As you may know, in any electoral system, there are records kept of voting patterns. Political boundary lines are drawn that identify these voting patterns. One can, via gerrymandering pretty much guarantee any kind of electoral outcome.
We have in the Middle East a unique situation. The government of Lebanon is roughly divided into two Islamic parts, Sunni and Shiite and one Christian Maronite part. The government of Lebanon disarmed all the parties of the last civil war EXCEPT Hezbollah. And recently Hezbollah went to war with Israel. This is sort of like the Republicans or the Democrats deciding to attack Canada. Since these political parties do not go around with weapons, Hazbollah is probably a bit more like the brown shirts of the mid 20th century.
Of late, Hazbollah has made a point driving into non-Hezbollah neighborhoods, intimidating the populace, and then launching a bunch of rockets at Israel. When Israel attacks the launch points, a bunch of non-Hezbos are screwed.
In World War 2, the United States Air Force learned how to create fire storms in cities like Tokyo and Dresden. There is a precedent for this kind of thing.
What say that some guys in Jewish intelligence get hold of the voting patterns of the last Lebanese election, and turn those districts that voted most heavily for Hesbollah into scorched earth. Since Israel will be damned for inflicting civilian casualties, they might as well go after Hesbollah's supporters in Lebanon. This will help motivate the Hesbos to defend their own neighborhoods instead of taking their show on the road.
There's a story of two guys in a forest who see a bear charging. One guy stops to lace up his running shoes. The second guy asks why he's doing that b/c neither of them can possibly outrun the bear. The first guy replies that he need not outrun the bear, merely the second guy. This is the kind of dynamic that's needed in Lebanon. The non-Hesbollah folks of Lebanon need to find ways to drop a dime on the Hesbos. If they don't, they're just cannon fodder for the Syrians and Iranians.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Saturday, July 29, 2006
movies i'd like to see
I just left the family room in disgust. The TV was playing some movie. The blonde woman was being chased by some crazy guy with murderous intent. Let's see... a) will she run backwards from the guy and trip on a tree root? b) will she get into the car and it won't start, or no keys, or whatever? c) will she pull out a large calibre hand gun and put daylight through him? If you've seen any scary movies in the last couple decades you know the answer has only once in the entire history of cinema been #c.
And in juxtapose with the blonde demonstrating a total mastery of murphyesque ineptitude, there is the crazy guy. Whereas she does everything in haphazardly, he glides through the scene finding a rock of exactly the perfect size to bash the car's windshield. The glass is a marvelous tempered non-safety variety that shatters immediately into little crumbles. Obviously, the movie gods are merely toying with this crazy, because despite his invincibility and total command of the scene, and despite the utter ineptitude of the girl, YOU KNOW he'll be dead at the end of the scene after the girl demonstrates plucky determination and dispatches him in an utterly implausible fashion.
Hollywood needs to get out of its rut. Instead of showing the same tired scene over and over again with different types of slashers and different sorts of blondes with plucky determination, show us something new. Here are some suggestions:
1) the blonde dials 9-1-1, locks herself in the bathroom, and the cops arrest the crazy. He is locked up in some mental hospital and spends the rest of his days in counselling.
2) the police show up, put daylight thru the perp, and then are sentenced to prison for their "disproportionate" response.
3) the crazy proceeds to kill the blonde and everyone else who stands in his way. A grateful nation makes him supreme leader and the UN gives him a seat on the Security Council.
C'mon Hollywood, let's see #3. Bonus points: make the crazy Iranian and the girl Jewish.
And in juxtapose with the blonde demonstrating a total mastery of murphyesque ineptitude, there is the crazy guy. Whereas she does everything in haphazardly, he glides through the scene finding a rock of exactly the perfect size to bash the car's windshield. The glass is a marvelous tempered non-safety variety that shatters immediately into little crumbles. Obviously, the movie gods are merely toying with this crazy, because despite his invincibility and total command of the scene, and despite the utter ineptitude of the girl, YOU KNOW he'll be dead at the end of the scene after the girl demonstrates plucky determination and dispatches him in an utterly implausible fashion.
Hollywood needs to get out of its rut. Instead of showing the same tired scene over and over again with different types of slashers and different sorts of blondes with plucky determination, show us something new. Here are some suggestions:
1) the blonde dials 9-1-1, locks herself in the bathroom, and the cops arrest the crazy. He is locked up in some mental hospital and spends the rest of his days in counselling.
