Last 10 Posts from My Bloghttps://ericsowell.com/content/rss.xml2024-02-04T19:14:00ZWerkzeugFebruary 2024 Journalhttps://ericsowell.com/blog/2024/2/4/feb-2024-journal2024-02-04T19:14:00Z2024-02-04T19:14:00ZEric Sowell<h2>January Reflections</h2>
<p>January was an unusual but pleasant month for me. As time freed up, I kept it unscheduled instead of filling the vacuum by committing to something else. I ended up filling this unstructured time with reading, home construction, cooking, and games with others. The month became especially free after <a href="https://www.conventiculum.com/mmxxivlatine">Conventiculum Hibernum</a>, which was a good experience.</p>
<h3>On Arbitrary Rules</h3>
<p>Two rules for January made it especially pleasant. The first was to strive to do less. As they say, "nature abhors a vacuum," and so does my schedule. It's my natural tendency to immediately schedule something new at the first hint of free time, whether it's a class, a daily commitment, or something similar. So, I made a rule for myself: until the end of January, I would take on nothing new. The empty time would remain free, and I would do with it as I pleased in the moment. This may be a poor way to reach long-term goals, but it was a great way to rest.</p>
<p>The other arbitrary rule I adopted in January was to play no game without anyone else. The intention of this rule was to increase my family time. In this it succeeded. It is easy for me to spend hours playing Civilization 6 alone, but this rule killed that, which either pushed me towards more cooperative games, reading, or rest.</p>
<p>What I didn't expect is that it would unearth a nasty habit. I had grown accustomed to playing MIRTS by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/@amirrajan">Amir Rajan</a> when I had a few minutes of downtime. I checked the stats in the game, and I had played it entirely too often without thinking. But with this rule, the ease of playing as a default action when bored became obvious. This rule is staying with me next month.</p>
<h3>Construction</h3>
<p>The two rules left me with much more free time. This time would have resulted in more studying except for some (occasionally fun) construction time. I helped my daughter put some new shelves up in her closet, replaced the backing, retiled a portion of my shower (ugh), <a href="https://x.com/Mallioch/status/1743719173077733804?s=20">improved the bookshelves in my study</a>, and <a href="https://x.com/Mallioch/status/1753125456419680561?s=20">made radical changes to my WFH office</a>. Though I would have been delighted to avoid bathroom work, the other changes were less tedious. It's nice to get your hands dirty sometimes, to step out of the realm of code and language and do more tangible work.</p>
<h3>Cooking</h3>
<p>And on the topic of more tangible work, I've been doing more cooking. This includes a good bit of Asian cooking, <a href="https://x.com/Mallioch/status/1745635094126067981?s=20">my first brisket</a>, and <a href="https://x.com/Mallioch/status/1749283353184899342?s=20">bread</a>. Since cooking is cheaper and healthier (on average) than eating out, it is a win.</p>
<h2>Study and Reading</h2>
<p>At the beginning of January, I finished Gaiman's <em>Norse Mythology</em> (which is great) and Machiavelli's <em>The Prince</em> (which was historically impactful and therefore fairly interesting). The first was a gift from an Improver and the second was for a book club at <a href="https://www.improving.com/">Improving</a>. Then came <a href="https://www.conventiculum.com/mmxxivlatine">the Winter Latin Assembly (Conventiculum Hibernum)</a>, which was non-trivial to prep for and (once again) a good experience. If you're into Latin, I recommend the meetings. The last finished book was a re-read of Terry Brooks' <em>Sword of Shannara</em>. It was one of the first fantasy books that I read when I was in High School. My children were the cause of this. Two of them decided to read it, and I decided to refresh my memory so we could discuss.</p>
<h2>Faith</h2>
<p>Today, we visited <a href="https://allsaintskirk.com/">All Saints Presbyterian Church in Fort Worth</a> to attend some baptisms. The singing was strong, there were many prayers and much scripture, and the preaching gave me a new perspective on Acts 6 and 7. It was all a blessing. Lord willing, next week, we will be back at <a href="http://www.firstbaptistparker.org/">FBC Parker</a>, and I begin a study in Ephesians during the morning study hour. It was great to be with some saints in Fort Worth today, but I will be happy to be with my church family again next week.</p>
<h2>February Plans</h2>
<p>But now February has arrived! I can take on new goals, though I will restrain myself. </p>
<ul>
<li>Some daily Hebrew on Biblingo - My Latin and Greek are better than ever, though my Hebrew has suffered. I have subscribed to <a href="https://biblingo.org/">Biblingo</a> and will shoot for 15-20 minutes daily as a refresher. I'll revisit the goal in March.</li>
<li>Daily Greek reading in Athanasius' <em>On the Incarnation</em> - I have been spending too much time recently on Latin, so I'm going to read this through again. The last time was March of 2019.</li>
<li>An Obsidian Plugin - I started working on the <a href="https://github.com/AnthropologieBiblique/link-heading-range/tree/implement-live-preview">Link Heading Range</a> plugin for <a href="https://obsidian.md/">Obsidian</a>, extending someone else's previous work, early last year. I've been using it ever since as-is. Unless something exists that supersedes it, I will attempt to get it published. And if it isn't necessary anymore, then I have a Bible downloader plugin I built that will be useful. Obsidian is such a great tool. Now that I use it, It's one of those things that I would have to build myself if it didn't exist.</li>
</ul>
<p>Even with the new goals, I expect plenty of time to relax, but we'll see how things go. I hope all who read this have a blessed February. Valete, amici!</p>Pascha, Easter, and Paganismhttps://ericsowell.com/blog/2022/4/22/pascha-easter-and-paganism2022-04-22T19:14:00Z2022-04-22T19:14:00ZEric Sowell<p>It's the season of Easter, a time to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. You might be thinking, "but Eric, you're late! Easter already happened!" Only for some us. The Eastern Orthodox still use the Julian Calendar for its liturgy, and their Easter is this weekend. So I'm posting this on a Good Friday.</p>
<p>Not only is it a time to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, but it's also that time of year that people come out and start talking about how Christian Easter is the takeover of a pagan holiday. If you <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=easter+pagan">do a quick search on Google</a>, you will find plenty of people saying so. If you're curious and want to know what they're saying, go ahead and take a look, but then come on back. You'll see people writing about how Christian Easter is based on pagan Eostre, or perhaps Ishtar, about Easter eggs, the Easter bunny, and hot cross buns. It all very effectively taps into that part of our brains that loves conspiracy theories.</p>
