Prayer and Wonder - or, the Mistake about the Computer

I had a fascinating and wonderful experience last weekend - I threw my star charts into my vehicle and went to visit some dear friends in a distant star system... Ahem, I guess I ought not go into details about who they are or how I got there. But they are Chestertonians, and there are one or two experiences I wish to tell you about.

First, their church was having a festival that weekend and to my delight they had a used book table! I found a small book by Father Hardon called The Theology of Prayer which I grabbed - a glance told me it was a critical reagent in my current experiment of developing a new text on the technology of prayer... and - even better - once I started reading it, I learned that it contained the answer to an issue we Chestertonians are concerned with! Oh yes. In fact, it ties into... no, no. It forms the true basis for the larger issues, such as government, economics, and education, and the Great Evil of the age - the hatred of life - which Chesterton called "Eugenics" and which goes by other names in our time.

But in order to set the stage for this discussion, I must tell you about another matter. I donned my doctoral robe for a brief time on Sunday evening and gave a miniature lecture to a bright young man of 14. Earlier that weekend I had been speaking with his father on the "Magic Box" of our modern days, and how all who touch it become endowed with supreme intelligence and wisdom, regardless of their knowledge of automata theory, the XOR, the mutex, recursion, floating-point, ASCII and all the magical tools within that Magic Box. We laughed as I said it is as silly to credit a 7 year old child with "knowledge" of the Computer because he plays with it for an hour in the classroom as it is to credit him with "knowledge" of the Internal Combustion Engine because he rides in a big yellow bus containing one for an hour on his way to and from that classroom! Oh yes.

So, just for fun, I decided to ask my young friend whether his father had shown him the really stupid math mistakes a computer can make.

He stared at me - as if I had asked him about the edibility of rocks.

Oh, yes, I told him, I know a very simple math problem that I knew he could perform (since he was 14) but was beyond the ability of the computer to handle. Again he stared, as if I had said that most pigs are seen in floating the air.

So I told him I would show him. It is something, I said, as easy as doubling a number. Of course he already knew one plus one is two, two plus two is four... and I proceeded to rattle off the powers of two up to the 20th power (since I use many of them at work, I have them ready to hand - nothing surprising there). I scribbled this series down on a scrap of paper and he nodded.

1
2
4
8
16
32
64
128
256
512
1024
2048
4096
8192
16384
32768
65536
131072
262144
524288
1048576

All that was obvious to him. So I asked him, if I had you do this doubling another dozen times, on paper, would you have any problem? Of course he smiled and shook his head. But I think he was starting to wonder what this was leading to, and began to feel uneasy.

So, I smiled and asked, will the series of doublings ever get smaller?

HUH??? he asked. Smaller? How can that happen?

Oh, I pointed to the computer. Let's just ask the computer to try this very easy little homework project, shall we? So I typed in a very tiny program, which began with one and repeatedly doubled it, counting 20 loops. It produced the exact list of numbers I had already scrawled on paper and listed for you above.

He shrugged, and I smirked. Now, let's just have the computer repeat until the doubled number becomes SMALLER. I typed in what must look like the silliest program ever phrased to a computer - completely sound, and accurate and valid, but something never usually conceived of by most programmers. Rather than show you the actual code, I want you to imagine writing these instructions to someone:

Start with one, and keep doubling it until the new number becomes smaller than the previous number.

Very nice. Then, I said, once the doubled number has become smaller, print "I am finished" and stop.

What? Oh, all right, I will show you the code...
#include "stdio.h"
main()
{
int i,j,k;

i=1;
k=0;
do

{
j=i;
i=j+j;
printf("Loop %d: %d doubled is %d\n",k,j,i);
k=k+1;
}

while(i>j);

printf("All done.\n");
}

I pointed to the screen, and asked my young friend: So, will the computer ever stop?

But he is smart and did not say "NO" - instead he shrugged. So I said, let's see what the computer will do - and I ran the program - and this came out:

Loop 0: 1 doubled is 2
Loop 1: 2 doubled is 4
Loop 2: 4 doubled is 8
Loop 3: 8 doubled is 16
Loop 4: 16 doubled is 32
Loop 5: 32 doubled is 64
Loop 6: 64 doubled is 128
Loop 7: 128 doubled is 256
Loop 8: 256 doubled is 512
Loop 9: 512 doubled is 1024
Loop 10: 1024 doubled is 2048
Loop 11: 2048 doubled is 4096
Loop 12: 4096 doubled is 8192
Loop 13: 8192 doubled is 16384
Loop 14: 16384 doubled is 32768
Loop 15: 32768 doubled is 65536
Loop 16: 65536 doubled is 131072
Loop 17: 131072 doubled is 262144
Loop 18: 262144 doubled is 524288
Loop 19: 524288 doubled is 1048576
Loop 20: 1048576 doubled is 2097152
Loop 21: 2097152 doubled is 4194304
Loop 22: 4194304 doubled is 8388608
Loop 23: 8388608 doubled is 16777216
Loop 24: 16777216 doubled is 33554432
Loop 25: 33554432 doubled is 67108864
Loop 26: 67108864 doubled is 134217728
Loop 27: 134217728 doubled is 268435456
Loop 28: 268435456 doubled is 536870912
Loop 29: 536870912 doubled is 1073741824
Loop 30: 1073741824 doubled is -2147483648
All done.

Of course it stopped after the 30th repeat - as I expected - and he started laughing. (So did I - I have a very low humour threshold, as you may know by now.)

When I had control again, I told him: Now you have seen a computer perform a very trivial, elementary arithmetic problem and get a completely WRONG answer. And he smiled and nodded. But I said, let us be clear about what is going on here. I then set up another very similar program which started with one and continually added one to the previous value, until the total got smaller. However, I ordered the computer to print the LAST number before the decrease.

Before I ran the program I asked my young friend how fast he could count: Could you count to two billion I asked. Again he stared, wondering how long that would take. (In case you are wondering too, at one number a second, it would take over 63 years.) So, I said, you know you are good at counting, but you are slow. Let's see how the computer handles this new problem... and I started it running.

In a very short time (under a minute) the computer printed 2147483647, which was the last number it had counted to - yes, by ones - before it added wrong and got something smaller.

He laughed again. Then I said: Now you have seen, very briefly, the correct view of the computer. It is faster than we are, but it is still making a mistake, for we, unlike it, know that numbers do not decrease when we add one to them! We must always know and understand the tools we use, and their particular limitations - for the computer is NOT magic! Just as a car is not legs, a computer is not brains: it does not "add", it does not "think" - though it can do wonderful things, if we are careful about using it. (If you want to know MORE about this and why, see me after class. Hee hee!)

Now, what does this lengthy narrative have to do with prayer - and with Chesterton?

Simply this: the first and foremost act of worship of God, what the theologians call "adoration" is simply wonder at God - at Him as He is, at His creation, at His inspirations by which we poor fallen men make bridges and software and cakes and poems and rock songs, at His work to enter our human family and make Himself part of our world. We need to admire Him for what He is, which we know through what He does, directly or indirectly. (cf. Eucharistic Prayer IV: "All Your actions show Your wisdom and love.") We need the true view, since "the object of my school is to show how many extraordinary things even a lazy and ordinary man may see if he can spur himself to the single activity of seeing." [GKC Tremendous Trifles 6]

Which is why I did what I did: in two tiny programs I gave my young friend a miniature lesson in the true view of computers, and he could wonder - he could admire them for what they are.

I can now answer the question our esteemed blogg-mistress posed some weeks back about wonder and why the modern world seems to have lost its sense of wonder. There is a theological reason for it. People sense that wonder arises from the surprising power and goodness and delight of God, in Himself and in His works - and they do NOT want to be reminded that He is responsible.

This is why there are lots of people who do not like Chesterton. They do not want to be reminded of God, of His work in Creation (cf. any of Jaki's works) or of His work in sub-creation (cf. Tolkien, Sayers and GKC) or of His work in what we call "Salvation History". But for me, and some friends such as I visited recently, Chesterton and creation and computing - and pedagogy (what and how we teach) - and the Church and wonder and prayer are all inter-related. Hence, in order to renew the sense of wonder in our world, we must begin with God. And you will find as you proceed that you will include addition and computers and fantasy stories and poems and rock music and cakes and all kinds of things: "But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice: and all these things shall be added unto you." [Luke 12:31]

No wonder GKC wrote "I never can really feel that there is such a thing as a different subject." We can entertain ourselves with our studies of philosophy and literature, our tech and television and sports and drink-and-drugs, and "fruitless adult activities", but they are only distractions to keep us from facing Reality. (See GKC on this in his book on Aquinas.) There really isn't any such thing as a "different subject" - all things are God's and point to Him, and to see them all we need to do is open our eyes:

The axe falls on the wood in thuds, "God, God."
The cry of the rook, "God," answers it
The crack of the fire on the hearth, the voice of the brook, say the same name;
All things, dog, cat, fiddle, baby,
Wind, breaker, sea, thunderclap
Repeat in a thousand languages -
God.
[GKC "the Notebook" quoted by Maisie Ward in Gilbert Keith Chesterton 64]

Or, as was written almost three millennia ago:

The heavens shew forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands.
[Ps 18:2]

Special Treat

In case I haven't convinced you that you need to listen to the CDs from the Rochester Conference, I was listening yesterday and discovered that a very special guest introduces Dale at the talks: his wife Laura! Laura gives some "insider" information that you won't want to miss.

