The Great Firewall (GFW) simplified Chinese: 防火长城; traditional Chinese: 防火長城 Through a combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People’s Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically, called the Great FireWall, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) blocks information coming from outside the country. Residents of China use a VPN to get information blocked by the CCP. VPN stands for “Virtual Private Network” and describes the opportunity to establish a protected network connection when using public networks. VPNs encrypt your internet traffic and disguise your online identity. This makes it more difficult for third parties to track your activities online and steal data. Do not use TikTok. I am told that many residents of Hong Kong are attempting to leave. Breaking news: China is having a bank crisis.
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Chi Phi Fraternity Chi Rho Alpha Omega Christ Since 1824 courtesy of Leo Reynolds on Flickr The inscription in three languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew - Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews - was nailed to the cross. Notice the first letter of the inscription. I and J were used interchangeably by scribes to express the sound of both the vowel and the consonant. It wasn’t until 1524 when Gian Giorgio Trissino, Italian Renaissance grammarian known as the father of the letter J, made a clear distinction between the two sounds. Once he distinguished the soft J sound, as in “jam” (probably a loan sound), the current phoneme for J was born. Source: dictionary.com We see the Latin inscription, INRI, on the cross, instead. In the inscription above, all the words are run together. Find INRI by picking out the first letter of each word: I for Iesus, N for Nazarenus, R for Rex, and I for Iudaeorum. I listened to a friar and wanted to put the conversation in my blog, but I said no. The talk about serving the poor sounded self-serving and self-congratulatory.
Case 1. Take the guy who is 30 and drives a delivery truck for a large company. Because it is a large company, he has health insurance. He can walk into a Kaiser emergency room and be taken care of. However, he rents, owns an average car, and has some possessions but, basically, lives from paycheck to paycheck. Case 2. Take the guy who is 30 and lives on the street. He has no job and begs all day. However, he has money. Homeless people do. How else do you think they buy their booze, cigarettes, and drugs? Who is poor? Both, but the second man is treated as “the poor” by the Church and the first man is not. Working people who are poor are excluded as if work were not important. I think Joseph worked his whole life as a carpenter. I am a realist. I would rather listen to Flannery O’Connor, Shakespeare, or music than a dreamer or do-gooder. Henry V William Shakespeare … for so work the honey-bees, Creatures that, by a rule in nature, teach The art of order to a peopled kingdom: They have a king and officers of state, Where some, like magistrates, correct at home, Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad, Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds; Which pillage they with merry march bring home To the tent-royal of their emperor; Who, busied in his majesty, surveys The singing masons building roofs of gold, The civil citizens kneading up the honey, The poor mechanic porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate; The sad-eyed Justice, with his surly hum, Delivering o'er to executors pale The lazy, yawning drone. How do we write repeating decimals in fractional form? Answered by David Joyce Ph.D. in Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania 1979.
Case 1. The repetition begins immediately following the decimal point as in 0.142857142857142857. Typically, that is denoted with a bar over the repeating part with a repetition length of six. To write it as a fraction, use the six digits as a numerator and for the denominator use six nines. 142857/999999 = 1/7 Case 2. The repetition begins after a few digits as in 0.357142857. Convert the repeating part as described above and add that fraction into the non-repeating part. In this example the non-repeating part is 357/1000. 357 + 1/7 over 1000 That equals 2500/7000 = 5/14 Did you know that earth has four sections? They are man made. The hemispheres divide the world. The equator separates the Northern and Southern hemispheres at zero degrees latitude. The prime meridian separates the Western and Eastern hemispheres at zero degrees longitude. Any line of longitude could serve as the zero-longitude line. However, earthlings agreed that the meridian that runs through Greenwich, England, would be, and is, the prime meridian. Allie the Alien did not bone up on her Latin before she was contacted. Ergo, she will spend one Earth hour in detention at undisclosed coordinates. The equator (noun) comes from the Latin verb, aequare, “to make equal”.
