Philosophy on Harry's Ruminations

Birthdays and Regrets

Mon, 10 Feb 2020 12:07:03 -0600

Today is my daughter’s 13th birthday.

Thirteen years ago, I watched my wife attempt to deliver our child naturally via the Bradley method, then I watched my daughter get stuck at -2 station, her head caught on my wife’s pelvis, and I watched a sex-addicted doctor cut her open and finally bring my daughter into the world.

My account of that day

What I left out, of course, was how utterly unprepared I was to be a father. Overwhelmed with emotion, between that 11pm and 11:30pm timestamp, I stood in the room where my wife had tried to push out our daughter, and I cried. I stood there and sobbed. I know now, those were sobs of crushing anxiety cresting into relief. They were both going to be okay.

What I Learned From Gambling

Fri, 10 Jan 2020 11:35:33 -0600

Wait….what?

So, I’ve been gambling quite a bit lately. I’ve won and lost thousands of dollars on both blackjack and craps, and I want to write about it.

::blink::

Blackjack?

CRAPS?

Keep your pants on. I’ve been playing two particular iOS apps, learning about two popular casino games. There is but one conclusion:

If you Play long enough….you lose.

So if some of you read my post Regression to the Mean and thought: “Hmm….he seems to care A LOT about what the odds on dice are…”. Bingo. Er…“Winner, Seven!”

Regression to the Mean

Mon, 06 Jan 2020 11:53:12 -0600

Why is the world going to hell, Harold?

It seems a right of passage for people of a certain age–typically over 40–to look around them and ask certain questions:

“What’s with kids these days?”
“Why aren’t things like they used to be?”
“Why is no one moral anymore?”
“Does NO ONE have any work ethic?”

This isn’t exaclty, new. Listen to this modern voice:

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

Avoiding Team Cascade Failure

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 14:14:00 -0400

Disclaimer: There’s probably a term for this, but I’ve this pattern in teams and I’d like to discuss it.

Scenario

You have a high functioning team of 6-10 individuals. Team culture is great. Everyone is pulling in the same direction, and lots is getting done. Yet, in under 4 months half the team will be gone and the rest will be considering it. As a manager, you’ll realize you can’t deliver anything and it all seemed to crumble overnight. What happened?

Time is a Pretty Pony, with a Wicked Heart

Wed, 22 May 2019 13:53:00 -0400

So, I made some rocks for my daughters’ rock ceremony last night.

The left, JOY, is for Grace (all-caps intentional) and the right Perseverance is for Maria. Then today, I got the “memory” of the rocks last year.

That was exactly 364 days ago (Understanding == Maria, Enthusiasm == Grace). As cliche as it sounds, it really seems like yesterday. I’m reminded of reading the Stephen King short story My Pretty Pony. The summary seems apt:

Things I Really Wish I Knew about LOVE

Sun, 17 Feb 2019 21:10:00 -0500

Having just ended my second trip through The Five Love Languages by Dr. Chapman, there are things I really wish I could get through my thick skull.

Apropos: We just got through Valentine’s Day and the occasion seems right.

1. Being “In Love"Ends

I remember my friend Dannah my freshman year. She was one of the strongest women I’d ever met. She had the grit and determination of her military dad, a sharp wit, and a heart as big as Dayton, Ohio. But there was one thing.

TULIP, again. (Or, why I'll never be a Baptist in my Heart)

Wed, 31 Jan 2018 10:45:00 -0500

In sum, here’s my problem: I’ve joined a Baptist Church, but I’m no Baptist.

In detail it goes like this:

Baptists come from the Calvinist tradition.
You may have heard of “free will baptists.” These are not those.
Calvinism is a very well reasoned Protestant doctrine based on Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. It further comes from the sole scrirptura tradition of the Reformation, in that it solely derives from points in the canonical scriptures, especially the New Testament.

Christian Doctrine: Justification versus Sanctification

Sun, 29 Nov 2015 18:52:00 -0500

Yes, I’m still alive, as my twitter stream would substantiate.

Felt led to share this.

First, some background: I’m a Protestant Christian. As such, I follow the doctrine of Justfication by Faith (Sola Fide). Justification by Faith, broadly defined, means that we are ‘justified’, that is, redeemed or saved, by Grace from God alone through Faith,

**For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,**not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:9, ESV).

A thought experiment.

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 10:39:00 -0400

Imagine yourself trapped in a cylinder filling with water. The water comes in at an uneven rate: Sometimes it dribbles, sometimes it gushes. You can’t get out of the cylinder, and once the water reaches your head you’ll drown.

“Okay, that’s torture.”
Yes, it is.