2) the police show up, put daylight thru the perp, and then are sentenced to prison for their "disproportionate" response.
3) the crazy proceeds to kill the blonde and everyone else who stands in his way. A grateful nation makes him supreme leader and the UN gives him a seat on the Security Council.
C'mon Hollywood, let's see #3. Bonus points: make the crazy Iranian and the girl Jewish.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Don't Judge Me
On two occasions I've seen someone on television say, "Don't judge me..." The first occasion, I was watching "My Name Is Earl" and the person who said it, Brett Butler, would perpetrate some aweful thing and immediately say mantra-like, "Don't judge me." Moments later, she'd do something equally bad and repeat her mantra. The second occasion occured when my daughter was watching a teen show, Gilmore Girls, and the young mom said to her teen daughter, "Don't judge me..." and then supplied some reason I forget.
In the first case, Brett Butler plays someone who screws up time and again, then uses the "don't judge me" line as a vaccination against self-improvement.
In the second case, the Gilmore mom is merely inarticulate. She mispoke. She intended to say "don't condemn me." And she gave reasons to justify herself. Judging is different from condemning. Best to remember that.
Self-justification is related to judging. When Brett Butler on My Name Is Earl said "Don't judge me" she had already judged herself and condemned herself.
We all know what Jesus said about judging: The way you judge others is the way you should expect to be judged. I want to be judged generously and mercifully. I hope I judge others that way. Tell me whether this is so or not.
I know the only way I'll improve is if I get feedback, positive or negative. Go ahead and judge me.
In the first case, Brett Butler plays someone who screws up time and again, then uses the "don't judge me" line as a vaccination against self-improvement.
In the second case, the Gilmore mom is merely inarticulate. She mispoke. She intended to say "don't condemn me." And she gave reasons to justify herself. Judging is different from condemning. Best to remember that.
Self-justification is related to judging. When Brett Butler on My Name Is Earl said "Don't judge me" she had already judged herself and condemned herself.
We all know what Jesus said about judging: The way you judge others is the way you should expect to be judged. I want to be judged generously and mercifully. I hope I judge others that way. Tell me whether this is so or not.
I know the only way I'll improve is if I get feedback, positive or negative. Go ahead and judge me.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Cheeks and Teeth
Last week we had a discussion at work about whether the Christian ethic is inconsistent or not. Moses said, "Eye for an eye" and Jesus said, "Turn the other cheek." But Jesus endorsed the law of Moses.
What gives?
I've always regarded apparent contradictions as an opportunity to learn. These are generally resolved by finding distinctions. And one learns as one finds distinctions. (If you know how to distinguish between Monza Red and Candy Apple Red, you've learned something about cars.)
Resolving the "eye for an eye" versus "turn the other cheek" problem involves distinguishing between large injuries and small injuries. There's an old saying that, "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye." If you're messing with a Red Ryder BB gun and someone puts an eye out with that thing, it's a big deal. You should get into legal trouble if it wasn't an accident.
But not every injury rises to that level. There's a popular book entitled, "Don't sweat the small stuff." When Jesus says to turn the other cheek, he's talking about a small thing that's best not blown all out of proportion. The Romans had a law that said that a Judean could be forced to carry a Legionaire's gear one mile. Jesus told people to go the extra mile. If everybody is doing more than what's required of them in a million small ways, society will get along better. I think of this as social lubricant.
Thou shalt cut the other guy some slack, give him the benefit of the doubt. We are imperfect beings who work with partial knowledge. Jesus's ethic of social lubricant provides a coping mechanism for this.
I once told someone this and she said, "Does this mean I should be a doormat?" And I replied, "No, sometimes you run out of doubt." There are times when there is no doubt that a crime has been committed. There are times when whatever social framework within which you find yourself, e.g. the laws of the state of Michigan, specifies sanctions and punishments for specific misdeeds. In those cases, you pursue justice.
The Christian exists in tension of Mercy and Justice. We care about right and wrong, so we recognize and we embrace Justice. But we acknowledge we're sinners and we seek Mercy.
So, where do you draw the line between small things that you make a point of mercifully letting things slide versus large things where you pursue justice? It depends upon you. Jesus said that the same strictness by which you judge others will be the strictness by which you will be judged.
What gives?
I've always regarded apparent contradictions as an opportunity to learn. These are generally resolved by finding distinctions. And one learns as one finds distinctions. (If you know how to distinguish between Monza Red and Candy Apple Red, you've learned something about cars.)
