Octopodial Chrome

One of the milestones in one’s path towards old age is this: hearing a grand old song from one’s youth turned into Muzak. Well, I just heard a smooth jazzy rendition of Boyz II Men’s End of the Road.

May I start belting my pants over my pecs now?

The Apple Macintosh turns twenty-five today. I still remember how amazing it was when Dad brought one home, and how much cooler the Mac, and Mac software, and Mac people, were than any other computer of the time. We boys spent hour upon hour playing Deja Vu and Dark Castle, making pictures in SuperPaint, writing papers and so on.

I’m a Linux geek now, but I’ll always have a certain soft spot in my heart for the classic black-and-white all-in-one Macs.

Hey folks, enormity is a bad thing: it means something outrageous or wicked. I don’t think that Kiran Chetry quite meant that.

Well, America has passed a milestone: we now have more people employed by the State than in manufacturing and construction. In other words, we have more leeches than producers.

I, of course, am one of those leeches, at least in part. In fact, looking at my family two of my brothers (as well as my sister-in-law) are paid by the State; my remaining brother lives off of scholarship money; and my parents both make their money off of the Church.

The exclusionary rule (based on court rulings from the 1920s) states that illegally-gotten-but-true evidence is excluded from criminal proceedings. There are good reasons for it to exist, but it remains worrisome: in order to prevent certain injustices in the future, we do an injustice now by allowing an admittedly-guilty man to go free. Glenn Reynolds suggests a fix: instead of excluding the evidence, revoke official immunity for police and warrant-issuing magistrates who violate the law. That would serve to dissuade the police from searching without warrants and magistrates from issuing baseless warrants, but would not cause the miscarriage of justice that exclusion of legitimate evidence is notorious for.

What do my readers think?

Once again the magnificent machinery of our republic has turned and we have a new president. It’s a remarkable thing for one man to cede power to another so easily, without violence or bloodshed–that’s terribly uncommon in an historical sense.

I’m sorry to see George Bush go. He did some things right and some wrong, but I think that history will agree that in the main he was a decent president and a fundamentally decent man. The Editors of National Review agree on that score; Peter Wehner has more to add and Victor Davis Hanson caps it off. Bush did his best to be bipartisan—his unprecedented renomination of Clinton appointees is just one instance—but the unfortunate circumstances of his initial election and a Left eager for vengeance for the Right’s Clinton Derangement Syndrome conspired to prevent that. I firmly believe that had he been a Democrat the media and the intelligentsia would have loved him to death and in eight years he’d be as popular as Bill Clinton is now. As it is, I imagine that we’ll have to wait a good 60–80 years for historians to honestly examine his record.

It’s pretty cool that we have a president perceived as black (really, he’s as white as he is black…). It’s a nice milestone in the road to racial equality. Now that we have a black president, can we get rid of racial discrimination finally?

90 years ago this month the Paris Peace Conference opened; its decisions and the treaties which codified them into international law would have far-reaching consequences for the rest of the 20th century and even down into the present day (ever wondered why so many of those Middle Eastern countries have straight-line borders which ignore geography?).

An old college professor of mine is now blogging the Paris Peace Conference, I believe in ninety-year-delayed realtime. Professor Hunt Tooley was hands-down my favourite professor; his teach style was inimitable (you gotta love a prof with a greenbottle-fly tweed coat!) and his insights heavily influenced my own thinking on Middle East, Russian and German history.

I’m really excited my this new blog; any student of history should be likewise so.

Divers have discovered 4,000,000 rounds of .303 ammo in the hold of RMS Lusitania. Those of you who’ve studied your history may recall that her sinking was one of the reasons we entered the Great War on the side of Britain and France and against Germany and Austro-Hungary.

Now it turns out that she was a legitimate military target after all. Whoops.

I recently found the first newsreel documenting Nazi atrocities. It’s disturbing, powerful stuff and serves as a reminder of just how evil that regime was.

Computers generally track time as the number of units of time (e.g. second or milliseconds) since some date (called the epoch); Unix counts the seconds since 1 January 1970 at 00:00:00 GMT. Well, at 23:31:30 on 13 February 2009 it will be 1,234,567,890 since the epoch.

Yeah, I’m just a bit of a geek…

Here’s some cool trivia about The Princess Bride, one of my favourite films of all time. I mean, it has swords, monsters, freaks and a hot babe—how could it get any better?

A study has found that men with longer ring fingers than index fingers are better financial traders due to increased exposure to androgen in the womb.

There are some big changes in society coming as we recognise the influence of genetic and pre-natal factors on human beings.

An Australian study has found that open-plan offices sicken workers and harm productivity. I knew it!

Joel Stein argues that the majority of nut allergies are an affliction of the idle rich. Roughly 4% of the population has a real food allergy; roughly 25% of parents believe their children have food allergies. Notably, according to a social scientist, We don’t see this problem much in African American or poor communities. So there’s something going on here. We don’t see them in Ecuador and Guatemala.

