326 reputation
211
bio website fivesecondreview.wordpress.co…
location Pasadena, CA
age 39
visits member for 1 year, 2 months
seen May 13 at 20:48
stats profile views 2

My day-to-day work is with a combination of C, ksh and PL/SQL. I enjoy asking and answering questions that come up at work. I also dabble in Perl, lua and LaTeX. My boss has asked me to learn Python as well.

My favorite living philosopher is Alvin Plantinga and my favorite dead philosopher is Blaise Pascal. I think Paul of Tarsus is too little credited as a force in Western philosophy. If you think I'm a Christian, you're right.

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. -- 1 Corinthians 1:20-25 (ESV)

At home, I have a potted herb garden, potted dwarfed citrus, and a hanging hummingbird garden. My wife and I are also trying to grow a son, but he's harder to feed and train properly.


May
14
awarded  Scholar
May
14
accepted Why did Civil War officers tell their men to “aim low”?
May
14
comment Were Civil-War-era Americans better writers than modern Americans?
@Steven: That's fine. Would it help if I could find an objective measure of writing quality to apply? (I don't know if there is one.) I suppose part of the problem would still be in finding the right sample. Would it help if I asked if it's legitimate to compare Civil War correspondence with, say, the average substantive email in my Inbox? But in any case, I'm content to let the question lie fallow unless and until I (or someone else) can re-till it. (Thank you for complementing the wording of the question. That was thoughtful. ;-)
May
13
awarded  Quorum
May
12
comment Why did Civil War officers tell their men to “aim low”?
Welcome to History.SE and thanks for the answer. That explanation makes even more sense when you consider the order seemed to come when officers exhorted their men to wait for the enemy to close distance (even until they "see the whites of their eyes").
May
12
asked Were Civil-War-era Americans better writers than modern Americans?
May
11
revised Why did Civil War officers tell their men to “aim low”?
added 1 characters in body
May
11
comment Languages spoken by Josephus?
Somewhat related: What language did Jesus commonly speak?
May
11
comment Why did Civil War officers tell their men to “aim low”?
Hmmm... I see that the tendency was to aim too high, but I still don't see why. A projectile will always end up falling down from a straight line drawn from the end of the barrel, so a marksman must always account for that drop-off. It seems just as likely that a raw recruit would adjust too low as often as they would adjust too high.
May
11
awarded  Student
May
11
comment Is there any corroborating evidence for the story of Sadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?
Two small corrections: 1) half of Daniel (chapters 2-7) is Aramaic and the rest in Hebrew, and 2) Hebrew probably was spoken through the Roman occupation of Judea. There is considerable uncertainty in the dating of the Book of Daniel. But there's doubt in my mind that this story was, well, a story told orally for some time before being recorded.
May
11
asked Why did Civil War officers tell their men to “aim low”?
May
8
awarded  Necromancer
Mar
12
awarded  Supporter
Mar
1
awarded  Editor
Mar
1
revised Is there any corroborating evidence for the story of Sadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?
Missing word when I rephrases a sentence.
Mar
1
awarded  Revival
Mar
1
awarded  Teacher
Mar
1
answered Is there any corroborating evidence for the story of Sadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?