Blog posts by Randy Ridenour.
You should note one thing before investing too much time reading what follows: I could not have done this in the time I had available without using an AI tool. So, if you are averse to anything tainted by such things, you’re welcome to close the window at any time. For years, almost everything that I have written was done with LaTeX. After using several editors, I eventually settled on…
Toggle Ghostel I have been using Eat and toggle-term.el for terminal emulation in Emacs. After seeing some recommendations for Ghostel , I decided to give it a try, especially since I use Ghostty as my terminal emulator on the Mac anyway. All the reports were correct, Ghostel works like a charm, but I didn’t have as smooth a toggle experience as I had with Eat. Before switching back, I…
While preparing a sermon on Dietrich Bonhoeffer for last Sunday, I was struck by how much his 1942 essay, “Ten Years Later” sounds like it was written for 2026, especially the section “On Stupidity.” Here are some excerpts: Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force.…
In any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake. Tagged: Quotes
My mother-in-law died yesterday after a long period of decline. She had been admitted to hospital for breathing issues a few days ago. On the wall opposite her hospital bed was a broken clock that was stopped at 8:04. She complained about the clock to every visitor and every hospital employee that entered the room. After a family decision to start her on end-of-life comfort care, the nurse removed…
Roger Williams, founder of the first Baptist church in America, writing in The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644): The civil sword may make a nation of hypocrites, but it shall never make one true Christian. Tagged: Religion Politics
I love teaching. I do not love grading, though. I’ve always thought it would be an ideal job if there were no requirement for grades, and if there were no grades, then there would be no need for exams. This, of course, isn’t true. In an ideal world, each student would be motivated to acquire knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, not a mere grade. Good students would still want some…
It’s rare that I can write a post about Emacs and be able to claim some expertise — and by “rare” I mean that this is the first time ever. My usual Emacs posts are about the tools that I’ve hacked together to do things that only I probably need. A recent post by Karl Voit, titled “ The Emacs Lock-In Effect or the Emacs Sunk Cost Fallacy ” caught my eye, since…
Writing quizzes in Canvas is, to put it mildly, a pain in the neck, especially for keyboard-centric users. Every tiny step in the process requires a mouse click, something that quickly becomes irritating. Fortunately, the New York Institute of Technology provides the Canvas Exam Converter which takes a formatted text file and converts to an XML file that Canvas can import. This means that, with a…
The fundamental problem of political philosophy: Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation? Gilles Deleuze Tagged: Quotes Political
From Gabriel Hanotaux, French minister of foreign affairs from 1894 to 1895: A few precepts to repeat whenever you are in need of comfort, Anything can happen. Everything is forgotten. Every difficulty can be overcome. No one understands anything. If everyone knew what everyone said about everyone, no one would speak to anyone. Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat…
I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least. Dorothy Day Tagged: Quotes
Those who cannot see Christ in the poor are atheists indeed. Dorothy Day Tagged: Religion
This is one of those posts to remind me of a solution to a rarely occurring problem. Emacs has a feature called interlocking to prevent two different users from modifying the same file. If, like me, you regularly use two different machines, this may occasionally present a problem. Most of the time, Emacs behaves nicely and gives the user some options to either steal the lock, proceed with the…
By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic “the self-transcendence of human existence.” It denotes the fact that being human always…
The United States isn’t exceptional because of our common cultural heritage; we’re exceptional because we’ve been able to cohere despite faiths, traditions and languages that set us apart, and sometimes against one another. The drafters of the Constitution tried to create that cohesion by building a government that could transcend our divisions. Leighton Woodhouse Tagged: Politics
Emacs Dashboard is an elegant start page for Emacs that displays projects, recent files, agenda items, etc. It’s very customizable, but not quite in the way that I would like. I do like having a dashboard as my starting page, but I want something that displays the usual agenda view, not just a list of events. This is mainly because I like having a visual representation of the relation…
In his Baptist News Global piece, “ Here’s what the Churches of Christ and MAGA have in common ,” Richard T. Hughes writes: The problem would be just as acute had Churches of Christ been captured by Democratic as opposed to Republican interests since both parties — indeed, all political parties — are wed to the right-side-up interests of power, wealth and control. Disciples of Jesus,…
Hunger is not a problem. It is an obscenity. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. Anne Frank Tagged: Quotes Ethics
I’ve really enjoyed participating in the Emacs Carnival that’s been going on since June this year. I’m particularly excited about reading the posts on this month’s topic, “Obscure Packages.” There are some people who keep their initialization files lean and simple, but I’ve never been one of those. I don’t really care about Emacs startup time —…
There is always an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible and wrong. H. L. Mencken, Prejudices: Second Series , 1920 Tagged: Quotes
I’ve often wondered why the administration continues to make claims that are laughably and provably false, such as Trump’s claim that one of his prominent critics, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland called him “the greatest president of my lifetime.” Anne Applebaum writing for The Atlantic : This tactic—the so-called fire hose of falsehoods—ultimately produces not outrage but…
I do not like taking attendance in class. Unfortunately, despite having paid very much to take the course, many students need the extra motivation to attend class. My Introduction to Philosophy classes average 35 students which makes calling every student by name more time-consuming than I would like. If I could remember names, I could take attendance quickly, but unfortunately, names have always…