<p>However, it's wrong. For a resource, I generally recommend Peter Gainsford's posts <a href="http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2018/03/easter-and-paganism-1.html">Easter and Paganism Part 1</a> and <a href="http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2018/03/easter-and-paganism-2.html">Easter and Paganism Part 2</a>. For a takedown of the idea that Easter is based on Ishtar, I recommend Spencer McDaniel, <a href="http://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/04/06/no-easter-is-not-named-after-ishtar/">No, Easter Is Not Named after Ishtar</a>. These are good posts, but I feel like one aspect of Gainsford's presentation needs to be seriously tweaked. As far as I know, he's not factually incorrect on anything, but he (and many) aren't quite looking at something correctly. Here's the paragraph I want to call out:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Easter was being celebrated by Christians in Rome by the mid-100s CE. In the 150s there was a dispute between the Roman Christians, led by pope Anicetus, and an Anatolian group called the Quartodecimans, led by Polycarp. The disagreement was over whether Christians should celebrate the crucifixion according to the Hebrew lunar calendar, at the Jewish Passover (on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan: <em>quartodecimani</em> = ‘14th-ers’). The Roman Christians, who were predominantly gentiles, preferred to have Easter fall on the right day of the week. Anicetus and Polycarp didn’t settle the matter, but they agreed to disagree.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The source he is pulling this from is Eusebius' <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250105.htm"><em>Church History</em>, book 5, chapter 23 and 24</a>, if you want to read it for yourself.</p>
<p>But here's the thing: if someone asks "When did Christians first celebrate Easter?", they're already looking at it wrongly. Why? When Anicetus and Polycarp were chatting, they would have been using the word πάσχα/<em>pascha</em>. Understanding why helps a great deal.</p>
<h2>Pascha</h2>
<p>What is <em>Pascha</em>? Let's see it in use.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Pesach/Passover/Pascha. <strong>Exodus 12:11</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This "Passover" is an event that the Jews were commanded to observe yearly in remembrance of their exodus from bondage in Egypt. It was to be celebrated on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan (Exod 12:6). If you were reading that and other texts about the Jewish Passover in Hebrew, you would see the word <em>pesach</em>/פסח, not "Passover" (English). If you check your Septuagint, you'll generally see <em>pascha</em>/πάσχα. If you check your Latin Vulgate, you'll either see <em>pascha</em> or you'll see them translate it (rather than transliterate it) as something like <em>transitus Domini</em>, or "passing over of the Lord." And just in case you're wondering about it, the Greek and Latin πάσχα/pascha is more closely related to the Aramaic <em>pascha</em>/פסחא, which is why you have the vowel differences between <em>pacha</em> and <em>pesach</em>. So the Hebrews have this annual event called <em>Pascha</em> that they are supposed to remember, established hundreds of years before Christianity was born.</p>
<p>Now we fast forward a long time so I can ask a question. When do you think the apostle Peter was present at his first Pascha? I assume it was before he turned one year of age. He wasn't an apostle at that point, but since the Jews had been celebrating Pascha for hundreds of years, this seems likely. What about James, John, Philip, Simon, and Jesus? Probably the same. For example, as setup for a story, In Luke 2:41 we have the statement that Jesus' parents went up to Jerusalem every year to celebrate the Passover. This is something we would expect. </p>
<p><em>Pascha</em> occurs several times in the Gospels. The last occurrence is extremely important. Let's look at Luke's account.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>14</strong> And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. <strong>15</strong> And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Pascha/Passover with you before I suffer. <strong>16</strong> For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” <strong>17</strong> And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves. <strong>18</strong> For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” <strong>19</strong> And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” <strong>20</strong> And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. (Luke 22:14–20, ESV)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So we have this very important religious event happening, and Jesus celebrates it with his disciples. The Hebrews had been celebrating this event for hundreds of years. That Jesus would celebrate this with his disciples is exactly what we should expect. But this particular celebration is not typical <em>at all</em>. In fact, in the middle of this Pascha, Jesus sets up a new rite, or practice, for his disciples. And not only that, he is betrayed later that night, and then crucified. This is an unusual Pascha! And then three days later, the disciples start saying that they've seen Jesus alive and believe that he was raised from the dead! This is an extremely unusual Pascha.</p>
<h2>When Did The Christians First Celebrate Pascha?</h2>
<p>When did the Christians first celebrate Pascha? After the launch of this new thing that would later be called "Christianity," when do you think the disciples decided to start celebrating Pascha? Since the earliest followers were Jews, these people had been celebrating Pascha their entire lives. Answer: they would have celebrated it the next year. This is especially true since their Lord had imbued it with new significance the previous year by the establishment of the Lord's Supper, and had died, and been raised from the dead during Pascha week. Would they have celebrated it the same way that they had always celebrated it before? Unlikely. Can I prove this by documentary evidence? No. But to me it's inconceivable that this isn't the case. It's unreasonable to think that these Jewish Christians stopped celebrating Pascha.</p>
<p>In other words, asking when the Christians first celebrated Pascha doesn't even make sense as a question. You might ask how their celebration of Pascha changed over time. That's a great question. You might ask at what point some decided to stop celebrating on the 14th of Nisan and make sure it's celebrated on a Sunday, the change that caused the discussion between Anicetus and Polycarp mentioned above. Phenomenal question. When did they begin celebrating Pascha? I submit to you that this is not a good question because the answer is obvious.</p>