Find the CDs here.

High School Chesterton Class OnLine Starting in Feb 2010

From Maureen:

Hey Nancy!

Wondering if you can help promote Robert Gotcher's Chesterton course coming up next semester. It's an evening course so it wouldn't be restricted to homeschoolers. Catholic students in other schools would be welcomed too. It'd be cool to get Chesterton out to as many high school kids as possible! The link is http://tinyurl.com/hschesterton

Dr. Gotcher picked the 2 books that Kolbe and MODG students need to read so this class would be helpful in fulfilling those school requirements. A nice bonus!

For people who like to save money, there's a $10 off coupon that expires this Thursday: r1ns52. Plus there's also an early registration discount that expires 12/31/09. So, if they register with the coupon this week, they'd save $25. Pretty sweet.

Anything you can do to get the word out to the Chestertonians would be superbalous!

Seattle Conference CDs NOW AVAILABLE!

Come and get 'em!

Uncommon Sense #10

New Leaf Theater in Lincoln Park, IL puts on The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton and adapted by Bilal Dardai for a new audience. Tickets available until November 21, 2009.
I talk first with Jessica Hutchinson, the director of the play, and then with Deb Lillig, who attended the play to find out more about how this 100 year old play came to life.
Rochester, NY Re-awakening Wonder Conference CDs are available now here.
Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy by William Oddie available here.

http://newleaftheatre.org/

Web sites:
http://chesterton.org
http://americanchestertonsociety.blogspot.com
http://www.twitter.com/amchestertonsoc
FaceBook Fan Page: The American Chesterton Society
http://music.mevio.com
(Pictures: Left is Deb, next to her is Jessica)

Uncommons Sense #9 is posted

Victoria Darkey recently attended the Re-Awakening Wonder conference in Rochester, NY sponsored by the Rochester Chesterton Society.
Vicky relates the highlights of the conference.
Vicky tells us how she came to start her own Chesterton Society in Western Pennsylvania.
Conference CDs are now available for only $25 here.

Websites:
http://www.siministries.com/Store
http://chesterton.org
http://www.twitter.com/amchestertonsoc
FaceBook Fan Page: The American Chesterton Society
http://music.mevio.com

Tickets still available for The Man Who Was Thursday at New Leaf Theater now through November 21, 2009.

Tidbits

Thanks to Dr. Thursday for the post yesterday and for trading post dates due to his travel schedule. Over the next two weeks, I'll be traveling, so posting may be sporadic.
Meanwhile, I'm working on two different podcasts, which I hope to finish up before I leave. Big changes are coming soon for the blog, so stay tuned.

Anglican-Catholic-Chesterton

Thanks to alert reader Tzard:

Jeffrey is a new Catholic (ex Anglican Priest) who has good things to say. He uses the unshakable arguments of Chesterton to comment on the possibility of Anglicans joining the Church en-masse (per recent news from Rome).

Check it out.

Thanks for the tip!

GKC: on Love and Liberty

I will not be able to write a posting for tomorrow, so I am rudely intruding into the rest of the week and posting a very interesting and relevant excerpt today, with the hope that it will provoke some discussion - or at least some thought.
--Dr. Thursday

... one very simple thing was true both of Love and Liberty; the gods of the Romantics and the Republicans. They were both simply fragments of Christian mysticism, and even of Christian theology, torn out of their proper place, flung loosely about and finally hurled forward into an age of hard materialism which instantly destroyed them. They were not really rational ideas, still less rationalistic ideas. At least, they were never rational ideas after they had left off being religious ideas. One of them was a hazy human exaggeration of the sacramental idea of marriage. The other was a hazy human exaggeration of the brotherhood of men in God. When the Romantic laid his hand on his Red Waistcoat and swore to George Sand or some other lady that their souls were two affinities wedded before the world was made, he was drawing on the Christian capital of the old ideas of immortality and sanctity. When he explained to his mistress in his garret the delicacy and dignity of cutting her throat and his own, and called it "the world well lost for love," he was really appealing to the old tradition of the martyr and the ascetic, who lost the world to save his soul. He was not, in any very exact sense of the word, talking sense. He was not uttering purely rational remarks; certainly not remarks that our more rationalistic generation would call rational. Often, when he had done himself particularly well with champagne and old brandy, he would let the cat out of the bag rather badly by calling the blanchisseuse or the artist's model "his bride in the sight of God."

Anyhow, he could not make the sort of appeals to deific faith or demonic jealousy, which constituted the vigorous love poetry of the age of Hugo and Alfred du Musset, without implying an immortal significance in passion, which the modern realists refuse to see in mere appetite. He could not so praise love without also praising loyalty. He might not admit that there was a sacred bond between Guinevere and Arthur; but he could not write at all without assuming that there was a sacred bond between Guinevere and Lancelot. The later sex writers would refuse to admit that there is any sacred bond between anybody and anybody else. The truth is that this mystical feeling about the love of man and woman was treated so clumsily that it fell between two stools. When it was really mediaeval, it could be preserved for ever in a story like that of Dante and Beatrice. When it was really modern, it simply fell to pieces, into little decaying scraps rather like wriggling worms, the hundred little loves and lusts of the modern sex novel. But the Romantics of the nineteenth century held it up in a sort of indeterminate pre-eminence; a dizzy and toppling idolatry; trying to make it at once as sacred as they thought good and as free as they found convenient. They wanted to eat their wedding-cake and have it. They wanted to make their wild wedding sacred without making it secure. They did put woman upon a pedestal; but they did not look to see if it was a solid pedestal.

Now, oddly enough, it was the same with Liberty as with Love. It was the same with the democratic ideal of political freedom for all. And Democracy is being criticised just now for exactly the same reason that Romance is being criticised just now. It is that all the sense there ever was in either of them rested on a religious idea. The nineteenth century took away the religious idea and left a sense that rapidly turned into nonsense. All men are equal because God loves all equally; and nothing can compare with that equality. But in what other way are men equal? The vague Liberals of the nineteenth century cut away the Divine ground from under Democracy, and Democracy was left to stand by itself. In other words, it is left to fall by itself. Jefferson said that men were given equal rights by their Creator. Ingersoll said that they had no Creator, but had received equal rights from nowhere. Even in the democratic atmosphere of America, it began to dawn on a great many people that it is very difficult to prove that men ever received the equal rights at all. In short, the Republican theory will turn out to be another form of Romance; and will be classed with the illusion of the too idealistic lover unless it can be reconnected with the positive beliefs from which it was originally borrowed. The Red Cap will follow the Red Waistcoat into the old clothes' shop unless it can be made something more than a fashion, or dipped in that enduring dye that coloured the red roses of St. Dorothy or the red cross of St. George.

[GKC ILN Aug 27 1932, also reprinted in All I Survey. Special thanks to Frank Petta and to my mother.]

For Dale's Roadies

G.K. Chesterton: His Wit, Wisdom & Sanctity

Dale Ahlquist, author, TV host, and president of the G.K. Chesterton Society, presents an illuminating and inspiring talk on the wit, wisdom and sanctity of G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton was profound and prolific in his defense of Christianity and the Church, using his good-humored battle with words against various evils in today’s world. Free. Nov. 15, 7:30 p.m. Kolbe Academy-Trinity Prep, 2055 Redwood Road, Napa. Info, tony@ignatius.com

What I Said

Lee blogs some thoughts about something I've often thought and feared myself about Chesterton.

It almost seems that his eminently quotable nature makes it easy to focus more on what he said and less on what he had to say. For too often the quotations are simply treated as quips that are now divorced from the larger contexts of cogent discussions of some significant topics.

I have this feeling almost weekly as I, like Lee, often search the Internet for Chesterton to see what people are saying about him or his work. Most often what I find is some quote of his used to the writer's benefit, and not an engagement with his ideas.

Loyola reviews New Leaf The Man Who Was Thursday

Be sure to see the combox below where Nick Keenan of New Leaf Theater responds and invites your discussion of the play they have currently going on there, an adaptation of The Man Who Was Thursday.

I completely agree with Nick: the play is, whether good or bad, at least making people aware of the man G.K. Chesterton. Maybe it will help someone pick up the novel and actually read it for the first time. Maybe someone will wonder about Chesterton and read a biography of him. Maybe it will make some people think, and that, as we know, is what the mind is there to do.

If you've attended, I'd love to hear from you. I know of one person with tickets in her hands, and when she sees the play, I hope to hear from her. Maybe even do a podcast interview of it, which would be great, too.

And welcome Nick to the blog!

Read the Loyola review here, and also see Nick's comment and the link to more reviews.

If you attend this weekend and dress like an anarchist, you get a discounted ticket!

Rochester Conference CDs are here!

You can now find the conference CDs from the Re-Awakening Wonder conference here, the entire set from the entire day is only $25! Order yours today.

"It is as" what?

Rather than blogg myself into virtual tar - and virtual feathers - I shall refrain from responding to the quarrelsome, interesting and even hilarious comments for last week - apparently I really did cause some division, hee hee - since there are other things to say, though most of them must be deferred for the present.

