the Don Juan of knowledge

The Don Juan of knowledge: he has yet to be discovered by any philosopher or poet.  He is lacking in love for the things he comes to know, but he has intellect, titillation, and pleasure in the hunt and intrigues involved in coming to know--all the way up to the highest and most distant planets of knowledge--until finally nothing remains for him to hunt down other than what is absolutely painful in knowledge, like the drunkard who ends up drinking absinthe and acqua fortis.  Thus he ends up lusting for hell--it is the last knowledge that seduces him.  Perhaps, like everything he has come to know, it will disillusion him as well!  And then he would have to stand still for all of eternity, nailed on the spot to disillusionment, and himself having become the stone guest longing for an evening meal of knowledge that he never again will receive!--For the entire world of things no longer has a single morsel to offer this hungry man.

Nietzsche Dawn §327

A Nietzschean warning for the philosopher as traveler but I don't think it's a real threat (I mean beyond the pursuit of painful knowledge (and the pain involved in the pursuit of knowledge), illusion being so much more comforting and all that). Just as Don Juan would have a hell of a time trying to conquer every woman on the planet, so too does the Don Juan of knowledge quickly encounter a nearly infinite set. The knowledge of abiding in hell would require some commitment but then in some sense he'd be abiding also in his true love, the chase.

I don't think I'm totally understanding this aphorism.  Maybe I shouldn't take the metaphor so far.

Sophie returns to Oregon

Sophie, Sarah and I just returned from an extended (work related) trip to Utah where I had the chance to hang out with my cousin Chris, Charlie and a number of other friends. I also had a birthday party, decommissioned a server (RIP ip0), and helped my little brother move out of my parents house (he's 18).



On the way back we got to do a mini brewery tour, stopping at Deschutes in Bend, The Brewers Union Local 180 in Oakridge, and Ninkasi in Eugene. Of those I'm most of a fan of the Brewers Union where we drank "Real Ale", met Ted, the brewer (former software engineer who learned his brewing technique in England). Ninkasi also makes awesome beer but I love that English style ale.

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Recently Noted:

Huenemann's review of Julian Young's Nietzsche biography in ndpr.

JT is blogging about Aris-tote-lay's Nichomachean Ethics.

Carl Johnson has been weaving Confucius in with his recent posts. I especially liked this one on software design and "convention".

blues guy in DC

We saw this guy playing the blues on the National Mall.

back from DC

While walking up to the Washington monument,



we came upon a street preacher.



He had a translator.



I made sure to get a copy of their tract. The guy who handed me the pamphlet asked me, "Are you from around here?" I answered "I'm an American if that's what you mean" and we walked away.

The tract tells an interesting story about Johnny.







The tract had a destiny.



I have a new bookmark.

crazy guy on the bus

There were three crazy guys on the bus with us yesterday but one was exceptional. When we got on the bus he was already talking out loud (to nobody?). He seemed intent on telling us the world is going to end with a tinge of "praise Jesus and pass the ammunition". I'll try to give a feeling for it:

The world is going to end.
Oil and gas.
The world is going to end.
Jesus is coming back soon.
The world is going to end.
I'm looking for Jesus.
See the signs; the world is going to end!
Why not start world war three? Might as well.
The world is going to end.
You probably think I need a doctor; I've already seen the doctors.
The world is going to end.

He went on and on like that for a while. He got off the bus where we did and once he got off he was looking at the sky and talked about looking for Jesus. I asked Sarah about it shortly after we passed him, "When did his world end?"

on Paul, Christianity, marketing and globalization

Rob Sica pointed out this somewhat rambley but interesting article in the April issue of The Atlantic. It's titled One World, One God (by Robert Wright) but it could also be called "Paul the apostle-marketer". Paul the apostle-marketer has a bit to teach us about how to thrive in an increasingly connected (globalized) world. Apparently the situation he (and others) faced is not so different from our own.