Title: F.L. Vek Release date: September 12, 1972 Location: Czechoslovakia Run time: 11 ½ hours I love this clip from a television series, F.L. Vek. It has everything I would want. I wish I could have watched it. From IMDb reviewer ww.imdb.com/title/tt0267176/ “F. L. Vek is a legendary TV serial based on the novel by Alois Jirásek, famous Czech author of historical novels. Its central character is Frantisek Ladislav Vek, literary projection of an interesting historical person living in years 1769 and 1847. The serial catches his childhood in the village, teenage years in one Prague cloister where he was educated, young years in Prague where he was studying philosophy, and adult age after his comeback to the village. He was a big lover of art and music. “His life was an encounter between longing and need, art and the conventional life of a village merchant, obligation and love, Catholicism and protestantism. He was a big patriot, and he consorts with many Czech artists of the time (so the serial is full of historical men and women). He also met W. A. Mozart and sang in the premiere of his opera Don Giovanni. The important theme of the time was the Czech language (in relationship with the German language) which was viewed as one main element of nationality. And the fight for it was the leitmotiv of all Vek’s life. “This serial, which reflects the epoch of the birth of the independent Czech nation, was pictured in the similar time of 1971 when the idea of the so-called Prague Spring (1968) was suppressed by starting Normalization. The serial represents national trust in social and political changes reflected in the Czech National Revival. There were many analogies between those and these days (e.g., censorship, religion submission, totalitarianism, domiciliary search and revolt against it, braveness of revivalists...).” Complete review on IMDb. I shortened the review, edited it slightly to fix the English, and highlighted the portion that makes the series relevant to today. Note period continuity: Missa Tridentina is the Latin Mass, and the money collector is audaciously in the choir loft! Majestic Captions are in the Latin alphabet. The Father and Son in purple is by Diego Velázquez, done 1641-1644, oil on canvas, 69 in by 49 in, and is held by Museo del Prado, Madrid. Jesus holding His mother's hand has been a subject for many artists.
“Corporatism is an ideology that advocates the organization of society by corporate groups, such as agricultural, labor, military, business, scientific, or guild associations, on the basis of their common interests. The term is derived from the Latin corpus, or ‘body’.”
As Wikipedia points out, this is not corporatocracy, a political system dominated by large business interests. “Within the corporative model of Italian fascism, each corporate interest was supposed to be resolved and incorporated under the state. Much of the corporatist influence upon Italian Fascism was partly due to the Fascists’ attempts to gain endorsement by the Roman Catholic Church that itself sponsored corporatism. “However, fascist corporatism was a top-down model of state control over the economy while the Roman Catholic Church’s corporatism favored a bottom-up corporatism, whereby groups such as families and professional groups would voluntarily work together. “The fascist state corporatism … influenced the governments and economies of not only other Roman Catholic-majority countries, such as the governments of Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria and António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal, but also Konstantin Päts and Kārlis Ulmanis in non-Catholic Estonia and Latvia. …” Fascinating look at history. I learned about it from a YouTuber’s comment on tradwave’s posting. What a resource good people are. F will visit Canada and participate in an indigenous, smudging (burning sage), purification ritual during Mass to make Sacred Heart Church more hospitable to the pope. The ritual “clears away evil spirits”, and smoke is directed away from the people, where, out the window? Incense in the Catholic Church, which is frankincense or myrrh or other tree sap or bark, brought by the Magi, represents prayers of the faithful rising to heaven and has nothing to do with evil spirits.
Two on-the-ground journalists, not the beguiled media readers, report.
I enjoy dramatic stories much as the next person, but historical drama, even historical fiction, needs to stay close to the truth.
“Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste, defined heresy as ‘an opinion chosen by human perception, created by human reason, founded on the Scriptures, contrary to the teachings of the Church, publicly avowed, and obstinately defended.’ The fault was in the obstinate adherence rather than theological error, which could be corrected; and by referencing scripture, Grosseteste excludes Jews, Muslims, and other non-Christians from the definition of heretic.” Wikipedia Why this subject for my blog? The publishing world loves the Inquisition. However, the real reason I bring it up is that Microsoft made me an offer: enter for a chance to win A Plague Tale: Requiem custom PC with blah, blah, blah. “A Plague Tale: Requiem is an upcoming action-adventure stealth video game sequel to A Plague Tale: Innocence (2019), and follows siblings Amicia and Hugo de Rune who must look for a cure to Hugo’s blood disease in Southern France while fleeing from soldiers of the Inquisition and hordes of rats that are spreading the black plague.” Wikipedia Historians estimate that the total number of people killed each year under the Inquisition, spread out over 100 years in multiple countries, was 45. Joe Ketzer directs my attention to auto-da-fé (Portuguese for “act of faith”). If one googles the Spanish Inquisition, one is told that it lasted about two hundred years and 32,000 people were killed. Further research on Wikipedia reveals, “However, after extensive examinations of archival records, modern scholars provide lower estimates, indicating that fewer than 10,000 were actually executed during the whole history of the Spanish Inquisition, perhaps around 3,000.” 3,000/200 = 15. Dom Alcuin Reid speaks about what happened to him and to his monastery in France, and also about a connection to San Francisco. Reid is featured in the film, Mass of the Ages, Episode 2, which details how one man surreptitiously replaced the Latin Mass with the modern Mass. https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2022/07/rorate-exclusive-interview-with-dom.html
Si bellum vis para bellum. If you want war, prepare for war. The commenters on YouTube raved, Latin syntax at its best, concise and weighty, fierce, too. When Altan starts Latin I end of August, I will send it to him. He could do it in front of class with some other boys (Catholic boys school) for extra credit from his Magister and get some laughs. He turns 14 this month. Pugna iam carpe diem. Fight now, seize the day. Mary Flannery O’Connor, born Savannah, Georgia, 3/25/1925, died Milledgeville, Georgia, 8/3/1964, was an American author who wrote two novels and 32 short stories. She died unmarried at age 39. Wikipedia says - “She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a sardonic Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters, often in violent situations. The unsentimental acceptance or rejection of the limitations or imperfections or differences of these characters (whether attributed to disability, race, crime, religion, or sanity) typically underpins the drama. “Her writing reflected her Roman Catholic faith and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics.” … “Her daily routine was to attend Mass, write in the morning, then spend the rest of the day recuperating and reading. Despite the debilitating effects of the steroid drugs used to treat O’Connor’s lupus, she nonetheless made over sixty appearances at lectures to read her works.” If you have never read any O’Connor, here is a chance to hear her lovely Southern accent as she reads her own “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Did you like it? I bet there isn't a single exclamation point in the text, though I haven't seen it. From a report by Father John Hollowell, dated September 3, 2013: “I asked for parishes that made the switch to all male altar servers what their server numbers were like before the switch and what the number of servers was about a year after the switch. “That’s hard to argue with. The average parish surveyed, when switching from co-ed servers to male-only, saw their server numbers grow 450%.” https://www.cal-catholic.com/parishes-that-switch-to-altar-boys/ chart courtesy of Father Hollowell
St. Stephen the First Martyr (FSSP) in Sacramento, CA, has 110 altar boys. What private American engineering ingenuity achieved, faster than a rifle bullet, and now a disabled leader and band of inexperienced hayseeds lead us. Thanks be to God we still have Nevada and the Mojave Desert. Even in San Francisco schoolyards in the 1960s we heard those awesome sonic booms. Roman foreign policy Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war. American foreign policy
Ostentatio virtutis est quomodo bellum deterreat. A show of might is how you deter war. Lame word! It is an unstressed syllable, always pronounced “uh”.
Notice how the “e” in “dozen” and the “o” in “memory”, both pronounced like “uh”, have a short, dull presence. Some languages omit schwas completely. That’s better. The schwa is there, but the speaker chooses not to say it. This is a common phenomenon in French … and throws a curve ball at me every time. American English does it, too. Listen to how we pronounce chocolate, every, and camera. In each one, the schwa in the middle of the word does a disappearing act to the hearer … bless the ESL student. Not lame. I arrived at the address and honked the horn. After waiting a few minutes, I honked again. Because this was going to be my last ride of my shift, I thought about just driving away.
