Decide to take one of those classic nerd tests.
Author: jra
Google NGrams: Nerds vs. Geeks
With Google’s new tool Ngram Viewer, you can visualise the rise and fall of concepts across 5 million books and 500 years! I decided to plug in ‘geeks’ and ‘nerds’ and it looks like the nerds will inherit the earth and not the geeks.
Emacs – Working with Regions
In this weeks segment on Emacs wizardry let’s learn some of the basic commands for working with regions of text so you can move around your Emacs region faster than Blackberry’s are forgotten about.
| Keystrokes | Command Name | Action |
| C-@ or C-SPACE | set-mark-command | Mark the beginning (or end) of a region. |
| C-x C-x | exchange-point-and-mark | Exchange location of cursor and mark. |
| C-w or SHIFT-DELETE | kill-region | Delete the region |
| C-y or SHIFT-INSERT | yank | Paste most recently killed or copied text. |
| ESC-w or C-INSERT | kill-ring-save | Copy the region. |
| Esc-h | mark-paragraph | Mark paragraph. |
| C-x C-p | mark-page | Mark page. |
| C-x h | mark-whole-buffer | Mark buffer. |
| ESC-y | yank-pop | After C-y, pastes earlier deletion. |
Linux PAM Resources
Pluggable authentication modules (PAM) are a mechanism to integrate multiple low-level authentication schemes into a high-level application programming interface (API). It allows programs that rely on authentication to be written independent of the underlying authentication scheme. PAM was first proposed by Sun Microsystems in an Open Software Foundation Request for Comments (RFC) 86.0 dated October 1995. It was adopted as the authentication framework of the Common Desktop Environment. As a stand-alone infrastructure, PAM first appeared from an open-source, Linux-PAM, development in Red Hat Linux 3.0.4 in August 1996. PAM is currently supported in the AIX operating system, DragonFly BSD,[1] FreeBSD, HP-UX, Linux, Mac OS X, NetBSD and Solaris.
Below is a list of good resources related to PAM that you can use to improve your Linux security model.
The Necessity of Catechism
From Richard Baxter’s “A Christian Directory – Volume I:
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A sound and well composed catechism studied well and dept in memory, would be a good measure of knowledge, to ordinary Christians, and make them solid and orderly in their understanding, and in their proceeding to the smaller points, and would prevent a great deal of error and miscarriage, that many by ill teaching are cast upon, to their own and the churches grief! |
We can see plainly that the a few of the sound benefits of committing a catechism that exhorts sound doctrine offers:
1. Ground Christians in the fundamentals of Christian doctrine.
2. Refutation of error introduced into the Church.
3. A continual means of growing in grace.
So what are some biblically faithful catechisms that you can use to commit to memory? Here are a few:
Is T.D. Jakes now a converted Trinitarian?
There have already been a number of blog entries on the James Macdonald/Mark Driscoll interview with T.D. Jakes on his supposedly now orthodox views on the doctrine of the Trinity. You can read the transcript here. I’m just going to address once specific statement that he made:
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Driscoll: We all would agree that in the nature of God there is mystery. But within that, for you, Bishop Jakes, the issue is one God manifesting Himself successively in three ways? Or one God existing eternally in three persons? What is your understanding now? Which one? Jakes: I believe the latter one is where I stand today. One God – Three Persons. I am not crazy about the word persons though. You describe “manifestations” as modalist, but I describe it as Pauline. For God was manifest in the flesh. Paul is not a modalist, but he doesn’t think it’s robbery to say manifest in the flesh. Maybe it’s semantics, but Paul says this. Now, when we start talking about that sort of thing, I think it’s important to realize there are distinctives between the work of the Father and the work of the Son. I’m with you. I have been with you. There are many people within and outside denominations labeled Oneness that would be okay with this. We are taught in society that when we disagree with someone in a movement, we leave. But I still have associations with people in Onenness movements. We need to humble both sides and say, “We are trying to describe a God we love.” Why should I fall out and hate and throw names at you when it’s through a glass darkly? None of our books on the Godhead will be on sale in heaven.
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Kindle Version – Jonathan Edwards Resolutions
In a previous post I documented the Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards. As an addendum, I have created a version that you can view on your Kindle or E-Book reader. You can download the file here.
The Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards
Resolutions 1 through 21 were written by in one sitting in New Haven in 1722.
The Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards (1722-1723)
Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do humbly entreat him by his grace to enable me to keep these Resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to his will, for Christ’s sake.
Remember to read over these Resolutions once a week.
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Facts & Reason
From Greg Bahnsen’s “Van Til’s Apologetic”:
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If the “facts” (external events or states of affairs) are completely a matter of “chance”- random and unconnected, having no rationale, no preestablished order, |
Here we see that you can not separate the facts from the interpretation of those same facts. For example if you say that the human beings came into existence by the a process of N number of random mutations, but cannot justify the predication of the those mutations since the presupposition is that they (“the mutations”) have no relationship between one mutation to another since they are all random, you have failed to demonstrate a rational conclusion to the premise that human beings came into being through evolution. Or to put it into more simplistic terms, you have assumed what you are trying to prove.
Emacs Org Mode
Here’s a great tutorial on getting started with Emacs Org Mode by Sacha Chua.