To vary my complex (x+iy) metaphor - if you are an engineer, read this (x+jy) - Oh, am I alluding to something you don't know? Sorry, sometimes I naturally quote a fitting math epigram the way Chesterton would quote a fitting Latin epigram. Of course I was trying to be funny, since the number (x+iy) is called a "complex" number, made of both real and imaginary parts, though of course "i" (or "j") is just as real to us as "5"! (That"!" makes it even funnier, but let us defer that too, hee hee!) Yes, mathematicians dignify "i" (or "j") with the glorious term "imaginary" - one imagines GKC illustrating an addition problem (or one in phasor analysis or wave mechanics) with horns and forked tails etc... Oh my, hee hee! If you have ever read the wonderful "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip, you may recall one where Hobbes mentions some other forms of imaginary numbers like "eleventeen" and "thirty-twelve" Ah! What joy. Ahem. Of course numbers are real, including those called "imaginary" by mathematicians; they do wonderful things like make your electric light work, and your radio - and if you treat them poorly, you will find that you have overdrawn your bank account.

Ahem! but as I started to say, to vary my complex metaphor, let us turn to the other wing of the University and see what curiousities we can find lurking in the halls of language. Of course, since I am an engineer I am not expected to know very much Latin or Greek, but from my youth I had read the mystic Ambrosian "TE DEVM LAVDAMVS" scribed far about the main altar at our church, and seen the strange letters "A" and "W" on the altar itself. And I kept the visitors into the Control Room where we did work for A Certain Cable Television Company by putting Latin epigrams like Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? onto the big screens where the tool called WATCHER kept us informed about system status... But you are not interested in what I know or don't know, but in what Chesterton knew, which we begin to gain hints of by reading his books.

And just for fun, since one may say that I am biassed, or (worsely argued) that I didn't know GKC personally, I shall give you a nice little quote from someone else who DID know him personally, and who also read his books:

Chesterton by his intellectual inheritance from the high Unitarian English culture was highly sympathetic with the general classical culture of Europe. He could illustrate it and pass it on (often unconsciously), as could not a writer or a man who knew not the soul of that culture. He could not have conceived a world which should be of our civilisation in a fashion and yet not based on Latin and Greek.
I remember, some years before he was received into the Church and before he ever visited America, his asking me, as one with a wide experience of the United States, whether it were true that the Latin and Greek classics were there of no effect. I told him this was increasingly so, save in a very few academic coteries and, of course, in the ubiquitous and very numerous Catholic clergy, and those influenced by them.
[Belloc, On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters 23-4]

Curious - but let us proceed. Besides, we shall come back to Belloc in order for me to explain my complex (hee hee) title for today.

Anyhow, in my explorations of GKC I have seen one or two Spanish words, a handful of German words, and a handful of Italian words, and a handful of Greek words, including some wonderful comments on learning Greek - see his Autobiography (CW16:60) for the startling revelation that the ancients did not write their Greek with accent marks! Of course as we know, they also wrote their Greek and Latin without spaces, which is hardly a simplification...

(See here for more on this item.) Ahem. But by far the two other languages we see in his writing are French and Latin. I've often wondered whether he used more Latin than French, but do not have the time to give all the details today. I can note a couple of lengthy bits, just to see how well you do without a dictionary:

The one case for Revolution is that it is the only quite clean and complete road to anything - even to restoration. Revolution alone can be not merely a revolt of the living, but also a resurrection of the dead. A friend of mine (one, in fact, who writes prominently on this paper) was once walking down the street in a town of Western France, situated in that area that used to be called La Vendée; which in that great creative crisis about 1790 formed a separate and mystical soul of its own, and made a revolution against a revolution. As my friend went down this street he whistled an old French air which he had found, like Mr. Gandish, "in his researches into 'istry," and which had somehow taken his fancy; the song to which those last sincere loyalists went into battle. I think the words ran:-

Monsieur de Charette
Dit au gens d'ici
Le roi va remettre
Le fleur de lys.

My friend was (and is) a Radical, but he was (and is) an Englishman, and it never occurred to him that there could be any harm in singing archaic lyrics out of remote centuries; that one had to be a Catholic to enjoy the "Dies Irae", or a Protestant to remember "Lillibullero." Yet he was stopped and gravely warned that things so politically provocative might get him at least into temporary trouble.
[GKC "The Red Reactionary" in A Miscelleny of Men 182-3]

Amazing! Now, I wonder what he said, and what it means. Here is a nice little project for someone to post about! Gee, maybe it is time for us to start homework assignments?

Here is another bit, again something curious which needs commentary:

We have ample evidence that the old leaders of feudal war could speak on occasion with a certain natural symbolism and eloquence that they had not gained from boots. When Cyrano de Bergerac, in Rostand's play, throws doubts on the reality of Christian's dulness and lack of culture, the latter replies:

'Bah! on trouve des mots quand on monte à l'assaut;
Oui, j'ai un certain esprit facile et militaire;'

and these two lines sum up a truth about the old oligarchy. They could not write three legible letters, but they could sometimes speak literature.
[GKC "A Defence of Slang" in The Defendant 107]

Now, let us go further into the past and hear GKC in the tongue of ancient Roma. There are several possible selections I could make where GKC quotes Aquinas or Virgil or others. He knows Juvenal's "Satires" well enough to apply his great dictum "quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, ("Who will watch the WATCHERs themselves?" - a line well known to the WATCHERs of Cable Television) into the excellent "Quis docebit ipsum doctorem?" (Who will teach the teacher himself?) which he wrote in "The Mad Official" in his A Miscellany of Men. Yes, that line would play well into last week's topic, but we must proceed.

That wonderful book of essays contains another glorious bit, which I will give you in a larger excerpt since it is pure delight - and of course because it deals with those great Chesterton topics, CHEESE and BEER:

I entered an inn which stood openly in the market-place yet was almost as private as a private house. Those who talk of "public-houses" as if they were all one problem would have been both puzzled and pleased with such a place. In the front window a stout old lady in black with an elaborate cap sat doing a large piece of needlework. She had a kind of comfortable Puritanism about her; and might have been (perhaps she was) the original Mrs. Grundy. A little more withdrawn into the parlour sat a tall, strong, and serious girl, with a face of beautiful honesty and a pair of scissors stuck in her belt, doing a small piece of needlework. Two feet behind them sat a hulking labourer with a humorous face like wood painted scarlet, with a huge mug of mild beer which he had not touched, and probably would not touch for hours. On the hearthrug there was an equally motionless cat; and on the table a copy of Household Words.
I was conscious of some atmosphere, still and yet bracing, that I had met somewhere in literature. There was poetry in it as well as piety; and yet it was not poetry after my particular taste. It was somehow at once solid and airy. Then I remembered that it was the atmosphere in some of Wordsworth's rural poems; which are full of genuine freshness and wonder, and yet are in some incurable way commonplace. This was curious; for Wordsworth's men were of the rocks and fells, and not of the fenlands or. flats. But perhaps it is the clearness of still water and the mirrored skies of meres and pools that produces this crystalline virtue. Perhaps that is why Wordsworth is called a Lake Poet instead of a mountain poet. Perhaps it is the water that does it. Certainly the whole of that town was like a cup of water given at morning.
After a few sentences exchanged at long intervals in the manner of rustic courtesy, I inquired casually what was the name of the town. The old lady answered that its name was Stilton, and composedly continued her needlework. But I had paused with my mug in air, and was gazing at her with a suddenly arrested concern.
"I suppose," I said, "that it has nothing to do with the cheese of that name."
"Oh, yes," she answered, with a staggering indifference, "they used to make it here."
I put down my mug with a gravity far greater than her own. "But this place is a Shrine!" I said. "Pilgrims should be pouring into it from wherever the English legend has endured alive. There ought to be a colossal statue in the market-place of the man who invented Stilton cheese. There ought to be another colossal statue of the first cow who provided the foundations of it. There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton, cheese, and survived. On the top of a neighbouring hill (if there are any neighbouring hills) there should be a huge model of a Stilton cheese, made of some rich green marble and engraven with some haughty motto: I suggest something like 'Ver non semper viret; sed Stiltonia semper virescit.'"
The old lady said, "Yes, sir," and continued her domestic occupations.
[GKC "The Poet and the Cheese" in A Miscellany of Men 12-14]

Ah, class - let us recite this excellent epigram together!

Ver non semper viret sed Stiltonia semper virescit.

(Roughly, "Spring is not always green, but Stilton always turns green.")

Excellent! And now, before I leave for lunch, let us return to Belloc.

Now parallelism is a gift or method of vast effect in the conveyance of truth.
Parallelism consists in the illustration of some unperceived truth by its exact consonance with the reflection of a truth already known and perceived.
A truth may be missed by too constant a use, so that familiarity has dulled it; or by mere lack of acquaintance with it (the opposite danger); or by the repeated statement of it in false and imperfect forms. When the truth has been missed, it is recalled and fixed in the mind of the hearer by an unexpected and vivid use of parallelism.
Whenever Chesterton begins a sentence with, "It is as though," (in exploding a false bit of reasoning,) you may expect a stroke of parallelism as vivid as a lightning flash. Thus if some ass propounds that a difference of application destroys the validity of a doctrine, or that particulars are the enemies of universals, Chesterton will answer: "It is as though you were to say I cannot be an Englishman because I am a Londoner," or "It is as though you were to say that I cannot be an Englishman because I travel," or "As though you were to say Brown and Smith cannot both be Englishmen because one of them talks West Country and the other North Country."
[Belloc 37-8]

What is truly funny about this - and somehow chiming in with my previous posting about mathematics is this: The phrase "It is as though" only appears three times (more or less) in all of GKC's books I have presently available!!!