Resolving the "eye for an eye" versus "turn the other cheek" problem involves distinguishing between large injuries and small injuries. There's an old saying that, "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye." If you're messing with a Red Ryder BB gun and someone puts an eye out with that thing, it's a big deal. You should get into legal trouble if it wasn't an accident.
But not every injury rises to that level. There's a popular book entitled, "Don't sweat the small stuff." When Jesus says to turn the other cheek, he's talking about a small thing that's best not blown all out of proportion. The Romans had a law that said that a Judean could be forced to carry a Legionaire's gear one mile. Jesus told people to go the extra mile. If everybody is doing more than what's required of them in a million small ways, society will get along better. I think of this as social lubricant.
Thou shalt cut the other guy some slack, give him the benefit of the doubt. We are imperfect beings who work with partial knowledge. Jesus's ethic of social lubricant provides a coping mechanism for this.
I once told someone this and she said, "Does this mean I should be a doormat?" And I replied, "No, sometimes you run out of doubt." There are times when there is no doubt that a crime has been committed. There are times when whatever social framework within which you find yourself, e.g. the laws of the state of Michigan, specifies sanctions and punishments for specific misdeeds. In those cases, you pursue justice.
The Christian exists in tension of Mercy and Justice. We care about right and wrong, so we recognize and we embrace Justice. But we acknowledge we're sinners and we seek Mercy.
So, where do you draw the line between small things that you make a point of mercifully letting things slide versus large things where you pursue justice? It depends upon you. Jesus said that the same strictness by which you judge others will be the strictness by which you will be judged.
Monday, July 17, 2006
The Billion Dollar Hamburg
If you're a private pilot, you've heard of the "hundred dollar hamburg." This is what you get when you climb into an airplane and burn a hundred dollars' worth of aviation fuel to fly to some locale to buy lunch--a hamburg. It's not about the hamburg; it's about the flying.
I just watched the Space Shuttle land. When it did, a NASA flack said, "Discovery's crew completing a 5.3 million mile mission to restore the International Space Station to an assembly-ready status and proving they can use a fifty-foot boom as a heatshield repair platform." Last night I heard Matt Drudge say the former consists of "taking out the space station's garbage." And when they were playing with the fifty-foot boom I heard it described as standing on it and jumping up and down a lot. This business about repairing the Space Shuttle heatshield is important because one Space Shuttle has been lost because a bit of foam nicked the fragile bricks that serve as the Space Shuttle heat shield. (Of course, if you didn't fly this turkey, you wouldn't have to worry about its heatshield failing.)
I've been watching Space Shuttles take off and land on TV for a quarter of a century. That's twice as long as I watched the "moonshots" on TV for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects combined. During the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects NASA was working toward an identifiable goal articulated by JFK. The accomplishments of this Space Shuttle mission is fairly typical. NASA has spent billions of dollars in low earth orbit growing soybeans and watching spiders spin webs in zero gee.
It's not as if they haven't accomplished anything in this quarter century. They've built the International Space Station.
When I was a kid, the Space Station was this spinning wheel in high orbit that served as a stopping-off point on the way to the Moon or Mars. (NASA has little more than paper studies--that they've paid millions for--to go there.) And the International Space Station? It's an unfinished tin can that circles the earth in low earth orbit doing stuff like growing soybeans and watching spiders spin webs in zero gee. It's "International" because the Russians send cosmonauts up there and we send astronauts up there. I suppose they spend all day shaking hands and toasting each other in the other-guy's language for world peace. The International Space Station must do something more significant than that, I hope they serve great hamburgers.
I just watched the Space Shuttle land. When it did, a NASA flack said, "Discovery's crew completing a 5.3 million mile mission to restore the International Space Station to an assembly-ready status and proving they can use a fifty-foot boom as a heatshield repair platform." Last night I heard Matt Drudge say the former consists of "taking out the space station's garbage." And when they were playing with the fifty-foot boom I heard it described as standing on it and jumping up and down a lot. This business about repairing the Space Shuttle heatshield is important because one Space Shuttle has been lost because a bit of foam nicked the fragile bricks that serve as the Space Shuttle heat shield. (Of course, if you didn't fly this turkey, you wouldn't have to worry about its heatshield failing.)
I've been watching Space Shuttles take off and land on TV for a quarter of a century. That's twice as long as I watched the "moonshots" on TV for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects combined. During the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects NASA was working toward an identifiable goal articulated by JFK. The accomplishments of this Space Shuttle mission is fairly typical. NASA has spent billions of dollars in low earth orbit growing soybeans and watching spiders spin webs in zero gee.
