I suspect many of you have seen and remember the 2001 movie, A Beautiful Mind, starring Russel Crowe as the American John Nash. Nash won a Nobel Prize in Economics for his game theory – popularly known as the Nash Equilibrium. There are initial conditions for the “game” but that is probably only of interest to folks familiar with game theory. The Nash Equilibrium basically says, e.g. you have three players in the game – let’s say Canada, Mexico, and the United States. If each player has chosen a strategy – an action plan based on what has happened so far in the game – and no one can increase one’s own expected payoff by changing one’s strategy while the other players keep theirs unchanged, then the current set of strategy choices constitutes a Nash equilibrium.
Continue readingDaily Archives: February 4, 2025
Writing with Intent
This coming weekend is the 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time in which St. Luke described the calling of the first disciples. Christian tradition and popular biblical opinion is that St. Luke was a physician. I occupy the minority camp on that matter. There have been lots of studies comparing his writing and language to known physicians of his age. There is nothing about this Gospel (or Acts of the Apostles) that points to a physician. But as many have pointed out, there is a lot that points to another occupation: rhetorical historian (and yes, he could have been both…). As the rhetorical historian, he writes with a purpose and intent. Green [230] writes: “Within his overall narrative strategy, the initial purpose of this episode is to secure for Luke’s audience the nature of appropriate response to the ministry of Jesus. Simon’s obedience and declaration of his sinfulness, and especially the final note that Simon, James, and John “left everything and followed” contrast both with the earlier “amazement” of the crowds and with the questions and opposition characteristic of the Pharisees and teachers of the law in the later episodes of this chapter. His further statement, “Go away from me, Lord,” contrasts even more sharply with attempts by people at Nazareth and Capernaum, as it were, to keep Jesus to themselves.”
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