<h2>Okay, Now Easter</h2>
<p>As Gainsford (and others) very helpfully point out, our first record of Pascha being called something like <em>Easter</em> is roughly seven hundred years later in Bede's <em>On the Reckoning of Time</em>, and <a href="https://glaemscrafu.jrrvf.com/english/mensibus.html">you can read the chapter here in English or in Latin</a>, whichever you prefer. Here's the relevant part:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We do not stray away from the topic if we now deal with interpreting the name of all others of their months. The months called <em>Giuli</em> get their name from the return of the sun towards the increase of the day, because one of them comes before and the other follows it. <em>Solmonath</em> can be told to be the months of cakes, which they then offered to their gods; <em>Rhedmonath</em> is named after their god <em>Rheda</em>, to whom they sacrificed at that time; <strong><em>Eosturmonath</em>, which is now interpreted as the month of Easter, once held its name from their goddess called <em>Eostre</em>, for whom they then celebrated festivals, and by whose name they now refer to the time of Easter: they call the joys of the new solemnity by the customary name of the old observance.</strong> <em>Thrimilchi</em> was thus named because the beasts were then milked thrice a day. For such was then the of fruitfulness of Britain or of Germany, whence the English nation came into Britain. <em>Lida</em> means “gentle” or “navigable” because on both these months the quiet breezes are gentle, and they then used to sail the calm seas. <em>Weodmonath</em> is the month of tares, because there are great plenty of them at that time. <em>Halegmonath</em> is the month of holy rites. <em>Winterfylleth</em> can be expressed by a new compound name, the winter-full-moon. <em>Blotmonath</em> is the month of immolations, because they then devoted to their gods the beasts that were to be slaughtered. Thanks to thee, good Jesus, who turned us away from this nonsense and granted us to offer thee praises in sacrifice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Note that Bede doesn't say "we picked up some great ideas from this pagan festival" or "now that I am here, I can see our celebration was stolen from this pagan festival." What he actually says is that this month already had a name based on a god they worshipped, and they decided to keep that name even if they don't worship that goddess. And to this day, it's apparently only the English and Germans who use a name derived from Eostre. Everyone else still use <em>Pascha</em> or a derivative thereof. So this is mostly nonsense that us English and German speakers have to put up with.</p>
<p>Also, Bede lived in Northumbria in England. First century Judea, the birthplace of Christianity, is separated geographically from this place and temporally by a great distance. This is our only ancient record of this. That's it. There is no evidence that Christianity created Easter out of a pagan ceremony.</p>
<p>It is absurd.</p>
<p>So where did Christianity's observation of Pascha come from? Easy. Pascha, the Jewish Passover. It's in the name. Christian Pascha/Easter is a transformation of the Jewish Pascha.</p>
<h2>Ishtar</h2>
<p>So what about Ishtar? Even though the modern popular connection between Ishtar of antiquity and Easter seems to be the fault of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science , the source of this connection is apparently a 19th century Protestant named Alexander Hislop fishing for ways to critique to the Catholic Church. I looked this one up, and you can see <a href="https://archive.org/details/thetwobabylonsor00hisluoft/page/102/mode/2up">a later edition of this fellow's book on archive.org</a>. Being nice, I even linked you directly to the page in which he begins his discussion of Easter. I'll just quote the first three sentences.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Then look at Easter. What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, our Easter comes from Ishtar because they sound the same. This is absurd. I won't waste any more of my time on this. Read the pieces by Spencer and Gainsford above.</p>
<h2>In Conclusion</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, this all comes from people repeating nonsense because they haven't taken the time to look at this historically. And since it's repeated a lot, people assume it's true. Unfortunate. For all the less important items, like Easter bunnies and eggs, read the linked items above. They're very interesting. But even if it were true that Easter was the takeover of a pagan festival, it wouldn't bother me too much. It would be a trophy of just one of the many gods that Jesus has put under his feet.</p>
<p>Two final notes. If you're interested in some good reading on the Pascha chronology in the Gospel accounts and language about the celebrations, I cannot more highly commend Brant Pitre's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Last-Supper-Brant-Pitre/dp/0802875335">Jesus and the Last Supper</a>. Chapter four alone is worth the cost of the book.</p>
<p>And finally, this whole issue is a good but small reminder of the importance of knowing something of these ancient languages. Nothing in this post requires great language skill, but just <em>some</em> exposure helps. The worlds of the ancient Hebrews, of early imperial Rome, and early medieval England are very different than our own. Language study helps break down those barriers to understanding.</p>
<p>And with that I will end. Happy Pascha!</p>Teaching A Dynamics CE Career Accelerator: Reflectionshttps://ericsowell.com/blog/2021/8/16/teaching-a-dynamics-ce-career-accelerator-reflections2021-08-16T10:02:00Z2021-08-16T10:02:00ZEric Sowell<p>Whew. A Dynamics CE Accelerator finished. I've been out of the classroom for a little more than a week. I love teaching, and there’s nothing that I would rather be doing, but doing it reminds me of how tiring teaching can be. When it has been a while, you forget these things. I had to look it up, but <a href="http://ericsowell.com/blog/2017/6/21/moving-on-from-the-iron-yard">I haven’t been in the classroom since mid-late 2017</a>. So long ago! Memory stirred.</p>
<p>I am enjoying my little break, but I will be ready to again in a few weeks. What will the next one be on? When will it start? No one knows. Bootcamping and accelerating tech careers is something that <a href="https://improving.com/">we at Improving</a> are good at, but we don’t schedule them back-to-back, so at the moment I’m doing other developer-related tasks.</p>
<p>But while the class and all the emotions are fresh in the brain, I figured I should write up some reflections.</p>
<h2>What Is A Dynamics CE Accelerator?</h2>
