Review: Full Fathom Five, by Max Gladstone

August 26, 2014 By willduquette

Full Fathom Five is the third book in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence, following Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise. Gladstone has invented a world where “gods” are real and where “soul” is a kind of energy that can increase, decrease, and be transferred from one person to another. People generate soul-stuff naturally over time; Gods receive soul-stuff from their worshippers, and provide comfort and services in response. At some point in living memory, someone figured out the science and... Read more

CT 10.2: Thomist Taxonomy, or What’s a Species?

August 25, 2014 By willduquette

We’re blogging through St. Thomas Aquinas’ Compendium Theologiae, sometimes called his Shorter Summa. Find the previous posts here. In the previous post, we began to explain what it means for a being to have an essence, so as to understand what Thomas means when he says that God is identical with His Essence. In this post, we continue to provide background to Thomas’ words, explaining what he means by definition, genus, and species. In each case, Thomas’ notion is considerably more precise than... Read more

The Glorious Multiplicity of the Magisterium

August 24, 2014 By willduquette

The phrase “the magisterium of the Church” is simply a fancy phrase for the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. This teaching authority resides in the Pope and in the college of bishops speaking together, and is ensured by the Holy Spirit through the apostolic succession. In paragraphs 48 and 49 of Lumen Fidei, Pope Francis explains why it has to be this way. Since faith is one, it must be professed in all its purity and integrity. Precisely because... Read more

Software Development and the Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci

August 23, 2014 By willduquette

One of my regular goals as a software developer is the intentional reduction of cognitive load—that is, I try to reduce the number of things I have to think about to get the job done. This applies to interfaces used by the customer, but it applies in spades to the interfaces used by the programmer: which is to say, APIs of the modules of code in the system, and the interfaces of the tools used during development. It’s like this.... Read more

Music to Flee Shoggoths By

August 22, 2014 By willduquette

I discovered H.P. Lovecraft the summer I turned 14 or 15. That’s not quite right. My elder siblings—excuse me, I should capitalize that ominously—my Elder Siblings had a couple of books of Lovecraftian tales around the house, and I’d dipped into them once or twice. But the summer I first really got into Lovecraft was the summer I turned 14 or 15. I remember golden afternoons sitting in my room at the top of the house, with windows open on... Read more

Terry Pratchett on Family Feuds

August 21, 2014 By willduquette

The Oggs were what is known as an extended family—in fact not only extended but elongated, protracted and persistent. No normal sheet of paper could possibly trace their family tree, which in any case was more like a mangrove thicket. And every single branch had a low-key, chronic vendetta against every other branch, based on such well-established causes célèbres as What Their Kevin Said About Our Stan At Cousin Di’s Wedding and Who Got The Silver Cutlery That Auntie Em... Read more

A Tale of Two Financial Collapses: More BS?

August 20, 2014 By willduquette

Here we have another economic meme, somewhat similar to the meme I examined recently and accused of being BS.* It’s comparing two disparate regions, Iceland and the United States. It’s discussing economic actions and results. It’s trying to make an implicit point. So what is it claiming? Both Iceland and the United States suffered financial collapses. I don’t follow the news from Iceland, but I’ll take it as read that Iceland has indeed had difficulties. The events here in the... Read more

Review: The Citadel of God, by Louis de Wohl

August 19, 2014 By willduquette

Louis de Wohl spent a considerable time in the middle of the 20th century writing historical novels about the great saints of the Catholic Church. I’ve read a number of them, and have found them to be uniformly well-written, entertaining, and informative. I wouldn’t call them truly top-notch—they are a little lightweight compared to the historical novels I’m seeing these days, and they are certainly romanticized—but as a first look at one of the great saints, they aren’t bad. One... Read more

CT 10.1: Identity of God with His Essence

August 18, 2014 By willduquette

We’re blogging through St. Thomas Aquinas’ Compendium Theologiae, sometimes called his Shorter Summa. Find the previous posts here. Now that Thomas has established that God exists, is eternal and everlasting, and is utterly simple (in the sense of not being composed of distinct, separable parts) he begins to get seriously metaphysical. That is, he’s going to look at the metaphysical notions we apply to the objects of daily experience, and determine the extent to which those notions apply to God. I came almost to... Read more

Pope Francis on Fellow Travelers and True Believers

August 17, 2014 By willduquette

Historically, the phrase “fellow travelers” was used of those who sympathized with the aims and goals of the Communist Party but chose not to join it. Though not members, they were traveling in the same direction. That doesn’t mean they precisely shared the beliefs of the Communist Party—presuming that the members of the Party themselves had a precisely unified set of beliefs beyond that week’s party line. We see something similar in every area where people band together to do... Read more