Posts

A few weeks ago, I came across the description of an extremely inspiring engineering project at Kimball Livingston’s blog (pictures and videos taken from there). Basically, conventional wisdom in wind propulsion is that, whatever the wind is propelling, that object can’t actually go faster than the wind unless it uses up some kind of stored energy (fuel, rowing, etc…). Rick Cavallaro thought otherwise, put his ideas out there for how it might work to go dead downwind, faster than the wind, and was roundly ridiculed by pretty much everyone. ...

One of the topics which has really captured my attention over the last few years is “non-violent resistance”. I’ve been introduced to the concept largely through Walter Wink’s work on “the powers”, though Wink makes use of René Girard, whom I really like, as well. Additionally, attending a talk by Miroslav Volf gave me a lot of food for thought! Non-violent resistance is a complicated idea with a simple (and, from the viewpoint of many, absurd) moral logic: (a) evil is bad, therefore (b) we should name and resist evil, but (c) we cannot do this with violence, since it is evil and therefore counter-productive to the eradication of evil itself. ...

In the year and four months since I last bothered to post anything here, a lot has happened. Chief among these events was my proposing to and actually marrying my now-wife, Jessica! I also began a graduate program in linguistics at Oxford, and am in the second year of that program, finding great enjoyment in it as well as in exploring Oxford with Jessica. The hectic pace of life in the last year and a half did not keep me from having ponderings worth blogging about, but it did keep me from actually blogging about them. Also, I noticed that the ability to post snappy one-liners as Facebook status updates, or to share a link with only a brief description, tended to siphon away any drive to construct actual extended discussions here (a phenomenon which I’m sure is quite widespread). ...

We’re now over halfway through the summer, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late for rock. I’m happy to announce the 4th edition of my annual Summer of Rock compilation! Although it’s late in coming, it’s not short on good music. I know you want to squeeze the most out of the remaining 5 weeks of summer anyway – and now you have the perfect companion to your adventures! ...

I took a trip recently, occasioned by dirt-cheap airfare and the fact that my parents were going already, to Germany and England. Awesomely, Jessica was also able to come! We spent a few days in Edelsfeld, Germany, the tiny town where my sister and her husband live. Then it was off to Cambridge, England, for a night with our friends Eric and Nicki. Eric is a student there, and we were able to have an inside look at some of Cambridge’s colleges. We spent the bulk of our time, however, in Oxford, where I’ve been accepted to read for a Linguistics degree this Autumn. We had the good fortune to stay with some friends from Schloss Mittersill who live in Oxford, and spent the days cruising around town, visiting colleges and pubs! Finally, we had a fun two days in London at the end of the trip before heading home. Here are two photo sets with pictures from the trip! As you can tell, on this trip I focused a lot on architecture, and enhancing the ancient buildings using HDR techniques. Enjoy! ...

Today I ran my first marathon, and I wanted to write about it - not because it was a fast marathon or one that, from a running time perspective, I am proud of. It wasn’t and I’m not. But I think today’s marathon taught me a lot about life and spirituality, and allowed me to express both humility and my own form of personal heroism in a way that I hadn’t before. The marathon taught me these things, of course, in a way that only a 26.2-mile slog can. What follows is a race report, but also my reflections on the process that led me to the finish line in a (relatively to my training) unremarkable 4 hours and 8 minutes. Warning: this will be long, but (I hope) worth the read. And I haven’t written anything since December so you readers ought to indulge me. Warning 2: Profanities will probably be involved. They go hand-in-hand with marathons. ...

In previous years, Splendour Hyaline (the band consisting of my brother and myself) has enjoyed recording some music for the Christmas holidays. Now that we are past Thanksgiving, David and I decided to produce a few songs to add to the collection. The album is called The Holly and the Ivy, and has just two tracks (can you guess what one of them is?) which are available for download below. I’m also including for download all our previous Christmas songs, from the albums we recorded in 2006 and 2007: Christmas and Holy Night, respectively. Enjoy this Christmas gift from us, and please feel free to share these songs with your friends and family! (Also, be sure to check out Splendour Hyaline’s new Backlight.org profile). ...

It’s been a while since I wrote. Lots of things have happened. Work on Backlight continues. My personal life unravels. I take the GRE. I start applying to grad school again. I begin marathon training. I read many insightful things by many insightful people (and neglect to share). I ruminate about issues surrounding Election Day (war, abortion, gay marriage, the economy, and others). I vote. Barack Obama is elected president, and I breathe a sigh of relief along with the rest of the world. ...

A few years ago, I wrote a post detailing my personal gaming history, wherein I also looked ahead to the future at a computer game that was shaping up to be extremely interesting. That game was Spore (you should really go to their site and watch the introductory video). Under development for half a decade, it was finally released a little over a week ago. Of course, I went out and bought it immediately, and have spent way too much time enjoying it recently. ...

Blog silence has reigned for the last month, largely due to my traveling in Europe and wanting, understandably, to minimize computer time. I spent most of my time in Germany living with my sister Rachel in a tiny town in Bavaria called Edelsfeld, where she is living with her husband while he works for the US Army. He is currently on deployment, so it was good to spend some time with her! ...