Instead, I put the car in park and walked up to the front door and knocked. “Just a minute,” answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 90s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a hat with a veil pinned on it as if she had stepped out of a 1940s movie. By her side was a small, nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware. “Would you carry my bag out to the car?” she asked. I took the suitcase to the cab and returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness. “It’s nothing,” I told her. “I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother to be treated.” “Oh, you're such a good boy,” she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address and then asked, “Could you drive through downtown?” “It’s not the shortest way,” I answered quickly. “Oh, I don't mind,” she said. “I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice.” I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes glistened. “I don't have any family left,” she continued in a soft voice, “The doctor says I don't have very long.” I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. I asked, “What route would you like me to take?” For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that once had been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes, she’d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing. At the first hint of sun creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, “I’m tired. Let’s go now.” We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her. I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair. “How much do I owe you?” she asked, reaching into her purse. “Nothing.” “You have to make a living,” she said. “There are other passengers.” Almost without thinking, I bent and kissed her. She held onto me tightly. “You gave an old woman a little moment of joy. Thank you.” I squeezed her hand and then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life... For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away? What would my lady have said? Anonymous Albrecht Dürer
I scanned the Wikipedia entry. It speculates about his personal life, which is an intrusion into inviolability and the bane of our time. etymology of genuflection: Latin genu + flectere genu meaning “knee” and flectere meaning “to bend” Not fond of “tribulation”: “dogfight” sounds better. Vigano is in hiding, which explains his freedom to speak. Schneider of Kazakhstan and Vigano of At Large are the bravest bishops. His comment uses two rhetorical devices: (1) repetendum, derived from Latin and meaning repetition, and (2) parataxis, derived from Greek and meaning to place side by side. The latter is a rhetorical term in which phrases and clauses are placed one after another independently, not coordinating or subordinating them with conjunctions.
Why is there so much Latin in your blog?
The answer is that things evolved over time. It began when the only church that was open in 2020 was a Latin Mass parish. No authority on earth can tell a church when to shut down. It began way before 2020 when in high school at age 14 the first non-English language I studied was Latin. Two Jesuits, 25 or 26, did their duty: Alvernaz, a Spaniard Marlon Brando look-alike, for Latin I, and Henning for Latin II. They say that one’s first experience with something new is the one that remains the most impressive. It did. The same thing happened when I began reading the classics at 14. Every new American or English novel made a lasting impression. Over the last two years, gradually, my Latin improved. One of the reasons given for eliminating Latin from the Mass was that no one understood it. This is insulting and condescending. It is akin to lowering educational standards. One parent tells me that standards are lower. This is not something I am making up. I am doing my small part to raise the standard. One might ask, “Why is language so important?” I claim to be a writer, perhaps, a franken one, and I tutor it. Definitions: (1) an inflected language changes the spelling or ending of a word to show how it is used; (2) an epicurean indulges in luxury, pleasure, food, drink. The narrator mixes vulgar pronunciation, not vulgar as we use the word, with classical. Pause the video as needed. The Tacitus put-down is so funny. Guess what? The English word tacit, meaning unspoken or implied, comes from the Latin tacitus. classical pronunciation Alea iacta est. The die has been cast. The die would be God’s plan.
Audax et fidelis. Bold but faithful. Catholics who resolutely keep tradition. Quid in luce aeternitatis? What is it in the light of eternity? Roman Missal, p 1,816 YouTube’s Trad Catholic Francis has numerous songs from the choirs of men and boys, which are a traditional feature of English cathedral centers, here Sheffield, and though once Catholic, produce great singers. I post many of the videos. England has taken singing to high heights, and I fall far for rhyme. (misspelling: Tantum ergo 😉) |
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