Kevin Basil

Morning Coffee: A “Get to Know You” Quiz

Four places I go over and over

• Work
• church
• Panera
• The Taphouse

Four people who encouraged my faith along the way

• Father Ignatius Smith, OFM
• Fr David Rucker
• Fr Joseph Gibson
• Clifford Davis

Four of my favorite foods

• steak
• potato soup
• cream of mushroom soup
• beef stroganoff

Four places I would rather be right now

• Home (that’s Nicholasville, y’all)
• Indianapolis
• Boston
• SVOTS

Four movies i would watch over and over

• Babette’s Feast
• Finding Nemo
• the director’s cuts of The Lord of the Rings trilogy
• The Hunt for Red October

Four things i like about the Orthodox Church

• At its center, it is about reality, not religion
• since it is about reality, it is thoroughly multivalent on matters of opinion and taste
• everything in it always comes around to Christ, crucified and risen from the dead
• The PASCH!

Four of my favorite hobbies

• reading a good book
• watching movies
• waiting for Godot
• endlessly browsing Facebook and comparing myself to all the successful people I have known who have kids and homes and cool jobs (with the freedom to go places and see things) and multiple degrees beyond college

DR. JOHNSON declared a tavern seat “the throne of human felicity.” The Frenchman Hilaire Belloc, who spent his life in England, said: “When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves. For you will have lost the last of England.”

…

In Oxford, which has some pubs — like the Bear, on Blue Boar Lane, and the Mitre, on the High Street — that date back to the 1200’s, many of the names echo the Middle Ages. The White Hart (a stag, Richard II’s heraldic emblem), the Kings Arms (named for James I, during whose reign neighboring Wadham College was founded), The Bear, the Wheatsheaf: all are names that call up a past of knights, farms and forests.

A well-written article, which I want to keep for later. I may need it if I’m ever in England.

Read it all: Journeys: Oxford, England - A Pub Crawl Through the Centuries - Travel - New York Times

This video assumes that you’ve seen the Tom Cruise Scientology video that escaped into the wild.

<sarcasm mode="on">
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is your friendly, neighborhood cranky grammarian here with a usage note. Rule One: KNOW THE MEANINGS OF WORDS YOU USE, ESPECIALLY HOMOPHONES.

Take the following sentence, for example: “We are called father, and that is the roll of the father in a family to teach and correct his children.” Let’s ignore the punctuation issues for the moment. The “roll of the father.” I wonder, does he mean his dinner roll? Perhaps his roll of tape? Maybe he has a parchment roll from which he teaches and corrects his children.

Frankly, I think he means “role,” as in, “a part or character to be played” or “a function or position in society.”

Having twatted your nose with a roll of newspaper, I now lay aside my role as cranky grammarian.
</sarcasm>

And the award goes to Веб дизайн — “The Web Design.” This unique character is the name given to the knave who wrote nearly an essay in Russian on web design as a spam comment on my post hailing Dr Bacchus’ home innovation.

I’m back. My Jeep was gone upon my return. I thought it was towed. Then, at the city impound, I saw that it had been towed from… Where? I don’t even know where that is! The missing spare tire, mutilated steering column and non-functioning ignition switch clinched it. Now I’m waiting on the insurance company to do it’s thing. I’m sure that I will post the entire story — long and sad — either here, on the mailing list or both.

I am on leave right now, but the transportation and — most importantly — money situation really did not support travelling. (A bus ticket to Lexington costs $200 round trip!) Curses.

I updated the St. Athanasius blogroll to include some of our newest members. I kept Rich Bowen’s name as Dr. Bacchus because — well, he’s Dr. Bacchus. It just seemed right.

There is also a new addition to Pilgrims: Ani Ruhama, alias Laura.

I shaved my head.

It’s been five years since I first blogged. Oddly, the first post wasn’t really the first.

It’s funny how you remember things. I thought I’d been blogging for longer than I’d been Orthodox. But my chrismation in the Orthodox Church in America predates my first post by three months. Fascinating.

Let’s look back on the last five years. Some of my top posts by hits:

Spooky

I consider this an aberration, yet it continues to be my most popular post. Quite humbling for someone who considers one of his primary subjects to be his Orthodox Christian faith.

Saint Emily

I am considerably prouder of this post. Previous to writing this, I was unable to find a comprehensive description of St Emily’s life. I compiled this one from various references to her in the lives of other saints, such as my namesake, St Basil the Great, and his sister, St Macrina the Younger. This article served as the basis for the article in OrthodoxWiki.

New Navy Uniforms

Not sure why my quote with a cropped photograph is so popular.

To be continued, with a look back at my favorite posts. If anyone still reads this, you may nominate your own favorites in the comments.

These are the results of some quizes I’ve taken recently. I think the Five Love Languages result really explains why I’m so messed up. I need physical touch and quality time and get neither.

Are you a non-conformist?

