I have finished Mr. Blue,^[1] recommended by and borrowed from Vincas. I can see why he likes it. But I do not think I shall read it again. Blue is indeed an intriguing fellow, the sort of character that our modern world no doubt needs more of, and is , with even less doubt, ill equipped to understand. The end of the book casts a shadow over its entirety though, one that I am ill equipped to handle. It is much like Mr. Ray Bradbury’s short stories: I am glad to have them, but I can handle them only in small and infrequent doses.

Mr. George Gilder claims that Mr. (Dr.?) Kurt Gödel proved “in essence that every logical system, including mathematics, is dependent on premises that it cannot prove and that cannot be demonstrated within the system itself, or be reduced to it.”^[1][2] Does anyone know if that is in fact the case? The proof is no doubt beyond me, but E.L. or J.D. would likely be able to understand it, were they interested. I am rather curious to know if this authors claims of the proof (that mathematics necessarily rests on unprovables) are true.

“We’re drowning in information and starving for knowledge.” —Rutherford D. Rogers

0.7.6-rc3 is at last a version of tiger envelopes that is able to pull mail from schierer.org. This means that the 0.7.6 release should be a good one. ☺

0.7.6-rc2 is also a no-go. It seems to get the ssl right (at last), but fails to log me in over IMAPS. Looking at the logs, I am unsure if it is sending luke@schierer.org or luke@@luke@schierer.org, but either way, it should be sending just luke. At least, that is what I think is happening. We will see what I hear next from them.

“By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the social-assistance state leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients.” —Pope John Paul II, Centesimus annus (1991)

“The state which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person — every person — needs: namely, loving personal concern.” —Pope Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est

Mr. George Weigel has masterfully summed up were we stand, after nearly 5 years of open warfare.^[1] Our war in Afghanistan, and our war in Iraq, the war between Isreal and Lebanon, and the radicalism at work in Iran are not separate events, separate conflicts. They are just the next chapter in the centuries long conflict between Christiandom, or in this case its remains, and radical Islam. We will continue to have trouble winning in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in influencing Iran until we recognize this fact, and react accordingly: with conversion of self (and others) and with a renewed, reborn, commitment to prayer.

Moreover, when we do engage in armed conflict, be it resistance, or be it offensive, we must do so remembering that we are seen as representatives of Christiandom and act accordingly. For that reason, if no other (and I do believe there are other good reasons), we should rethink our commitment to Isreal, who does not support even so much of the fullness of our Christian faith (though we do worship the same God), as our separated (Protestant) brothers and sisters do. We have an obligation to protect them, but we need not enable their own tendency to atrocity.

The TigerPrivacy people tell me the most recent issue is that my ssl cert is self-signed. They claim that they will get back to me soon. Again, while I must say that as disappointed as I am that this has not Just Worked, I cannot but be impressed with their response rate. Let us see if they can keep it up.

I would expect Damian792 to 1)do very well on this test 2)find fault with its mistakes (I am assuming there are some).

My score on The World Languages Test:

Language Savvy
(You scored  a 210 out of 400 on language knowledge.)

“Congratulations! You know your stuff! You’ve scored higher than most people would and you probably have taken a linguistics or cultural science class to boot. Most likely you are bilingual or even multilingual. You are also probably fascinated by languages and want to learn more of them in the future. When you travel to a foreign country, you make a point to learn some of the language instead of imposing your own. It’s people like you who help promote the exchange of languages worldwide. Keep it up!”

Take it! http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=14542641333555646929