NaClhv

Theology, philosophy, math, science, and random other things
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

How do you help those kinds of people?

Today is Christmas. I once tried to help a homeless person, in a pretty major way. It was hard, and It didn't go well. Let's just say that in some ways, it might have been better if I didn't try at all. Of course, homelessness is well-known to be a difficult problem. It's pervasive in […]

Ten year anniversary for the blog!

This is a rare post, and I consider myself to have been tremendously blessed to make it. Not many blogs make it to the 10-year mark. As for me, I was fairly certain that I would never run out of material. But I did wonder about other factors, like reaching enough readers to keep up […]

Travelogue: Europe in the summer of 2023

(All the pictures in this post can be seen at their full resolution here, and my reflections specifically on the Ukrainian part of the trip can be found here.) Svalbard The first stop in my trip was in Longyearbyen, Svalbard - probably as far north as I'll ever get to go: I embarked on a […]

From my job: technical career storyline

I've mentioned before that I work as a data scientist. I've been at it for a long while now. Long enough, in fact, that they interviewed me at my job about what it was like to be me, and published the interview internally as part of their "technical career storyline" feature. The following are the contents of that interview, reproduced with permission and some minor editing.

My multi-purpose home office setup, with two 85-inch TV monitors

I've been working on a new home office, which has been challenging enough that I thought I should write about it. The centerpiece of my setup are two 85-inch TVs, which I'm also using as computer monitors. Not only are they large and delicate "furniture pieces" in and of themselves, but they also required rearranging […]

The justice of the reprobates' eternal punishment in hell

Hell does not necessarily impose an infinite punishment, and the sins of the reprobate are not necessarily finite. Biblical Christianity is perfectly flexible on both of these points. Either one of them, in isolation, is enough to fully answer the objection of "infinitely disproportionate punishment", and we have both. So we can say with confidence that the reprobate in hell will get exactly what they deserve - the exact right level of punishment commensurate with their sins.

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

...is my favorite Christmas carol. It has been so since I heard Jewel's rendition of it on a random road trip, and I somehow understood all the lyrics in all the verses, through the music and the poetry to their meaning. The second and third verses hit me particularly hard in their novelty, as I hadn't heard them before. Here are the lyrics:

From "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" (1999)

As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid […]

The meaning of faith - an exploration of Hebrews 11

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" - Heb. 11:1 This is a key verse in understanding what the Bible means by "faith". So what does it say? First, let's note that the words here can be applied in quite a mundane manner. I think doing so […]

Easter, perfect play, and the best of all possible histories

Some have said that if a perfect God exists, then we must live in the best of all possible worlds. Others have said that since this is clearly not the case, God cannot exist. Others still have said that we must actually live in the worst of all possible worlds, since if it were any worse it could not continue to exist. What should we make of these observations, and how are they related to games?
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