April is the cruellest month

Apr 1, 2003 · 4 minute read

And so, I have decided that once I have conquered the world, and the people bow to my wishes, I shall eliminate the phrase “tilting at windmills”, and order the removal of every person called Brad. Have you ever seen anybody tilt at a windmill? Ever? If so, could they just have been leaning in a slightly awkward direction? Was there a point during the Middle Ages when somebody said “Stop tilting at that windmill, Jeremy. You’ll put your eye out?”

Oh, okay. It's from Don Quixote. But still, it's stupid, and must be eliminated. Your ruler has spoken. Obey.

I managed to avoid lots of April Fool's jokes, but instead found myself attempting the test that my students will be taking tomorrow. And failing miserably. I followed that by a final attempt to get that Athlon chip working in my computer. As you can imagine, technology laughed in my primitive face. Addendum to my wishes, once the world is all mine: find the inventors of the PC architecture, and torture them for fifteen years. They will be forced to repent for the sins of LIM EMS! The blasphemy of the POST! And so forth.

To finish the day off, I sat in the Pit, and had a three-hour theological argument with today's Guy In The Pit. He came across much better in person than he does on his website, now that I'm actually reading it:

However, being a Catholic does not necessarily make one a Christian.

Umm, I'm fairly sure that it does, you know. Given that Catholicism is one of the two main branches of Christianity...

Anyway, it was an interesting discussion, although he couldn't answer one of my main points: The Trinity insists that Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit are the same thing, aspects of God. God is All-Knowing. Therefore, he knew that he would be resurrected after he was crucified on Good Friday. Which, to me at least, seems to cheapen the notion that he died for our sins. If anyone (i.e. Phil and his brotherly connections) wants to put me straight on this, please go ahead. I'm genuinely interested.

UPDATE: I'd just like to point out that St. Anselm didn't understand the concept of infinity when he wrote the Monologion...

UPDATE 2: Who died and made Paul head of the Church? Oh.

UPDATE 3: I have spent the last hour reading about St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Anselm. Truly, I have no life.

UPDATE 4: I like updates.

UPDATE 5: Look, I have to be stopped. I'm now looking into irreducible complex systems, Zeno's Paradox, and other anti-Evolutionary arguments. Zeno's fairly easy, but then I've studied a bit of Cantor, so—HELP ME! SOMEONE!

UPDATE 6: *cries* I'm now reading the Second Council of Constantinople (not Istanbul). There is no hope for me.

UPDATE 7: Okay, so when I brought up that Jesus wasn't strictly human today, I was told that God worked through Jesus to perform the miracles. However, the Second Council seems to say that the two were one and the same. In fact, it uses quite strong language to that effect.

Stop laughing at me.

UPDATE 8: And now, the Apocrypha. An intervention! I'm begging you!

UPDATE 9: Seems to me that Peter has Secret Diary of Sam Gamgee-type issues:

Peter also opposed her in regard to these matters and asked them about the Savior. "Did he then speak secretly with a woman [cf. John 4:27], in preference to us, and not openly? Are we to turn back and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?"

Thomas will kill him if he tries anything.

I'm so going to hell for that one..

UPDATE 10: I finished Kavalier and Clay over a month ago. I just haven't got around to changing the graphic.

UPDATE 11: Stopping now.