Ali, Florence. Opposing Absolutes: Conviction and Convention in John Ford's Plays.
Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1974.
Saturday, 31 May 2003
Thursday, 29 May 2003
Ah - that's better!
I had to stop writing a bit ago - touch of stomach ache. The interweb said I should drink ginger tea, which seemed like a good thing to try out regardless of the condition of my stomach. So I skanked some ginger off Paul, grated it into my handy-dandy infusion ball and drank the resultant spicy water. It seems to have done the trick. Creation rocks.
I had to stop writing a bit ago - touch of stomach ache. The interweb said I should drink ginger tea, which seemed like a good thing to try out regardless of the condition of my stomach. So I skanked some ginger off Paul, grated it into my handy-dandy infusion ball and drank the resultant spicy water. It seems to have done the trick. Creation rocks.
I must have wanton poets, pleasant wits,
Musicians that with touching of a string
May draw the pliant king which way I please.
[...] Sometime a lovely boy in Dian's shape,
[...] Shall bathe him in a spring, and there hard by
One like Actaeon peeping through the grove
Shall by the angry goddess be transformed,
And running in the likeness of an hart
By yelping hounds pulled down and seem to die.
(Edward II I.i.50-69)
Practically every day Gavin gets post. Quite often there are parcels. By now he must have accumulated many times his own bodymass in post. Given that he is still able to get inside his room, I posit that he either a) burns all incoming mail or b) is building a giant robot to do his bidding over at Rebekah's.
Wednesday, 28 May 2003
I wonder if you have any parasites installed... I do.
D'ya know, I think I might have killed it? Me and my friend RegCleaner.
D'ya know, I think I might have killed it? Me and my friend RegCleaner.
MLA documentation: "It's not just a referencing system, its a way of life." (Dobson 39)
[...]
Dobson, Mark Stuart. "Wednesday, May 28, 2003." < an anecdote free zone >. 28 May 2003.
University of Exeter. 28 May 2003.
<gosh.ex.ac.uk/~el00msd/weblog/2003_05_01_archive.html#94986459>
[...]
Dobson, Mark Stuart. "Wednesday, May 28, 2003." < an anecdote free zone >. 28 May 2003.
University of Exeter. 28 May 2003.
<gosh.ex.ac.uk/~el00msd/weblog/2003_05_01_archive.html#94986459>
Tuesday, 27 May 2003
Grace and Merit
Well, I guess it'll be time to go to bed soon. So I think I shall listen to Clappers: A History of Applause, but not before noting an instance of a recurring phenomenon in anti-Catholic web articles.
I was reading this article on www.carm.org, a Christian apologetics site with Catholicism conspicuously in its 'other' section. Read it if you like. I just wanted to focus on the bits which quoted the CCC. The bold bits are the ones which they quoted. In case you're feeling lazy, I put the bits that were altogether less damning in italics, though I do not presume to say that you could not have spotted them yourself:
I'm sure you'll see there's enough italicising to be going on with. The upshot of this kind of decontextualisation is this, so far as I can see; two options:
Neither option has a great deal to commend it. This kind of thing happens rather a lot, as I say. G.K. Chesterton maintained, providing a good quantity of examples, that any stick seems good enough for Catholicism's opponents to beat it with, usually from two contradictory directions. Perhaps this is the case.
I was reading this article on www.carm.org, a Christian apologetics site with Catholicism conspicuously in its 'other' section. Read it if you like. I just wanted to focus on the bits which quoted the CCC. The bold bits are the ones which they quoted. In case you're feeling lazy, I put the bits that were altogether less damning in italics, though I do not presume to say that you could not have spotted them yourself:
2022 The divine initiative in the work of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man. Grace responds to the deepest yearnings of human freedom, calls freedom to cooperate with it, and perfects freedom.
[...]
2025 We can have merit in God's sight only because of God's free plan to associate man with the work of his grace. Merit is to be ascribed in the first place to the grace of God, and secondly to man's collaboration. Man's merit is due to God.
