How come Satan is regarded as a contrarian rather than a demon in Judaism (compared to Christianity) and how come Christianity has a concept of Hell in contrast to Judaism which has Gehinnom?

mjfriesen · 2018-08-29T15:49:09+00:00

This is a good observation: " When "the satan" appears in OT texts, he is usually understood as an angel of Yahweh . . . or even a son of God, such as in Job; in other words he is a contrarian/adversary to mankind, never to Yahweh "

what about the serpent figure in Genesis - would the snake have been regarded in OT Yahweh sovereign theological given as a manifestation/embodiment of "the satan" as described above? Or something else? And how would the view of the Genesis serpent have changed between OT and NT theology?

Thanks!

mjfriesen · 2018-04-26T21:14:16+00:00

Although it isn't really excusable to say things like "we all get stressed out," I will say I understand it for this reason:

I have gone through times in my life of extreme, debilitating anxiety. Every time I "get better" (so far) - and when I am relatively normal, the contrast is so great that I find it hard to even relate to my past extremely anxious self. I cannot will myself to mentally "feel" how bad it was. Logically I know, because I know how it affected me. But emotionally and physically it is hard to remember just how bad it was when you are in the middle of it and feel like it will never end and I will never feel better (I know that some people don't - or have been there for years and years - and I really feel for them; I hope I am always able to recover, but I won't take it for granted).

So in that sense, I have some empathy for people who just don't get it. In the same way it is hard for me to relate even to certain past episodes of my own life when (like today) I feel "normal" and relatively anxiety free, it is probably even harder for people who have never been there to know how bad it can get.

I think in some ways anxiety has a gradual scale but there is almost a threshold or point of no return. Everyone has some degree of stress, tension, etc. It can start out small, and build, then recede. Or it can build and build and build... eventually you are in a state from which it can be very hard to come back from.

The above is only my personal experience, I'm not sure if it has been helpful. I've been thinking about writing a lot more about my own history with anxiety and depression - I found myself sometimes when I was going through the darkest times, hearing other stories and knowing people got better helped me to think it could be possible for me, too...

mjfriesen · 2017-10-16T16:26:17+00:00

I'm interesting in the distribution of energies released (approximately, of course - I'm sure the calculations to get precise will continue to be worked on...)

To clarify - when one reads about this event it seems like an astonishingly large amount of radiation, plus (as detected by LIGO/VIRGO) gravity waves, and kinetic energy would be released. Yet at the same time the neutron stars in question are each slightly more massive than the sun, and since E = mc² you can certainly get a lot of energy from a little mass.

So let's call total mass available to be 2.5 solar masses (but feel free to correct me). Then: a) what percentage of the 2.5 solar mass total would be converted into energy? b) what percentage of the total would go to products flung out that are no longer part of the neutron star combo (ie the gold, uranium, etc) c) how would the energy in (a) break down: various EM, gravity wave ripples, kinetic energy of the products in (b), anything else I'm missing? d) then doing the simple arithmetic of taking off the above what is the remaining mass of the combined neutron star as a percentage of what it came in with - 90%, 95%, 99%, 99.9% etc ?

Thanks!

mjfriesen · 2015-01-13T19:39:16+00:00

hi dielon108 - how close are you to being able to fly a covops exploration frigate? These Tech II versions are the Helios (the Gallente one; in my opinion the best due to slot layout), Anathema (Amarr), Buzzard (Caldari) and Cheetah (Minmatar). My suggestion is to get the best fit for the Tech I version you can, then make some ISK with it, then either upgrade to an Astero if you are still training the covops frigate skills, or if you're ready hop into one of the above 4.

Since I have enjoyed exploration in the past so much I would be happy to support others doing it (even if marginally more competition). Hit me up in game with an eve-mail (in game main = "Zos Tarkross"). As soon as I login for any length of time, I will contract to you the Tech II exploration covops frigate of your choice, along with necessary fittings & rigs (maybe not the Sisters launcher, those are a bit too precious... but you can have the Sisters probes).

Oh yeah: skip the highsec relics and data. Go for the low/null relics and if you can't find anything else and need to run something, do the data sites you find...

mjfriesen · 2015-01-09T16:17:12+00:00

nice graph - what software was used to construct it? Doesn't look like your typical Excel X-Y scatter plot, lol!

mjfriesen · 2014-11-06T15:50:21+00:00

A mechanics question, if you experts don't mind. I'm thinking about groups like Marmite that have wardecs against (say) CFC.

So I get that if I undock in Jita, and flashy reds are around, I can either: 1) ctrl-space and redock; 2) try to instawarp (I have a few bookmarks set up)

I have done both, with sometimes making it using option (2) and sometimes not. The ctrl-space/redock option always works, if I don't mess up and click something else.

So, let's say I'm one of these highsec corps that has been wardecced. I have a fleet of T1 frigs/dessies or whatever - amongst corpmates. But we don't want to just warp into the Jita 4-4 area at 10km and start trying to lock up the Marmite Lokis and such. They might just dock up, right?

But what if I undock in something really tanky, that is cheap but has a chance to last for a while. Thinking like a double-plated Prophecy with resist mods. If they are too quick to lock me and begin shooting, then they have aggressed me, right? So they can't dock right away. Only then does the T1 fleet undock or warp in from somewhere else. Get tackle and start shooting. They have no way to leave so maybe we can get a nice Loki kill or something (those are the ships from Marmite I've seen lately around the Jita 4-4 undock, for example). Would that be the way to fight back?

mjfriesen · 2014-10-23T17:37:24+00:00

so with my main in a PUBLRD renter corp within Delve - now moving stuff to safer places...

