Michael Bates: December 2023 Archives
FIRST - Mouser - Dean Kamen intervew
Mouser is an electronic parts company that sponsors FIRST Robotics. They've got a great little 9 minute interview on their website with founder Dean Kamen about the value of FIRST Robotics. "Every player can turn pro!"
A New Pattern Language for Growing Regions
An extension of the work done by Christopher Alexander and team to document successful urban design patterns in the 1970s, this wiki describes 80 patterns applicable to today's problems in urban design, such as retrofitting suburban sprawl.
The self-delusion of secular Jews - UnHerd
Playwright David Mamet writes:
"Western Jews have traditionally voted for liberalism, which is to say for inclusion in some imaginary coalition of the right-thinking. We support the United Nations, a Potemkin village of remittance men hired to denounce Israel, and we elect politicians who kowtow to murderous antisemites. We send our children to elite universities, which teach antisemitism and support anti-Jewish demonstrations, and then advise them to "stay safe". Can you name another group which behaves similarly?...
"Mike Tyson remarked that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the nose. Diaspora Leftist Jews have tried to escape punishment by staying out of the ring -- and acknowledging our enemies' right to an opinion, and our responsibility as Jews to defend that right at whatever cost to our interests. The American Civil Liberties Union stands up for the right of protestors to demonstrate -- that is, to "act out" -- in favour of genocide, much as their co-religionary Aaron explained to Moses: "What could I do? They took the gold and threw it in the pot and this calf came out, and we worshipped it."...
"Jews were not instructed to worship fairness (a human concept, incapable of absolute determination), but to worship God and keep his ordinances. Indeed, a devotion to God and the Word of God is the sole protection we poor weak humans have against doing evil. Our devotion will not protect us from the evil others do, however -- and that's why we have armies."
10 Secrets of the Hotel Pennsylvania, Under Demolition - Untapped New York
Demolished earlier this year, it was built in 1919 as a companion to the original Penn Station across the street, and both were designed by McKim, Mead, & White. It was the largest hotel in the world when it opened. Its phone number inspired a hit Glenn Miller song, "Pennsylvania 6-5000." In 1981, as the New York Statler, it was the headquarters hotel for the National Invitational Tournament, held across the street at Madison Square Garden. The University of Tulsa Golden Hurricane, with Nolan Richardson in his first year as head coach and great players like Paul Pressey, Greg Stewart, and Rondie "Poindexter" Turner, prevailed over West Virginia and Syracuse to take the NIT title. My best friend was given a trip to the NIT with the team as an early high school graduation gift, and he invited me along. Another high school friend joined us, and we stayed in a very small room at the very aged Statler, where the soda machines sold only White Rock beverages and the TV was black and white (no cable). Tulsa radio and TV sportscasters set up in the hotel's lobby to interview players, coaches, and the fans who made the trip. The team's charter flight to LaGuardia was my first ever plane flight, and I had my first (and for many years, only) alcoholic beverage, a celebratory cup of champagne, on the flight home after the final victory.
MORE: New York Times feature story on the Hotel Pennsylvania and the preservationists who tried to save it.
"Sin Boldly!" - The Scriptorium Daily
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Martin Luther's statement to Philip Melanchthon, pecca fortiter sed fortius fide: "To understand this, everything depends on how the difference between result and presupposition is applied. If Luther's statement is used as a presupposition for a theology of grace, then it proclaims cheap grace. But Luther's statement is to be understood correctly not as a beginning, but exclusively as an end, a conclusion, a last stone, as the very last word. ...'Sin boldly' -that could be for Luther only the very last bit of pastoral advice, of consolation for those who along the path of discipleship have come to know that they cannot become sin-free, who out of fear of sin despair of God's grace. For them, 'sin boldly' is not something like a fundamental affirmation of their disobedient lives. Rather, it is the gospel of God's grace, in the presence of which we are sinners always and at every place. This gospel seeks us and justifies us exactly as sinners. Admit your sin boldly; do not try to flee from it, but 'believe much more boldly.'"