I suspected as much.

A week ago Father George Paulson passed away. He was the first parish priest I remember; he was the man who—teaching a Biblical Greek class—managed to convert my parents (and hence me & my brothers too) to Orthodox Christianity.

Fr. Paulson ran a very tight altar (he was the first Greek Orthodox chaplain in the military and retired as a captain): what with him, Dad (also former a naval officer) and Fr. Bartz (then and now a naval chaplain) we altar boys were squared away. One snap of the fingers from any of the three of them and all of us would settle down and snap to attention. There was a sequence of hand signals (invisible to the congregation) which indicated to us what we should be doing. He even set little plastic buttons (normally used for the bottoms of chair or table legs) into the solea (the floor in front of the icon screen) indicating where each altar boy should stand in order that we’d be lined up evenly. To this day, no-one who served on Father’s altar can abide sloppy acolyte-work—and I’m pretty sure any one of us could stand in and serve once more, so well-drilled were we.

Father was one of the first priests to celebrate the Liturgy in English, a practise which is now fairly well-accepted. That need to translate all the services into English is, I believe, what got Dad involved in building service books (a work which appears will be his own legacy). He also taught Dad how to sing & chant in the Byzantine style. Most importantly, Father Paulson encouraged and taught Dad in his path towards ordination, first as a deacon and later as a priest.

Here’s Father’s obituary:

Virginia Beach—The Rev. Father George I. Paulson, surrounded by his family and loved ones, fell asleep in the Lord in his home Jan. 5, 2009. He was born in Springfield, Mass., July 31, 1918, the son of Ignatius and Panorea Pavloglou. After his marriage to his beloved wife, Evangeline, June 11, 1944, Father Paulson was ordained into the Holy Priesthood Aug. 9, 1944.

After graduating from Bay Path Business College in 1935, Father Paulson attended Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, graduating in 1944. Always in pursuit of higher education, he also attended the University of Pennsylvania, George Williams College and Coastal Carolina Community College. In 1974, Father Paulson received a master’s degree in education from Boston University. In 1993, at the age of 75, he received a Doctorate in Ministry conferred upon him by Boston University.

Father Paulson’s ministry in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese began in 1944 at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Tacoma, Wash. He was transferred to the Holy Trinity Cathedral in San Francisco in 1949. In 1952, Father Paulson was chosen by the Archbishop to become the first Greek Orthodox chaplain in the history of the U.S. military. During his 28 years of active service in the U.S. Navy, he attained the rank of captain and earned numerous awards and commendations.

Father Paulson’s naval career was highlighted by his organization and direction of the Leadership School. In response to the Navy and Marine Corps’ need to eradicate lingering racial tension among service personnel following the Vietnam War, Capt. Paulson developed the curriculum for the Leadership School. More than 15,000 Marines and sailors attended this school. A Navy Commendation Medal was awarded to him by the secretary of the Navy for this remarkable achievement. Father Paulson also earned the Navy Unit Commendation, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, a Combat Action Ribbon and decorations for National Defense Service, Armed Forces Expeditionary, Vietnam Service and the Republic of Vietnam Campaign. Father Paulson was commissioned by Saint Leo University to introduce the religious studies degree program in the Norfolk and Virginia Beach areas. He served as chairman of both the Psychology and Theology departments at Saint Leo and established a scholarship that is awarded annually to a deserving Saint Leo student. Father Paulson was a dynamic and illustrious educator whose teaching career culminated in a designation of full professor status at Saint Leo University.

Early in his career, as a direct result of his military service, Father Paulson developed a strong belief that “Jesus Christ belongs to all of us.” He felt that the most effective way for him to bring Christ to the people was to offer Greek Orthodox services in the United States in the language of the people, English. Utilizing this philosophy, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was established in Virginia Beach in 1980. Father Paulson served as pastor of St. Nicholas until his retirement in 2004 at the age of 85.

Father Paulson greatly valued the importance of family. His beloved Evangeline preceded his passing July 19, 2003, after 60 years of blissful marriage. He is survived by his sons, Ned and his wife Susan, Louis and his wife Jeannette, Bill and his wife Meg and George Jr. and his wife Gina. Father George and Evangeline were deeply devoted grandparents to their nine grandchildren, George, Carl, Elias, John, Matthew, Billy, Leah, Jon and Chris. They were also loving great-grandparents to their eight great-grandchildren, Madison, Alex, George, Max, Henry, Anastasia, Louis and Cathy. Father Paulson is survived by his brother, Vasilios Pavloglou and was predeceased by his brother, Peter Paulson. The family would like to extend a very special thank you to the warm-hearted ladies, Minnie Turner and Daisy Stephenson, who cared for Father Paulson for his last three years. Their love and devotion to Father George will forever be appreciated.

I was unable to attend his funeral on Saturday (I had to drill), but my parents were. Αιωνία η μνήμη—May his memory be eternal.