Henry Imler June 23rd, 2008

While I completely get the fluidity of language and what is important in a word is its intended meaning, I can’t help but agree with Maeve here when she says:

But while “pimping” a ride or a wardrobe may have become an acceptable usage, “to pimp” when applied to a woman is still the unlovely practice of sending her out to be a whore…

…For some of us pimp will always be an ugly, unacceptable word for any use other than to describe a trafficker in women. Younger people may not understand what the fuss is about. As Jesse Sheidlower says in a Slate article on the subject, “you can’t make someone feel a certain way about a word.”

To some extent, the gentrification of the word pimp can be said to be a generational thing, but it also carries cultural undertones. A dictum of General Semantics is that we see what we say. Language colors our view of the world. Pimps exploit, abuse, and degrade women. What kind of cultural perspective enables pimp to evolve into an inoffensive word?

(From When Did “Pimp” Become a Positive Term?)

• Ethics , Philosophy
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Henry Imler June 23rd, 2008

You were a very funny man.

George Carlin mourned as a counterculture hero

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Henry Imler June 17th, 2008

If you have grown up in a Christian culture, or around members of a Christian culture, then you are familiar with the current Christian canon, the list of books that Christians dub the Bible. If you have met very many Christians outside of the Christian culture that you are most familiar with, you most likely have noticed that different Christians have different books in their canon.  This is especially true when you look at the various canon lists that various ante-Nicene Christian groups.  Ben C. Smith, at Thoughts on Antiquity has a great series on canonical lists, which I recommend reading though.  In order to find the other posts in the series, scroll down to the bottom  of the series page and browse through the trackbacks.  While it would kill most of you to read though all of them, I highly recommend reading his posts on the Marcionite Canon, the Origenic Canon (part II), and Eusebian Canon.

These posts are a fascinating look at how the Christian canon developed over time.

Sample NT Canon Lists:

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Henry Imler June 17th, 2008

Jake Jones sent me this blurb from Wired’s online magazine’s blog :: Romans Used 20-Sided Dice Two Millennia Before D&D. Apparently the d20 has been around since Roman times. The above dice date back to the 2nd Century CE.

If you wanna buy one of them (the greenish one) you can pick it up here for a thrifty eighteen thousand dollars.

* Latin for “Critical Hit”

• Philosophy
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Henry Imler June 16th, 2008

While part of me agrees with the above picture, I have to also vehemently disagree.  The further you get from "purity" the closer you get to real people.  I am thinking of history, religious studies, etc…  Perhaps what I am trying to say is that dirty has value as well as purity.  This is part of my newfound problem with philosophy and philosophers.  Philosophy is a nice set of tools and ways to conceive the world.  However, I’d rather go build something with my tools rather than spend all day polishing my nice toolbox.  (With that said, I have and will always have a deep love for math.)

• Humor , Philosophy , Religion , Science
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Henry Imler June 16th, 2008

Mental Floss Blog :: Battlestar Galactica vs. Star Trek - I love me some sci-fi comparisons. Scott Miller looks at how BSG differs from STNG. Star Trek explores our hopes and dreams, a vision of why humanity wants to be; while Battlestar Galactica explores our flaws and our realities, a vision of what humanity is. It is a really good read. While you are at it, check out the following peices of lesser quality:

• The Fascist Ideology of Star Trek: Militarism, Collectivism, & Atheism
• Firefly, the anti-Trek

Wikipedia :: The Resoration Movement - When is a denomination not a denomination? When it says denominations are morally wrong, as the body of Christ is to be a unified body. This is the religious tradition in which I grew up. There are three wings of this denomination movement:

1. Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
2. Churches of Christ (a cappella)
3. The (instrumental) Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ

I link to this movement because it came up several times this past week in our 14 hour van rides. One of my friends, has some history in the Churches of Christ (a cappella) movement and I have a long history in the Independent Christian Churches movement. I often get blurry when recalling the differences between thevarious movements within the larger Campbell-Stone movement. As I was telling some of my friends in the van, I really like most of what the C-S movement has to say on paper, but I have huge problems with the application of those values and secondary beliefs.

The Times UK Online :: Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol - The first line gives me great hope: “Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide ‘renewable petroleum’” What?! Wait, even if this is as good as they promise, isn’t it just more of the same environmentally devastating oil? Nope, for “[t]he company claims that this “Oil 2.0” will not only be renewable but also carbon negative – meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.“

I am all down for stuff like this. As a matter of fact, I think I remember reading about the early phases of a similar project in Discover a few years ago: Anything Into Oil. While it is great to see the progress made on this front, pessimism rises within me. As my buddy Jake Jones put it when I emailed this article to him, “that is pretty cool. I wonder how long it will before the big oil companies buy the tech and screw it all up.”

• Blogging , News , Philosophy , Religion , Science
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Henry Imler June 5th, 2008

Its right at midnight here - and we are under a tornado warning till 5 am.  I think it will rain a bit tonight (I live in Columbia):

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Henry Imler June 5th, 2008

Has been wonderful. Here are some of the reasons why:

• Philosophy
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Henry Imler May 30th, 2008

Ben Affleck Harrison Ford was the bomb in Phantoms Frantic, but this clip is just plain weird.

Is the man that sexy, that we compare the loss of his chest hair to the loss of rain forest?

Update: The original vid was pulled, but now works.

Backstory for the commercial:

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Henry Imler May 24th, 2008

Scott, over at Grace is Unfair, is is reading through When War Is Unjust by John Howard Yoder and looking at Christians and Just War theory.  Please go check out Part I (Stances towards war), Part II (Selective Objection), and Part III (Training for Peace).  I have yet to see local congregations talk openly and honestly about the stance of the body of Christ to war beyond the “we support out troops” rhetoric.  A discerning and nuanced stance may be there, I just have not seen it (but I have been blind plenty of times).

S4Ep12 - There’s No Place Like Home, Part One from Long Live Locke. If you are a Lostee, you need to be reading this website.

A tantalizing taste of Firefox 3: testing RC1from Ars Technica.  I have suffered through the last three Firefox 3 beta releases and RC1 is the real deal.  It is soooo much quicker than FF2, looks better, and now most of my favorite extensions work with the release.  Download Firefox Release Candidate 1.

I put together a desk and two bookcases and sorted through a bunch of books since 1:30AM.  I am not quite sure how to sort through my books.  I have a section for languages I am working on and a section for thesis.  After that is where it gets a bit hairy.  There are philosophy, science, the study of religion, devotional scholarship, devotional books, theology, history, Christian history, ancient Christian scholarship, comics, novels, and political thought.

The problem is that most of these categories overlap. On top of all of that, I have had fantasies of going dewy decimal with my books ever since I saw my brother in law Casey’s library at his church.  Anyone know of amateur ways of doing this?

With that, I may just now go to bed.

Listening to: By Babylon by Psalm from Waking up the Storm

• Philosophy
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