Random Posts

📺 Introduction to the New Testament History and Literature RLST 152 – Lecture 6 – The Gospel of Mark | Open Yale Courses

Watched Lecture 6: The Gospel of Mark by Dale B. Martin from RLST 152: Introduction to the New Testament History and Literature

The Gospels of the New Testament are not biographies, and, in this class, they are read through a historical critical lens. This means that the events they narrate are not taken at face value as historical. The Gospel of Mark illustrates how the gospel writer skillfully crafts a narrative in order to deliver a message. It is a message that emphasizes a suffering messiah, and the necessity of suffering before glory. The gospel’s apocalyptic passages predict troubles for the Jewish temple and incorporate this prediction with its understanding of the future coming of the Son of Man.

00:00 - Chapter 1. The Gospels Not As Biographies
13:44 - Chapter 2. A Historical Critical Reading of Mark
22:18 - Chapter 3. Mark's Messiah
30:26 - Chapter 4. The Apocalyptic in Mark

👓 11 Warning Signs of Gaslighting | Psychology Today

Read 11 Warning Signs of Gaslighting by Stephanie Sarkis, Ph.D.Stephanie Sarkis, Ph.D. (Psychology Today)

Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. It works much better than you may think. Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting, and it is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders. It is done slowly, so the victim doesn't realize how much they've been brainwashed. For example, in the movie Gaslight (1944), a man manipulates his wife to the point where she thinks she is losing her mind.

People who gaslight typically use the following techniques:
1. They tell blatant lies.
2. They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof. 
3. They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition. 
4. They wear you down over time.
5. Their actions do not match their words.
6. They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you. 
7. They know confusion weakens people. 
8. They project.
9. They try to align people against you.
10. They tell you or others that you are crazy.
11. They tell you everyone else is a liar.

Interesting to see that this was published on January 22, 2017, immediately after the inaugural of Donald J. Trump.

👓 Monthly report: December 2017 by Jeremy Cherfas

Read Monthly report: December 2017 by Jeremy CherfasJeremy Cherfas (jeremycherfas.net)
The most important thing to note is that I was away from my desk literally for three weeks, on a wonderfully relaxing holiday. Of course, there were still work-like things to be done, and they got done, but mostly I wasn’t thinking or doing much “work”. Ever hopeful, I entered a podcast for th...
Replied to a tweet (Twitter)
As Francis Urquhart might say, “You might very well think that…”

The whole point of that post is to show that og hasn’t solved it. There are too many flavors of metacrap and no standards. And worse og is not only not “open” it’s a DRY violation.

If you want to spelunk a bit, Cory Doctorow approached the idea back in 2001: Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia

Read Identifying Post Kinds in WordPress RSS Feeds by Dan Q (danq.me)
I use the Post Kinds plugin to streamline the management of the different types of posts I make on my blog, based on the IndieWeb post types list: articles, like this one, are “conventional” blog posts, but I also publish notes (which are analogous to “tweets”), reposts (“shares” of things I’ve found online, sometimes with commentary), checkins (mostly chronicling my geocaching/geohashing), and others: I’ve extended Post Kinds to facilitate comics and reviews, for example.
I’m sort of hoping that feed readers will improve with respect to titleless posts and make hacks like this one unnecessary. Though it could be an interesting tidbit until then.
Bookmarked Information theory in living systems, methods, applications, and challenges. by R. A. Gatenby, B. R. FriedenR. A. Gatenby, B. R. Frieden (Bull Math Biol. 2007 Feb;69(2):635-57. Epub 2006 Nov 3.)

Living systems are distinguished in nature by their ability to maintain stable, ordered states far from equilibrium. This is despite constant buffeting by thermodynamic forces that, if unopposed, will inevitably increase disorder. Cells maintain a steep transmembrane entropy gradient by continuous application of information that permits cellular components to carry out highly specific tasks that import energy and export entropy. Thus, the study of information storage, flow and utilization is critical for understanding first principles that govern the dynamics of life. Initial biological applications of information theory (IT) used Shannon's methods to measure the information content in strings of monomers such as genes, RNA, and proteins. Recent work has used bioinformatic and dynamical systems to provide remarkable insights into the topology and dynamics of intracellular information networks. Novel applications of Fisher-, Shannon-, and Kullback-Leibler informations are promoting increased understanding of the mechanisms by which genetic information is converted to work and order. Insights into evolution may be gained by analysis of the the fitness contributions from specific segments of genetic information as well as the optimization process in which the fitness are constrained by the substrate cost for its storage and utilization. Recent IT applications have recognized the possible role of nontraditional information storage structures including lipids and ion gradients as well as information transmission by molecular flux across cell membranes. Many fascinating challenges remain, including defining the intercellular information dynamics of multicellular organisms and the role of disordered information storage and flow in disease.

PMID: 17083004 DOI: 10.1007/s11538-006-9141-5

Liked Quasi un'Utopia : the final act by Kristof De JaegerKristof De Jaeger (realize.be)
Come see me play and place your bet whether I'll make it or not :) wo years after I announced my piano challenge - to be fair, I really only took it serious this year - le moment suprême has arrived: I'll be performing the Moonlight Sonata the 8th of December on a concert in the church of Zevergem. I'm not alone that afternoon: together with 2 choirs and the harmony orchestra of De Pinte, we'll be playing to raise money for Studio Brussel's De Warmste Week. You will also be able to place bets whether I'm actually going to finish the third movement or not, so there's some extra pressure on my shoulders ...
Congratulations on the achievement and good luck on the performance!
Liked a tweet by Maggie Appleton (Twitter)
Liked a tweet by @geonz (Twitter)
Similar to my own aphorism: “Not everyone can be me, but at least I try.”