2026 The grace of the Holy Spirit can confer true merit on us, by virtue of our adoptive filiation, and in accordance with God's gratuitous justice. Charity is the principal source of merit in us before God.
2027 No one can merit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life, as well as necessary temporal goods.
2006 The term "merit" refers in general to the recompense owed by a community or a society for the action of one of its members, experienced either as beneficial or harmful, deserving reward or punishment. Merit is relative to the virtue of justice, in conformity with the principle of equality which governs it.
2007 With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there is an immeasurable inequality, for we have received everything from him, our Creator.
[...]
2009 Filial adoption, in making us partakers by grace in the divine nature, can bestow true merit on us as a result of God's gratuitous justice. This is our right by grace, the full right of love, making us "co-heirs" with Christ and worthy of obtaining "the promised inheritance of eternal life."[60] The merits of our good works are gifts of the divine goodness.[61] "Grace has gone before us; now we are given what is due.... Our merits are God's gifts."[62]
I'm sure you'll see there's enough italicising to be going on with. The upshot of this kind of decontextualisation is this, so far as I can see; two options:
- The author believes Roman Catholicism abominable enough to warrant unjustly polarising its teaching into ready-to-denounce form.
- The author really is too simple/lazy to examine the context.
Neither option has a great deal to commend it. This kind of thing happens rather a lot, as I say. G.K. Chesterton maintained, providing a good quantity of examples, that any stick seems good enough for Catholicism's opponents to beat it with, usually from two contradictory directions. Perhaps this is the case.
Awesome. The BBC are doing free sound samples. That should come in handy if I get back into tracking in the near future.
Everything web-related is getting screwed up simultaneously: I've still got that adware kicking about, two in fact; my comments boxes have died, which means that no-one can see this page; even if I could be bothered to alter my template so that it did work, that isn't an option because Blogger's forgotten when it last saw my template, apparently. Plus, I still have no Veggie Tales videos or an amiga. And James is stuck in Zelda.
Hang on. Why the hell am I blogging now? I'm re-installing IE. In a minute I'll have to stop. Silly me.
* * *
Damn; it didn't work. I was re-installing because a parasitic toolbar has installed itself on IE and is popping up items of a less than wholesome nature. I found some proper removal instructions involving editing the registry and laying the smack down on DLLs, but it seems to have been to no avail. Humph. I guess I'll try uninstalling it properly after this. I also have a headache. I don't know how .dlls and the old amiga .library files differ, but the fact that the former are apparently vulnerable to being pissed about with by web-borne viruses argues in favour of their relative craposity. I hate PCs; vive l'amiga. I might even get one if they're still around by the time I have enough money to buy a home computer.
I'm sick of pop-ups. I need a new host for this blog. I've encountered plenty of the buggers just looking for that. I think my demands are modest enough:
Perhaps I am asking for too much. Someone who always, always asks for too much is James. I can't remember the last time he ever used shareware or stolen software that he didn't moan about for its lack of features which "they must be able to do". He then proceeds to spend an afternoon searching the interweb for software that does do it. The annoying thing is that he usually does.
Today is the last day before I must start working on my Renaissance Blood, Death and Other Inconvenient Things essay. Therefore, I thought it sensible to get my dissertation bound finally. Caroline and Ellen were at the bus stop. Ellen had some package from Amazon which she was returning "because it's crap" apparently. So crap was it, that she did not wish to explain the nature of the product. Very interesting.
I think printing and binding my dissertation has cost me about £8 all together. If you convert that figure to pints, you get a number which I'm not happy with. As ever (you'd think I'd have learnt by now) my early start didn't help me, because the Guild printing shop doesn't open until 0930. So I returned my books on Marlowe and Ford. It has come to my attention that the kind of people who feel compelled to make notes in books of literary criticism tend also tend to have a defecit of life. I never make notes in books. Anyway, I swear these people get off on the fact that they can pretend to be lecturers for an afternoon. I wouldn't be surprised if I found a "!!! Please see me Stanford, Kevin. MBA MPhil" remark in barely legible pencil. I think that you could probably make a good book out of students' smug margin notes, like Nigel Rees' Graffitti.
