infractions committed by oneself. Since repeated cheating can lead to ostracism or exclusion - thus compromising survival chances and reproductive success - appeasement behaviours would also evolve, either accompanied by or perhaps even driven by a corresponding emotional state, which we would call guilt. Since human intelligence, especially at the level of self-awareness and conscious reasoning, is so much more developed than in other animals (at least, as far as we know) the group maintenance behaviour can be far more sophisticated, taking into account not only current or recent circumstances but also likely future events or even entirely hypothetical ones. I have no problem accepting that our moral faculties are a product of our evolutionary history.
On beauty I have to be more putative, but I don't think natural selection for an aesthetic sense should be ruled out of court. On the contrary, I find it very plausible, and once again as a consequence of our sophisticated brain power. An intelligent emotional animal is forced to have some kind of emotional response to its environment. Its survival, after all, depends on its psychological as well as its physical health. Individuals who responded favourably to their environment would be subject to less psychological disturbance and might therefore enjoy greater reproductive success in consequence. I don't think this is half as silly as it might sound - almost all natural landscapes, even quite inimical ones, seem to be perceived as beautiful by the majority of people, but the artificial urban habitats we have created for ourselves are frequently regarded as the very opposite. Towns and cities are very stressful places to live in, and mental illness is a serious social problem.
There are, of course, many possible contributory factors to mental illness in the urban population, not least unnaturally high population densities, so to single out the alleged ugliness of the urban landscape as the prime suspect would be rash to say the least. Nevertheless there is some evidence that it might play a part. For example, experimental subjects performing a rigorous exercise routine reportedly feel less stressed when presented with a view over parkland or even just pictures of rustic scenes whilst doing their work-out. (Sorry, I don't have a citation.) I think
Basically, I suspect we had to evolve a sense of natural beauty in order not to go mad.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-24 10:54 am (UTC)Your argument for beauty is an interesting one, but it circles back around towards the uniqueness of human intelligence, which you at least admit has a discontinuity with animal intelligence.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-25 07:10 am (UTC)The discontinuity between human intelligence and that of (other) animals is, like any evolved discontinuity, unremarkable once you consider that it is merely the current phase of a progressive digression in different evolutionary directions. I don't think human intelligence is particularly unique except in the degree of its development. The unique features of humans are, for the most part, derivatives of our intellectual development - reason, foresight, language, culture, morality, sport, art and, yes, religion.