These are just some examples of tasks that I need to perform for my job and apps I need to use for personal reasons that, despite my unending iOS optimism, cannot be completed in a reasonably efficient way on the iPad alone. Which means that, while I consider the iPad Pro my primary computer, I also have a use for the Mac these days, and I don’t begrudge this at all. I like using macOS for what it’s good at, and I’m having fun re-learning my way around apps like Hazel and Keyboard Maestro.
— Read on www.macstories.net/ipad-diaries/using-a-mac-from-ios-part-2-luna-display-and-macos-as-an-app/
Category Archives: Philosophy
Barnes and Noble isn’t doing enough to protect their shoppers
Almost all of these problems occured in the past few months inside Barnes and Noble bookstores and right in front of them. Obviously for any problem that actually makes the news, there are likely dozens that go unreported. This could be due to the customer feeling ashamed that they let it happen, outright denial or it isn’t worth reporting, it is easier to just leave and not come back. Retail shoppers make up the vast majority of sales, and if B&N is not protecting them, this leads to a crisis of confidence.
— Read on goodereader.com/blog/barnes-and-noble-nook-ereader-news/barnes-and-noble-is-not-doing-enough-to-protect-their-shoppers
Faith, Family, and the Future of Europe ~ The Imaginative Conservative
“Hungarians are family-oriented,” she says, “and they love their families, their culture and their traditions. We’ve been given this direction by the Hungarian people. We want to strengthen families, women and young people. We want to provide security, and we want to protect our Christian culture.”
In the light of such heart-kindling wisdom from the peoples and governments of Poland and Hungary, rooted in faith and family and the future they offer, we are seeing the sun rising in Europe’s East, even as we see it setting in its decadent West.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/05/faith-family-europe-joseph-pearce.html
Seeking the Humane: Big Big Train’s “Grand Tour” ~ (Birzer’s Second Review)
If all of this sounds too intelligent and too good to be a part of popular culture, it’s because it is! No, no, no. This is not pop. This is art. True, good, real, and beautiful. Imagine, for a moment, how many other manifestations of secular culture take seriously a Christian saint, let alone analyze the very stones used in the art of Byzantium? Truly, what this band offers us is a precious gem. And, while the members of the band (at least as far as I know) are not religious, they certainly take the religion of the past quite seriously. Not just Theodora, but the band has also written gorgeously on its previous releases about St. Edith, the granddaughter of King Alfred, the first great English king, the first to codify Anglo-Saxon common law, and the blessed recipient of Marian visions.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/05/big-big-train-grand-tour-bradley-birzer.html
Causal Chain
Recently went riding at the margins of Olympic, was actually planning to do a loop through couple of forest roads, but eventually ended up running into a road gated shut. So, had to turn back half way, and ride across the same bridge seen on my way up. And not just the same bridge, I crossed paths with the same hiker who was now walking back from the other end. Clearly, even he was amused at this bizarre coincidence. How often do the path of a motorcyclist, and a hiker in the wilderness converge on a bridge — twice!
In a way, coincidences or accidents are just separate causal chains coinciding at some point. For instance — ferry time, riding pattern, not up-to-date maps on the GPS etc were all immediate preceding links on my causal chain. If we go further back, then there are other causal sequences explaining why ferry times are the way they are, or how I ended up riding in some quirky way etc. But, we can only speculate about the causal events related to the mysterious hiker.
In that sense, every moment is the consequence of a set of connected or disconnected and known or unknown preceding causal events. Actually, even in my case, we can only speculate whether it was the incorrect map or did someone just decided to shut that road the previous day? Or maybe my riding pattern was immaterial. That means if all the other factors remained same, all types of riders would have faced the mysterious hiker, twice! If only we could replay life, and control it for various factors.
Some coincidences are rare, but others tend to be recurring and contentious. For instance, rising college tuition, health care costs or govt deficit spending tend to be recurring and divisive. But there are also recurring less contentious coincidences – like plummeting smart phone or fast food prices! Rarely do we see political rallies about unaffordable fries. Recurring events tend to have some dominant agency – it can be some specific group of people, natural forces, or some incentive structure etc. But general discourse is rarely about correcting these complex causal factors, which led to the present contentious pattern. But it’s usually more about introducing new factors into the mix — like price/licensing controls, or a new tax, or may be a new war? So, instead of fixing the root cause we keep introducing workarounds. Sounds like another recurring pattern.
What Hath the train Wrought, Part II
Part II of our symposium. A second indepth look at the philosophy and emotions behind Big Big Train’s latest album, GRAND TOUR.
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Beginning with genteel blushings and awed whispers, David Longdon’s vocals—so plaintive and so earnest and so full of wonder—begin Grand Tour by sharing hard-earned wisdom.
After all, this story begins far from home, and the craft in question flies along shadowed paths beyond all human sight, but never beyond human imagination. By whatever measure of success or failure, the craft made the attempt. And, by necessity, so did those who launched it in the first place.
