Updating my Linux Machine

This post is as much for my own reference as anyone else's use. Hopefully I can at least point people in the direction of what has helped me.

Network Card

I have a RealTek network card, which doesn't play nice with Linux by default. This site solved it: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=80757#p469071

In case that link dies, the relevant portion is: 

If you are using kernel 3.0 you'll notice that the /src/Makefile has a bug that causes it to install the r8168.o file instead of the r8168.ko file

The solution is simple:

After the autorun.sh finishes, just do the following:

sudo cp src/r8168.ko   /lib/modules/3.0.0-1-amd64/kernel/drivers/net/
sudo depmod
sudo modprobe r8168

I'm not one to encourage people to leave the Church if they don't like it. To tell people to get out is to misunderstand what the Church is. No one gets kicked out of the hospital for disbelieving germ theory. The doctors just keep giving them the penicillin anyway. If you find that your relationship to the Catholic Church inside-looking-out, stick it out. I think you'll find that the grass is greener in the reflection of the stained glass windows.

That said, here's what not to do: don't tell the Church what it's supposed to be. They didn't ordain women to the priesthood in the days when powerful abbesses controlled convents and monasteries, they aren't going to start just because a woman ran the Department of State. They didn't claim two men could could marry when the emperor was doing it, they won't change their minds because Elton John is doing it.

A Totally Amazing Mind

Hey, reader(s)!

I haven't updated in a while, and this one isn't going to be very good. If there's only one universal law in the universe, it's not entropy or gravity. It's "no one cares about that weird dream you had." But, hey, this is my blog. I didn't force you at gunpoint to read it (note to self, consider this option in the future).

So anyway, I had this dream the other night that the popes came to stay at my house for the weekend. Benedict and Francis must have been doing some kind of cross country road trip or something. When the pope(s) want to crash at your place, you don't ask questions. I had been out for the evening, so when I got home they were already set up. They had brought two identical twin beds and set them up a next to each other with a nightstand in between, like Bert and Ernie. They had their night caps on and were  tucked in with the sheets up to their shoulders. I didn't know the exact protocol for saying goodnight to a pope, so I tried to kiss Benedict's ring. He wasn't wearing one so we stood there awkwardly for a minute until Francis finally said "Hey, over here!" When I went to kiss his ring he pulled it back.

We all had a good laugh.

Look Out Below

I'm clearing out a bunch of drafts that I've been meaning to publish. Don't say you weren't warned.

Some Advice

If you're confused by what Pope Francis says, read the full context.

If you're confused by the context, ignore informal papal comments entirely and read the Catechism.

Breakfast Serial

I'm just about to listen to the last episode of Serial and I have a prediction: I'm going to end up feeling dirty.

It looks like this is going from "investigating an interesting mystery and maybe learning something new about the case" to "let's talk about ME and MY FEELINGS" and forgetting the fact that a family of real people have had to have their daughter's murder dredged up again for no real benefit.

I hope I'm wrong, but here goes...

The Value of Definitions

Today's Wall Street Journal has an editorial titled "Misunderestimating Vladimir" by Bret Stephens.

Ignoring its main content, it includes an aside that interests me. Stephens mentions "the notion that geography no longer matters, the high ground, the warm water ports and everything else that nations have fought over since time immemorial are superfluous in our 21st century world."

As I do with most problems in the world today, I think this notion is rooted in bad philosophy. Outside of talk about borders ("how can we really say where one country starts and the other country ends?"), this comes up in plenty of other contexts. Think extreme linguistic descriptivism: "Languages are defined by their users, how can we say that any particular grammatical usage is an error?" Think of the definition of personhood: "We can't pin down exactly when two gametes have reached 'conception,' so let's just say an embryo can't be a person."

It's positivism mutating into nominalism. It's the lazy idea that, since we can't absolutely define something with absolutely no grey area, there's no point in trying to define it at all.

It's despair, ultimately rooted in a lack of faith. If there's no God (even in the Aristotelian, if not the full Christian conception), there's no final arbiter of truth. There's no standard to conform to. We all make up our own definitions, or we decide that definitions don't matter anyway. And once there are no definitions, reason goes out the window, leaving will and power. You don't have to know a lot about history to know that doesn't end well.