<p>This is a good question. It’s a twelve-week coding accelerator for young programmers. It is a mix of core programming skills (C#/ASP.NET/JS/Sql Server), the Dataverse, Dynamics CE/Marketing, the Microsoft Power Platform (Automate, BI, Apps [Canvas, Model-Driven, Portal]), and Azure. Some of this involves a lot of coding, but some of these tools are made to be no-code or low-code. In case you are not familiar with these things, here’s some short explanations. But I won’t say too much since I don’t want to give away the secret recipe.</p>
<p>C# and JavaScript are programming languages. ASP.NET is a website-building toolkit. Sql Server is a database. If you’re not familiar with the latter, imagine it’s MS Access, but way better. If that’s also unfamiliar, imagine a big ol’ spreadsheet that you can write code to insert data into and pull it out when needed. It is a home, or a base, for your data.</p>
<p>The Dataverse is like a database. For those who have used databases like Sql Server before, it’s relational and built at least partially on Sql Server, but has an interesting event and security model. For those who haven’t its…er…just another type of database.</p>
<p>Dynamics CE and Marketing are highly configurable (primarily) cloud-based CRM tools. Although plugins can be written in C#, these are primarily low-code/no-code tools. The data is stored in the Dataverse.</p>
<p>The Power Platform is another low-code/no-code tool. Power Automate is for automation (surprise!). Power Apps is for building user interfaces and comes in three flavors, Model-Driven Apps (nice UI, less UI flexibility, but otherwise quite customizable), Canvas Apps (easy way to make a UI for mobile based on your data), and Portal Apps (make a website). These are built on the Dataverse. Power BI is for making pretty and interactive visualizations (I’m over-simplifying here) and can pull from the Dataverse, but so much more.</p>
<p>Azure is a set of cloud servers and services offered by Microsoft. It’s roughly equivalent to something like AWS. If that still doesn’t make sense, you’re writing code and website stuff and paying to have it run on someone else’s computers so that you don’t have to set all that up. And yes, that is yet another vast over-simplification.</p>
<h2>Paying Your Students</h2>
<p>One thing that’s different about Improving is that it pays its students during its accelerators (or bootcamps). Back <a href="http://ericsowell.com/blog/2017/6/21/moving-on-from-the-iron-yard">when I worked at The Iron Yard</a>, the students paid pretty large sums of money to take a full-time class for three months during which they received no income. For those that succeeded, it was absolutely worth it. For those that didn’t, well…</p>
<p>You can probably imagine the stress this put the students under. How long does it take to save up around $12K? And then you spend it on some teachers that you hope will be able to help you. And then you aren't able to work during that time. And then you have to convince people you’re worth hiring after! Ugh. Tough.</p>
<p>This was also very stressful for me as a teacher. People spending their savings, expecting that I’ll be able to deliver the goods and help them get a job? Stress! I get that learning is the primary responsibility of the student, not the teacher, but this is still psychologically exhausting. On top of that, I have my own responsibility to do well. Like I said, stress!</p>
<p>At Improving we avoid this by paying the students a salary while they are in class. This allows the students to focus on the learning, and me on the teaching.</p>
<p>But could this really work? Is this real? When we were recruiting for the accelerator, I remember one student who essentially ghosted us after the first chat. I contacted him a few more times and he eventually joined the class. A couple weeks before the class ended, he told me that he ghosted us because he thought there was some sort of catch. Maybe it was a joke! Well it wasn’t, he did well, and now he’s an Improver.</p>
<h2>Team Teaching</h2>
<p>My last reflection is around team teaching. Though some of the previous bootcamps I did involved some team teaching, this was the <em>modus operandi</em> of our accelerator throughout.</p>
<p>On the one hand, this was a necessity for the course because I didn’t know anything about Dynamics or the Power Platform before this started. Fortunately, Improving has many Improvers who do, so I played host to a guest teacher from out of town every week. I taught the core programming tools, they taught the platform-specific materials. I think this was hugely successful.</p>
<p>Apart from just the knowledge problem, this teamwork created a nice support structure for leading the class. Demos not working? Fine, let the other teacher take it for a few hours while you work out the kinks. Have a client task you have to deal with in the afternoon? No problem, teach in the morning and let the other guy teach in the afternoon.</p>
<h2>Success!</h2>
<p>The accelerator was a huge success. We now have eleven new Improvers in the Dallas office with some new skills. And I now have eleven new friends. I’m proud of what we did, and I’m looking forward to seeing them succeed.</p>Deploy an ASP.NET Core MVC app to an Azure Web App using Azure Devopshttps://ericsowell.com/blog/2021/4/13/deploy-an-asp-net-core-mvc-app-to-an-azure-web-app-using-azure-devops2021-04-13T18:50:00Z2021-04-13T18:50:00ZEric Sowell<p>As <a href="https://twitter.com/Mallioch/status/1376615471005450244?s=20">I mentioned in a recent tweet</a>, I am now a Principal Consultant at <a href="https://improving.com/">Improving</a>. I will be helping to teach an <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/eric-sowell-5b340132_bootcamp-dynamics365-dynamicscrm-activity-6783465911438462976-UA8K">upcoming bootcamp on Microsoft Dynamics 365</a> (which you should contact me about if you are interested in more info), and to prep for that I have been working with Azure Devops.</p>
<p>Today I decided to make a screencast showing <a href="https://youtu.be/xoNGy_cZFvY">how to create an ASP.NET Core MVC app, get it into Azure Devops, setup an Azure Web App, and setup a pipeline to get it deployed</a>. Hopefully someone will find it useful.</p>Postman: Amusing Ourselves to Deathhttps://ericsowell.com/blog/2021/1/25/postman-amusing-ourselves-to-death2021-01-25T10:45:00Z2021-01-25T10:45:00ZEric Sowell<p>I’ve been hearing for years that I should read Postman’s <em><a href="https://amzn.to/36blNOl">Amusing Ourselves to Death</a></em>, so I figured that now would be a good time to do that. Despite the fact that it’s written to a media culture that is quite a bit different than our own (80’s TV culture versus our social media culture), it still has a lot of value. Actually, I would recommend it for everyone, because even though the mediums are different, the diseases are the same. Rather, they are more advanced because the newer mediums take the bad qualities of TV and add a few of their own. So what’s the actual value? It’s useful as a tool to discuss and critique the role and practices of news and social media today. It will help give you good vocabulary and perspectives through with to attack the subject. One of the things you need to help you fight the toxic affects of media in your life (and the lives of your friends and loved ones) is the tools to identify its harmful aspects. This book can help you with that.</p>