You Are 80% Non Conformist

You are a pretty serious non conformist. You live a life hardly anyone understands.
And while some may call you a freak, you’re happy with who you are.

Blogthings - Are You a Nonconformist?

The Five Love Languages

My primary love language is probably
Physical Touch
with a secondary love language being
Quality Time.

Information

Unhappiness in relationships, according to Dr. Gary Chapman, is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. Sometimes we don’t understand our partner’s requirements, or even our own. We all have a “love tank” that needs to be filled in order for us to express love to others, but there are different means by which our tank can be filled, and there are different ways that we can express love to others.

Take the quiz

A new, non-pharmaceutical treatment may help severe asthmatics, as reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. Forbes reports:

One year later, air flow was much better in patients receiving thermoplasty — 39 liters per minute compared to 8.5 liters per minute for those getting standard treatment.

The thermoplasty group also reported an average of 40 symptom-free days, compared to 17 for the others, with fewer asthma symptoms and less medication used.

“Now a second trial, which uses information from this one, moves forward,” Miller said. “It is similar to the first trial except that it will use a sham procedure in the control arm.”

Read more: New Heat Technology Helps Asthma Patients - Forbes.com

See also: TheStar.com | MedPage Today | New Zealand Herald

The Union Jack is not an object of veneration, as some flags are. We’re not sure how we would react if someone set fire to it. After all, we see it more often degraded on cheap underwear or tacky plastic souvenirs than billowing vigorously in the wind.

(Read the whole thing: Icon No 7: The Union Jack)

I found this interesting remark in an appreciation of the Union Jack by British evangelical mag Third Way. I recently rediscovered a friend’s blog which led me to the British version of the defunct re:generation, albeit older and still healthy and hale.

This attitude towards Great Britain’s national ensign stands in stark contrast to the attitude enshrined in the U. S. Title Code: the U. S. Flag Code. Beyond prescribing respect, the Flag Code prescribes that the flag should be disposed of by burning or burial and should never be allowed to touch the ground. Orthodox and Catholic Christians will recognize this as standard protocol for holy things.

What’s interesting to me is how few of my fellow countrymen seem to be aware of the Code or even care, judging by how often flags are flown soiled, tattered, and faded or used as an advertising gimmick, flown backwards or carried in state like a dead body — anyone remember all those sporting events of 2001 and 2002 when the flag from the World Trade Center was paraded like a coffin?

I think I turned off comments because of spam. I’m not sure because I barely remember doing it. Going back, I did it around Christmastide, because that’s when posts first start having closed comments.

I have not, however, turned off trackbacks or pingbacks. If a post stirs you to comment, blog about it.

Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. —John Kenneth Galbraith

A couple of weeks ago, I watched most of the televised portion of the Academy Awards. Throughout the show, a constantly reiterated theme was that former Vice President Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth was neither left nor right, neither red nor blue, neither conservative nor liberal, just true.

I have labored under the belief that there was no real consensus on the existence of global warming, the cause if average temperatures were in fact rising, and the possibility that temperatures would continue rising if temperatures were rising. Being an ignoramus in climatology, it’s important that I understand the state of consensus (especially since I have made so much of consensus in previous articles).

Apparently, that assessment is ten years old, at least. According to Wikipedia, scientific consensus now firmly supports the theory that global warming is real, that it is 90% likely to be caused by human factors, and that it will continue, even if we begin cutting greenhouse emissions. (See articles on global warming, scientific opinion on climate change, and scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming.) The only controversy now seems to be over what should be done.

I began this article hoping to ask Theodora’s assessment of the consensus or lack thereof among scientists, but the articles cited above seem pretty clear that I need to adjust my assessment of the consensus.

In Australia, only the cold glow of fluorescent bulbs will light the night. Time to light the world with flame once again. Read it all: Watt is wrong with the bulb? - Business - The Washington Times, America’s Newspaper

I’m back on land (and I have been for a few weeks now).

I moved in with my brother upon arriving in Norfolk; he’s an airman at Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Center (METOC). This has been cool and a little stressful, too. Not because we’re having any friction, but because I have a lot of stuff in boxes from moving that I keep trying to move around, like a game of Tetris that I’m about to lose because there’s no room left.

While out at sea, I received my silver dolphins. (Readers of the mailing list already know this.)

More to come on the mailing list. I’ll return to my eccentric reflections on the meaning of all things once I get some movement going in organizing my stuff.

For those of you who, for whatever reason, have a snapfish.com account, and you want to view someone’s album created at snapfish.co.uk, you may get an “interstitial page” warning you direly that the site is not available in the country you selected. Simply switch the “.co.uk” with “.com” and it works. Well, as much as you can say snapfish works.

Flickr is good, people. If people want to view your public photos, they don’t need Yet Another Annoying Registration. If you already have a Yahoo! account (and who doesn’t, ten years into the internet revolution?), you can use that with flickr. It’s just awesome.