ROBERT E DUNN - Blog

second-most

6/4/2023

The second-most sold and translated work of Christianity after the Bible is The Imitation of Christ, written by medieval monk Thomas à Kempis.

Five to seven billion copies make the Bible the top seller of any book. Estimates on The Imitation, which was published in Latin c. 1418-1427, are uncertain, but there are about 750 extant manuscripts, that is, copies made around the publishing date. Thomas was born 1380 in Kempen, Germany, ordained 1413, and died 1471 in Zwolle, Netherlands, an old man of 91.

With 454 Amazon ratings the book is 4.7/5 and is divided into four parts providing detailed instructions: “Helpful Counsels of the Spiritual Life”, “Directives for the Interior Life”, “On Interior Consolation”, and “On the Blessed Sacrament”. A paperback edition costs about $10.

cats & adjectives

6/4/2023

A neighbor cat is at my front door every night for food, poor little thing. I swatted him with a hand towel. I didn’t want to but had to. One cat for 1.36 billion Catholics. “Let us learn to call people by their name, as the Lord does with us, and to give up using adjectives,” tweeted Francis on Sept. 24, 2019. He has no respect for adjectives.

high school

6/4/2023

Our Jesuit administrators opted for a strict code over suits. The teacher here reminds me of the old-style Jebs, sweet and gentle but sometimes sarcastic and exasperated, seldom using first names, respecting intellect and effort, and setting a good example. It was a lay teacher, not a Jesuit, who threw an eraser, or was it a book, at a boy.

thomas massie

6/4/2023

Featured Person of the Year

Thomas Massie (R-KY) is born in 1971 in West Virginia.

He drives a Tesla with a ‘friend of coal’ vanity plate and walks around Capitol Hill wearing an electronic debt clock on his lapel that constantly updates the sum. He has four kiddies.

1991 Participates in the MIT Solar Car Club, which takes second place at the Solar and Electric 500 at the Phoenix International Raceway.
1992 Wins MIT’s 2.70 Design Competition. Professor Woodie Flowers pioneered the contest and said that Massie watched the contest on television in 7th grade and wanted to come to MIT to win it.
1993 Founds SensAble Devices Inc. It allowed users to feel digital objects appearing on a screen.
1993 Writes his BS electrical engineering thesis Design of a three-degree of Freedom force-reflecting haptic interface.
1995 Wins the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventors and the $10,000 David and Lindsay Morgenthaler Grand Prize in the sixth annual MIT $10K Entrepreneurial Business Plan Competition.
1996 Reincorporates as SensAble Technologies, Inc., and raises $32 million of venture capital.
1996 Writes his MS mechanical engineering thesis Initial haptic explorations with the phantom: virtual touch through point interaction.

SensAble employed 70 people and obtained 24 patents.

Still thinking all conservatives are dumb?

You’d better adjust your interface.

patchen insiders

6/3/2023

Only Cherries?

They didn't want me around
Said I couldn't have no cherries
Or watch them pick cherries
Or even stand near the table
Where one of those Kultur-Kookie-Klucks
With the big fat legged-smile
Was fixing to pop a nice red cherry
In on top of his gold spoon
You know I don't like those people
Who act as if a cherry
Was something they personally thought up

The Temple

To leave the earth was my wish, and no will stayed my rising.
Early, before sun had filled the roads with carts
Conveying folk to weddings and to murders;
Before men left their selves of sleep, to wander
In the dark of the world like whipped beasts.

I took no pack. I had no horse, no staff, no gun.
I got up a little way and something called me,
Saying,
‘Put your hand in mine. We will seek God together.’
And I answered, ‘It is your father who is lost, not mine.’
Then the sky filled with tears of blood, and snakes sang.

Kenneth Patchen
1911-1972

Beware singing snakes, Catholics and ex-Catholics.

a dream within a dream

6/3/2023

A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe
1809-1849

american bandstand

6/3/2023

sister-taught

Kathy appeared on “Dance Party” KPIX San Francisco once. She asked Ronnie Palambino. Mom said, “Let him do the asking,” the same mother who told my sister, a champion tennis player, “Let the boy win.” Answer: “He’s so shy.”

gal luft

6/2/2023

Ex-Israeli Defense Force colonel gives New York Post investigative journalist Miranda Devine a true story of intrigue — not a novel. Will Devine get a Pulitzer Prize? Columbia U administers the prize. Do conservative-types now have a chance?

