It’s been far too long since I have posted anything. I have not had time to put any real articles together 1, but I figured that my private journal could be sustained with a post or two with my random, private thoughts and life events from time to time 2. Now it’s nearly spring, and I’m studying once again. This time, it’s an exploration of the Akedah (????? ???? the binding of Isaac).
This past winter had me studying a lot more Lévinas, and a bit more on the work of Richard Rorty as well. I have also been reading a surprising amount on religion, theology, and the philosophy related to those topics. I finished the first presumably successful reading of a full-length work in French, and I found a few more difficult works to page through. I’m hoping to get some time to start posting my translated bits up here on the ol’ journal as I wade through them, but time will indeed tell whether that is a possibility. I have found myself wanting to get back into studying PHP. My relevant knowledge is rather antiquated as it dates to the version 4.x series (non-object-oriented), but I keep thinking of great uses for the skill, so perhaps I’ll find the time to get into it again soon. I haven’t bothered to check, but I assume that either v. 6.x is around the bend or patches have been introduced for better unicode support by now, which I will greatly appreciate (these sorts of problems precluded my dabbling with PHP again while I studied Ancient Greek a year or two ago).
For now, I have to get back to the Akedah study. Hebrew (and the semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family) is a remarkably interesting language–though frustrating. I hope, if I get the time, to start working on a new little PHP script that will allow me to see how far unicode support has come3 while improving my ability to understand the Hebrew passages I am reading, but that is still in the concept stage. Now, back to yet another reading of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling! This time, I have finally got my hands on a Hong translation, which I hear is most excellent. Class and outside discussion have been so exciting, I am actually thrilled to be going through Fear and Trembling for what has to be at least the fourth time.
- There are dozens of half-baked ones sitting in my unpublished coffers ↩
- after all, this is the purpose for which I envisioned this so-called “blog” ↩
- it might not have come too far, the facebook crossposting plugin for wordpress balked with errors when I tried to publish this post with Hebrew characters in the title ↩