AKMA’s Random Thoughts

There's a bit of an issue with *singing* your new version, AKMA. I can't help but associate it with "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," which is not at all appropriate.

But maybe if we set Randall Thompson onto it something could be done.

Can't you finesse the need for a third person imperative in English by using an epistemic modal "must?" "He MUST lie down with dogs." The word MUST functions a lot like BETTER in this example, but lacks the charm of the colloquialism. ("...or else!" is understood in this passage.) Use of the BANG or EXCLAMATION POINT to punctuate also accentuates the imperative mood. When added, it says something about the need to understand power and station as markers in the use of the imperative... third person usage seems to be possible only if it is understood that your will can be actualized by observational proxy. The powerful man's utterance, "He must lie down with dogs," followed by lots of "amens" and "yah bosses" and much scurrying around and gathering of dogs and enforcement of a recumbent posture (either prone or supine, the comand lacks precision) on the unfortunate third person in this example would, I think, create a context wherein third person imperative could be understood.

Regarding Paula Poundstone: I didn't see the program you refer to, but can't imagine Poundstone knowing much about Jesus or his family. In the far recesses of her mind, however, she probably remembers learning something about Jesus tending bar at a wedding, and welcoming little children.

Regarding Paula Poundstone: I'm not surprised she doesn't know anything about Jesus' siblings, but I bet she remembers the parts where he turns water into wine and welcomes little children into his open arms.

How about: oughta.

Your name oughta be hallowed.
Your kingdom oughta come.
Your will oughta be done.

If you want to be formal about it: ought to.

Looking for some help from you Greek scholars, I posted some thoughts I have about those first phrases of the Lord's prayer in my blog. Check it out.

Wait. Do you need to be a Greek scholar to join in here, or would simple epistemology suffice? If the latter, then blow away my previous comment. If the former, then as re. the discussion of "hallowed" and a suitable neologism to replace it, I think we may be stepping all over the question of historical/cultural perspective.

While I respect people who humble themselves before G-d, I think the posture of abasement has gone through some tremendous changes as Indo-european culture and languages have evolved over the last two or three millenia.

What I've gathered from the 3rd person imperative discussion is that there has been a cultural perspective where it made sense to have a grammatical construction implying that (Someone) better do something, or else! Absent a tradition of prostrating ourselves before a higher power, this doesn't make much sense to us speakers of modern English (regardless of current efforts in Washington and London to bring back the good old days). This may be why "hallowed" rings hollow too.

Maybe we shouldn't discard "hallowed" out of hand. "The Church" (organized religion) is an institution that changes more slowly than other parts of our culture, because our understanding of G-d is more fundamental than our taste in weskits. Wh- or wh-t better to abase ourselves before than G-d? And if our language lacks a third person imperative mood, why so much the more reason to explore the nuance of behavioral considerations relating to this greater power.

Where I come from the phrase is 'you'd better mow the lawn.' In liturgical english 'Your name had better be hallowed, Your kingdom had better come,Your will had better be done....' Southern to the max...

Note first that favoriteNumbers type changed. Instead of our familiar int, we're now using int*. The asterisk here is an operator, which is often called the "star operator". You will remember that we also use an asterisk as a sign for multiplication. The positioning of the asterisk changes its meaning. This operator effectively means "this is a pointer". Here it says that favoriteNumber will be not an int but a pointer to an int. And instead of simply going on to say what we're putting in that int, we have to take an extra step and create the space, which is what does. This function takes an argument that specifies how much space you need and then returns a pointer to that space. We've passed it the result of another function, , which we pass int, a type. In reality, is a macro, but for now we don't have to care: all we need to know is that it tells us the size of whatever we gave it, in this case an int. So when is done, it gives us an address in the heap where we can put an integer. It is important to remember that the data is stored in the heap, while the address of that data is stored in a pointer on the stack.

When Batman went home at the end of a night spent fighting crime, he put on a suit and tie and became Bruce Wayne. When Clark Kent saw a news story getting too hot, a phone booth hid his change into Superman. When you're programming, all the variables you juggle around are doing similar tricks as they present one face to you and a totally different one to the machine.

The most basic duality that exists with variables is how the programmer sees them in a totally different way than the computer does. When you're typing away in Project Builder, your variables are normal words smashed together, like software titles from the 80s. You deal with them on this level, moving them around and passing them back and forth.