However, "it is as if" appears over 250 times.

The funny thing here is that Belloc's argument is correct despite this minor variation in terms. Of course, this is why we computer people learn not to use the standard solutions for the quadratic equation, since under some conditions small errors can creep in - oh yes. It is as if we must be ever vigilant in both our words and our numbers - but then Chesterton told us, as he quoted John Curran's famous "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance" - this "is only what the theologians say of every other virtue, and is itself only a way of stating the truth of original sin." [GKC The Thing CW3:312] Yes! Let us be ever vigilant, both in our words and in our numbers, and so (as Milo did in The Phantom Tollbooth) defend the Kingdom of Wisdom against the Demons of Ignorance.

P.S. May I mention this? Please do NOT run those French quotes through a mechanical translator and post them. (I could have done that.) I gladly admit I do not know French, and wish I had time to learn it, and many other languages. However, if you desire to write a reply based on your authentic knowledge of the tongues and the issues being referenced, please do so, either as a comment or a link to a posting on your own blogg. There are plenty of such things to clarify, and we shall all benefit from hearing experts in these matters.

The International American Chesterton Society

This morning, I was randomly checking statistics on the Fan Page of the American Chesterton Society on Face Book.

Besides a ton of American fans, (totalling 200+ right now), we also have some international fans from:

Estonia
Mexico
Indonesia
Norway
Italy
and
France!

I believe this makes us quite an international national society and I'm proud of us.

Podcast Contest

Contest! Anyone who leaves audio feedback on the line 206-337-9049 or sends me an audio .wav or .aiff file via email in the next two weeks is entered to win one of my books (Mystery of Harry Potter, Father Brown Reader, Study Guide to Blue Cross or St. Francis).
Ideas:

"Hi! My name is (fill in blank) and I love the American Chesterton Society."

"Hi! My name is (X) and I follow the American Chesterton Society on the FaceBook Fan Page."

"Greetings! I'm (X) and I follow the American Chesterton Society on Twitter."

Or--make up your own original and fun greeting!

Deadline: Nov 9 midnight.

Israel Gow: The Movie

Have you seen it on EWTN? Need to see it again? Order it here.

You go play...

Like Chesterton, I am busy with thing upstairs, so you go play until I can get back down here and toss buns in the air to catch them.

Yesterday, we visited a potential college for my hs senior, and today, my hs freshman is making her Confirmation. I'll join up with you soon. Have a treasure hunt while I'm away, will you?

I have come for division!

One of the sillier "education" notions these days - I mentioned it recently - is the idea that children ought to be taught "problem-solving skills" rather than the ordinary traditional subjects which they will need if they are ever to solve problems. No teacher, no administrator, no "doctor" of education (I use it in quotes since they are rarely PhDs and almost never actually teach, which is what the Latin word means!) - none of these educators actually specifies what skills these are, since the few which I know of (e.g. math induction & recursion, automata, graph theory, force diagrams, dimensional analysis, and so forth) all require the basic tools of learning. Ah, well - you think I mean these things ought to be taught in grade school? Certainly, but not necessarily. I think kids are lots smarter than any educator - or any Media Personage - can grasp, and could be getting far more meat far sooner, if there was discipline (which means living & acting as a student does!) and lots less trash and distractions. But this posting is not on the "Thursday" method of education, as interesting as that might be. Besides there is a better way of showing my point on this topic, and it is quite funny. For at the same time these dear ones are pushing for "problem solving skills" they are rejecting traditional skills - like (don't get scared now) - like "LONG DIVISION".

Now, the funny thing is that long division is a problem-solving skill! It solves the question of how many times some given number (say the number of stars) can be split up ("divided") among another given number (say the number of students in a classroom). If there are 5000 stars, and there are 40 students, then each person gets 125 stars. I know that was an easy one, but I am not lecturing about the technique today. (I can, if you want, but it will have to be on my own blogg. But see below for GKC's comments on the topic.)

These dear educatists will say that we use calculators for chores like long division - but that is like saying we can use bicycles to go around the bases during a baseball game! Sure, we could, and get Home lots faster than running! But as worthy a tool as the bicycle is, it is not admitted to be fair part of the game of baseball.

Nor is the calculator a fair part of the game of long division.

That is because long division is a skill which is necesary for other tasks than getting the result of dividing one number by another. It is a SKILL, writ large as FAther Jaki likes to write, and comes up in a whole range of places in mathematics, computing, and such disciplines. But there is another reason for it, which completely escapes the understanding of these educators.

That is Long Division is a means of teaching something much harder to describe than the very simple idea of getting the quotient. In fact, it exemplifies the First Problem Solving Skill one ought to have.

Oh, Doc! Really?

Yes, my child. Really. It is simply stated, and something I would guess you've heard from your mother, especially if you've ever helped her in the kitchen. It is simply this:

Follow the Directions.

Yes. You see, Long Division is a bunch of Directions - it is a - well, since I am a computer scientist, I should use the word "algorithm" - but I am often a baker (and even occasional cook) so I should use the word "recipe", and I am also a scientist (yes, I have a white lab coat!) and so can use the term "lab protocol"; I have been a musician so I could suggest the term "score", and I have read GKC's plays, so I could call it a "script", and I am also a Catholic so I might use the term "rite" (though that is a bit of a stretch).

Long Division is a lot more interesting than "Long Addition" or even "Long Multiplication" because it contains a "step" we computer people call a "conditional" - that is something with an "IF". That is nothing new to any of the above fields of human activity: recipes often have "if" statements, and everything from lab protocols to liturgical rites contain such things.

Does this division business connect to Chesterton? Sure, and in a startling way. I am sure you know the Gospel lines "Think ye, that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, no; but separation." (Luke 12:51) or "Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword." (Matthew 10:34) which GKC relied on when he writes:

Christianity suddenly stepped in and offered a singular answer, which the world eventually accepted as answer. It was the answer then, and I think it is the answer now.
This answer was like the slash of a sword; it sundered; it did not in any sense sentimentally unite. Briefly, it divided God from the cosmos. ... And the root phrase for all Christian theism was this, that God was a creator, as an artist is a creator. A poet is so separate from his poem that he himself speaks of it as a little thing he has "thrown off." Even in giving it forth he has flung it away. This principle that all creation and procreation is a breaking off is at least as consistent through the cosmos as the evolutionary principle that all growth is a branching out. A woman loses a child even in having a child. All creation is separation. Birth is as solemn a parting as death.
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:281]

Father Jaki elaborates on this idea in several places, notably in his Genesis 1 Through the Ages where he discusses the Hebrew bara which means "create" but also "divide, hack".

Not that I suggest the learning of Long Division is somehow a part of theological training - but of course it is. Theologians, like Philosophers and Historians and all the Students of Words, no less than the Students of Numbers, need to FIRST learn to think according to simple, easy, formulated rules - in order that they can proceed to examine issues for which there might not be such rules! Yes, Long Division is as important to the most esoteric branches of literature and philosophy as good grammar is to the most esoteric branches of engineering and science and mathematics.

Besides, and you may find this most surprising to learn: there are lovely problems in mathematics that calculators (and even computers) cannot solve, and that is one good reason why we need to learn Long Division. I've seen such things at work, and it was not something esoteric either. But as much fun as it is I cannot go into the math of such things here.

To conclude, I'll let you enjoy the only four excellent insights which I found where GKC uses the term "Long Division". The hilarious thing is that one of them says almost the same thing I've been trying to say - but it's nearly 100 years old. Odd that the modern up-to-date educators are still trying such failed and fusty old methods...

It is unfortunate that common-sense has come to mean almost the contrary of the sense that is common. Indeed, we might say that when men boast of common-sense, it generally means a contempt for common people. A man who will not listen to any evidence in favour of ghosts or witches may (especially in his own opinion) possess sense; but what exactly he does not possess is common-sense. He has no realisation of the common bond of human instinct and experience which binds him to the very varied memories and lives of his fellows. He may be right in saying that he has no nonsense about him; a very lamentable gap in any man's character. But the general impression of a borderland of abnormal experiences is not nonsense. It IS sense, even if to some it seems like the suggestion of a sixth sense. It is not nonsense either in the bad or in the good sense. It is not a confusion of thought or a contradiction in terms. It is not a fantastic form of art or a grotesque form of beauty. Spirit-rapping does not introduce us to the Mad Hatter or the Pobble Who Had No Toes; would that it ever introduced us to anybody so entertaining! On the other hand, it is not nonsense to say that a man's soul went out of his own body, as it is nonsense to say that he jumped down his own throat. It is simply an assertion, true or false, about certain conditions on another plane, which are different from the laws of our planet, but not different from the laws of our reason. It is certainly unknown; it may be unknowable; but it is not unthinkable. It is not like saying that long division is green, or that Wednesday is oblong, or that thought is a molecular movement.
[GKC ILN Jan 12 1929 CW35:21-22]

Shelley invented half a hundred goddesses, but he could not pray to them, not even as well as the old atheist Lucretius could pray to Venus, Mother of Rome. All Shelley's deities were abstractions; they were Beauty or Liberty or Love; but they might as well have been Algebra and Long Division, so far as inviting the gesture of worship goes. In this, as in everything else, what is the matter with the new pagan is that he is not a pagan; he has not any of the customs or consolations of a pagan.
[GKC Jul 5 1930 CW35:339]