Now, let’s imagine the cylinder were bigger, maybe the size of one of those nuclear storage tanks, but still only 7 or so feet tall. You can have things in there with you to distract you, but the water’s still coming in and once it gets to the top, you drown.

On Conflict Resolution

Fri, 20 Jun 2014 11:52:00 -0400

Thought I’d just shout this one into the ether: When one feels wronged by a person, the correct procedure is to go to that person one-on-one and discuss it.

15 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. (Matthew 18:15)

Okay, that’s what to do, but why does God want us to do it that way? Because it’s human nature to gossip, and conflict destroys community.

Frankenstein's Monster is coming...then what?

Mon, 13 Jan 2014 18:00:00 -0500

So, my church is going through Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. The second item within the 40-day book is “You are not an accident.” With this as the follow-up.

Your parents may have been good, bad, or indifferent. It doesn’t matter: God had a design for you before you were even born, with the combination of DNA inside your body determined.

Immediately, the reality that soon enough (if some rogue nation hasn’t already) a cloned human being will be created. No mother, no father, just a sequenced genome injected into a sterilized embryo. It begins dividing and gestating, with a person resulting 40 weeks later. Maybe less if we accelerate the process.

On "Love"

Sun, 08 Sep 2013 15:06:00 -0400

1 Cor 13, v1-3

1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge ; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

Armchair Sociology

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:33:00 -0400

While musing on the inevitable decay of our debt-ridden society, Chuck and I happened upon an hypothesis today: Entrepreneurs aren’t first-born children.

Think about it…first-born kids in families are dedicated, responsible, typically over-parented. They live quite well within rules. They’re not interested in rebellion or “changing the game”. Instability scares them.

Yes, those are broad generalizations based upon no hard data. But, if you’ll let me assume these as true, the consequence is:

Correlation: No pension == no loyalty?

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 09:17:00 -0400

Had a fascinating conversation with Chuck the other day, where he said:

The best thing that ever happened to me is when they cut out my pension

This got me thinking: Today, if you’re lucky you have some employer-matching, tax-deferred retirement plan, like a 401(k), 403(b), SIMPLE, ABC-XYZ-Dooflatchie. These plans are all portable–quit or get laid-off, and you take the money with you.

From a corporate perspective, this moves legacy costs off the books. once you’ve contributed to the plan, your obligation ends, and the employee and the servicing company (say, Fidelity or Vanguard) handle the rest. This is A Good Thingtm.

On the logic of female promiscuity

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 09:23:00 -0400

Okay, my brain is off-the-wall sometimes. I was watching some sort a show about Bradd Pitt and Angelina Jolie and thought. “Dang, guys are just pigs. All we think about is sex. Our nature is to be promiscuous.” Brad had left Jennifer Aniston to be with a “better” (?) woman, Angelina.

Something, though, made me think that wasn’t quite right: WOMEN should tend to be more promiscuous than men. Here’s my thoughts, ignorning the obvious moral concerns and thinking anthropologically:

Kinda profound

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 21:22:00 -0400

So, I’m in chruch today and the sermon is on achieving a personal relationship with Christ…then it hits me.

God made people.

WHY!? I mean, think about it. . .You’re the most powerful being in the universe. Omnipotent, omniscient, everywhere simultaneously. You ARE reality. You DEFINE everything we only have equations and intuition for–time, space, probability.

What do you need people for?

You’re lonely.

I used to ask myself if God was bored. After all omniscent & omnipotent means you know all that’s going to happen, right? Also, I used to get hung-up on the whole ‘can God make an object that even he can’t move?’

Quick theory on the 'apex' person...

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 12:05:00 -0500

Random thought I had in church yesterday: Lawyers and their derivatives (Judges, etc.) are the apex people of our society. There is no one more powerful, ultimately, than a lawyer in American society, because these are the people who mediate disputes between two or more equal parties. Without lawyers and a judiciary, democracy couldn’t exist with our current code of laws–people would get frustrated and start killing one another, and society would break down.

Just Look at the Row You're On

Thu, 09 Dec 2004 10:17:00 -0500

When I was about 11, my Dad and I were laying-out sticks in the field for the forthcoming tobacco harvest. I looked at the whole task, the number of rows, and the number of sticks. I told Dad, “We’ll never get this done!”

“Don’t look at the rows ahead, just the row you’re on, son. We’ll get done.”

And we did.

* * *

When I’m having days like today, it feels good to remember that.

undefined

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 16:00:00 -0500

Ah, I finally have an excuse for having no color distinction compared to women: Some woman have tetrachromatic vision

That’s right…in addition to the regular Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) vision that men have, some women with a mutuant gene can perceive 4 channels of color.