Whatever the fate of that craft, it was made by human hands, and those hands should be celebrated. And, thus we should celebrate not just the act of creation but the very life that gave the very intelligence to act.
We are, after all, ALIVE!
And thus begins Big Big Train’s latest album, Grand Tour, a masterpiece even among masterpieces. Ostensibly, this hook—which catches onto the eighteenth-century ideal of English travel throughout the European continent and, especially, into and around the Mediterranean and Aegean—ties the latest album together. By employing such a story, the band can travel not only across space but also back through time. The album explores ideas and as well as biographies.
This is, simply put, an album for the intelligent and meaningful person.
With track three, “The Florentine,” the band looks at the very core of the Italian Renaissance and one of its four greatest figures, Leonardo.
On track four, “Roman Stone,” the band digs deep back into western civilization, finding the very stones that created the Roman Republic and the various Mediterranean powers of the ancient world. There is both regret at the loss and admiration at the gain. See what we once were, the band claims. See what we could’ve been, the band asks. After all, things that have broken have often been made whole again. Sometimes even with the very material that had fallen into ruin becomes the cornerstone.
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What Hath the Train Wrought, Part I
Given that this site’s patron is also the patron saint of music, it seems meet and just to review our favorite music. Thus, I give you the awesome Tad Wert’s first entry into the symposium, “What Hath the Train Wrought,” a deep look at Big Big Train’s GRAND TOUR.–Brad, editor
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“GRAND TOUR” by Tad Wert
There are and can exist but two ways of investigating and discovering truth. The one hurries on rapidly from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from them, as principles and their supposed indisputable truth, derives and discovers the intermediate axioms. This is the way now in use. The other constructs its axioms from the senses and particulars, by ascending continually and gradually, till it finally arrives at the most general axioms, which is the true but unattempted way.
–Francis Bacon, Novum Organum
Never let it be said that Big Big Train doesn’t think big. Their latest opus, Grand Tour, is a massive undertaking, taking the listener on a voyage from the cliffs of Dover to Italy, Constantinople, and out to interstellar space. Along the way, we pay our respects to Leonardo da Vinci, Saints Theodora and Justinian, exiled Prospero and Ariel, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Oh, and we mustn’t forget to say hello to Francis Bacon, the first “modern” thinker.
If this project were attempted by any other artist, they would be ridiculed for their pretentiousness. To BBT’s credit, they have done their research, and every song on this amazing album is filled with respect, appreciation, and love for their subjects. In the 18th and 19th centuries, every well-educated European took a “Grand Tour”, which included visits to famous cultural and religious sites, such as Rome, Florence, Paris, etc. Thanks to BBT, we can embark upon our own grand tour via their artistry.
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Leviathan, Inc.: Robert Nisbet & the Modern Nation-State ~ The Imaginative Conservative
By the end of his formal academic career, in the late 1970s, Nisbet considered this chance encounter with The Servile State in 1936 to be one of the most significant turning points in his professional life. Indeed, he counted The Servile State one of the five most important books he had read in his life, ranking it alongside Tocqueville’s Democracy in America; James Fitzjames Stephen’s Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; Frank Teggarts’s Processes of History; and Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. “Suffice it here to say that never again, after reading Belloc’s work, did I imagine that there could be genuine individual freedom apart from individual ownership of property.”[3] Equally important, Nisbet noted, it forced him to realize that the liberals of the twentieth-century had profoundly corrupted the vision of their nineteenth-century ancestors. Additionally, at least in the mind of Nisbet, The Servile State, along with Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Thomas More’s Utopia, Smith’s Wealth of Nations, William Graham Sumner’s The Forgotten Man, and Albert Jay Nock’s Our Enemy The State as one of the most important anti-government books of the modern West.[4]
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/05/leviathan-inc-robert-nisbet-modern-nation-state-bradley-birzer.html
Are dictionaries dead?
I have many dictionaries. The languages I have taught, Spanish and English, are the languages I have with the most dictionaries. I use online dictionaries also but I rely on my shelf of carefully collected books and dictionaries. I have German, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Scottish Gaelic, Breton-French, Irish, German-Spanish, Latin-Spanish, Latin-English and Spanish-Greek dictionaries. On the Spanish side I have a Diccionario de Dudas which analyzes the difficulties of the English idiom from the Spanish side. It is remarkably cogent with very few errors. It’s chief drawback it that it tends to focus on BRITISH English rather than American English but that doesn’t bother me. I have a number of Spanish dictionaries Collins Spanish-English (great grammar notes), Oxford (magnificent treatment of phrasal verbs) and American Heritage (great synonyms and explanation of multiple meanings) The AHA, my prefered dictionary, uses a simple phonic system instead of the IPA. The IPA is very precise but useless to help English learners spell and pronounce English. I prefer the Merriam-Webster or American Heritage phonic system for the purpose of teaching. Even I sometimes use the AHA dictionary primarily for copying the phonetic letters. But I learn much more by studying real dictionaries because the words are explained in detail and are surrounded alphabetically by related words (sometimes false cognates).