A peasant who merely says, "I have five pigs; if I kill one I shall have four pigs," is thinking in an extremely simple and elementary way; but he is thinking as clearly and correctly as Aristotle or Euclid. But suppose he reads or half-reads newspapers and books of popular science. Suppose he starts to call one pig the Land and another pig Capital and a third pig Exports, and finally brings out the result that the more pigs he kills the more he possesses; or that every sow that litters decreases the number of pigs in the world. He has learnt economic terminology, merely as a means of becoming entangled in economic fallacy. It is a fallacy he could never have fallen into while he was grounded in the divine dogma that Pigs is Pigs. Now for that sort of intellectual instruction and advancement we have no use at all; and in that sense only it is true that we prefer the ignorant peasant to the instructed pedant. But that is not because we think ignorance better than instruction or barbarism better than culture. It is merely that we think a short length of the untangled logical chain is better than an interminable length of it that is interminably tangled. It is merely that we prefer a man to do a sum of simple addition right than a sum of long division wrong.
[GKC The Thing CW3:165]


Education is only truth in a state of transmission; and how can we pass on truth if it has never come into our hand? Thus we find that education is of all the cases the clearest for our general purpose. It is vain to save children; for they cannot remain children. By hypothesis we are teaching them to be men; and how can it be so simple to teach an ideal manhood to others if it is so vain and hopeless to find one for ourselves?
I know that certain crazy pedants have attempted to counter this difficulty by maintaining that education is not instruction at all, does not teach by authority at all. They present the process as coming, not from the outside, from the teacher, but entirely from inside the boy. Education, they say, is the Latin for leading out or drawing out the dormant faculties of each person. Somewhere far down in the dim boyish soul is a primordial yearning to learn Greek accents or to wear clean collars; and the schoolmaster only gently and tenderly liberates this imprisoned purpose. Sealed up in the newborn babe are the intrinsic secrets of how to eat asparagus and what was the date of Bannockburn. The educator only draws out the child's own unapparent love of long division; only leads out the child's slightly veiled preference for milk pudding to tarts. I am not sure that I believe in the derivation; I have heard the disgraceful suggestion that "educator," if applied to a Roman schoolmaster, did not mean leading our young functions into freedom; but only meant taking out little boys for a walk. But I am much more certain that I do not agree with the doctrine; I think it would be about as sane to say that the baby's milk comes from the baby as to say that the baby's educational merits do. There is, indeed, in each living creature a collection of forces and functions; but education means producing these in particular shapes and training them to particular purposes, or it means nothing at all. Speaking is the most practical instance of the whole situation. You may indeed "draw out" squeals and grunts from the child by simply poking him and pulling him about, a pleasant but cruel pastime to which many psychologists are addicted. But you will wait and watch very patiently indeed before you draw the English language out of him. That you have got to put into him; and there is an end of the matter.
[GKC What's Wrong With the World CW4:64-5]

Interesting Review

I can't tell if this is an honest review that aims to flatter, or a flattering review that contains pointed barbs.

Has anyone here seen the play?

"Acting is deft across the board, and the quicksilver pacing, along with gorgeous technical theater, keeps the play afloat—even the facile last scene Dardai added that makes a vapid reference to terrorism (not to mention completely compromises Chesterton’s message) remains buoyant in the hands of director and cast."

(Emphasis added by Ed.)

Some Pictures from ReAwakening Wonder in Rochester

Thanks and H/T: Su
Includes Dale and Tom Howard, the four speakers (Joseph Pearce, Dale Ahlquist, Tom Howard, and David Higbee), Ellen Finan, Vicki Darkey, and Jeff Force, who were all in Seattle.

It should be noted that Vicki, Ellen and Su (whom I received these pictures from) are all heads of their local Chesterton Societies, way to go!

Podcast #7- Ted Olsen Eaten Alive?

Ted Olsen interview about Eaten Alive Conference held in Twin Cities. Cardinal George's new book-The Difference God Makes. Who will debate these modern atheists like Chesterton debated Clarence Darrow or GBShaw? ENDOW for Catholic women. ChesterTen news.

Audio feedback: 206-337-9049 uncommonsensepodcast@gmail.com

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Christianity Today: GKC subverts the subversives

The ACS's own David Deavel has had an article published in Christianity Today, and it's available on line here. Exerpt:

Chesterton's Return
How GKC subverts the subversives.
David Paul Deavel | posted 10/08/2009

A prophet is never welcome in his own hometown. For a long time after the tumult of the Sixties, G. K. Chesterton's writings seemed to have lost a welcome anywhere, except, perhaps, among the detective fiction enthusiasts who have kept the Father Brown tales in circulation continuously on both sides of the Atlantic. According to Denis J. Conlon, an English literary scholar who has specialized in Chesterton for many years, much of Chesterton's work is still out of print and hard-to-get in his own merry England. A friend of mine studying in Rome a few years ago told me that the English and Irish Catholic seminarians he met almost universally regarded Chesterton a pre-modern, pre-Vatican II embarrassment. The situation was about the same in America for a long time. As of 1985 there were probably fewer than ten of Chesterton's books in print, and those were, aside from his detective fiction, mostly published by small and often obscure Catholic presses.

Read more.

On Being Chestertonian - the Rosary and Presence of Mind

I had already worked out part of my posting for today when I noted an interesting appeal for a quote in a recent posting - but it was far too important to merely answer in the comment box. I don't have the request to quote for you, but here is what Chesterton wrote:

Humanism is quite different from Humanitarianism. It means, as explained here, something like this. Modern science and organization are in a sense only too natural. They herd us like the beasts along lines of heredity or tribal doom; they attach man to the earth like a plant instead of liberating him, even like a bird, let alone an angel. Indeed, their latest psychology is lower than the level of life. What is subconscious is sub-human and, as it were, subterranean: or something less than earthly. This fight for culture is above all a fight for consciousness: what some would call self-consciousness: but anyhow against mere subconsciousness. We need a rally of the really human things; will which is morals, memory which is tradition, culture which is the mental thrift of our fathers.
[GKC The Thing CW3:146-7, emphasis added]

Now this idea of consciousness connects very well with the topic I had selected - that of the Rosary - and it also gives a very powerful answer to our Bloggmistress' question about "how to live Chestertonian".

The fight, as GKC points out, is about achieving consciousness. In other places he calls this "presence of mind". I wish I had room to properly deal with this, especially as it touches my own disciplines, since I keep hearing this silly line about how children need to acquire "problem-solving skills" and I wonder what that means, since without proper formation in reading and writing - and mathematics - all problems remain insoluble, since one cannot even understand their statement! Or are they teaching automata theory and recursion, perhaps? Ahem.

So let us see how GKC handles this issue under an older formula, that is, "How To Think". Oh, my it's hilarious, but wait until you hear what he says. It will be startling to you but only if you have not yet understood why Christ threw the money changers out of the Temple.

I have before me a little pamphlet in which the most precise directions are given for a Mock Turkey, for a vegetarian mince-pie, and for a cautious and hygienic Christmas pudding. I have never quite understood why it should be a part of the Simple Life to have anything so deceptive and almost conspiratorial as an imitation turkey. The coarse and comic alderman may be expected, in his festive ribaldry, to mock a turtle; but surely a lean and earnest humanitarian ought not to mock a turkey. Nor do I understand the theory of the imitation in its relation to the ideal. Surely one who thinks meat eating mere cannibalism ought not to arrange vegetables so as to look like an animal. It is as if a converted cannibal in the Sandwich Islands were to arrange joints of meat in the shape of a missionary. The missionaries would surely regard the proceedings of their convert with something less than approval, and perhaps something akin to alarm. But the consistency of these concessions I will leave on one side, because I am not here concerned with the concessions but with the creed itself. And I am concerned with the creed not merely as affecting its practice in diet or cookery but its general theory. For the compilers of the little book before me are great on philosophy and ethics. There are whole pages about brotherhood and fellowship and happiness and healing. In short, as the writer observes, we have "also some Mental Helps, as set forth in the flood of Psychology Literature to-day - but raised to a higher plane." It may be a little risky to set a thing forth in a flood, or a little difficult to raise a flood to a higher plane; but there is behind these rather vague expressions a very real modern intelligence and point of view, common to considerable numbers of cultivated people, and well worthy of some further study.