<p>It’s not a difficult book to read, so you likely won’t need the following. But since I took the time to write up a prose outline, here it is.</p>
<h2>An Outline</h2>
<p><strong>(Ch 1: The Medium is the Metaphor)</strong> The medium through which we converse has the strongest possible influence on what we can conveniently express. Form limits and shapes what content can work. For example, you can’t do philosophy over smoke signals. Nor can daily news really exist until the telegraph (i.e. some way of getting distant info immediately). This book is a lament about the change from a typography-based culture to a TV-based culture. These two media are vastly different and cannot accommodate the same ideas.</p>
<p><strong>(Ch 2: Media as Epistemology)</strong> Discourse under the TV is different than under the printing press. It’s not that all of TV is bad. It’s actually when the TV tries to be serious, when it tries to take the role of print, that it is most dangerous. Postman then works through several examples of how the medium used affects how you think and determine what is true. One of those examples is the use of proverbial wisdom in making judgements. In some contexts and cultures, proverbial wisdom can be impactful and useful for making decisions. But in the case of the modern print-based courtroom, that will not be acceptable. He is not saying that either are wrong or right all the time. The point: as the structure and medium of how you pass on information changes, what gets defined as intelligent changes with it. The printing press brought about radical changes to how we think. Some of those changes were harmful, but on the whole we are better off. In contrast, public discourse is much worse through the medium of TV.</p>
<p><strong>(Ch 3: Typographic America)</strong> Chapter three and the following two build a narrative of the changes in America. Chapter three starts with a conversation between Ben Franklin and a Dunker (a religious group). That group avoided putting their ideas in print because they feared that it would entrap their ideas and keep them from thinking. But this was unusual for early America. Generally speaking it was print and literacy-focused. Even discourse was often print-ish, print-out-loud, or printed orality. Print dominated both because of its qualities and because it had a natural monopoly.</p>
<p><strong>(Ch 4: The Typographic Mind)</strong> Continuing the narrative, it opens with a Douglas/Lincoln debate, focusing on how the audience could handle long discussions, could understand complex sentences when spoken, and were informed. This ability comes from the fact that it was an era of print, and print required actual content (true or not), and demanded much from the reader. The age of reason and print culture are related. It was an age of intellectual prowess in politics and religion. Even advertising at the time was more about content, because it was all prose.</p>
<p><strong>(Ch 5: A Peek-a-Boo World)</strong> Major changes start with the invention of the telegraph. Suddenly, we are beginning to be flooded with an incoherent and disconnected flow of information that was irrelevant to almost everyone that heard it and was about things that almost no one could do anything about. Irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence. Later, photography becomes the handmaid to this kind of information because it gives the trivia of that information a feeling of context and connection. TV gives imagery and trivial knowledge its perfect expression. The culture and epistemology created by the medium of TV has been around long enough for it to become background noise. The goal of the following chapters is to make it visible again.</p>
<p><strong>(Ch 6: The Age of Show Business)</strong> TV is not an extension of type and creates a different social and intellectual environment. Every technology has a bias. Printing’s bias is text. TV’s bias is entertainment. A news show is built for entertainment, not for reflection, dialogue, or catharsis. TV is not suited for revealing the act of thinking. There are notable exceptions on TV to this, but they were fighting against the norm of what TV as a medium is actually good at, so could never be the dominant type of content. TV’s entertainment focus then spreads out and affects other aspects of how we conduct ourselves.</p>
<p><strong>(Ch 7: Now…This)</strong> Telegraphy and photography introduced the discontinuous mode of discourse, but TV matured it. Credibility is about showmanship and looks, with a cast of the right appearance and personality. As for the feel, you have music to entertain and ease through transitions, stories are short (avg 45 seconds), and pictures beat words. That most of the news is presented in a disengaged fashion, and that it’s frequently interrupted by commercials, takes away the seriousness and weight. The rapid juxtapositions destroy continuity. TV is driven by a theory of anti-communication. Americans, entertained but not informed, have only the illusion of knowledge. We don’t have opinions. We have emotions. We are even losing the idea of what it means to be informed. The press is primarily entertainment-driven, not truth-driven. Because of the incoherent approach, people can’t see context. Knowledge is now trivial pursuit.</p>
<p><strong>(Ch 8: Shuffle off to Bethlehem)</strong> After watching some religious TV shows (Reverend Terry, Pat Robertson/700 Club, Jimmy Swaggert), a few conclusions can be drawn. First, anger and hate usually don’t play well on TV, so they were pretty tame. Second, it’s entertainment. Third, it weakens the nature of religious experience. Not all forms of discourse can be translated into other media and remain the same thing, e.g. poetry, condolences (cards are not the same as physical presence), and education. Proper religious experience requires religious space, and TV is naturally profane. Electric church however goes toe-to-toe with TV by having high production value, pretty people, good marketing, and by focusing on wants instead of needs. But ritual, aesthetics, and enchantment have a real place in religion. Can religion survive the conversion to entertainment? “I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether” (141).</p>