Of course, I have the venerable RAE (dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy), and the Larousse dictionary with its encyclopaedia like features. I have the Larousse in Portuguese also. I read Portuguese and occasionally read articles from Brazil or correspond with people from Brazil. I also watch films with Portuguese subtitles. I used to be reasonable fluent in Portuguese but as hardly ever use it the only thing I have retained is a good reading ability. When speaking Portuguese today I inevitably lapse into Spanish.
Another favorite dictionary is BEYOND THE DICTIONARY IN SPANISH by A. Bryson Gerrard. This dictionary consists of short essays on words and phrases and the author clearly explains nuances and multiple meanings as well as the limitations of certain Spanish words. Every teacher of English or Spanish knows there are cognates that English and Spanish (indeed most Romance languages) share. And every teacher knows there are FALSE COGNATES; words that look alike but have completely different meaning. Famous examples are éxito, suceso embarazada ,agonía etc.
| Spanish | English |
| éxito | success[1] |
| suceso | Event or incident or a [2]happening |
| embaraz-ada | literally “heavily burdened with child”; pregnant NOT embarrassed [3] |
| agonía | Means dying breath or death throes [4] |
| extravag-ante | Partially FALSE; Wandering away from the normal or eccentric especially in clothes[5] |
| feria | Fair of course is in market but NEVER “just”[6] |
[1] Not exit which is “salida”
[2] éxito is, of course, success not exit.
[3] Preñada does mean pregnant but is used ONLY for animals or if used for humans it is humorous or insulting. Very insulting.
[4] Dolor horrible is probably agony or a prolonged agony would be “martirio” (martyrdom)
[5] Extravagant in the sense of money is us “derrochador” (big spender) or “pródigo” (prodigal)
[6] Feria in slang means (fare or money) ‘feriar” means to change a large sum into small change as for the bus.
But the really difficult words are idioms or are the cognates that are PARTIALLY FALSE. Of course, it is complicated by the use of “americanismos” or “Spanglish”. I have no problem, per se with “americanismos’ or “Spanglish” . I do have a problem with illiteracy; that is substituting English words so much that one is unable to read standard Spanish. Slang words add humor and zest but they should be used as some extra spice. They should not be the whole “enchilada.”
I will never forget the time when a student came back to California after an extended time in Mexico on her family ranch. She said, ” ¿Me mistió , míster?” At first I did not understand her as this is not properly Spanish but after a moment I realized she was asking “Did you miss me, Sir?” That’s “Spanglish”. It never ceases to get a few laughs when I recount this true story which proves that slang is great for humor or local color.
Similarly, in my private life, I love to use Scottish dialect for our “hame” dialect. The Glaswegian/Oban language my father spoke as a child was a Scots/Gaelic hybrid. An example would be “Yon’s a paltry lassie” (not meaning trashy but overly skinny) or “yon’s a fey mon” (meaning he is taking so many chances he is going to roll snake eyes -that is to say he is doomed). My father often remarked that his father (Auld Pop) upon seeing JFK in an open car waving in a motorcade in New York City said (in 1960), “yon’s a fey mon.” My father said, “What do you mean, Pop?” He said, win or lose he was an easy target for an assassin. When November 22, 1963 came around my father remembered that expression. Of course, Auld Pop (his father) had seen many a commanding officer and comrade laid low by German snipers at 2nd Ypres. Of course, having a knowledge of Scottish dialect is mostly important to enjoy poems of Burns and Scottish songs but otherwise has a very limited utility.
But normally I would never use Scottish dialect outside of my clan circle or except when corresponding with Scottish friends because I am aware that this argot is impenetrable to most English-speakers and especially almost all English learner. I have only met one Spaniard in my entire life who was fluent in Scots and he had been educated in Glasgow. He found the Scots pronunciation easier than English so he stuck to it. He sounded like a well educated Glaswegian who had lived in Edinburgh. I am a firm believe in language control and in having command of STANDARD ENGLISH or STANDARD SPANISH. But I am well aware “non-standard English” etc. exist and have their uses. I like online dictionaries, I like electronic dictionaries on my NOOK but I love and rely on and study my real dictionaries and my real books. If I really want to study an article or book I get the real Mccoy. Virtual books do not make as strong an impression on my mind and memory.
MELTING POT OR SALAD BOWL?
John deCrèvecœur SAID:
the most famous and important question in American history: “What then is the American, this new man?” The authentic American leaves behind him “all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds.” The American “entertains new ideas, and forms new opinions.” Crèvecœur was enthusiastic about this new man whose “labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.”
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/03/the-decline-and-rise-of-secular-judaism
Spirit of Cecilia 
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