Ukraine is the country in Trump’s allegation.

camera obscura

6/2/2023

I might have said something in previous posts about artists having to sit for hours while painting a scene or portrait, but I have learned about camera obscura from a YouTube video produced by the National Gallery in London. The curator discussed camera obscura in connection with Canaletto (1697-1768).

With a camera obscura, one can capture the world by projecting what is on the outside down into a darkened space on the inside and use what is captured back in the studio. For more about camera obscura, check out Wikipedia. Recently, I completed a Wikipedia survey on how I use the site.

aoc parody

6/2/2023

“After brainstorming with my staff, I’m going to push Congress to make it illegal to joke, laugh, or make fun of me. Parody should be illegal,” said the socialist fashion diva. The dipsy diva did respond to the parody! “I am assessing with my team how to move forward. In the meantime, be careful of what you see.”

birth tourism

6/2/2023

Trump promises to end birthright citizenship for illegal aliens.
https://dailyconservative.com/trump-promises-to-end-birthright-citizenship-for-illegal-aliens/?utm_source=BPN&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=BPN2&utm_content=BPN2A

12th promise

6/1/2023

12th Promise of the Sacred Heart

I promise you in the excessive mercy of my Heart
that my all-powerful love will grant to all those who
receive Holy Communion on the First Fridays in nine
consecutive months the grace of final perseverance;
they shall not die in my disgrace, nor without receiving
their sacraments. My divine Heart shall be
their safe refuge in this last moment.

With 1,000 other boys, this is what my brother and I did during the nine months of the school year for each year of high school, totaling 36, a perfect square, and Tom received the sacraments before his death.

boy wonder

6/1/2023

I met with Alexander today for a math lesson and gave him some new vocabulary words, too, as math and reading/writing lessons seem to be commingling. One reason is that funny-sounding words tickle out our laughter.
Last week I defined the words oriental and occidental, beautiful words used throughout classic literature. I told him that some people are sensitive about the word oriental and asked, “Why is that?” Alexander is Asian American. His response was, “Why are you asking me?”
He schooled me with that response.
His mother and I talked about that and some other things. She told me that he is very sensitive to people in need of help, and that is more so than I.
Another thing she said is that after being tested and retested, his IQ is in a range where the number is not relevant, it’s that high. It is said that Musk’s IQ is in the 150s, that area where numbers no longer compute.
He is still a boy I can tease, and now he can give it right back.

death penalty

6/1/2023

Catechism of the Catholic Church
Paragraph 2267. “Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person’, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”
Francis revised this paragraph on 2/08/2018.
I understand that this is not dogma. There is no obligation to accept it, and I don’t.
This is an example of what a strictly political pope does.
He does nothing about important challenges facing the Church, for example, the sharp decline in numbers of priests or even exhorting them to live chaste lives or even knowing them.
I’m hoping his replacement is a priest from the FSSP, SSPX, or ICKSP. Probability? Odds? One in 100, 1/100, .01, 1%.
The joy of being a cat is that he doesn’t have to face moral issues in his life, but then again, he won’t be going to Heaven, so I’m fine with our statuses.
Are there generic cats in Heaven? Dunno.

antipope

6/1/2023

Church Militant is a group of journalists. The broader term is communal and means the entire Church on Earth. I wish CM had not diverged into his anger and language.

What is important is his statement that presenting the Catholic faith and hoping for a conversion is a sin. That is an outright lie.

Michael James Nazir-Ali (Urdu: مائیکل نذیر علی), dual citizen of Pakistan and Britain, is a British Catholic priest.

piano pi

6/1/2023

The 16th letter pi—which is written as the Greek letter for p, or π—is the ratio of the circumference of any circle to the diameter of that circle. Regardless of the circle’s size, this ratio will always equal pi. Ratio...picture a fraction.

matt taiibi speaks

6/1/2023

Matt the Narly Newspaperman - dates Dec. 24, 2022, and Mar. 9, 2023 - Elon the Agnostic Billionaire

quid pro quo

5/31/2023

Apparently, quid pro quo payments to the Biden family center on Romania, Ukraine, and China. Quid pro quo - this for that, this policy change for that amount of money.

Twitter dropped out of the EU voluntary code to combat disinformation. Romania is part of the EU, Ukraine has the status of candidate for membership in the EU, and, well, we all know about China pocketing money.

Democratic dictators sit on some EU seats.

a-p-o-s-t-a-t-e

5/31/2023

“Or is my way of practicing the faith stuck stubbornly to doctrines, the letter, which are just expressions that are sometimes cold.” —Pope Francis 5-28-2023

He is referring to Catholics who are of a traditional mind: we accept the Catechism and go to church. Hahaha. We are the only target of his hatred.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” The parental rebuke does not apply in this case or in any other case where Francis has expressed skillfully-written rage at ‘trads.’