Under the title of "How to Think" there are twenty-four rules of which the first few are: "Empty Your Mind," "Think of the Best Things," "Appreciate," "Analyse," "Prepare Physically," "Prepare Mentally," and so on. I have met some earnest students of this school, who had apparently entered on this course, but at the time of our meeting had only graduated so far as the fulfilment of the first rule. It was more obvious, on the whole, that they had succeeded in the preliminary process of emptying the mind than that they had as yet thought of the best things, or analysed or appreciated anything in particular. But there were others, I willingly admit, who had really thought of certain things in a genuinely thoughtful fashion, though whether they were really the best things might involve a difference of opinion between us. Still, so far as they are concerned, it is a school of thought, and therefore worth thinking about. Having been able to this extent to appreciate, I win now attempt to analyse. I have attempted to discover in my own mind where the difference between us really lies, apart from all these superficial jests and journalistic points; to ask myself why it is exactly that their ideal vegetarian differs so much from my ideal Christian. And the result of the concentrated contemplation of their ideal is, I confess, a somewhat impatient forward plunge in the progress of my initiation. I am strongly disposed to "Prepare Physically" for a conflict with the ideal vegetarian, with the holy hope of hitting him on the nose. In one of Mr. P. G. Wodehouse's stories the vegetarian rebukes his enemy for threatening to skin him, by reminding him that man should only think beautiful thoughts; to which the enemy gives the unanswerable answer: "Skinning you is a beautiful thought." In the same way I am quite prepared to think of the best things; but I think hitting the ideal vegetarian on the nose would be one of the best things in the world. This may be an extreme example; but it involves a much more serious principle. What such philosophers often forget is that among the best things in the world are the very things which their placid universalism forbids; and that there is nothing better or more beautiful than a noble hatred. I do not profess to feel it for them; but they themselves do not seem to feel it for anything.
[GKC "The Meaning of Mock Turkey" in Fancies Versus Fads]

Now what do I mean by bringing up the Rosary in such a discussion? Don't I know that some of my readers are not Catholic? Of course. GKC knew that some of his readers weren't vegetarian - and that perhaps even some of them were.

But you see I find it relevant to the issue, even more so than recursion or automata theory. I could easily give a link from this simple and fully Biblical prayer to the esoteric branch of mathematics called "Graph Theory", or another link to the most interesting and curious qualities of the twenty amino acids as studied by Biochemistry or Molecular Biology.... or my as-yet unwritten link from the Rosary to the extreme high technology of network theory and modern communications protocols.... but not here and now. No; I simply want to give one important detail about it which is relevant to this idea of "presence of mind" and "learning to think" - and yes, to "problem-solving skills".

First, I must deal with the word "prayer" - that is something where some people don't quite get the usage of English words. A "prayer" is an asking - the verb comes up in legal documents "The undersigned PRAY the Court, etc..." without any confusion about adoration of God. Nor should there be any difficulties with asking others - to ask someone to pass the mustard (that famous action beloved by Chesterton) is a prayer. Even funnier is that the prayer which seems to bother some people the most - the Hail Mary - specifically asks her for nothing more than to "pray for US sinners". Quite a good idea. We ought to pray for each other, after all. But there is another verb associated with the Rosary - something far harder to discuss than prayer, and perhaps even more confusing to some these days.

That word is MEDITATION. This word used to have a very sound and powerful sense, a Western and classical sense - and GKC was still using it in that fashion - the sense that one is bringing all one's powers of thought to bear on a topic or issue or idea. It is, in the most perfect sense, the extreme version of Presence of Mind.

And so it is to be formally and absolutely distinguished with the "modern" or "Eastern" form of the term, which is the "emptying of the mind". In the Rosary, one meditates on various scenes of the life of Jesus - one tastes, savours, replays, re-experiences these scenes in the most direct fashion one can. Now, it is possible that too many people have weakened their minds and cannot accomplish this vivid and dramatic experience. They think they cannot do it - they watch too much TV, surf too many websites, play too many video games - they have become intellectual couch potatoes.

But the exercise of the mind is possible - you won't even need a membership card or special equipment, or have to get all sweaty!

You just begin to STUDY these scenes - take your time, use pictures, use gospel texts, whatever will help you acquire the direct personal and intellectual awareness of these Gospel events: What happened. Who did what. WHY did it happen. What does it tell me. What must I do because of this. Those, in my view, are the kind of problem-solving skills worth acquiring!

Why do I urge this? Because, if we say we LOVE our Lord, it is a matter of knowing about His life, and rehearsing those main events so we have them as part of our own life - we are (or claim to be) part of His Family, so we need to catch up on the events the Family has experienced. Think of the Rosary as Christ' home videos, His family photo albums - no equipment, no boredom. With just a little mental effort, you can even picture yourself in the scenes - and perhaps become closer to Him.

Now, Doc (you say) - c'mon Doc - connect this to Chesterton.

Sure. I just discovered it for myself. I happened to be reading part of his The Everlasting Man aloud to a friend and it dawned on me. The first three chapters of Part II ("The Man Called Christ") are really GKC's form of meditation on the Mysteries of the Rosary. They form a kind of literary expression of his meditation, and we get to experience some of his own thoughts when we read it.

So if for some reason you find you cannot yet approach this Presence of Mind, this Western meditation which fills the mind with thought - then just try out GKC's own writing in those chapters of The Everlasting Man and you'll get a kind of test drive experience. There will be no sales pressure. The ride will convince you far better than I can. (hee hee)

Yes really. And there's more. Once you begin this easy and quite healthy practice of Presence of Mind, you will find that these powerful mental skills assist you at other things - things like Graph Theory or the Biochemistry of amino acids - or even software development, hee hee! But then that is what you can expect, since we were told: "seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice: and all these things shall be added unto you." [Luke 12:31]

Wedding Anniversaries

Gilbert and Frances celebrated 35 years together, and that was tremendous. From 1901 till Gilbert's death in 1936, they remained together in love, companions on the journey of life.

Love is a strange thing. So many young people today are tossing love around like it was meaningless, worthless, or heartless. They hook up and unhook almost as often as they change their brand of sneakers. They live together long past the point of honeymoon, then decide they couldn't ever stay together for life. They chemically induce sterility to keep that idea out of the picture. They go right past that natural urge to join their two lives together as one for life, and join up anyway, without permission and they know it, and it eventually fails, and they know why, but do it anyway. It must be right. TV says so. Movies say so. The culture says so. David Letterman says so. Maybe I'll be the one prove it works.

The long term implications of this current catastrophe are going to be disastrous for the culture. Well, they already are. Kindergartners are witnesses to mom and dad's loose morals. How will they grow up differently?

Perhaps some will choose the path of rebellion. To rebel today has all the excitement of virtue: marry; marry young (meaning in your 20s), marry innocent, have children, stay together. Revolutionary ideas, I know. But if you want to rebel against the culture and against your parents, maybe that's the path you might choose.

How to Live Like a Chestertonian

One complaint I've heard in the last few weeks is that these Chesterton meetings are great, and help you feel like you've got some kindred spirits out there, and it's great talking to people, but then you leave. How do you take what you've learned and live like a Chestertonian?

One thing I've come to believe more and more about Chesterton himself is that he chose the way he wanted to live: cheerfully, lightly, bucking the tide, but humorously. Humility played a huge part. It is, as he said, easy to be heavy, hard to be light.

When someone gets heavy on you and starts saying they disagree with you and get kind of huffy and angry, how can you keep things light without them thinking you're making a joke of the situation? How can you get them to "turn off" the heaviness and get back to a place where you are having a conversation again, instead of a disagreement?

Yippee! The Podcast is BACK on iTunes!

After a whole lot of trouble, involving mostly me not knowing what I'm doing, the Uncommon Sense podcast is back up on iTunes! Yeah! When I first started, about half the people found us on iTunes, half on the web. Since going down, all those who had previously subscribed on iTunes just....probably thought I wasn't making any more podcasts. Boy won't they be surprised today!

I interviewed a very special guest today, so watch next week for another great podcast.

New Edition of Chesterton Mysteries

H/T: Joey G
Joey found this new edition of Chesterton's Mysteries, which will be coming out in a six volume collection, this is volume one.
I *love* the cover.

Even blacker than it is painted

As you know I am pursuing the mysteries of the truth of Chesterton by considering his actual words, and not what some "lit'ry" professors have written journal articles or doctoral dissertations about. Mine, as you know, is about how computer science and its string theory can assist biology with its study of prokaryotic rRNA, and I delight in applying it to Chesterton's work.

In response to the anonymous commentor, I make NO claims or insinuations about GKC's vocabulary. I merely made a tidy little study of how certain words appear (or, more properly, fail to appear) within the AMBER collection of ILN essays - and that was ALL. I am not trying to prove GKC was written by Shaw (as Maisie Ward reports was suggested by the Bystander; see pp. 236-7 in her Gilbert Keith Chesterton!) Hee hee.

Actually, if I were proving anything at all, which I wasn't, it was merely that the so-called "google" world of search tools is horribly limited. But then the biologists knew that back in 1991, and from the looks of things, not much has changed in almost 20 years, despite the vastly larger collection of genetic sequences. Hee hee hee! Ah, yes. And though there plenty of Chesterton texts already available for free out here in the e-cosmos, they suffer from the same illness.

Oh, but once one has even a small collection, one can learn so much! It is lots of fun - for example, two words, "the" and "of" comprise almost ten percent of Orthodoxy. Adding six more "a", "is", "to", "and", "that", "it" brings the total to over 25 percent - a quarter of the book! What does it prove? Nothing. It suggests the curious powers - and weaknesses - of English. But I commented on this some time ago, and even have a poem scheduled to be written about it.

However, let us try something even more novel - a curious exploration into the "density" of words, which gave me the hint to a very wonderful essay of Chesterton's which I shall quote shortly. In my on-going search (not an INTERNET one, thank God) for the wonderful and the true, I once asked myself what was the longest word which did not contain ANY repeated letter. Now, that answer might be found by some intense magical googlisation, but I don't know that tongue. And I don't as yet have an electronic dictionary... I wondered what I could do. Then I remembered, I had some 50,000 unique words in the AMBER collection - so I dashed off a little program to examine them for "density". That is, the ratio of "the number of distinct letters of the alphabet in the word" to "the total number of letters in the word". So "word" is four letters long and has four distinct letters: D, O, R, W - so its density is 1.0. But though "noon" is also four letters long, it only has two distinct letters: "N" and "O" - so its density is 0.5. The fun will be to see what words of Chesterton's fall at the extremes.

