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What’s your favorite Bible verse?
Originally Answered:
What is your favorite verse of scripture in The Holy Bible and why?
For linguistic reasons, Mark 16:4, referring to the stone being rolled away from the tomb:
ἦν γὰρ μέγας σφόδρα.
For [the stone] was fiercely huge.
It’s easy to lose sight in translation of how colloquial Mark is.
For stylistic reasons, 1 John 1–3, an avalanche of relative clauses crashing into each other, and sometimes onto the reader:
Ὃ ἦν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς, ὃ ἀκηκόαμεν, ὃ ἑωράκαμεν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς ἡμῶν, ὃ ἐθεασάμεθα καὶ αἱ χεῖρες ἡμῶν ἐψηλάφησαν, περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς— καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἐφανερώθη, καὶ ἑωράκαμεν καὶ μαρτυροῦμεν καὶ ἀπαγγέλλομεν ὑμῖν τὴν ζωὴν τὴν αἰώνιον ἥτις ἦν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα καὶ ἐφανερώθη ἡμῖν—ὃ ἑωράκαμεν καὶ ἀκηκόαμεν ἀπαγγέλλομεν καὶ ὑμῖν, ἵνα καὶ ὑμεῖς κοινωνίαν ἔχητε μεθ’ ἡμῶν· καὶ ἡ κοινωνία δὲ ἡ ἡμετέρα μετὰ τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ μετὰ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.
What are some surprising things about you?
Habib le toubib, you already know about me having three cousins also called Nick Nicholas, and that I translated Hamlet into Klingon, so those things I won’t count as surprising.
So what should I count?
- I can dance. Not just dad dancing as I walk into a cafe, although I certainly do that. I do dance Greek dances, and I can pick the steps up for unfamiliar dances readily—although not if they’re from up north. (I did try to dance along to a 13/8 number from Florina/Lerin once. I really did try.) I have had salsa lessons too, although I think my hips are not yet Latino hips.
- In high school, the disciplines that fascinated me were mathematics and physics. No, you’re not missing any pearls of wisdom from me in those topics. When I switched to the humanities, I really switched. My engineering education had successfully killed off any love I had for those disciplines.
- Oh, and word to the Melbourne Uni Physics Department. If anyone thinks teaching students Special Relativity without teaching them Classical Mechanics first is a good idea? Fire them.
- You would think that, with my prodigious intellect, my analytical background, and my incisive insights, I’d be genius at strategy games, right?
… Why the hell would you think that?!
My gameplay in Civ—all iterations of Civ—was best summed up 15 years ago, by my colleague idly watching me play. “You’re not actually playing Civ at all, are you? You’re just randomly moving all the pretty horseys around the screen.”
I do enjoy escape rooms. Though they’re not a good combination with anxiety disorder.
The Decalogue of Nick #6: Loud as a poor coverup for shyness, and with one’s usual share of psychological baggage
For Lyonel Perabo.
I am, I protest, a shy person. I’ve got the Meyer-Briggs to prove it: Nick Nicholas’ answer to What’s your MBTI personality type? A person who is uncomfortable and a wall-hugger in a new crowd. A person who finds it hard to mingle in the proverbial cocktail party. A person who gave up on conference dinners early on, because my God, I don’t know any of these randoms.
People who know me very well can corroborate this.
People who know me less well will think I’m talking crap.
Because once I find myself in an environment where I know people, I come out of my shell. And it’s very hard to stuff me back in.
Dad-dancing into the cafe for my morning latte. Greeting imaginary fans with a politician’s wave, as I walk into a restaurant with my honey (but only if it’s together with my honey). Guffawing and talking loudly in the pub about whatever recondite topic strikes my fancy (back when I used to go to the pub). Holding court at work about power dynamics (but only if I have an audience).
My ideal self is like that. Loud and Greek. Voluble and witty. Unabashed and unreserved.
That’s my ideal self. I have only noticed slowly that this wasn’t who I was most of the time; that I had fallen silent much of the day; that I was back in my shell after all.
But not at work, praise be. I’m the guy that the cubicles in the neighbouring office complain about.
And not on here, in the virtual equivalent of the cube farm. I think out loud here, and I live out loud. Not as unabashed as I think my ideal self is: any BNBR violations I’ve gotten have been about tone policing, rather than me actually being un-nice or dis-respectful. But voluble, certainly enough at times for me to have been reproached. And every bit as much the social butterfly and the connector as I seek to be, trying to draw people together, out and engaging with the collective. (Unless those people are shmucks. Then, I just avoid you, because I go back in my shell.)
It’s performance, the dad-dancing and the waving at imaginary crowds and the storming into the office late exclaiming “So! What did I miss?” It’s performance of an ideal self, who is not afraid, and not embarrassed, and not ashamed. You could argue that the real me is not that. You could argue that this is front, to shield the cowering real me, who broods when struck or reproached or found wanting.