I’m teaching my student how to infer, both from what he reads and from interactions he has with others.

Inference: Francis doesn’t accept doctrines.

Compare Robert Southwell heroism. I cast myself not as Robert, nor is my role the same that Francis has. I’ve not been elected to leadership requiring language that is sober, from Latin sobrius, meaning “not drunk,” and from that can be inferred “temperate, moderate, sensible.”

The radical left is eating itself alive, but not in the Catholic Church. Obey!

southwellian

5/31/2023

Robert Southwell (1561-1595), the first entry for yesterday, was not involved in the Douay-Rheims translation but went to seminary at Douai.

“In 1576, he was sent to the English College at Douai, boarding there but studying at the Jesuit College of Anchin, a French college associated, like the English College, with the University of Douai. He studied briefly under Leonard Lessius.

“At the end of the summer, however, his education was interrupted by the movement of French and Spanish forces. For greater safety Southwell was sent to Paris and studied at the College de Clermont under the tutelage of the Jesuit Thomas Darbyshire.

“He returned to Douai on 15 June 1577.”

The desire to enter the Society of Jesus was thwarted.

“He bemoans the situation, writing, ‘How can I but wast in anguish and agony that find myself disjoined from that company, severed from that Society, disunited from that body wherein lyeth all my life my love my whole hart and affection’” (Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Anglia 14, fol. 80, under date 1578).

He got in, was ordained, and returned to England in secret. In 1592, he was arrested while saying Mass and sent to prison. For the three-hour journey to Tyburn, he was tied to a hurdle and dragged through the streets to the gallows.

latin vowels

5/30/2023

This is classical pronunciation, not ecclesiastical. After listening, you will know English speakers’ gain. The macron is used in the 1962 Latin/English Missal. The Douay-Rheims (1582 and 1609-10) is the product of Catholic scholars who left England for France to escape death under Elizabeth I 4X (for axe).

i like my gas stove

5/30/2023

I put this in the Comedy category. Where else does it go? One commenter on YouTube said, “The movie Idiocracy is now officially non-fiction.” Summary from IMDb on the movie: “Corporal Joe Bauers, a decisively average American, is selected as a guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program but is forgotten, awakening to a future so incredibly moronic he’s easily the most intelligent person alive.” The clip is funny.

If you like good science, join Quora. I just read an answer to this question: “If a gamma ray burst hit Jupiter, will [would] Jupiter lose its gaseous layer and leave only the core?” I’m not telling you the answer.

spelling

5/30/2023

“A News-monger is a Retailer of Rumour, that takes up upon Trust, and sells as cheap as he buys. He deals in a perishable Commodity, that will not keep: for if it be not fresh it lies upon his Hands, and will yield nothing. True or false is all one to him; for Novelty being the Grace of bothe, a Truth grows stale as soon as a Lye...”
— Characters

Samuel Butler (d. 1680) was an English poet and satirist.

Sam Johnson standardized spelling in Dictionary of the English Language (1755).

Next Butler quote:
“The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too.”

Mark Twain considered his best work to be the novel, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896). “I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none.” That means Joan followed spelling rules.

In 2023, ought spelling be in the curriculum? Dogs don’t care.

federalism

5/30/2023

“The problem we’re having today is, so many things are being decided from Washington, D.C., and that naturally makes us hate each other, because half of us are going to be mad at any given time, roughly,” [Mark] Meckler said. “And so, if you go back to federalism, I think we can keep the country together.”

“We take off a lot of the heat, cool a lot of the pressure, out of the system by just saying New York’s New York, California’s California, and the conservative states are whatever they want to be,” he explained.

“Federalism is a combined and compound mode of government that combines a general government with regional governments in a single political system, dividing the powers between the two.” Wikipedia

quixotic

5/30/2023

quixotic adjective

exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical
extravagantly chivalrous, absurdly romantic, striving for an unattainable or impractical ideal

The word comes from the novel, Don Quixote. He is the romantic, impractical hero of Cervantes’ 1605/1615 satirical novel, Don Quixote de la Mancha (in English translation by 1620).

As a type attempting the impossible or holding visionary but impossible ideals, it is in English from the 1670s.

His name literally means “thigh” and also “a cuisse”, which is a piece of armor for the thigh.

The word in Modern Spanish is quijote and derives from Latin coxa meaning hip.

It is alleged that quixotic is one of the most beautiful words in the English language. It combines the beautiful sounds of q, x, and k.