Kevin Basil

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OK, folks. You have no doubt figured out that I’ve been having some difficulties. To those three of you still checking this blog, just to see if I’m still alive, here is your proof of life.

My server went offline a few weeks ago when my phone line went dead. I have moved that server (maria.kevinbasil.com), which also hosts my church website, AthanasiusOCA.org, to another location in meatspace. (Thanks to Sockmonk/Theophan for the assist.)

This blog has now been moved to moose.qx.net, which is why you may have seen that page while we worked out the kinks in the webserver config.

All of this means, my stuff is back, including the CGI script for Orthodox chat. However, I will be posting on a much more sporadic basis, as I happen to be lost in meatspace at the moment, with only occasional ports of entry to the Matrix.

One big development in the last few weeks is that I am seriously considering enlisting in the U. S. Navy. If I do as well on the ASVAB as I have in the past, then any specialization will be open to me, with the exception of the SEALS and Nuclear Field work, in view of my age.

This is not because I am gung-ho about getting glory in the present conflagration. Far from it. In fact, I am quite sober about the consequences of choosing military service, and I am trying to be sensitive to the leading of the Spirit as I pursue this oppurtunity.

I was initially interested in the Navy because I am a Navy brat, and I thought Navy service might be helpful in paying down my student loans and saving some money for seminary. I was not prepared for the possibility of having my student loans paid off up to $65k. I am pursuing this very intentionally now for both reasons. Perhaps in a future post, I’ll explore a little bit more why a brat is simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by the idea of military service.

Suffice it to say for now that being a brat means that I am in a unique position to be aware of the consequences of enlistment, positive and negative.

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Yesterday, my parents came up from Tennessee, and we spent most of the day cleaning my apartment. A very productive day yesterday, after the dust settled. (In an unrelated story, I am happy to report that my apartment has a carpeted floor.) It was very cool to find some old relics of my past while sifting through boxes that haven’t been touched since I moved in with the Allergy Twins back in ’99.

Last night, after adding the WeatherPixie to my site, I was putting around, looking at some of my old content. Some this old junk has been around since ’97 or ’98. Scary. So, I clicked on a link to the re:generator to test it, with the aim of vigilance against linkrot.

Once more I asked myself the question I pondered over a year ago when I last visited their website: Why don’t I read this ’zine all the time? It is always brimming with soaring insights incarnated in sharp prose. Last night, two features captured my imagination.

Technology As If the Incarnation Actually Happened: David Gelernter and the universality of beauty

“…he believes that some things are beautiful and others are not. ‘You tend to talk about beauty as if it were a given, a universal,’ one irritated interviewer has said to him, to which Gelernter replied, ‘You can say the sense of beauty evolves and reflects social constructs, but people read and love Homer today.’ Or, as he has written elsewhere, Chartres, the Books of Samuel, and the Ryoan-ji garden in Kyoto are all universally acknowledged as beautiful. ‘Why do roses smell sweet and trash dumps not? Because human beings are built that way. In any case, had an omnipotent creator set out to equip man with a truth seeking physiology, He could hardly have done better than to provide us with this peculiar beauty sense of ours.’”

Romeo Must Die: Reed Arvin on censorship and propaganda in the Christian Booksellers Association

“Here is the CBA position on profanity, as I have had it put to me on many occasions: I am responsible for what the characters say in my books. It’s too convenient to claim that these ideas and words are espoused by characters and not by me, the author. I’m then quoted a Bible verse or two admonishing against vulgarity, and told to mend my ways. To which I reply: if that reasoning is valid, I will be having cocktails in hell with Tim LaHaye. Because if I must personally claim the words of my characters, how is it that other Christian authors don’t have to claim the actions of theirs?”

I really need to keep re:generator from falling off my radar this time. Perhaps I could get them to publish a piece for me. That would be cool.

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For Orthodox Christians, the Great Fast is almost here. We begin fasting from meat tonight, and then from dairy next Sunday after Forgiveness Vespers. Katie explains some of the more esoteric points of the Great Lent to non-Orthodox.

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