Fire and Knowledge

Be sure to read–if you already haven’t–an article about the Lordship of Christ over blogging by Joost Nixon. I wish he would have addressed the medium of blogging itself and how that affects communication, but his counsel still applies whatever your view of blogging is. Especially pertinent is his jab at online diaries:

Godly blogging begins with the right metaphor. Many young bloggers write as though they are scribbling ugly secrets into their private diaries. Because their blog-thoughts are just them “thinking out loud,” they think their grumbling lawful—as if our thought-lives aren’t under the Lord’s dominion. The fact that the “diary” metaphor is faulty only multiplies the destruction of sinful speech. Blogging is a form of diarizing, but one written expressly for others to read—or else why the public forum? But blogging is like reading one’s diary over NPR. Bloggers should reflect on whether they really want such a public forum. My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment (Jas. 3:1).

But the real warning is our tendency as bloggers to be (overly) critical:

When a critical spirit is pointed towards individuals (usually unnamed, though their identity is rarely in doubt), it gets especially ugly. Remember that others bear the image of God. Understanding this is the foundation of courtesy. Because we love God, we honor His image wherever we find it—even if we find it on someone who irritates us. “There is one who speaks rashly like the thrusts of a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing” (Prov. 12:18). One pastor recommends that one critical comment about someone should be preceded by four positive ones. Try it, and the effort alone will be revealing.

I think this “critical spirit” has to do with the nature of blogging, although it has to do with the nature of typographic discourse in general. The word is disconnected from the person, and we are tempted to be more harsh when there is no personal connection. This was made very clear to me when John Marstall and I were corresponding (see our “A Word Wrapped in Light” exchange/debate). It is always easier to attack something when there is no personal connection. This is something that we must be careful of–for the rules of Christian charity do not stop during blogging.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

It was just announced, but rumors have been circulating for days (weeks?). Apple is really moving to x86 Intel-based chips from PowerPC. I am speechless. For now.

The sports hero represents the masculine virtues, the Mars complex, as the popular motion picture actress or the bathing beauty contestant represents Venus. He exhibits that complete skill to which the amateur vainly aspires. Instead of being looked upon as a servile and ignoble being, because of the very perfection of his physical efforts, as the Athenians in Socrates’ time looked upon the professional athletes and dancers, this new hero represents the summit of the amateur’s effort, not at pleasure but at efficiency. The hero is handsomely paid for his efforts, and as well as being rewarded by praise and publicity, and he thus further restores to sport its connection with the very commercialized existence from which it is supposed to provide relief—restores it and thereby sanctifies it.

—Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1934), pp. 306-307

Do you want to know something about political philosophy and thought from a historical perspective? No? Well, you should. Check out Dr. Greg Forster’s guide on how to self-educate yourself with a MA in Political Thought. You will be glad you read it, but you’ll be even more glad if you follow some of his advice.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

If you want to become an early riser, but find you are “not wired that way” (which is a self-delusional thought that I long entertained), you might find these articles helpful:

• How to Become an Early Riser
• How to Become an Early Riser - Part II

I got in the habit of staying up far past midnight but then sleeping in during college (as most college students do, I imagine). Over the past two months I’ve been getting up earlier and it has been extremely helpful in terms of productivity and health. I’ve also found that a shower and a walk will do wonders to wake you up. Perhaps Benjamin Franklin (or was it Aristotle…) was right after all by saying, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

One of the most significant elements in modern sport is the fact that an abstract interest in record-making has become one of its main preoccupations. To cut the fifth of a second off the time of running a race, to swim the English channel twenty minutes faster than another swimmer, to stay up in the air an hour longer than one’s rival did—these interests come into the competition and turn it from a purely human contest to one in which the real opponent is the previous record: time takes the place of a visible rival.

—Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1934), p. 306

In the latest forms of mass-sport, like air races and motor races, the thrill of the spectacle is intensified by the promise of immediate death or fatal injury. The cry of horror that escapes from the crowd when the motor car overturns or the airplane crashes is not one of surprise but of fulfilled expectation: is it not fundamentally for the sake of exciting just such bloodlust that the competition itself is held and widely attended? By means of the talking picture that spectacle and that thrill are repeated in a thousand theaters throughout the world as a mere incident in the presentation of the week’s news: so that a steady habituation to blood-letting and exhibitionistic murder and suicide accompanies the spread of the machine and, becoming stable by repetition in its milder forms, encourages the demand for more massive and desperate exhibitions of brutality.

—Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1934), pp. 304-305

[Has it ever struck you as odd that people love to watch numbers (scores) change when they are not even watching the game?]

Unlike play, sport has an existence in our mechanical civilization even in its most abstract possible manifestation: the crowd that does not witness the ball game will huddle around the scoreboard in the metropolis to watch the change of counters.

—Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1934), p. 304