It's not as if they haven't accomplished anything in this quarter century. They've built the International Space Station.
When I was a kid, the Space Station was this spinning wheel in high orbit that served as a stopping-off point on the way to the Moon or Mars. (NASA has little more than paper studies--that they've paid millions for--to go there.) And the International Space Station? It's an unfinished tin can that circles the earth in low earth orbit doing stuff like growing soybeans and watching spiders spin webs in zero gee. It's "International" because the Russians send cosmonauts up there and we send astronauts up there. I suppose they spend all day shaking hands and toasting each other in the other-guy's language for world peace. The International Space Station must do something more significant than that, I hope they serve great hamburgers.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Greenhouse Effects
If Al Gore is to be believed, global climactic change caused by human activity is an inconvenient truth. Mr. Gore has spent the last couple of decades claiming that we are just ten years away from the point of no return. I recall claims of environmental devastation, just ten years away, dating back to the 1970s.
Let's suppose for a moment that carbon dioxide emissions are causing global warming. What is to be done about it? There was that Kyoto thing that levied carbon taxes on the countries that create wealth (while burning fossil fuels) and didn't do anything to poorer countries that also emit as much or more carbon dioxide. (I am uncertain where carbon tax money would be spent, but I suppose Mr. Gore has an idea.)
The whole idea underlying this is that since CO2 emissions cause global warming and reduced CO2 emissions will undo the badness. I think such a notion of causality is simplistic. Life is full of effects that are not negated when you negate their causes. A divorce can be caused by unfaithfulness, but subsequent faithfulness will not necessarily cause reconciliation. Is restricting CO2 emissions the most effective way to counter global warming? Are there ways to reflect more solar energy into space? For instance, clouds are white and provide shade. It's fairly easy to create clouds. Don't like clouds? OK, there are other ways. Let's treat global warming as an engineering problem.
"But, but, but," the environmentalist says, "we don't understand atmosphere dynamics well enough to 'engineer' climate." Is that so? Then how can you pontificate about global warming with such certainty?
My complaint is that Mr. Gore has his legion of Lysenkos who chant impending doom. The impending doom is too dire to wait until they understand the problem well enough to prove it. They say that emitting CO2 causes global warming and offer nothing more substantial than to stop emitting CO2. That wouldn't be a problem, except for the fact that we're talking about committing trillions of dollars to unproven hypotheses.
Let's suppose for a moment that carbon dioxide emissions are causing global warming. What is to be done about it? There was that Kyoto thing that levied carbon taxes on the countries that create wealth (while burning fossil fuels) and didn't do anything to poorer countries that also emit as much or more carbon dioxide. (I am uncertain where carbon tax money would be spent, but I suppose Mr. Gore has an idea.)
The whole idea underlying this is that since CO2 emissions cause global warming and reduced CO2 emissions will undo the badness. I think such a notion of causality is simplistic. Life is full of effects that are not negated when you negate their causes. A divorce can be caused by unfaithfulness, but subsequent faithfulness will not necessarily cause reconciliation. Is restricting CO2 emissions the most effective way to counter global warming? Are there ways to reflect more solar energy into space? For instance, clouds are white and provide shade. It's fairly easy to create clouds. Don't like clouds? OK, there are other ways. Let's treat global warming as an engineering problem.
"But, but, but," the environmentalist says, "we don't understand atmosphere dynamics well enough to 'engineer' climate." Is that so? Then how can you pontificate about global warming with such certainty?
My complaint is that Mr. Gore has his legion of Lysenkos who chant impending doom. The impending doom is too dire to wait until they understand the problem well enough to prove it. They say that emitting CO2 causes global warming and offer nothing more substantial than to stop emitting CO2. That wouldn't be a problem, except for the fact that we're talking about committing trillions of dollars to unproven hypotheses.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Caveat eBay
Earlier, I wrote of my little problem with a no-name thumbdrive I bought on eBay. To summarize, I found a 4GB thumb drive on eBay that checked out fine, and it reported 4GB capacity, but when I started copying files onto it that were greater than or equal to 1GB, the files read back corrupted.
I repeated the experiment with a 2nd no-name thumb drive (also 4GB advertised capacity). This time I found that it flaked out when I tried to write more than 1/2GB to it.
