hardshell case

This weekend I bought a hardshell case for the Yamaha. It's a Fender case -- 120 dollars. So if I get a strat again someday I've got the case for it. The local music shop is the Players Bench. A good place with decent prices and nice people there.

In terms of amps, I'm looking at the Fender G-DEC junior. 15 watts with special effects and rhythm loops. You can program it to play a 12 bar blues in the background, with bass and drums, and jam along with it. You choose the key to play in and the tempo, and the volume. Pretty nifty. Also to effects include making the guitar sound like all sorts of guitars, from jazz to 50's fenders to crunchy hard rock and metal guitars and even acoustics. Lots of computer effects these days, way different from when I was playing in the 80s. Also has effects like flange, reverb, etc. All built in. And it's 150 bucks. I will probably get it.

I'm practicing everyday -- it's going well. Love the blues!

And now for something completely different....

Change is good. Here at Robblog I've made a topic change. I'm starting guitar lessons this fall at the college -- blues guitar. Now I will be blogging about guitars, my progress, and my growing knowledge and appreciation of the Blues.

Figuring out what is real, or explaining creation, or discussing Judaism or Christianity or Paul or Jesus -- that has come to an end, mostly. It didn't really go anywhere -- there was no creativity or self-expression. It is interesting academic work, but now I have a new passion.

My good friend Heraclitus gave me a wonderful gift -- a Yamaha Pacifica 112 guitar. it's a strat style electric HSS; one humbucker at the bridge (?) and two single coil pickups. My lessons start next week with Tom. I've talked to him on the phone last night and he's ready to work with me.

At the moment my role model is BB King. Single note leads. Beautiful sound.

This all occured right before I got the Yamaha. I was looking for guitar lessons on youtube and stumbled on Keith Wyatt's lessons for beginners. Once I learned the blues pentatonic scale in A I was hooked. The sound -- it was like I had found a language that really connected with me. Then Heraclitus and wife came over for a visit, and he gave me the Yamaha. Wow.

Heraclitus, my only reader -- consider blogging about music! Your blog is old with no updates! This could be fun. Let's chart our progress and our discoveries. Will you be in the jazz ensemble?

OK, back to work. See you soon.

Isness is Isness

Isness is isness. Reality is a tautology -- it can't be otherwise. If one asks the question "why is there existence?" then one could equally ask "why is there non-existence?"

In other words, in trying to define reality we are asking for a linguistic construct that defines "reality" in a way that transcends the tautological or the infinite-nested-contexts problem. I think that language can't do this -- neither can logic or physics.

What is reality? Look around -- there's your answer. But don't say anything.

a few last comments on the gospels

The more I think about Paul's letters, especially Romans where he seems to sum up his message in his longest text, the more I think that his lack of biographical data on Jesus reflects the fact that in the 50s among many christian communities in the Roman Empire there was very little known about the "historical" Jesus. Paul spent so many years with so many christians -- he went to Jerusalem and spoke to some of the apostles (see his version versus Luke's version in Acts) -- he knew other missionaries and disputed their gospels -- he was no isolated hermit. He lived fully in the early christian community, yet he seemed to know almost nothing about Jesus' life and teachings -- it was the functional value of the death/resurrection that was the whole point of Jesus for Paul, not what he said and did.

I conclude then that very little of what Jesus said and did was known to most early Christians in the 50s (CE) -- there is the death/resurrection, the last supper -- and that's about it!

Mark put together a rough gospel from what he knew in his community: Parables, healings, miracles, speeches. Matthew and Luke used this as the basis for their works, along with Q, L, and M. John wrote a gospel from a very different set of data. All of them linked events in JC's life to "biblical prophecies."

Read Randal Helms' Gospel Fictions -- he's got it! They are literary constructions using various oral stories and earlier written lists of JC sayings. The early christians believed that JC's life was foretold in the Bible (HB) -- so that by reading it they could "reconstruct" his life -- without knowing any (or very little) details from those who knew JC.

For example, since the Bible predicts that JC will be born in Bethlehem, they write up a story to show he was born there. A literary composition based on a belief in biblical prophecy -- not a story based in "fact."

Some parables probably do reflect what JC taught. He probably was a baptized follower of John the Baptist who then became a leader of his own group. He made some claims that upset the Romans and got him crucified. He claimed to his followers to be the Messiah, but not to the public directly.

the rest -- gospel fictions.

the minefield of reality

This discussion will certainly have logical flaws. It will be circular -- it will be messy. How do we define "existence"? How do we define what is "real" and what isn't? I will informally take up this topic.

