IT Crowd – Series 3 – Episode 2 – “Are We Not Men?”

Would love to see more of these…

Classical education involves understanding the present by learning about the past through history, philosophy, theology, literature, art, Latin, Greek, logic and rhetoric. Students see an integrated big picture of Western Culture from a Christian worldview – which has a strong moral code and traditionally a high benchmark of excellence and appreciation of beauty, as well as a foundational belief in absolutism; there is a right way and a wrong way. Maths and Science, reflecting God’s character, are also strongly integrated into this big picture, distinguishing classical education from a liberal arts education.

via St Augustines.

Unfortunately Doug did not let the cameraman give us the tour of the study/library. Not happy!

Ask Doug – “How do you organize your study?” from Daniel Foucachon on Vimeo.

I’m sure that the person who asked Doug this didn’t get what they were hoping for. I imagine that guy is really frustrated.

Al Mohler – Study Video from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

I find myself surprisingly in agreement with Singer’s appreciation of the humanities. My hunch though is that our current ‘job factory’ culture within university education is a direct fruit of utilitarianism. In contrast, a theistic worldview drives you participate in Adler’s “Great Conversation“.

The idea of a liberal arts education goes back more than 2000 years to Plato’s Academy. It holds that an educated citizen in a free society should have a grounding in philosophy, history, literature, the sciences, maths, foreign languages, politics and fine arts. We might say that it attempts to answer the broad questions that Gauguin put into the title of one of his paintings (a title that he in turn took from a Catholic catechism): Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? This kind of education does not train you in a profession, but it gives you an intellectual foundation to use throughout your life, whether you decide to go into medicine, law, business, engineering, or any other occupation.

via We must nurture the humanities.

Educators once believed in the classical education very strongly. Little more than a generation ago you could not get into Oxford or Cambridge without demonstrating competency in Latin, and practically every Western historical figure and writer until the 1950s was taught the classics from an early age. The line of thinking that we don't need to learn Latin and Greek because they are too hard, irrelevant, not useful or not the languages of the future would have been regarded as the argument of philistines.

via Culturally adrift without classical moorings | The Australian.

I do two backups. One to a second hdd within the desktop (every midnight). The other to an external hdd enclosure I bring in every couple of weeks from home. The backup is of the entire system using ‘rsync’.

The only problem with the USB enclosure is that it is very slow. So I bought an esata pci card and connect via that instead. This increased my speed from about 1MB/sec over USB2 to 57MB/sec over esata. That is an increase of 50 times!

I also noticed that my internal hard drive is much faster than a few years ago. Old notes suggest I was getting about 54MB/sec in 2003, but the newer hard drives are giving me 96MB/sec.

The sustained write speeds are slower than hdparm. The external esata actually rsyncs at about 30-40MB/sec  (not 57MB/sec). But now I can update the backup in minutes, not hours.

All measurements are using hdparm under linux.

Example:

root@homoousion:/home/schuller# hdparm -t /dev/sdc1

/dev/sdc1: Timing buffered disk reads:  290 MB in  3.01 seconds =  96.22 MB/sec

In summary: if you are using external hard drive enclosures, make sure you connect via esata.

What about NAS? They are great in theory, but very expensive compared to a generic esata/usb enclosure.

MTS Vic Training Day 1 2010.pdf

http://www.flickr.com/photos/challies/4248235677/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/challies/4248235113/in/photostream/

Here is a tour by Mark Dever:

Mark Dever – Study Video from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

H/T Justin Taylor

David Peterson, “Resurrection Apologetics and the Theology of Luke-Acts“, in “Proclaiming the Resurrection – Oakhill School of Theology”, Edited by Peter Head, Paternoster Press, 2008.

QA: Organizing a library « Miscellanies.

(some wordpress bug is causing the images to cascade unless I put full stops in to space them out – bleh)

The Acts of the Apostles,  David Peterson, Pillar New Testament Commentaries, IVP.

Preaching through the final third of Acts this year, this new commentary has been invaluable.

Peterson has an excellent grasp of the use of the OT in Acts, and of the Lordship of Jesus as the pivotal theme.

Excellent and insightful.

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The Word of His Grace, A Guide to Teaching and Preaching from Acts

This is a really enjoyable summary of the theology and structure of Acts.

Exemplifies the very best of the Proc Trust tradition, really giving you a good sense of the ‘melodic line’ of different parts of Acts – to use the David Jackman phrase.

A great big picture look at Acts.

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Keller – The Prodigal God

Excellent confrontation with ‘elder brother’ legalism that pervades today.

Many wonderful exegetical insights that could only be discovered by a pastor-evangelist.

Destined to be a Christian classic.

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Notes from the Tilt a Whirl – ND Wilson

If you like philosophy then this is a fun ‘ride’.

Solved one theological puzzle I’ve been wrestling with for many years. That alone was worth the price of the book for me.

(I’ll have to blog the ‘puzzle’ another time)

Could be a good book to give away to well-read unbelievers. It gets under your guard.

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Calvin Sermons on Genesis 1-11

This new translation from Banner is wonderful.

So often people miss out on the best of Calvin because most retailers hock a crappy 19th C public domain facsimile translation.

This translation is readable and quotable.

His sermons have alot more applications than his commentaries, great for preachers.

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Making It All Work, David Allen

Not a Christian book but I did really enjoy the follow up to his productivity classic “Getting Things Done”.

Unfortunately Penguin Australia has a grammar nazi in management. They renamed the books as “How to Get Things Done” and “How to Make it All Work“. Lessons from rulebook of “How to Make Books Sound Dumber as if People Don’t Know the Real Title from the Net”.

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It even has a couple of really cool videos.

A great organisation.

Baptise those Babies!