<p><strong>(Ch 9: Reach out and Elect Someone)</strong> Politics are show business. The commercialization of politics has devastated discourse. Commercials are the greatest attack on capitalism since <em>Das Kapital</em>, because capitalism assumes rational self-interest. Commercialism attacks this by focusing consumer manipulation away from propositions and claims, “away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable” (149). Similarly, politics became about feelings, not propositions. The philosophy of the commercial: brevity, drama over exposition, and solutions over questions. This is the philosophy of electoral politics. This also naturally leads to the rise of politician as celebrity, and to choosing people over parties and policies. But the celebrity politician does not offer an image of himself, but rather an image of the one watching him, and empties politics of any authentic substance. All great TV commercials are about helping people create images for themselves. History plays no role in image politic. TV is making us unfit to remember, making us indifferent to history, and providing us no narrative. You might think that our problem would be book banning and the control of information by the government. For us, the problem is that our information is controlled not by the federal state but by the corporate state, and we are not setup to defend against that.</p>
<p><strong>(Ch 10: Teaching as an Amusing Activity)</strong> Everyone loves Sesame Street, but it leaves out much: the social aspect of school, teacher interaction, emphasis of image over language, and lack of practice of public decorum. This type of learning is hostile to book and classroom learning. As John Dewey would argue, there is collateral learning that needs to take place. You need to learn how to learn, and TV learning is hostile to that. In TV learning, education and entertainment are inseparable. Commandments: thou shalt have no prerequisites, thou shalt introduce no complexity, thou shalt avoid exposition like the ten plagues visited upon Egypt. This orientation reduces the potency of the classroom and refashions teaching and learning into something that must be fun. The rest of the chapter focuses on an educational program called “The Voyage of the Mimi”, full of short videos, highly-illustrated books, and computer games. The problem is that there is no solid proof it works better as a process. Also, this could only work with some types of content. The wrong question is “What is TV good for in education?” The right question is “What is education good for?”</p>An Outline of Pieper's Leisure: The Basis of Culturehttps://ericsowell.com/blog/2021/1/18/an-outline-of-piepers-leisure-the-basis-of-culture2021-01-18T11:37:00Z2021-01-18T11:37:00ZEric Sowell<p>I recently read <a href="https://amzn.to/39MZUG5">Josef Pieper’s <em>Leisure: The Basis of Culture</em></a>. If you intend to read it, or have read it, you might find this summary of the book’s argument useful. I think much of his argument is valid, though there are several points at which I disagree, but that is for another time. Here I attempt to summarize Pieper’s argument. If you find any flaws in the argument or find this useful, comments are welcome.</p>
<p>The context is post World War II Europe. In the middle of trying to rebuild everything, Pieper wants to argue for the centrality of leisure and, related, the pursuit of the liberal arts. He divides people into two groups, the educated class, which is an upper-level class that doesn’t live day-to-day on wages, and the working class, one that does. The “liberal arts”, the arts that make men free, are studied by that educated class. The working class, generally speaking, either does not have time or make time for such pursuits. Pieper’s desire is for more people to join that educated class and pursue the liberal arts, which involves changes political, economic, and spiritual.</p>
<p>Because I found this confusing as I read the book, it might be helpful to explain the “intellectual worker”, a term which he is bothered by in the work. In short, he sees the use of that term as an attempt to bring down the upper, educated class into a system of work that would make them unable or unwilling to pursue leisure/the liberal arts, like the average lower class worker. Now, the argument of the book in sequence.</p>
<p>The argument is broken into five sections. Section one sets up the distinction that drives the essay: Do we live to work, or do we work to live? Do we have leisure so that we may go back to work, or do we work so that we might pursue something more important, leisure? Modernists would have us focus on work, the ancients like Aristotle (or even thinkers of the Middle Ages) would have us focus on leisure. But what is leisure? It isn’t really defined in detail at this point (you must wait for section three), though here it is clearly related to the pursuit of the liberal arts. He wants to discuss the worker not in terms of what he does vis-à-vis occupation, but what he is, anthropologically speaking.</p>
<p>Section two focuses on the term <em>intellectual worker</em> (and variants like scholar, et al.) and the question of how knowledge is acquired as well as how it is valued. He dislikes the term <em>intellectual worker</em> because it has three faulty assumptions, that 1) human knowledge is exclusively attributable to discursive thought, 2) the effort which knowledge requires is a criterion of its truth, 3) and knowledge must end in some utilitarian social value. The first two are discussed together. The primary thinker with which he dialogues for these two points is Kant. For this view, Hercules and his labors provides the model. All knowledge is something you work for, and that knowledge is valuable in relation to its effort. Pieper chooses Aquinas as his companion and argues against point one that some knowledge is a gift, such as flashes of insight and strokes of genius, and so not all knowledge comes entirely from human effort. Related, the centrality of grace in the Christian tradition argues against such a toil-centric view of knowledge and virtue. Against point two, effortless work that comes from the training of our nature is more virtuous than fighting against our limitations to accomplish things. The example he uses to make his argument is the command to love your neighbor. For Aquinas, loving your neighbor with great effort because you are commanded to do so is good, while doing so effortlessly because you have trained your nature to be better is more praiseworthy. Bringing it back to knowledge, it’s not the effort that is important, but that it springs from a soul conformed to love. Pieper makes no clear argument against point three regarding utility. Rather, he sets up some important points to be developed later. The argument against point three takes the last three sections of the work to develop, so a little patience is necessary. So in his setup to this, Pieper turns to the distinction between the liberal arts (those that make you free and are ends in themselves) and their counterpart, the servile arts (those whose ends are not themselves and are utilitarian in nature). To reject this distinction calls into question the idea of the university. The university exists to form the whole of a person, not just his utilitarian value. The difference is education (wholistic) versus training (utilitarian). Recall that this is a translation, so the terms are less important than the idea that there is a distinction there. Pieper ends with noting the ancients believed the notion that there was more to life than its utilitarian aspects.</p>
