AKMA’s Random Thoughts

It's frustrated me badly to see to men whom I know to be of good will somehow manage to talk past one another, again and again. I think some of it is genuine disagreement, some has to do with vocabulary and divergent contexts/experiences, some of it with personal styles.

It's a humbling reminder of how difficult it is to talk about the stuff that matters, even when everyone has complete access to a forum for his views and takes pains to make himself understood. I wonder very much, however, whether your debate/disagreement would enlarge or diminish if you had the opportunity to meet face to face ~ to take each other's measure, hear each other's tone of voice. Maybe it would make a difference, maybe not.

Something I've observed in myself: when I get particularly worked up or passionate about my point of view, sometimes that's an indication that there is a particular node in the opposing view that pricks me badly in a vulnerable area. I've tried to make a practice of ramping down my own vehemence to try and determine where I'm avoiding my own ignorance, or shame, or ambivalence. I don't presume that this is the case with either of you two, though.

In any case, I hope that you and Dave will continue to read one another with respect and interest ~ I know I certainly will.

A more general question: Was Jesus himself "passive aggressive" in teaching us to turn the other cheek? As someone who has lost innumerable debates to you, I can only attest that your patience, moral refinement and reasonablness constitute an unfair advantage.

In my last class, I used Dave's essay on responsibility and an article from the UK Independent Don't idealize the soldiers fighting this unjust war.

Using Burke's dramatistic pentad to reduce the arguments found in both these pieces the "action" which both Dave and Natasha Walker recommend is ultimately silence-- in the case of Walker, she doesn't want to hear people idealizing soldiers. In Dave's case, though he claims that "words are not enough to express faith" the ultimate action he recommends involves words-- "holding our tongues."

The logical result from both sides is silence. I just can't see that as a solution. What amazed me was the timing. I needed to teach analysis of seemingly irreconcilable arguments, and these things appeared the same morning I needed them. Though the scene and actors were different, the agency, action, and motives were nearly identical.

I would have blogged this rather than clogged your comments with it, but as many may have noticed I'm having problems with an inhospitable host. I hope the issue gets resolved soon.

I only wish the war could be as resolved as easily as the prevalent rhetoric of silence-- "if you don't share my view, don't speak up around me."

I don't think soldiers are exempt from existential choices no matter the sincerity of their "leap of faith." The soldier who believes himself exempt from ordinary morality is on his way to becomming a criminal. The special burden of the soldier is to accept his role as a warrior without blinking. Our burden is to recognize that the soldier does our will, on our behalf. There isn't any symmetry here, nor any resolution of the paradox.

Jeff said : "Using Burke's dramatistic pentad to reduce the arguments found in both these pieces the "action" which both Dave and Natasha Walker recommend is ultimately silence-- in the case of Walker, she doesn't want to hear people idealizing soldiers."

I haven't the faintest idea what Burke's dramatistic pentad might be (and am far, far too lazy to google it up), but I didn't think that Natasha's piece, for what it's worth (as always) recommended silence...at least not as I remember it. An exhortation not to idealize soldiers is not equivalent to a command to shut up about your feelings about them...but then, perhaps through the Burkian lens (I just made that up (again, as usual)) it is.

OK. I'm done.

When the machine compiles your code, however, it does a little bit of translation. At run time, the computer sees nothing but 1s and 0s, which is all the computer ever sees: a continuous string of binary numbers that it can interpret in various ways.

This variable is then used in various lines of code, holding values given it by variable assignments along the way. In the course of its life, a variable can hold any number of variables and be used in any number of different ways. This flexibility is built on the precept we just learned: a variable is really just a block of bits, and those bits can hold whatever data the program needs to remember. They can hold enough data to remember an integer from as low as -2,147,483,647 up to 2,147,483,647 (one less than plus or minus 2^31). They can remember one character of writing. They can keep a decimal number with a huge amount of precision and a giant range. They can hold a time accurate to the second in a range of centuries. A few bits is not to be scoffed at.

A variable leads a simple life, full of activity but quite short (measured in nanoseconds, usually). It all begins when the program finds a variable declaration, and a variable is born into the world of the executing program. There are two possible places where the variable might live, but we will venture into that a little later.

These secret identities serve a variety of purposes, and they help us to understand how variables work. In this lesson, we'll be writing a little less code than we've done in previous articles, but we'll be taking a detailed look at how variables live and work.

This code should compile and run just fine, and you should see no changes in how the program works. So why did we do all of that?

This code should compile and run just fine, and you should see no changes in how the program works. So why did we do all of that?