(Hey - don't fall asleep, there's a great GKC excerpt to come!)

OK, so what was the least dense word? Any guess?

I didn't think you'd want to play that game. I was a bit surprised to learn it is "senselessness" (density 0.31) which comes in a very interesting and quite relevant context:

What I mean is this: between the two extremes of Mrs. Carrie Nation smashing saloons with axes and the Bohemian in Greenwich Village sipping strange culture with absinthe, there are of course a thousand shades of common sense or common senselessness. There is every sort of sane American citizen between the mad Puritan and the mad Pagan. But from my own standpoint, which is neither Puritan nor Pagan, there is one rather curious thing that is common to them all. For instance, one kind of man will say in effect, "I don't believe a man can be a good citizen unless he's a good Christian, and the Bible that was good enough for my mother is good enough for me. I don't say I've never taken a drink, but I don't allow it in my house and I'd give anything to save my sons from gambling."

Then there is a second sort of man who will say, "I'm afraid I can't believe in any creed myself, though of course I've a great respect for Christ and good Christians. It's all very well for them; but naturally I don't go in for being a saint; I take a drink from time to time though not as a habit, and I'm not above a game of poker."

Then we have the type of man who says more impatiently, "Oh, these Christians are too good for this world, or they pretend to be, though lots of them are dirty hypocrites and drink on the sly. They aren't so darned Christian when you come to know them. I make no pretences. Craps and whisky and this world's good enough for me."

Next to him we have a wilder specimen who says, "Christianity's been nothing but a blasted blight on all the fun and freedom of humanity. I'm not ashamed of saying, 'Eat and drink, for tomorrow you die.' All the Christian ever says is, 'Don't drink and hardly eat, for tomorrow you're damned.' You read what Mencken says about the ministers who want to cut out gambling, etc." Then of course there is the more logical and philosophical culmination of the same philosophy, as in Mr. Mencken himself.

Now there are any number of intelligent and kindly and jolly people of all those shades of thought. But what I remark about them is that they are all Puritans, at least they are all what we call in England Nonconformists. They all have the exact but extraordinary Nonconformist scale of moral values. They all have the same fixed but astounding notion of the nature of Christianity. Some of them accept Christianity and therefore refuse wine or whisky or games of chance. Some of them hesitate about Christianity and therefore hesitate about wine or whisky or games of chance. Some of them reluctantly reject Christianity and therefore (almost reluctantly) accept wine and whisky and games of chance. Some of them deliriously reject Christianity and therefore deliriously accept wine or whisky or games of chance. But they all seem incurably convinced that things like that are the main concern of religion. It is a pretty safe bet that if any popular American author has mentioned religion and morality at the beginning of a paragraph, he will at least mention liquor before the end of it. To a man of a different creed and culture the whole thing is staggering.
[GKC Sidelites on New London and Newer York CW21:564-5]

All right, so what is the most dense? Well, as we have already noted, there are words of density 1, like "word" or "fisher" - so to make it interesting let us find the longest such word. There are over a dozen words with density 1 of length 12, and the most frequently appearing is "considerably" which he used over 150 times.

(All right, Doc - nice density - so get to the exciting essay, why don't you?)

Yes, because I have nothing more to say about density, except my favourite word, "plakkopytrixophylisperambulantiobatrix" which has length 38, only has 17 unique letters, so its density is a rather bland 0.45. All right, now here is a very colourful and artistic discussion, which I found because I was hunting for "density"...

It is to be hoped, as I said last week, that people will realise that Spain is not so black as it was painted by those who only painted the black hoods of Inquisitors or the Tennysonian dualism of Don and Devil. Spain in one sense is quite as black as it is painted, for its painters were particularly fond of painting in black. But being in black is by no means the same as being in mourning. We might almost say that the Spaniards are fond of bright colours, and that black is the brightest of all their colours. They are very fond of it in art and decoration; but the effect is not necessarily what the English used to call gloomy, but rather what the French have called chic. It throws up all the other colours, especially the typically Spanish colours of gold and orange and copper and dark red. There are aspects in which all Spain seems to be striped with red and gold, like the legendary shield of Aragon. But nothing could make that glowing shield glow more vividly than to be worn by a knight in black armour or carried by a page in black velvet.

The well-known picture of the Spanish lady wearing a black mantilla and a red rose would be sufficient to make us recognise the tradition. The mantilla alone shows that black is a gay colour, and almost the colour of frivolity. For the Spanish ladies who keep the old custom in this respect look far more like what the old ballads call "ladies gay," the dames of a joyous Court or the dancing girls of a jovial festival, than do the more modernised ladies who have obediently hidden their heads in the helmets of the last Parisian fashion. The colour of the Spanish scarf or veil is dark, but it is not dismal; it is bright because it is brisk; it can shift and change with posture and gesture and mood; it is alive like a black snake or a black bird or a black butterfly. The accident that some of Velasquez's great portraits have a sombre dignity that is almost Satanic, and that Goya made black-and-white studies that are like the sketch-book of a goblin, should not lead us to exaggerate the sombre side of this use of black. The Spaniards do indeed use it where nobody else I know of has ever used it. I have actually seen black patches in a coloured church window. This is contrary to the very conception of windows, but it is quite consistent with the Spanish conception of colours.

The same impression, and perhaps the same illusion, is doubtless produced by the Spanish churches, which are kept unusually, and to us unnaturally, dark. It would seem as if the architect, like the artist, wished to produce great blocks of black, and did it with great blocks of shadow. The altars and the altar-screens are prodigiously high and heavy, like the portals of the palaces of giants. They seem to make the darkness darker, throwing a shadow even upon shade. Yet even here we find the triumph of contrast, which is really the triumph of colour. The stained-glass windows are turned to swords of flame of an indescribable incandescence. The church is dark with the very density of its colour. The Spanish gold may be partly buried in the gloom, just as the Spanish gold of romance was so often buried in the green sea. But in the reality, as in the romance, we always think of the treasure as tremendously costly and complex and covering vast areas. Indeed, there is sometimes a sensation in these twilight churches of walking as if in the depths of the sea; as if the hundreds of little candles were a phosphorescence, or the great canopies and banners the shapes of flat and floating fishes of gigantic size.
[GKC ILN June 19, 1926 CW110-111]

I feel compelled to add a comment here, since this excerpt touches what some consider a very difficult and sensitive topic. For a true artist like GKC, or even a poor dull amateur like me, there is something intense about black - and he reveals its power here. I might quote one of my art instruction books about black, or point out the amazing physical structure of the eye - which is both white (the sclera) and black (the Tapetum Nigrum and the choroid)... or resort to the Second Letter of St. John where he speaks of using "paper and ink" (2Jn 1:12), which shall always be for any scholar, literary or technical, the archetype of the mystery of conjoined white and black - but I am out of time, and so I must defer further discussion to a future posting.

PS: the Greek word for "ink" is melas, the root of the biological compound "melanine"... but discussion of that also must be deferred.

Podcast #6-Interview with James O'Keefe

James is a 25 year old investigative journalist and filmmaker. He and a friend he met over the internet, Hannah Giles, conducted a sting operation to uncover the corruption within the group ACORN, The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that got into hot water during the Obama election for voter fraud, but is funded in part by the federal and state Government.

O’Keefe and Giles went into ACORN offices in Baltimore, Brooklyn, San Diego, San Bernardino, New York City, Washington DC, posing as a pimp and prostitute trying to set up a brothel in that city by importing South American underage girls. They asked for advice on how to buy and get loans for their houses. ACORN workers condoned the illegal activities suggested by James and Hannah, even giving them advise on tax evasion techniques. They told the two how to lie to the government to get federal loans to set up a brothel with illegal immigrant girls for an underage prostitution business.

The Senate and House have called for a halting of funding for the group based on the investigation of O’Keefe and Giles. Listen to the interview by clicking on the podcast player on the left, or follow this link.

Show Notes:
James O'Keefe interview-sting operation takes away federal funding for ACORN-Chicago Olymics-David Letterman
James O'Keefe's favorite Chesterton books: Orthodoxy and What's Wrong With the World, favorite Chesterton quote: If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly. Advice to Chestertonians: use new media to respond to the corruption-if Chesterton were alive today, he'd be making youtube videos.
Listener feedback welcome: uncommonsensepodcast@gmail.com or call 206-337-9049
This show sponsored by The American Chesterton Society and by listeners like you. Please consider supporting the work by going here and clicking on JOIN or DONATE.

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James O'Keefe:
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The Laughing Prophet?

Found on Internet:

As part of the week-long festivities, the Northern State Campus Ministry Groups will host the annual Spirit of Gypsy Days party on Wednesday.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place in Thunder's Lair at 7 p.m.

Dale Ahlquist, also known as the Laughing Prophet, is scheduled to speak at the event. Ahlquist is the president of the American Chesterton Society, host of the EWTN series G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense, and publisher of Gilbert Magazine. He has lectured at several colleges and universities and other venues, including Yale, Columbia, NYU, Cornell, the Vatican Forum in Rome, the Thomas More Centre in Melbourne and at the House of Lords in London.