<p>The third section focuses on the notion of wholeness, of being what God wants you to be, of being what you actually are. The antithesis of this is <em>acedia</em>, which manifests itself in both the slothful man and the man who works too much. Leisure is not sloth. Sloth/idleness is a “deep-seated lack of calm that makes leisure impossible.” Leisure is an attitude of the mind, calmness, silence. It is serenity that springs from recognizing mystery in the universe and contentment that the universe will take its course. Leisure is contemplative celebration, recognizing our concord with the meaning of the universe, a festival celebrating basic meaningfulness. Leisure is on a fundamentally different plane than work. This is not the attitude of the worker. The worker struggles as much as possible, and breaks from work (not to be confused with real leisure) exist so that more work can be accomplished. For the person on the over-work side of <em>acedia</em>, the tension and activity of work is easier to induce than the relaxation and ecstasy of being whole, and so is also sick.</p>
<p>The fourth section opens with the question of whether a defense can be mounted for leisure. He begins with some previous attempts, such as “art for art’s sake” and the argument that it’s our duty as heirs of classical antiquity to defend such things. But he doesn’t continue in this direction (I assume because he doesn’t think these arguments will work) and makes section four an excursus on the proletariat and deproletarianization. The “proletarian is the man who is fettered to the process of work” (57). The opposite would be the educated class, the class that can pursue the liberal arts. The proletarian must work because he lacks the resources. Those constantly working can’t raise themselves out of the servile arts to the liberal. Also, some in the proletariat must work because of an inner defect, because they are addicted to it (th same point made about <em>acedia</em> above). The proletariat will generally include the poor, but it is not limited to them. There is a discussion again on the “intellectual worker” as a category of people, which Pieper thinks is just a terminological fix for the real problem. The “intellectual worker” is still stuck working, and is still in the proletariat. The goal is to move everyone out of the proletariat, not everyone into it. So how do you deproletarianize things? Three ways: 1) proletariats need to be able to acquire property, 2) the power of the state must be limited, and 3) people must overcome their own inner impoverishment. Part of this is has to do with how we look at the the money we need to make. Are we making an honorarium or a wag? For example, Pieper contrasts Stalin, who said the worker should be paid according to the work he has done, and Pope Pius XI, who argued that the worker has the right to a wage that he can support himself with. The former tries to make everyone a proletarian, the latter tries to obliterate the group. “The central problem of liberating men from the condition lies in making a whole field of significant activity available and open to the working man” (63). To do this, political changes are necessary, but they are not sufficient.</p>
<p>The fifth and last section centers around celebration and worship. Celebration/festival is the root of leisure. The root of celebration and festival is worship in its sacrificial wastefulness and superfluity. So fixing the problem means a return to worship. Festival thrives on superfluity, which is anti-utilitarian and by definition isn’t simply rest to work once again. Work without festival is Sisyphian. Passion for work can become a cult, blinding people to true divine worship. If culture is breaking down, you have to return to the source. “Leisure embraces everything…which is an essential part of a full human existence” (70). This is important to recognize because “culture lives on religion through divine worship” (71). Work is attempting to replace worship as the centerpiece, and in this context the academic appeal to antiquity is useless because antiquity itself was built on something else, worship. So how do fix our current culture? We ultimately can’t force a fix through some path, like study of the past to fix culture. It must be rooted in worship rather than individual resolve. The Christian cultus is both an act of sacrifice (and so functions as a festival) and as a sacrament, so it is visible, allowing someone to escape the work and in leisure rise above it in ecstasy.</p>Thankful for 2020https://ericsowell.com/blog/2020/12/31/thankful-for-20202020-12-31T22:30:00Z2020-12-31T22:30:00ZEric Sowell<p>As Benjamin Franklin once said, "There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self." I am thankful for 2020. There has been plenty of difficulty, but I have learned a lot about myself and life. Some thoughts:</p>
<ul>
<li>This year has given me a new appreciation for the value of community. Our church went entirely virtual for months, and this helped me value them more than ever. The church is a community. Or, as Paul would say, a body. It needs to meet in person.</li>
<li>I missed the frequent of casual lunches with friends, and learned to be thankful for them in a new way. I look forward to being able to reconnect in the real world more consistently this year, and am thankful for the technology to keep some contact with them in the meantime.</li>
<li>My employer is in the travel biz, so COVID-19 hit us hard. Still, the company not only survives, is even doing well in many ways, and is setup for great success in the future. Though it has been difficult, I am thankful to still be employed.</li>
<li>My family and I have made it through 2020 healthy, so that's something to be thankful for.</li>
<li>I am not meant to work alone, and this year has helped me see that. Some people can be the lone wolf, but I have learned that this is not how I work best. I thrive best when I can feed on the energy of others, and can feed them in return.</li>
<li>I found that I can, however, work alone from home. I really hated working from home at first, but now I have a nifty little office, a separate dedicated space. As long as I have some other developers to work with on the other side of an Internet connection, I can make this WFH thing work. Happy to ditch the commute.</li>
<li>Working from home made me think a lot about discipline, productivity, and focus. The reading and podcast listening on the topic has helped me be better about spending my time with the family, working, and learning.</li>