Given the length of my stay on campus, I ran into a good few people who know who I am today so far. Students met I one; a very pleasant girl whose name I cannot recall, but whose presentation group I was in for the infamous Contemporary Cultures module. She was looking at exemplar dissertations from the past, presumably to see what they're meant to look like and she asked to see mine too, politely, and hopefully not insincerely, saying that it looked very good. It has got pictures. Can't argue with pictures. Also ran into Eddie and Tony. Yeah, I know; the School of English is actually a subsidiary of the mafia. I was hoping that I migt be able to get my dissertation handed in today as well. Fat chance. What good is it if Julia knows your name but you still can't cheat the system?
I was going to go shopping when I got back, but as I mentioned, I had a bit of a headache. So I polished of my Neurofen and typed this up. I believe it is subsiding, but I'll do some note-making while I'm here, and then go shopping after lunch with James. Have pleasing days everybody.
* * *
Damn; it didn't work. I was re-installing because a parasitic toolbar has installed itself on IE and is popping up items of a less than wholesome nature. I found some proper removal instructions involving editing the registry and laying the smack down on DLLs, but it seems to have been to no avail. Humph. I guess I'll try uninstalling it properly after this. I also have a headache. I don't know how .dlls and the old amiga .library files differ, but the fact that the former are apparently vulnerable to being pissed about with by web-borne viruses argues in favour of their relative craposity. I hate PCs; vive l'amiga. I might even get one if they're still around by the time I have enough money to buy a home computer.
I'm sick of pop-ups. I need a new host for this blog. I've encountered plenty of the buggers just looking for that. I think my demands are modest enough:
- Size: 5MB
- FTP access
- No pop-ups
- None of that "This site has exceeded its bandwidth; piss off." nonsense
Perhaps I am asking for too much. Someone who always, always asks for too much is James. I can't remember the last time he ever used shareware or stolen software that he didn't moan about for its lack of features which "they must be able to do". He then proceeds to spend an afternoon searching the interweb for software that does do it. The annoying thing is that he usually does.
Today is the last day before I must start working on my Renaissance Blood, Death and Other Inconvenient Things essay. Therefore, I thought it sensible to get my dissertation bound finally. Caroline and Ellen were at the bus stop. Ellen had some package from Amazon which she was returning "because it's crap" apparently. So crap was it, that she did not wish to explain the nature of the product. Very interesting.
I think printing and binding my dissertation has cost me about £8 all together. If you convert that figure to pints, you get a number which I'm not happy with. As ever (you'd think I'd have learnt by now) my early start didn't help me, because the Guild printing shop doesn't open until 0930. So I returned my books on Marlowe and Ford. It has come to my attention that the kind of people who feel compelled to make notes in books of literary criticism tend also tend to have a defecit of life. I never make notes in books. Anyway, I swear these people get off on the fact that they can pretend to be lecturers for an afternoon. I wouldn't be surprised if I found a "!!! Please see me Stanford, Kevin. MBA MPhil" remark in barely legible pencil. I think that you could probably make a good book out of students' smug margin notes, like Nigel Rees' Graffitti.
Given the length of my stay on campus, I ran into a good few people who know who I am today so far. Students met I one; a very pleasant girl whose name I cannot recall, but whose presentation group I was in for the infamous Contemporary Cultures module. She was looking at exemplar dissertations from the past, presumably to see what they're meant to look like and she asked to see mine too, politely, and hopefully not insincerely, saying that it looked very good. It has got pictures. Can't argue with pictures. Also ran into Eddie and Tony. Yeah, I know; the School of English is actually a subsidiary of the mafia. I was hoping that I migt be able to get my dissertation handed in today as well. Fat chance. What good is it if Julia knows your name but you still can't cheat the system?
I was going to go shopping when I got back, but as I mentioned, I had a bit of a headache. So I polished of my Neurofen and typed this up. I believe it is subsiding, but I'll do some note-making while I'm here, and then go shopping after lunch with James. Have pleasing days everybody.
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