First, I'll grant that the material universe that we observe is "real." When someone throws a rock at you and hits you in the head, that's real. Any definition of reality that denies this seems to me to be useless. But of course it's not as easy as we think.

I'll defer a discussion of our inner psychological experiences until later. On some level feelings, dreams and thoughts are real -- but more on that later.

This topic is circular, I think, because it aims to find a formulation to satisfy a pre-existing concept of what is real. we expect certain qualites to that which is real, and so search for a definition that fits those qualities. It's a tautology of sorts.

Why struggle to define what's real? I wouldn't except for the question of its origins. Yet I suspect some circular reasoning here also.

From the view of sciences, we can look at the Big Bang theory, which doesn't explain creation, but does describe the early universe back to after the Planck epoch (here's Wiki on the PE):

"In physical cosmology, the Planck epoch (or Planck era), named after Max Planck, is the earliest period of time in the history of the universe, from zero to approximately 10−43 seconds (Planck time), during which quantum effects of gravity were significant. One could also say that it is the earliest moment in time, as the Planck time is perhaps the shortest possible interval of time, and the Planck epoch lasted only this brief instant. At this point approximately 13.7 billion years ago the force of gravity is believed to have been as strong as the other fundamental forces, which hints at the possibility that all the forces were unified. Inconceivably hot and dense, the state of the universe during the Planck epoch was unstable or transitory, tending to evolve, giving rise to the familiar manifestations of the fundamental forces through a process known as symmetry breaking. Modern cosmology now suggests that the Planck epoch may have inaugurated a period of unification or Grand unification epoch, and that symmetry breaking then quickly led to the era of cosmic inflation, the Inflationary epoch, during which the universe greatly expanded in scale over a very short period "

At T=0, the instant of creation, physics currently has nothing to say, much less at T<0. So it's a philosophical or logical problem, not a scientific one.

One could take the view that creation is not necessary, that reality begins with t=0 (my shorthand) -- and there's a certain sense to it. We exist in the spacetime continuum, and there is no "outside" beyond it.

Yet is that satisfying? Somehow we strive to ask "where did this STC (space time continuum) arise from?" That's the endless Colbert painting paradox. Whatever the answer is, it only begs the question "so where did THAT come from?" ad infinitum.

One answer would be an infinite series of nested universese, like taking the colbert portrait out to infinity. But that just seems evasive -- still the question would be "where did this infinite series of nested universes come from?" Even an infinite Russian doll has to exist IN something.

Or does it?

atheism and creation

Atheism lacks an account of the creation of the universe (if it ever were "created"). I suppose that science is supposed to supply that. My thinking is that a scientific theory, such as the Big Bang theory, can't explain the existence of whatever field or space-time continuum that is needed for the big bang to occur. How did these particular physical laws come into being?

It's like Colbert's portrait. The picture must be inside a larger picture, which must be inside one larger, ad infinitum. Physical laws don't explain themselves -- and they can't. It's a philosphical or logical issue, not a scientific one.

So with that gap, there is reason to find atheism inadequate. So what's left? Skepticism.

Later I will discuss the "reality" of infinity -- and the concept of "reality."

Jesus/John the Baptist/baptism

Recall the standard academic view of the gospels:

• Mark was written first
• Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels with Mark as a guide. They also shared another document, "Q", with more stories of Jesus. And each had their own documents, M and L, that the other didn't have access to. Mark, Luke, and Matthew are the synoptic gospels.
• John's gospel is a later, separate creation. He may or may not have had the previous three gospels as guides.

OK, let's look at Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist. It is the first scene in Mark's gospel. Matthew and Luke have the scene also, but they add stories of Jesus's birth and childhood. John's first scene is also the baptism of Jesus by John, although his version tries to make it look like Jesus is not subordinate to John. The gospels in general are a little reluctant to write out this scene clearly because it makes Jesus look like a follower of John. So they hem and haw and write in dialogue to make it seem more palatable.

The fact that it's still in there means it's a basic and early well-known part of the Jesus story, and it's something they can't omit. Even John has to include it, and he has no birth narratives. So a reasonable conclusion to make is that it did happen -- Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.

So, my reading of this is that Jesus originally was a follower of John the Baptist, one of many who came to him to be baptized. This act was deeply significant to Jesus, and was the beginning of his preaching. Later, especially after John was imprisoned and murdered, Jesus continued his preaching and finally became more popular and significant than John. Some of John's followers switched to Jesus, but probably not all in this early stage. Later the followers of John would join the Way and follow Jesus.