You could argue that. I prefer to think that it’s all performance, all facades. The bravado, and the cowering both. They’re all stances and reactions. And if the loud persona banishes the quiet persona for a few hours a day, there’s a reason for it. It feels alive. It feels vindicated.
It sure as hell feels like me.
Is discrimination the basis of Reason?
As I have admitted elsewhere, I am a dunce when it comes to philosophy. So my answer is going to be relentlessly positivist.
If we do not discriminate between entities in the world, we do away with any possibility of predicate logic. And in language, we do away with nouns.
If we do not discriminate between properties in the world, which have distinct intensions and extensions, we do away with propositional logic. And in language, we do away with verbs and adjectives.
With neither predicates nor propositions, we could still attempt to reason with what’s left. But what’s left would be so God Almighty fluffy and hippie, that I’d be reluctant to call it reasoning as I know it.
Why yes. Fluffy and hippie are positivist terms.
McKayla Kennedy: I think you drew the wrong Butterfly Man
In response to Nick Nicholas’ answer to Who is a Quoran that you look up to?
https://www.quora.com/Who-is-a-Q…
Definitely full of angels:
Or butterfly men, I guess, some of us don’t have your drawing skillz.
Nick Nicholas:
I think we settled as far back as Arius, McKayla, that the Son of Man was more than an angel.
Unless that’s meant to be me. Which it can’t be, I’m much too fallen, and much too dark-haired. (Well, grey-haired nowadays.) But I’m grinning none the less.
McKayla:
Hahah I only have 10 colors, none of which are grey, so you’re stuck with brown hair.
Don Niccolò, mafioso con pistola ad acqua
https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-g…
La Gigi: Haha! You make such a cute American gangstah.
Me: I did used to have a violin. Which means I did used to have a violin case…
La Gigi: It’s a CELLO case! How are you gonna fit a tommy gun in a violin case?
Nick: Ah. Wellp, that would explain a lot. 🙂
La Gigi: I see a comedy bit. A newbie gangster carrying around a weenie violin case and all the others are carrying cello cases. The newbie pulls out a water pistol.
Nick: You mean like this?
What are some examples of stately music?
The Canzonas and Sonatas by Giovanni Gabrieli. No contest: it’s the music of the spheres.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=m-Yfrbm-NDA
How important was your hometown in shaping who you are?
My home town until I was 8: not very. Possibly in ways I’m not conscious of, but obviously I can’t speak to those.
My hometown from 8 to 12: probably not so much as my home country did. At that age, I suspect one schoolyard was interchangeable with any other, and one promenade with another.
I have lived in Melbourne since 12. I think your teens are when your hometown starts to mould you. That’s when you become more aware of the humanscape beyond your immediate surrounds. I learnt to value the cultural premium that came with a critical mass of population. I appreciated the peace of mind that comes with a well ordered city. I came to value the layering of waves of settlement and city history. I became habituated to an urbane alternative to sterile Suburbia.
Melbourne has made me an intellectual. Melbourne has made me risk averse. Melbourne has made me cosmopolitan. Melbourne has made me introspective.
And yes, Melbourne has indeed made me pretentious.
What work jargon do you often use in daily life?
Often? I dunno, but I’ve certainly caught myself using use case rather more often than I should outside of work. It’s such a slippery term in IT, it’s very easy to overgeneralise.
I get some mileage out of business plan too, mainly as something that institutions all around me don’t seem to have articulated. I think ROI (Return On Investment) has come out my lips once or twice.
From my time in linguistics, etic vs emic distinction was something of a party piece. That one’s harder to trot out in a non-linguist context.
My word of the month has been hegemony; I wish it was work jargon.
Atheists: What will you say to God if he destroys you in hell for not believing he exists?
Answering this is just enabling pettiness, and sowing dissension between myself and my friends who are believers.
I’m answering it because I’ve found a passage I’ve been wanting to quote here for a long time. In answering it, I do not mean disrespect to my friends who are believers; and if they might take it, I beg them not to read further. But it’s a passage whose resentment has stayed with me.
I’ve cited Greek Mythology by the Greek humorist Nikos Tsiforos several times here. I’m citing this, the start to one of his chapters on Hermes. It’s anti-clerical, not anti-God, but it’s the same argument.
He speaks of the changes of the seasons, and sunrise and moonset, as mechanical processes that people wish to imbue meaning to, but they keep on regardless—
And all of this happens with a purpose hidden among the mysteries of the stars. And we come into the world as toothless and wrinkly babies, and we leave it as toothless and wrinkly old people. In the seventy or eighty years of our crappy existence we think ourselves the centre of the universe, we speak of transcendence and ideals, we shit and piss, some of us leave a squirt mark on history, most of us pass by unnoticed and struck down.
And the priests with their censers alongside us hound us with cauldrons full of hot pitch and torments, world without end. Why the hell? Because we’ve committed the crime of coming into this world, to live for seven or eight decades, eating our bread by our sweat and bitterness by the bushel? Well fuck off!