This is often called “A Franciscan Blessing.” May God bless you with discomfort, at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships so that you may live deep within your heart. May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace. May God bless you with tears, to shed for those who suffer pain,…
This is my post for this month’s Emacs Carnival , “Your Elevator Pitch for Emacs.” It’s very simple. There is one thing that I have never heard an Emacs user say: I’m forced to use Emacs for this particular task, but I sure wish I could use something else. Why would you not want to at least try something that its users love that much? Tagged: Emacs
Much of my writing requires quoting biblical passages, which always involved opening another application, searching for the passage, copying and pasting, then cleaning up the pasted text. Here is a function that I now use to automate the process in Emacs. My preferred translation is the New Revised Standard Version, which is available online using the oremus Bible Browser . They have a convenient…
Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all. John Maynard Keynes Tagged: Quotes Economics
Science increases human power — and magnifies the flaws in human nature. It enables us to live longer and have higher living standards than in the past. At the same time it allows us to wreak destruction — on each other and the Earth — on a larger scale than ever before. John Gray Tagged: Quotes Science
I’ve enjoyed reading the posts in this month’s Emacs Carnival on the topic of “Writing Experience.” It’s given me an opportunity to reflect not only on how I use Emacs to write, but also on why I continue to use Emacs despite the many alternatives that are available. I don’t consider myself to be the typical Emacs user, if there is such a person. I’m…
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. Douglas Adams Tagged: Quotes
Never in our history have we known more people less. Rands Schwag Tagged: Quotes
Jennifer Finney Boylan, in The Washington Post : It’s moral imagination that has provided me with some solace, these past six months, as I try to understand the sense of fear that people like me appear to trigger in others. It’s moral imagination that I have tried to ask others to have, when they set about trying to erase people such as me from the public sphere. If we are ever to build a more…
We are sometimes most pious in the ways we doubt our beliefs, and most blasphemous in the ways we defend them. Phil Christman Tagged: Quotes Religion
Christianity demands more than private values or partisan identity. It requires a public witness. And in a time of war, that witness includes a refusal to allow the state to define righteousness on its terms. When we do that, we are not practicing discipleship—we are participating in civil religion. A Christianity that affirms the state’s wars is not Christianity. It is idolatry. Stanley Hauerwas…
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. James Baldwin Tagged: Quotes
I found this on the Laughing Librarian Facebook page, so I don’t know have the specific source, but it’s too good not to share. “You sound a very educated man for a barbarian,” said Rincewind. “I didn’t start out a barbarian. I used to be a school teacher. But I decided to give it all up and make a living by the sword.” “After being a teacher all…
But Christians should as a rule be skeptical of versions of the faith that are informed overly much by partisan politics, which always have something other than Jesus at their core. Elizabeth Bruenig in The Atlantic Tagged: Quotes
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. Samuel Butler Tagged: Quotes
The Christian right is dead, but the religious right is stronger than it’s ever been. Another way of putting it is that the religious right has divorced itself from historical Christian theology but still holds its partisan beliefs with religious intensity. The religious fervor is there. Christian virtues are not. David French Tagged: Quotes Religion Politics
It’s important to listen to the voices of those who have left the church. Here is one of those voices: I consider myself one of those who have left the American evangelical church, unable to recognize as legitimate a belief system that doesn’t worship Jesus’ example to help the poor, the sick and the hungry. A church system that doesn’t recognize Jesus’ love and empathy, but rather worships…
Rabbi M. Bruce Lustig writing about a conversation with Pope Francis: It was quite the experience to have a private audience with the pope. I began to tell him: “I am Rabbi Lustig, the child of a Holocaust survivor. I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee.” Francis interrupted and said, “Bruce, may I call you that, I know who you are, you would not be here if I did not know. Now, tell me, what keeps you…
Aleksandra Gliszczynska-Grabias on how Poland survived a right-wing populist government: But those who were in the forefront of this fight, they really had to create for themselves kind of a support network, not to feel helplessness and hopelessness with every new development happening. May you find your community. Tagged: Politics
’My country, right or wrong,’ is a thing that no true patriot would think of saying. . . . It is like saying, ’My mother, drunk or sober’. G. K. Chesterton Tagged: Quotes
When her daughter announced that she intended to learn to read, Rum Godden wrote this letter to her: You see, when you learn to read you will be born again into another world and it is a pity to be born again so young. I should put off reading, if I were you. As soon as you learn to read you will not see anything again quite as it is. It will all the time be altered by what you have read and you…
All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. Flannery O’Connor Tagged: Quotes
Not to know is bad, not to want to know is worse. Gambian Proverb Tagged: Quotes
Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees. Gregory of Nyssa Tagged: Quotes
I need a new post to test Elfeed. Tagged: Emacs
In a post titled “ Is Emacs Hard to Configure ” on his blog Irreal, JCS discusses the oft-heard complaint that Emacs is difficult to configure. He objects, rightly so in my opinion, saying that many non-programmers also use Emacs. The post on Irreal was prompted by this discussion on Reddit. User precompute claimed that Emacs is not hard to configure, so long as you understand Elisp .…
Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are. Unknown This is often attributed to Augustine, but I think that’s unlikely to be true, since no one apparently knows where in the Augustinian corpus it is found. Tagged: Quotes