Month: April 2019

1994

wikipedia

April 7 – This day in history

April 7: Cheti Chand in various parts of India (2019); National Beer Day in the United States

Juvénal Habyarimana in 1980

Juvénal Habyarimana

via wikipedia

Sports Wisdom

The best ability is availability.
Proverbial

Take it one game at a time.
Proverbial 

Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton
Wellington

The Score Takes Care of Itself
Bill Walsh, Title of book by 

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
Mike Tyson

“You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”
Wayne Gretzky

Essential Heresies: Manicheanism

Now, Manicheans are not exactly a heresy, but they appear in the Confessions, and they’re very important. So since we’re doing doctrinal ideas, Manicheanism is a teaching about good and evil that can be applied to other religions besides Christianity. Manicheanism basically says that good and evil have a real existence. There is a war in the universe between a good god and an evil one. And this may be applied outside of Christianity or within Christianity.

And within Christianity, the evil god is the devil, or according to the Manicheans of this period that Augustine for a while joined, the god of the Old Testament. Jehovah is the evil god, and the god of the New Testament, the Christian god, is the good one. Jehovah is the one who smites a lot of people. Jehovah is the creator god, because the Manicheans believed that matter is evil and is the source of evil. Spirit is good. The Christian god created spirit. Human beings are imprisoned in the body, and they have to figure out a way to liberate themselves from the dominion of the evil god. Vegetarianism, for a start, avoiding flesh.

But salvation means casting off the flesh. How is this different from Christianity? And doesn’t this sound to you like regular old Christianity, mistrust of the flesh? The devil is identified with sexual desire or physicality, generally. Manicheanism is very useful as an explanation of evil. And this may not be something that keeps you up at night, but it will at some point, intermittently.

Yale Open U – The Early Middle Ages, 284–1000, HIST 210 – Lecture 4 – The Christian Roman Empire, Paul Freedman

Supercommuter

FOUR DAYS A week Andy Ross travels—by car, train, and bus—120 miles from his home in Auburn, California, to his job at a bank in San Francisco. His eight-hour round-trip typically begins at 6 a.m. He’ll be at his desk by 10, having begun work earlier on his laptop. He leaves the office by 4 p.m. and arrives home about 8.

Ross became a “supercommuter” eight years ago, after he left a tech business and took the bank job. He joined nearly 105,000 people who spend at least 90 minutes getting to jobs in the Bay Area. Ross and his wife kept their four-bedroom home in Auburn rather than move to San Francisco, where the median price is $1.4 million—more than three times that in Auburn. “I love working at my job. As a result, I’m now doing this crazy commute,” he says. “There are a lot more of us long-haul commuters” than a decade ago.

National Geographic April 2019 edition

Why does Kotter return in Welcome Back Kotter?

I haven’t seen Welcome Back, Kotter in years, but the theme song popped into my head a few days ago. I know that his dreams were his ticket out of there but that they have turned him around, but do we know why Kotter returned to James Buchanan High School?

Gabe Kaplan was a remedial High School student in Brooklyn. He fashioned his sitcom on the concept of a student from his background, returning as a teacher to teach the next generation of remedial students.

So, to answer the question, Kotter was supposedly a founding member of the Sweathogs, and he was returning to the high school he graduated from to teach the next generation of Sweathogs, who he knew he could relate to and therefore unlock their potential.

“Who’da thought they’d meet ya
back there where they’d need ya?”

They needed a teacher who could get through to the kids. But, in reality, they expected to only get (at best) a babysitter to hold class until the sweathogs dropped out. Of course, since Kotter could relate to them, he was able to actually get them to learn.

stackexchange

Faith – William James and George Michael

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible; and as the test of belief is the willingness to act, one may say that faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance. It is in fact the same moral quality which we call courage in practical affairs…
The Sentiment of Rationality, William James

Well I guess it would be nice
If I could touch your body
I know not everybody
Has got a body like you, uhh
Faith, George Michael