Now, maybe the vendors in question, obscure Hong Kong operators I've never heard of, are honorable and honest businessmen. But I now I have reason to doubt. Two no-name thumb drives each flaked out in roughly the same way and they flaked out in a fashion consistent with the manufacturer fraudulently substituting a cheaper 1/2GB or 1GB chip for the advertised 4GB memory chip and then hiding the fraud via firmware.
So, I thought, maybe this is a problem with WinXP or with my hardware. Easy enough to verify, I stopped by Best Buy and I bought a SanDisk Cruzer 4GB thumb drive. It's pretty cool. It has no cap to get lost, instead the USB socket retracts into the body of the thumb drive.
I repeated the above experiment with this drive, too: I copied 2.39GB worth of large MP3 files to the thumb drive. Then I checked each file for goodness. It was fine.
So, I learned something. Caveat eBay. If a deal on some big of cheap electronic gear seems like it's too good to be true, it is too good to be true.
Could I cause trouble for the two Hong Kong vendors who screwed me out of the difference between a 1GB and a 4GB thumb drive? I don't rightly know how. And I'm not highly motivated to take on the role of avenger of justice.
I am not happy with myself for having been taken. I am also unhappy with eBay for not shutting down these guys. On the other hand, I am quite happy with the 4GB thumb drive I just got from Best Buy.
I repeated the experiment with a 2nd no-name thumb drive (also 4GB advertised capacity). This time I found that it flaked out when I tried to write more than 1/2GB to it.
Now, maybe the vendors in question, obscure Hong Kong operators I've never heard of, are honorable and honest businessmen. But I now I have reason to doubt. Two no-name thumb drives each flaked out in roughly the same way and they flaked out in a fashion consistent with the manufacturer fraudulently substituting a cheaper 1/2GB or 1GB chip for the advertised 4GB memory chip and then hiding the fraud via firmware.
So, I thought, maybe this is a problem with WinXP or with my hardware. Easy enough to verify, I stopped by Best Buy and I bought a SanDisk Cruzer 4GB thumb drive. It's pretty cool. It has no cap to get lost, instead the USB socket retracts into the body of the thumb drive.
I repeated the above experiment with this drive, too: I copied 2.39GB worth of large MP3 files to the thumb drive. Then I checked each file for goodness. It was fine.
So, I learned something. Caveat eBay. If a deal on some big of cheap electronic gear seems like it's too good to be true, it is too good to be true.
Could I cause trouble for the two Hong Kong vendors who screwed me out of the difference between a 1GB and a 4GB thumb drive? I don't rightly know how. And I'm not highly motivated to take on the role of avenger of justice.
I am not happy with myself for having been taken. I am also unhappy with eBay for not shutting down these guys. On the other hand, I am quite happy with the 4GB thumb drive I just got from Best Buy.
Monday, July 03, 2006
The Bible and Immigration Policy
My wife pointed me to Leviticus 19:33-34 and asked if it applied to the debate about border security and amnesty for illegal aliens in the US. It reads like this:
33 " 'When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. 34 The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.
This sounds more like the Senate version than the House version of pending immigration reform legislation. Of course, in this fight I've been more interested in the corporate lawbreakers who get a cheap workforce to exploit via illegal immigration. If the guy's illegal, how can he sue you for OSHA or Minimum Wage violations. So, my first application of this passage is to corporate welfare queens, not my Bircher friends who want to secure the borders with some kind of wall. (This reminds me of Hadrian's wall, or the Berlin Wall, or the Great Wall of China and I'm not wild about it. Before 9/11, I'd be perfectly happy to dispense with the whole business of borders. I know it is impractical because other countries don't have welfare and laws regulating emergency room medical care and lawyers aiming to get rich suing corporations, etc.)
But the Bible says I'm not to mistreat immigrants, legal or otherwise. So, is this why Mr. Bush is screwing over the House of Representatives? Just begging them to make him a lame duck BEFORE the mid-term elections? Maybe. Mr. Bush's hijinks as well as those of various RINO Senators have transformed me from a free-borders type to an immigration hawk.
So, what about Leviticus 19:33-34? I looked at the fine print and then my eyes happened to spy Leviticus 19:28. " 'Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.
Hmmmm, this verse generally gets quoted by those who forbid all body piercing along with tattoos. So, I told my spouse to go ahead and cite Leviticus 19:33-34 when you're debating immigration policy, but when you do, you'd best not be wearing peirced earrings.
33 " 'When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. 34 The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.
