unthemed anthology

I have spent much of the summer, so far, being amazed by how many shades of green there are. It's a ridiculous thing to be so happy about- it's not like I haven't seen trees before- but I'm happy nonetheless.

Go here to see websites remade into cluster charts. Here's mine, for instance: (link)

I decided to play on KartOO,* hoping to find something to help with my spiritual discernment process. I found the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, in a vaguely sermon form. "The God who answers by fire, he is God". Usually, reading or hearing this fills me up with flaming Pentecostalish images; today, it made me think of smores. Not sure what that means.

At the risk of theming, I also found this, which points out the tension between these two sections of scripture:
Acts 17:11 Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
John 5:39-40 You [the Pharisees] diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
I think I spend more time as a Pharisee than as a Berean, unfortunately.

This list of definitions for research terminology reads like parts of Social Science Research Methods, although much more interesting. It showed up in a suspicious sort of email from family that I usually delete without reading, although Matt has given me a whole new system for dealing with such inbox-clogging:
"Correct within an order of magnitude"... Wrong.
"It is clear that much additional work will be required before a complete understanding of this phenomenon occurs"... I don't understand it.

Someday, when I'm rich and want to drop hundreds of dollars on a fancy cat, I will get a Turkish Van. They swim, and like it- what a spectacular cat trait! And they're cute!


Molinism, a doctrine named after "16th Century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina," is an attempt to resolve tensions between freedom of the will and the all-knowingness of God. Molina developed the idea of middle knowledge, which I've never really managed to understand, but non-Molinist Christians argue that "there appears to be no good answer to the question of what grounds the truth of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom." I spent far too much time this week trying to sort through William Lane Craig's short response to the "grounding objectors," because it was more interesting than my readings for the discernment class.
Some guy on Amazon thinks that Molina was an influence on Leibniz, but I'm not going to spend $100 to find out why.

*Thanks to Mr. Miro for the tip.