I dreamt that I needed to look something up in the Aeneid but was at someone else’s house, away from my library. (The Internet did not even come up as an option. It was taken for granted that a physical book was needed.)

One of the people I was with was a young man of college age, which gave me an idea: “Hey, ...

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Moonlight in Barösund - late 1870s

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Moonlight Over the Sea - 1876

I am of the opinion that if it was possible and desirable for everything to be made better for everybody in this world, then God would have done it already - indeed divine creation would never have had evil, entropy and death in the first place.

As it is - people have innate evil. As well as having positively sinful ...

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Dose: IV per diem

A high consumption of tea has been a feature of English daily life for a couple of hundred years - but is now not so common, nor such a central feature, as it once was.

Except in my house...

The Inklings - that Thursday late-evening writing group of such importance to CS Lewis ...

A major theme on and around this blog lately has been the L page of Animalia, which shows a dog (Lassie) and two big cats (lazy lions) in a library. Bill has accused me of being a lazy lion and of having no clue what’s going on, like Mr. Jones in the Dylan song.

With that as the synchronistic context, I naturally ...

Here, for convenience of future reference, is the whole Lassie and Uncle Balty story, from Lady Luck #88 (April 1950).

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Lassie: Here comes Uncle Balty ... and he looks all excited!

Balty: Lassie! Have you still got that nickel I gave you ...

Christianity and following Jesus should be easy and simple enough for a child to understand, entailing that Christianity should be able to provide a simple and easy answer to the quintessential “why” question that children pose.

A child’s “why” question can be positive or negative. On ...

i consider that the realities of this world have meaning, and tell us something of what came before and what will come after, and of what is above and also below it. plus, i regard creativity as a primary value, and thus am doubly interested in how the creation we inhabit came about, and how it works.

because of ...

My last post, "Mr. Johnson, ho, ho, ho" discussed the word nickel and its etymology (a goblin name, originating as a diminutive for Nicholas). It also has right in the title "ho, ho, ho," an exclamation closely associated with Saint Nicholas. Thinking about that name, Nicholas, made me think of how a man I went to ...

Thursday morning, the hypnopompic mental jukebox dished up an old Sesame Street tune, a “singing and dancing telegram” delivered by Grover:

Mr. Johnson, ho, ho, hoUsed to live in BuffaloFound your hat the other dayCome and get it right away

This differs slightly from the original, in which the second line is ...

I will never understand why the producers of the show thought it was a good idea to split this season in two, and actually make that split such a fundamental part of the plot, at least for the first third. It was frankly confusing. Of course the great strength of this format is that the narrative can be injected with ...

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Okay; the picture is unreal, the story an obvious manipulation, the launch video clearly "special effects" - but please don't get drawn into trying to discover what (if anything) really happened - how deep the fakery goes; because that is also part of the PSYOP.

As I have often said, by my ...

Achieving a sense of what is real requires an acute sense of one’s own being. Why? Because nothing is more real than one’s own being.

Let the lofty and pious Christians cry out in unison, “Blasphemy! God is the most real being, not us!”

I respond, “Without an acute sense of our own ...

I expect the next few years to include tests for the soul that become more and more finely tuned. The soul must eventually be made perfect, and if that seems a tall order, it is. However, the eventual perfection is not ours but God's, and acquired through his grace. All we have to do is be true to God, and to the ...

Over the past more than two centuries; Christians have been assailed by doubts induced by various forms of scholarship, legalism, logic, etc. applied to the evidences of Christianity, and the guidance of Christian churches.

For instance; there may be real or apparent contradictions in what the Bible teaches on a ...

There is a strong thread in religion of several kinds that asserts everything is alright already - e.g. because God is good and God is omnipotent therefore good is triumphant: here, now, already.

To which the obvious rejoinder is: In that case, what are we waiting for?

If we are already living in a world of ...

There were only five Lady Luck comic books, numbered #86-90. All of them are available on archive.org. Nothing about the stories seems interesting, and the cover scene in which Lady Luck stands on two cars as they drive down a yellow road between a supermarket and a deli, never happens in the story itself. Two things ...

Last night, I was meditating on this passage from the Book of Mormon:

Yea, and there shall be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die; and it shall be well with us. And there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God -- he will justify in ...

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sometimes you have to be out of it to get into it

there are eyes everywhere for those with the magic to see

can't wait for novels to go out of style so i can start calling them antiquels

if you don't want to sound linkedin, tell a story

when i say AI tools i mean the people who are excited about them

one ...

And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day.— Joshua 8:28

Based Joshua. If someone made a T-shirt that said “Joshua 8:28” on it, I would buy one.

But the main point of this post is that I’m not calling it that anymore, just as I didn’t call the birdemic by its proper ...

On April 16, I ran across a meme with a throwaway pun about dandelions and foppishly dressed leonines -- not the sort of thing I would have paid any attention to were it not for the sync context. "Lazy lions" have been in the sync stream for some time now, one instance being Leonard Cohen's song about being "a lazy ...

Warnings (and there are plenty of these around) that self-styled "AI" is just about to "take over" from human beings - are a deceptive code indicating plans for another Establishment coup.

(Intended to build-upon the successful "instant totalitarianism" global Birdemic coup of early 2020.)

So-called AI is, of ...

The Lady Luck comic book cover I posted yesterday in "Lady in Green" turned out to be unexpectedly synchy. After Debbie had left a comment telling a story about how she had worn a green coat at the deli counter of a supermarket, we noticed that the comic book cover describes the green-clad Lady Luck as a "deb" and ...

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Okay matey! Let's you and me debate the question, and then we'll see who wins the argument...

I have seen in more than one place the assertion that my statements concerning the unavoidable and foundational necessity of individual discernment in Christianity (and that Christians must be honest ...

(For recent readers, mainly.)

I refrained from posting anything about my churlish "Easter Problem" during the celebrations - because (apparently) these mean a great deal to many Christians.

But anyone who wants to understand my own reservations about this feast can take a look at some previous posts.

(My own main ...

The Easter Sunday procession in my small village. I'm in sunglasses carrying one of the lamps. You can spot the village stork in the background of the second image. The last photo features my son (the bespectacled lad), who continues to serve as an altar boy at the village church.

Happy Easter to all. ...

In yesterday’s post “Lady in Green,” I quote Tolkien’s description of Goldberry’s gown as being “green, as green as young reeds.”

I don’t know why my train of thought went in this direction, but seeing that word reeds made me think of a scene in Gilgamesh where (as some people, including me, ...

I recently decided that, in the interest of seeing the forest for the trees, I should go back and reread my own blog posts "from the beginning." I ran across this bit of verse, originally composed and posted on May 11, 2009:

I worry so for dear old Bill,So long abed, so very ill,For if old Bill does not get well,Then ...

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A classic post in which William James Tychonievich shares his recent experience of taking brunch and drinking coffee in a couple of Taiwan's cutting-edge eateries.

Coming soon to a café near you...

Today as I was reading an email, the old song “Greensleeves”started playing in my head out of the blue. Since the email itself had to do with the “mental jukebox” phenomenon whereby messages are received in song form during a dreaming or hypnopompic state, I took note. My first thoughts were that, as the song ...

Soul mates may be found in life - the special and unique relationship found perhaps with a best friend, a spouse, a favourite author; and in other areas of life.

(Of course, soul mates that emerge within an existing family seem less of a mystery, although a mystery remains. Consider, for instance (as a public ...

What is the relationship between mathematics and science?

Not necessary, not close - as any perusal of the major breakthroughs in the history of science will reveal.

But people who are good at mathematics, and who don't know much about the full range of science, like to assert that all "real" science is ...