Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Seven books I keep close because I love them

blog.plover.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 205 posts

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#161

Post by heresie-dabord »

slowin wrote: post #126

> This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in it. > I would like to understand the world I live in, and there is no way to understand 21st-century America without understanding the Bible. Hard disagree! Yes, many of the more odious directions society has taken have been backed by Christianity (Christian Zionism anyone?) but we're already ov…

Stripped of religious rhetoric, political discourse in the US is best understood as the economics of brazen greed.

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#162

Post by slowin »

heresie-dabord wrote: post #161
slowin wrote: post #126

> This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in it. > I would like to understand the world I live in, and there is no way to understand 21st-century America without understanding the Bible. Hard disagree! Yes, many of the more odious directions society has taken have been backed by Christianity (Christian Zionism anyone?) but we're already ov…

Stripped of religious rhetoric, political discourse in the US is best understood as the economics of brazen greed.

Yes, and racism and worship of fame.

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#163

Post by schoen »

slowin wrote: post #126

> This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in it. > I would like to understand the world I live in, and there is no way to understand 21st-century America without understanding the Bible. Hard disagree! Yes, many of the more odious directions society has taken have been backed by Christianity (Christian Zionism anyone?) but we're already ov…

Could we get a version without the neologisms ("Amerika", "Afrika", "theirstory")? I was willing to spend five or ten minutes looking into something that I knew I had tremendous disagreements with, and then it ... started intentionally misspelling everything on the first page.

I mean, I'm sure there are many different senses in which I'm not the target audience for this work, but it immediately feels like it's actively leaning into "this book isn't for you" or "this book is meant to upset you".

On the other hand, I just realized that this is probably exactly what reading Richard Stallman feels like if you don't already agree with him. Like "I'm going to use lots of neologisms that I don't even explain, because I want to remind you of all my attitudes toward everything from the very first moment that you encounter my ideas."

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#164

Post by [deleted] »

rsynnott wrote: post #118
frollogaston wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only ever read KJV and haven't heard of the others. Is the downside that KJV is 1600s English? That particular line: KJV: For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. NRSV: For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. NIV: For I know that…

One potential issue is that some English words have changed meaning since it was written, and sometimes in extremely confusing or misleading ways. For instance 'convenient' and 'prevent' used to have radically different meanings.

[deleted]

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#165

Post by schoen »

SegfaultSeagull wrote: post #47
Joker_vD wrote: post #14

> After several repetitions of this, Samson decides that being shaved, blinded and crushed will be less exasperating than listening to any more of Delilah's nagging. A very off-tangent note, but I recently learned that Samson's last words, "ἀποθανέτω ἡ ψυχή μου μετὰ τῶν ἀλλοφύλων"/"moriatur anima mea cum Philisthiim", pretty much have never been translated into English literally; it's always "Let me die with the Phil…

The Hebrew is תָּמ֣וֹת נַפְשִׁי֮ עִם־פְּלִשְׁתִּים֒, which literally translates to "You shall die, my soul, with the Philistines."

My Hebrew education didn't extend to the future tense, but according to

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%AA#Conjugation

תָּמוּת is either second person masculine future, or third person feminine future. But according to

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%A0%D7%A4%D7%A9

נֶפֶשׁ is feminine. So it seems that only the third person form could agree with the subject noun, right?

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#166

Post by schoen »

frollogaston wrote: post #108
WalterBright wrote: post #61

I discovered that when I want to find the translation of a German word, it is far quicker to open a dictionary and flip to the word than open google, select the language, and type in the word. Flipping pages in a book still has not been matched by computer text.

Binary search is strong

Strong as a log, one might say!

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#167

Post by schoen »

mjd wrote: post #149
navigate8310 wrote: post #141

Since you liked Orbis Pictus, you'll definitely appreciate The Way Things Work

Thanks! I'm a big fan of David Macaulay's other books, but I've never liked _The Way Things Work_. _Castle_ and _Umderground_, though I love.

There are some impressive British children's picture dictionaries, especially the DK Children's Encyclopedia, but also some others that I can't quite put my finger on. A little closer to Comenius compared to that particular Macaulay: more direct and broader in scope and less jokey.

What I most appreciated in The Way Things Work is that he gives a complete working description of the boolean half-adder built out of logic gates, and I think how to connect them to make larger adders. Remember, in our very recent past, it was actually hard for little kids to find explanations of how to do arithmetic with logic circuits? Macaulay did his bit (so to speak) to fix that amidst tons of weird mammoth jokes.

By the way, I've been to one of Comenius's old schools (Herborn, Germany) and grave (Naarden, Netherlands).

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#168

Post by n0dose »

frollogaston wrote: post #106
ntdef wrote: post #69

The New International Version (NIV) translation of the Bible is by far the worst translation on almost any metric you can think of, except maybe understanding how evangelical Christians read the Bible in the 90s and 2000s. The NIV has so many inexcusable translations that reinforce a theological worldview that matched the conversation on atonement and justification that was happening in the 90s and 2000s. There's a g…

I've only ever read KJV and haven't heard of the others. Is the downside that KJV is 1600s English? That particular line: KJV: For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. NRSV: For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. NIV: For I know that…

The downside is it was translated in the 1600s with the tools, knowledge and manuscripts available to them at the time. We just have a lot more now.

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#169

Post by mejutoco »

ivrit-tirvi wrote: post #133
Ardren wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always look it up in the original Hebrew if I really want to understand Why do you assume a entire team of biblical scholars, working for years to translate the Old Testement for the NIV didn't know what they were doing? But you do?

Reading Hebrew is not about "opinion" or "theological insight". Hebrew is all about INTUITION (knowledge that rises spontaneously from YOUR OWN heart). The more you are SPIRITUALLY ALIVE, the more you will get out of every Hebrew sentence. It's a work-in-progress that lasts all of your lifetime. And it's PERSONAL: every time you read (or re-read) a passage, it adds understanding to the level/dimension that you are cu…

I am interested in examples of why Hebrew is as you claim in comparison to other languages. Very curious

Re: Seven books I keep close because I love them

#170

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #61

I discovered that when I want to find the translation of a German word, it is far quicker to open a dictionary and flip to the word than open google, select the language, and type in the word. Flipping pages in a book still has not been matched by computer text.

If I was designing an E-reader, flipping pages would be a problem I'd work hard to solve.
Post reply on HN