He is the co-founder of Chesterton Academy, a new independent high school in the Twin Cities, and the executive producer of "Manalive," a film based on a novel by G.K. Chesterton, which will be released in 2010.

First time I've heard Dale referred to that way.

Narrative Magazine: Clerihew Contest

Mr. Ahlquist, Narrative is an online literary magazine. They do contests every other week or so. This one is for Clerihews. Thought you might like to see it.

H/T: Paul H.

SEND YOUR CLERIHEW
SHORT, FUNNY, AND BIOGRAPHICAL, the clerihew poem tells a story in four lines, following the rhyme scheme AABB. The English novelist Edmund Clerihew Bentley invented the form at age sixteen, when he wrote a poem about inventor Sir Humphry Davy:
Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.
In his memoir Unpacking the Boxes, Donald Hall recounts a clerihew once written about him by a fellow poet:
Donald Hall
Is fat and tall
But the ego within the matter
Is taller and fatter.
This week, Puzzler challenges you to a clerihew competition. To be true to the form, your poem must follow the four-line AABB rhyme scheme and must be biographical and, preferably, funny.
Send your clerihew to Puzzler by Monday noon, Pacific Daylight Time. You may enter as many clerihews as you wish.
ALL WINNERS will receive a three-month subscription
to Narrative Backstage or a digital edition of 18 Lies and
3 Truths.

Lepanto Day

Read, listen to, or recite Lepanto today in honor of the victory!

If you joined the novena, thank you.

Just finished

I just finished reading William Oddie's biography of Chesterton, and it is fantastic. Taken together with Joseph Pearce's book, Maisie Ward's book, and if you want to be totally well rounded, several others (Ada Chesterton's, Father O'Connors, Michael Ffinch's, Clemens's, etc.) it provides a new and wider-ranging view of the spiritual development of Chesterton's, well, spirit. The reason it is wider ranging is because Oddie had access to more papers and notebooks than previous biographers.

The subtitle is "The Making of GKC 1874-1908", and that covers birth through Orthodoxy's publication, and, as Oddie states near the end, Chesterton's spiritual growth peaked with Orthodoxy and he never strayed after that in any other directions.

I'm going to be discussing the book here, and on the podcast, because there were so many insights worth talking about and thinking about, my mind is just happily processing it all.

ChesterTen News

It has come to my attention that the ChesterTen announcement was overlooked by some folks, thinking I was making some sort of local conference (like the St. Paul or Rochester, NY) announcement.

ChesterTen, the Annual Conference of the American Chesterton Society's 29th annual conference, will be held in Emmitsburg, MD August 5-7, 2010. This is the biggie. What Seattle was this year and St. Paul was the 27 years before that (more or less).

So now I hope I've clarified that for everyone ;-) Make plans. Be there.

You Are Invited...

You’re invited to announce A&M (Apostles & Markets) Blog Comment Contest running for the month of October. If students in your theology and/or economics classes are interested, please invite them to go here for more information on the contest rules. Good luck!

Stephen J. Haessler, Ph.D.

Whilst in St. Louis for other purposes...

Here I am in St. Louis for reasons other than Chesterton, related to our business, but planning to have dinner tonight with the multi-voiced Kevin O'Brien and his lovely bride at none other than an Irish Pub, all of which sounds quite Chestertonian to me.

Check Out Podcast #5

If you click on the podcast player on the left there, you'll find a new podcast, full of interesting tidbits, and only 10 minutes long.

I'm having some issues with sound. You *can* podcast with the equipment I have and started with, but I can already see that some upgraded software and hardware would improve the situation.

I know that I personally have a hard time listening to bad sounding podcasts (sound is uneven, words cut off or mix together poorly, static or breathing sounds or pops on the ps, etc.) but I'm hoping y'all will be patient with me as I learn this.

Here are the show notes:
EWTN airs The Honour of Israel Gow -a G.K. Chesterton Father Brown mystery on Thursday October 15th 10pm EST.
Rod Bennett's house flooded, please pray. Kevin O'Brien interviewed for the next issue of Gilbert Magazine.
James O'Keefe takes down ACORN and confesses Chesterton is his homeboy.
Brazil creates a buzz by giving away free copies of ORTHODOXY.
Feedback welcome: 206-337-9049 or uncommonsensepodcast@gmail.com
Web sites:
http://chesterton.org
http://americanchestertonsociety.blogspot.com
Twitter @amchestertonsoc
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-American-Chesterton-Society
http://music.mevio.com
http://www.ewtn.com
EWTN can be viewed live on line in streaming video.

Today, as we drove to St. Louis, I had my ipod with me, and I was listening to some Podcasting for Dummies podcasts. I'm learning a lot, and mainly I realize that although you can start with what I've got (GarageBand and a cheap microphone) in order to serve you better and make it easier on your ears, I need a little bit more.

Feel like commenting?

This from Rachel:

I thought you and the rest of the Chestertonians up there might be interested in knowing about New Leaf Theatre's upcoming performance of The Man Who Was Thursday. Here's their site.

Naturally, their dramaturg assures us we don't have to worry about being inculcated as anti-Semites.

Perhaps you or one of your crew can provide a balancing comment on the blog! He doesn't seem to know that more people than just Gopnik have written on the subject.

You are the crew! Comment away if you can. Thanks.

EWTN: The Honour of Israel Gow

Theater of the Word, Episode 8: The Honor of Israel Gow: A Fr. Brown Mystery will have one prime-time airing in addition to the regular time slots. So the complete list of airtimes is:

Thursday, Oct. 15 at 10pm Eastern

Wed., Oct. 21 at 1pm Eastern

Thurs., Oct. 22 at 5am Eastern

Sat., Oct. 24 at 4pm Eastern

I've seen this. It premiered at the Seattle conference. It's great, and I can't wait to see it again!

If you don't get cable or your cable doesn't have EWTN, you can watch it on line streaming live. Be sure to check your time zone.

Thinking of Roses - and Signatures

Since today, Thursday October 1, is the feast day of the great Little Flower, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, I naturally was going... eh?

Oh, excuse me. That's Doctor Little Flower!

Of course it is... what a great thought for us, this dear little sister who, though cloistered, helps out those who live far away... amazing.

Well, perhaps I ought to do something doctoral to celebrate.

All right. Let's try using my very own doctoral skills on Chesterton. Note: don't try this at home, or even on the INTERNET, I mean out here in the e-cosmos. I am a professional, and know what I'm getting into. You might get all kinds of nondeterministic effects, after all! Whew. All right, now that I took care of my warning, let's go.

I wondered whether there was some quick way to get a glimpse of Chesterton's vocabulary use over his writing career, and realized that my work on the uniqueness of rRNA strings could readily be applied to his writing. I thought it would be interesting to learn what words might appear exactly ONCE in any given year of his ILN essays. If we could acquire the signatures, grouped by years, for his ILN essays, we might get a hint of how his vocabulary altered.

What's a signature? That's what we called a portion of a rRNA sequence which we found to be unique to a given species. That is, the signature is some sequence of RNA bases which appears only in one species, and in no other, so it can therefore act as a signature of that species. In the same way, if there is a word which appears only in GKC's ILN essays for 1911 (say), but never in any other of his ILN essays, then that word is a signature for 1911. (As you will learn, "signatory" is a signature for 1911 - talk about paradoxes!)

So I dusted off the machinery, rubbed my hands a few times, said the usual starting prayers for software development - hey, I use 13th century metaphysics, since I want to get things done (see Heretics CW1:46 for more!) Then I proceeded with the experiment. Heh, heh, heh. (No, that's NOT my usual "hee hee" - that's the doctoral mad scientist laugh. We doctors take special classes to learn to do it effectively, along with how to wear those funny little beanies, and Latin, and all kinds of fun things. It's great.)

Since I am also an engineer, I used some tricks, and devised a tidy little linear-time algorithm (which took lots less time than it does to tell you) And then I wrote the program, and ran it. (Actually I run the program as I write it, which was something I learned to do long before I became a doctor.) And I got some interesting results - and then I also checked the results, since I know what happens when one does not check one's work... it makes one's boss very unhappy, and one's customer FURIOUS... But things looked good, so I decided I could risk telling you here.

Of course 1905 and 1936 are the smallest, since he only wrote for parts of those years, and the others (such as 1915 and 1920) are on the low side. As I examined the list I noted that there are some indications that a handful of words are still spelled incorrectly in AMBER, and there are a few hyphenation issues also. But I did some checks, and the signatures appear to be authentic:
For example, "aggregate" only appears in 1905 and "circumlocutions" in 1906 and "Ecuador" in 1909.... but there are a goodly number of others.

Here is the list of the years and signatures:
1905 171
1906 718
1907 643
1908 528
1909 694
1910 685
1911 630
1912 574
1913 508
1914 526
1915 347
1916 616
1917 419
1918 285
1919 328
1920 260
1921 303
1922 381
1923 452
1924 420
1925 433
1926 450
1927 469
1928 441
1929 392
1930 478
1931 518
1932 489
1933 495
1934 486
1935 406
1936 227

And here is a graph showing the same information:



Very curious, you say, but what does it mean?

Well... one might make any sort of argument about what all this means, but I am not trying to argue anything at all. I merely wanted to give a suitable tribute as a Chestertonian Computer Scientist (and a doctor) to our Doctor Little Flower for her feast day. I am sure she will have a good laugh with GKC and FBC about it.