Month: January 2005

888! Yes!

888_1To the left is a screen capture of my weblog stats. Today, I met a goal that I’d had for a while: I wanted my "Average (hits) per day" to be 888 or more.

Unfortunately, despite its many excellent qualities, Typepad (my blog host) has really dinky stats that are much inferior to what other providers have. They’ve promised to improve these, but haven’t yet.

One of the problems is that "Average per day" isn’t your recent average (what you typically get on a given day recently) but an average based on all the time that has elapsed since you started the blog on Typepad. This means that those early days, when nobody was linking to you and you were first starting to build traffic, will forever pull down your "Average per day."

Thus you can see that I’m really getting a lot more than 888 hits per day. Above, for example, it says that I got 2980 hits "Today." But therein lies another problem: As Typepad reckons it "Today" is not the past twenty-four hours, it’s the period beginning yesterday at midnight, which means that "Today" is always 24-48 hours long, depending on what time of day you check. As you approach midnight, "Today" really includes the hits of two days.

I took this screen shot early in the day (when traffic is slowest), so I guess I got about 2700-2800 hits yesterday (including everything, such as people clicking into comment boxes), though one can never be sure, given the way this software works.

But why am I happy that the average is now 888? Because’s that’s the numerical value of the name of Jesus in Greek. Here’s how that works: In Greek "Jesus" is iEsous, and

Iota = 10
Eta = 8
Sigma = 200
Omicron = 70
Upsilon = 400
Sigma = 200

TOTAL = 888

SEE THE GREEK LETTER-TO-NUMBER EQUIVALENCES.

The reason that the Greeks (like Latin-, Hebrew-, and Aramaic-speakers) had numerical values for letters is that they didn’t have separate number symbols, so the letters did double duty. That’s why VIII is 8 in Roman numerals. In Latin, only a few letters have numerical values (I, V, X, L, C, D, M), so letters like B or R mean nothing. Originally Greek only used some of its letters for numbers, but by Jesus’ day they used all of them. This reduced the number of letters you had to use to write a number, so in Greek VIII was just the letter eta.

If you look at the table of Greek letter-to-number equivalences, you’ll note that the system has three letters you may never have heard of: digamma, qoppa, and sampi. These are letters that dropped out of the Greek alphabet. Digamma sounded like a w, qoppa like a back-of-the-mouth q (harder and darker than the k sound, like qoph in Hebrew, qop in Aramaic, or qaaf in Arabic). Sampi sounded like an extended s or like a ks combination.

If these letters hadn’t dropped out then, since sampi was the last letter, Jesus would be "Alpha and Sampi" instead of "Alpha and Omega" (or, as he is in Arabic translations of the New Testament, "Alif u-Hamza").

How To Tell Columbia House You're Honked Off

Down yonder, a reader writes:

Any idea how we can contact Columbia House and express our disgust?

Yep!

HERE’S THEIR ONLINE CUSTOMER CONTACT FORM.

And you can call their (curiously non-toll-free) customer service line:

812-242-7000

If you are a blogger or would e-mail friends and family about this, please take this opportunity to rally folks to contact Columbia House and let them know the level of opposition there is out their to their porn club!

How To Tell Columbia House You’re Honked Off

Down yonder, a reader writes:

Any idea how we can contact Columbia House and express our disgust?

Yep!

HERE’S THEIR ONLINE CUSTOMER CONTACT FORM.

And you can call their (curiously non-toll-free) customer service line:


812-242-7000

If you are a blogger or would e-mail friends and family about this, please take this opportunity to rally folks to contact Columbia House and let them know the level of opposition there is out their to their porn club!

October 14, 2004 Show

More results from the VOLUNTEER PROGRAM. Thanks to Christopher A. St. Jean for doing the October, 2004 shows!

LISTEN TO THE SHOW.

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW.

Highlights:

  • Did Vatican II take away "respectful" aspects of the Mass?
  • Which deuterocanonicals were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls
    written in Hebrew?
  • Is it a sin to vote for a pro-choice political candidate?
  • If receiving the Eucharist remits venial sins, why should those sins
    be later confessed?
  • How should Catholics defend confession to a member of the Assemblies of God?
  • How does one respond to Orthodox Christians regarding the Lefebvrist
    schism and charges of liturgical abuse?
  • What charges do Protestants make regarding the Catholic Church in
    the Middle Ages?
  • Has the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary been performed?
  • Are non-Catholic Christians members of the Body of Christ?
  • Does the magisterial authority of the Church compromise freedom of thought?
  • How does one defend the Sunday sabbath to Seventh-day Adventists?

AP Breaks News Promise

HERE’S A STORY IN WHICH THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CLAIMS THAT A "CARDINAL SAYS BUSH BROKE IRAQ PROMISE."