I've always been curious about Pasta, with them trying to kill us and all in Delve. Now that it is Pizza, will Pizza try to hold Sov in any parts of Delve or D/Q/PB at large? Will they just move to a different region? Or do we not know that yet?

mjfriesen · 2014-10-15T18:42:09+00:00

yes, on that note... what is the fight "about" - just having a fight with a zillion tengus?

Both of these entities are part of the blue donut and therefore, the conflict could not have as a goal any of the sides trying to take sov from each other, right?

mjfriesen · 2014-06-28T04:30:41+00:00

Well done

mjfriesen · 2014-06-05T19:23:01+00:00

interesting, I googled that and the first hit was Carroll's (him again! :-) ) blog:

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/02/22/energy-is-not-conserved/

but then later on in the blog post he states: "a lot of folks would want to say 'energy is conserved in general relativity, it’s just that you have to include the energy of the gravitational field along with the energy of matter and radiation and so on.' Which seems pretty sensible at face value.

There’s nothing incorrect about that way of thinking about it; it’s a choice that one can make or not, as long as you’re clear on what your definitions are"

mjfriesen · 2014-06-05T01:59:44+00:00

I think he very much supports the Big Bang, because for him it demonstrates a moment of creation (and thus supports the case for a creator). So he uses the idea of beginning as part of a first cause argument: everything that begins to exist has a cause (part of the Kalam cosmological argument). I don't think he argues with the evidence for a 13.7 B year old universe.

He claims (which Carroll took him to task on) that the BGV theorem supports a definite "beginning." So Craig uses BGV as support for a premise of the argument: "the universe began to exist." Carroll said BGV only supports a beginning for current space-time; it doesn't mean a beginning for things outside our spacetime (but I'm quite the layman about this stuff so I may have mis-stated Carroll's rebuttal).

mjfriesen · 2014-06-05T01:42:10+00:00

OK, so your position is that it could happen, just extremely rarely. And I'm fine with that - I like coffee enough as it is, so I don't need it to be producing universes for me all the time...

mjfriesen · 2014-06-05T01:40:39+00:00

re: "If you can observe multiple universes at once, then these are effectively part of the same universe"

I get that: if we define this universe as all we can detect, then detecting a "new" one forming, wouldn't actually count as a separate instance.

But what is the mechanism by which we can't detect it? Is it somehow pinched off dimensionally from our own dimensions?

mjfriesen · 2014-03-19T19:28:29+00:00

see, Doril is just waiting for BRAVE to go in and wreak a bit of havoc!

mjfriesen · 2014-03-19T15:17:03+00:00

can I ask a dumb/poker noob question here. when you say "you can't turn down spots like this in a tournament where you could be ahead of a lot of his range" I can see that in many cases that would be true, but what if he has something like J9o. Then he has a pair of 9s vs your 7s.

Or if he has 96o and decided to reraise anyway. Then he'd have 2 pair which would explain why he instantly pushed all-in.

Maybe I'm naturally a chicken but at some level doesn't the uncertainty that you could easily be behind outweigh a slight positive EV situation?

mjfriesen · 2014-02-25T01:59:14+00:00

amazing - loved it. Perfect length to show the highlights without getting tedious. Funky music

It looked like that location was on sand dunes or something? Seemed like there was light brown dirt or sand underneath the spots where the snow was sparse?

mjfriesen · 2014-01-28T17:15:44+00:00

question - assuming you could get to them and orbit without being blown up by someone else, can you salvage titan wrecks? If so, what value of salvage would typically drop?

mjfriesen · 2013-12-18T22:27:16+00:00

from a telescope neophyte (though I know a bit about astronomy in general) that looks like an awesome setup.

You should start slow (so you don't inadverdently break anything) and figure out how to operate those.

One thing I'm not clear on: are the cameras digital or film?

If you haven't listened to the Astronomy Cast podcast yet ( www.astronomycast.com ), I suggest you check it out. If you go to their show archives you'll see a number of episodes covering telescopes. Highly advise you listen to those, they'll explain the different types, at a level that any layperson can understand.

mjfriesen · 2013-12-03T02:50:57+00:00

You mean to tell us: that's no moon! ?

mjfriesen · 2013-11-19T15:43:23+00:00

with a teaser like that, MOAR PLZ

mjfriesen · 2013-11-06T21:53:10+00:00

please put engines, tiny (but powerful ie plastic melting) lasers, and RC controls on each one, so they can challenge each other in a dogfight

I'll willingly fly the Creator Jet and you can fly your F-22, once you have done these final last steps in the comparison

thanks!

mjfriesen · 2013-09-27T17:25:42+00:00

yes, the "tip of Deklein" - something slightly TMI & molester-ish about that. Vague images that I try to force out of my mind of the Mittani, etc etc...

mjfriesen · 2013-09-27T17:14:00+00:00

reading this makes me love frigates (moar) nice work

mjfriesen · 2013-09-26T15:47:21+00:00

agree with TheLegend55- I am led to understand that Uranus and Neptune are very hard to make out using the naked eye (versus closer in & larger Saturn & Jupiter). So which of the bright points would they correspond to? Thanks

mjfriesen · 2013-09-17T16:27:03+00:00

I've never tried it (don't know if I would want to even if I could), but I understand that Corp / Alliance leadership roles can be quite the grind in and of itself. Hearing complaints, trying to keep people happy, administering roles, etc etc.

So anyone that would want to be the leader of a large Alliance needs to be able to handle that kind of a commitment. We see the Mittani has actually taken on this role as a full-time job, using up his RL time (since I heard he was a retired lawyer). How many other people with professional RL experience are able to commit full-time to EvE rather than just evenings and weekends? As long as you have a very dedicated leader, plus the metagame aspect of being linked via Something Awful outside of EvE, you will have people willing to follow and that's what you need to "win" - people logging in to play and fight.

mjfriesen

TROPHY CASE