</ul>
<p>I am looking forward to 2021. May it be fruitful, blessed, and productive for you and me!</p>Great Plato Courseshttps://ericsowell.com/blog/2020/10/19/great-plato-courses2020-10-19T14:35:00Z2020-10-19T14:35:00ZEric Sowell<p>I have spent a lot of money over the years on titles from <a href="https://www.thegreatcourses.com/">The Great Courses</a>. I don’t regret it. And since I recently finished a course, I thought I would blog about it and one that is complementary.</p>
<p>First, <a href="https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/masters-of-greek-thought-plato-socrates-and-aristotle.html">Masters of Greek Thought: Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle</a> by Robert C. Bartlett. This course covers Socrates as depicted by Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato, and finishes up with lectures on Aristotle.</p>
<p>Second, <a href="https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/plato-socrates-and-the-dialogues.html">Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogues</a> by Michael Sugrue. This course is shorter and more narrowly focused on Plato than the other, only overlapping on some of Plato’s works.</p>
<p>I am not sure if I favor one over the other. Sugrue is a more energetic speaker and goes a little deeper on some of Plato's materials, so I found his a bit more enjoyable. But Bartlett’s is still very interesting and exposes you to a wider range of material. If you have the time, both will do you some good.</p>
<p>If you are interested in either, you have a few options. First, you can buy Sugrue’s course on the Great Courses website. Don’t ever pay full price, as courses go on sale frequently. You can still get Bartlett’s course in video format from the website, but they now sell <a href="https://amzn.to/3keAftQ">the audio version only through Audible</a>. Second, you could go with <a href="https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/">The Great Courses Plus</a>, which is apparently (I have not tried it) a streaming, monthly subscription version of the regular materials. However, given the complication of the Audible deal with Bartlett’s course, I can’t guarantee that it will be available. Third, my friends tell me that many local libraries have copies of some of these materials, so you might be able to find what you want there for free.</p>Thoughts on Andrew Le Peau's Write Betterhttps://ericsowell.com/blog/2020/10/8/thoughts-on-andrew-le-peau-write-better2020-10-08T12:45:00Z2020-10-08T12:45:00ZEric Sowell<p><img alt="Write Better, Le Peau" src="https://ericsowellblog.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/le-peau--write-better.jpg" /></p>
<p><a href="https://www.ivpress.com/andrew-t-le-peau">Andrew Le Peau</a> is a long-time writer and editor. His <a href="https://amzn.to/3iCNqD8">Write Better: A Lifelong Editor on Craft, Art, and Spirituality</a> is the first book of his that I have read. Having <a href="link">recently</a> cleared out my mind and increased my reading time, I decided to pick this book up. It doesn't hurt to learn to write better.</p>
<p>Le Peau organized the book in the three divisions you see in the subtitle. Chapters averaged about ten pages per, which makes the book easy to digest in small chunks. I generated about six pages of notes off of the book, most of which came from the first section. Though there are interesting bits throughout, the first section is what most interested me since I was looking for ideas on craft and technique rather than his views on art or spirituality.</p>
<p><img alt="Write Better, notes" src="https://ericsowellblog.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/le-peau--write-better-notes.jpg" /></p>
<p>The book is well-organized, has useful information, and is an enjoyable read. If you would like to write better, consider picking it up.</p>A Mid-Year Life Shufflehttps://ericsowell.com/blog/2020/10/5/a-mid-year-life-shuffle2020-10-05T16:15:00Z2020-10-05T16:15:00ZEric Sowell<p>I've been on a organization binge. I cleaned out our storage shed, cleaned out the attic and expanded the storage area up there, <a href="https://twitter.com/Mallioch/status/1287778366293245953?s=20">made a new office in my study</a>, sold some books I didn't think I would ever read or use to make room for more,
<a href="https://twitter.com/Mallioch/status/1300495468624044037?s=20">bought a serious filing cabinet</a>, organized all papers and class notes that I have kept since college, <a href="https://twitter.com/Mallioch/status/1300589040933244930?s=20">made a new little bookshelf</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/Mallioch/status/1303107646845857800?s=20">made a treadmill desk</a>.</p>
<p>Outside of the physical realm, for about a month now I have been in a state of inbox zero for both personal and work emails, have everything off my brain and into action lists, and am generally living in a chill mental state. I have run out of life to organize. Everything is in its place. It feels good.</p>
<p>Our pandemic made it clear that I was in need of a mental spring cleaning. Our family home-schools, so they were accustomed to being home almost every day, even if they now had fewer extracurriculars. But it forced me to work from home and that was a difficult transition. Though I was able to work as easily from home as from a workplace, I had a quiet office and a clear delineation between work and home. The change knocked me off kilter.</p>
<p>Some of the physical changes were especially helpful, like building the office within my study. But this was also a catalyst for the mental spring cleaning. I am still reflecting on and tweaking my system regularly, of course. It often takes time for me to try things and reflect on them before I see the strengths and weaknesses of particular changes. But through this I have learned a good deal about myself. Seven months later, I am now better for it.</p>
<p>Do you ever think about your productivity? If you haven't, I would recommend putting some time reading and pondering in the world of productivity thinking. Though I borrowed ideas from many places, I would start with the following. For a general organizational scheme, start with <a href="https://amzn.to/3jUi77K">Getting Things Done</a>. When you are reading it, think in terms of principles, not specific technologies or techniques. For daily to-do lists and general notetaking, I follow <a href="https://bulletjournal.com/">the bullet journaling</a> system and use a <a href="https://www.leuchtturm1917.us/">Leuchturm 1917</a> notebook. And finally, I would read some Cal Newport, starting with <a href="https://amzn.to/3jA0F94">Deep Work</a>. If you are new to this and want help, or a veteran who wants to hash out ideas on such things, <a href="http://ericsowell.com/contact">shoot me an email</a>.</p>
<p>And just so you know, now that I've figured this whole work-from-home thing out, I love it. I don't want to go back.</p>