Trouble is, the article shows the cardinal (Pio Laghi) saying nothing of the kind.

It quotes him as saying:

"When I went to Washington as the pope’s envoy just before the outbreak of the war in Iraq, he (Bush) told me: `Don’t worry, your eminence. We’ll be quick and do well in Iraq,’"

"Unfortunately, the facts have demonstrated afterward that things took a different course — not rapid and not favorable."

"Bush was wrong."

I’m sorry, but "Bush was wrong" does not mean "Bush broke a promise." The first statement attributes to the President a misperception of fact (how things would go), while the second attributes to him a moral failure to perform actions that were reasonably within his power to bring about–or a moral failure by making promises regarding something that one unreasonably believed to be within one’s power to bring about.

The Cardinal attributes neither of the latter to President Bush.

Opponents of the President might wish to attribute these to him, though based on what the Cardinal says I severely doubt that Bush was understood to promise a specific outcome. It would be more natural to understand the President as making a commitment to act expeditiously and making a prediction (not a promise) that things would go well. The first (commitment to act expeditiously) is a promise. The second (things will go well) is not.

In any event, but the Cardinal does not say that Bush broke a promise, and by headlining the article the way it did, the Associated Press misportrayed the Cardinal’s remarks–and simultaneously portrayed itself as a petulant organization willing to spout Democratic Party spin as if it were a pouting child suffering a disappointing loss.

Since the AP says it subscribes to the Associated Press Managing Editors’ ethics statement, it’s interesting to note that this statement says:

The newspaper should guard against inaccuracies, carelessness, bias
or distortion through emphasis, omission or technological manipulation.

The newspaper should deal honestly with readers and newsmakers. It should keep its promises [SOURCE].

Well, the AP didn’t sufficiently do these things in crafting the headline of this story. It therefore is also interesting to note that the APME ethics statement also says:

It should acknowledge substantive errors and correct them promptly and prominently.

Somehow, I doubt the AP will issue a retraction.

Now, someone might nitpick that I haven’t demonstrated that the AP broke a promise because the ethics statement only says a paper should guard against inaccuracies, not that it is committed to preventing them.

Fair enough. If the AP is not committed to preventing inaccuracies then it has not broken one of its commitments.

But my headline is at least as accurate as the AP’s.

ATTENTION ARGONAUTS! Get Ready For The Clashing Rocks!

Iceberg_showdownRocks of ice, that is! Right down near the mountains of madness.

Yee-haw!

Are you ready to RUUUUUMMMMBBBBLLLLLE???

It’s a polar showdown grudge match between two bodacious beefy blocks of ice!

Take it away . . . NASA!

Get Ready for the Largest Demolition Derby on the Planet
Scientists say Slow-Motion Collision Near Antarctic Research Station Imminent

It is an event so large that the best seat in the house is in space: a
massive iceberg is on a collision course with a floating glacier near
the McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica. NASA satellites have
witnessed the 100-mile-long B-15A iceberg moving steadily towards the
Drygalski Ice Tongue. Though the iceberg’s pace has slowed in recent
days, NASA scientists expect a collision to occur no later than January
15, 2005.

"It’s a clash of the titans, a radical and uncommon event," says Robert
Bindshadler, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and if
the two giant slabs of ice collide, we could see one of the best
demolition derbies on the planet.

If the collision occurs as predicted, this could be an event that we
witness again and again. The tides that drive the iceberg’s motion tend
to push it in circles.

Hoooooooooooooooo-eeeee! YEAH! Clash! Rocks! Clash!

GET THE TITANIC STORY!

June 17, 2004 Show

This is a show I taped while in Michigan visiting Steve Ray and Ed Peters. As a result, all three of us were guests.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW.

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW.

Highlights:

  • Clarifying spiritual maxims from The Imitation of Christ.
  • Did Jesus ever laugh?
  • Is marriage to a witch grounds for an annulment?
  • How should a church dispose of an old tabernacle? Can a person put it in their home?
  • Any advice on how to earn a living without losing Christian identity?
  • What is Paul talking about in 1 Corinthians 4:6? Does he support Sola Scriptura?
  • In Acts 9:5, what does “it is hard for thee to kick against the goad” mean?
  • Can the symbolism of the number of canonical books in the Bible be used as a proof for the Catholic canon?
  • What do you think about the book The Bible Code?
  • If my husband did not get declarations of nullity for his previous marriages, what is the status of our marriage?
  • Did Paul observe the Sabbath?
  • Were non-Catholic baptisms using the Trinitarian formula considered valid prior to the Second Vatican Council?
  • Is the
         Holy Father concerned about the use of psychic impediments in nullity
         cases?