When people open a local franchise—a McDonald’s, a Pizza Hut—they do so because they expect to get something in return. What did people get in return for making their homes Christian franchises? In some cases, no doubt, it was mainly the benefit of the gospel; Lydia presumably found Paul’s initial teachings gratifying, and what additional benefits she got—social, economic, whatever—from hosting a church, we’ll never know. But as the franchising continued, and the church expanded to more and more cities, it offered new benefits to church leaders.

In particular: reliable lodging. Tents were adequate for overnight stays on the road, but when you reached the big city, nicer accommodations were desirable—especially if you planned to stay awhile and do business. Paul’s letters to Christian congregations often include requests that they extend hospitality to traveling church leaders. Such privileges, as the scholar E.A. Judge put it, were increasingly “extended to the whole household of faith, who [were] accepted on trust, though complete strangers.” This extension was a revolution of sorts, since “security and hospitality when traveling had traditionally been the privilege of the powerful.” The Roman Empire had made distant travel easier than at any time in history, and Christianity exploited this fact. The young church was, among other things, the Holiday Inn of its day.
...
[H]istory expands the range of non-zero-sum relationships—relationships in which two parties can both win if they collaborate, or lose if they don’t. Technological evolution (wheels, roads, cuneiform, alphabets, trains, microchips) has placed more and more people in non-zero-sum relationship with more and more other people at greater and greater distances—and often across ethnic, national, and religious bounds.
...
[E]ither people of different faiths, ethnicities, and nationalities get better at seeing the perspective of one another, and acknowledging the moral worth of one another, or chaos ensues

The main trick seems to be the extension of familial hospitality to any inside the church. I find the arbitrary trust in Christian communities both warm and unsettling. Warm because I like to give people (especially strangers) the benefit of the doubt. Unsettling when I see people manipulated by someone they trust because s/he claims to be Christian (they don't often become aware of the manipulation). For Paul that whole familial-trust thing was very useful. A distrust of people because they aren't exactly like us isn't warranted. Beyond that though, trust still needs to be earned.

back from Puerto Vallarta

We got back from our vacation in Puerto Vallarta for my cousin's wedding late last night. It was amazing. The ceremony was on the beach at sunset and a dance stage was set up on the beach for the reception. There was a live band all night and around 12:30 or so the mariachis from Aguascalientes (the bride's home town) finished off the night (around 2am). Probably not so great for the other guests at the hotel but definitely one of the coolest weddings I've been to.

If you haven't traveled to Mexico much, these words of advice my cousin sent us before the trip were pretty helpful (and funny).

For those of us headed to Mexico in the near future, here are some reminders.

Remember your passport. You won't be able to board your plane otherwise.

Prices may be in pesos or dollars. A peso sign is a dollar sign with only one vertical line. There are about 13 pesos in a dollar right now.

Don't drink tap water. At all. Ever. You can brush with it, bathe with it, but don't drink it.

If they speak English, it probably costs extra. Brush up your Spanish numbers and phrases.

You are an ambassador for your country. If you act like an ass, say you are from Canada.

Tell your bank you are going to Mexico. Make sure your card will work and that they won't put a hold on it while you are gone. Bring some cash, just in case.

Keep a copy of your passport in a safe place. Get a money belt. Without your documents, you are no longer American. Border control is no fun.

Never assume. Simple things are not the same everywhere. I once traveled with a man who filled his tank with gasoline instead of diesel because the nozzle was green.

If you drive, the rules change. Just because you are allowed to drive, doesn't mean you should. Right of way rules especially change.

the "ancient" midwest

THE earthworks left behind by the long vanished civilizations of the Midwest are harder to spot than the pueblos and kivas of Arizona and New Mexico. For a long time many of them were hidden in plain sight or dismissed as little more than heaps of soil. But the more today’s archaeologists learn about the Midwestern mounds, the more intriguing is the picture that emerges from 1,000 or more years ago: a city with thousands of people just a few miles from present-day St. Louis, a 1,348-foot earthen serpent that points to the summer solstice, artifacts made of materials that could only have arrived over lengthy trade routes.

Ancient Midwest Keith Mulvihill (nytimes)

Something to explore next time I'm in St. Louis.