This sounds more like the Senate version than the House version of pending immigration reform legislation. Of course, in this fight I've been more interested in the corporate lawbreakers who get a cheap workforce to exploit via illegal immigration. If the guy's illegal, how can he sue you for OSHA or Minimum Wage violations. So, my first application of this passage is to corporate welfare queens, not my Bircher friends who want to secure the borders with some kind of wall. (This reminds me of Hadrian's wall, or the Berlin Wall, or the Great Wall of China and I'm not wild about it. Before 9/11, I'd be perfectly happy to dispense with the whole business of borders. I know it is impractical because other countries don't have welfare and laws regulating emergency room medical care and lawyers aiming to get rich suing corporations, etc.)
But the Bible says I'm not to mistreat immigrants, legal or otherwise. So, is this why Mr. Bush is screwing over the House of Representatives? Just begging them to make him a lame duck BEFORE the mid-term elections? Maybe. Mr. Bush's hijinks as well as those of various RINO Senators have transformed me from a free-borders type to an immigration hawk.
So, what about Leviticus 19:33-34? I looked at the fine print and then my eyes happened to spy Leviticus 19:28. " 'Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.
Hmmmm, this verse generally gets quoted by those who forbid all body piercing along with tattoos. So, I told my spouse to go ahead and cite Leviticus 19:33-34 when you're debating immigration policy, but when you do, you'd best not be wearing peirced earrings.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Mystery of the missing 3 Gigabytes
Months back I was looking on eBay for a cheap thumbdrive. I noticed something odd. A lot of no-name Chinese vendors were selling higher capacity thumb drives than American vendors I'd done business with before (Sandisk and PNY). And these drives were cheap, too! So, I bought a couple 4GB drives and they worked fine. I was one happy camper.
That was until I replaced the hard disk in my basement computer and that entailed reinstalling a bunch of software, including that of my RadioShark. I don't use my basement computer much. It basically sits down there and waits until Sunday morning whereupon it wakes up and runs a Tivo-like program on my RadioShark that records Jazz Brunch on my local classic rock station, WLAV. About a month went by and I had a lot of recorded stuff downstairs piling up. (Jazz Brunch runs when I'm in church and I figure it's a fair use to time-shift it for listening during the week. Disagree? Sue me.)
After a while, I copied the recordings to a thumb drive and took it upstairs to my laptop to listen to. Didn't work. I was distracted and I let more time pass. I figured the problem was some stupid DRM on the Windows WMA recording format. I switched to WAV. It seemed to work at the expense of massive files. After working once, that failed, too. A week later, I switched to MP3s. Still no workie.
Hmmmmm. I really am not dumb, though I act that way occasionally. I finally got bothered enough by what was obviously something that should be working not working that I payed attention to what I was doing. And I couldn't find my no-name high capacity thumb drive, so I picked up a 1GB drive from PNY. It took all the files and carried them to my laptop safely.
This is what they say in the detective business is called a clue.
(Oddly, I had already done an XCOPY/v and it said everything was fine. Liar.)
Then I formatted the cheapo 4GB drive and carried files to my laptop just fine. I copied more files and this time I tested each file after copying it. After a dozen or so files, everything I copied afterwards would be corrupted. Strangely, even if I deleted some files, subsequent files would be corrupt. So, I reformatted the 4GB drive and copied a bunch of MP3s thereto. I looked at each file to see where the file corruption started.
Turned out that the first bunch of files were OK, but the next one was bad half-way through and all files copied thereafter were bad. I deleted just the bad and half-bad files and then checked the properties of the good files. They summed to 933MB and the half-bad file had been over 100mb.
OK, the drive lets me format and thereafter copy up to 1GB of files thereto correctly. After that WinXP, and even DOS's XCOPY, say that all is fine while copying data into corrupt data. Just writing to that 2nd GB and beyond causes the thumbdrive to thereafter store corrupt data without warning. Not good.
Is this a cautionary tale? Not to buy el cheapo thumb drives off eBay from insidious Hong Kong merchants, but to stick with known vendors like PNY or SanDisk?
Idunno. I'm going to repeat this experiment with a different cheapo drive. And I'm CERTAINLY going to be more thorough about testing thumbdrives in the future.
Update: I performed these experiments on the 2nd el-cheapo thumb drive and also on a 4GB SanDisk Cruzer drive as described here
That was until I replaced the hard disk in my basement computer and that entailed reinstalling a bunch of software, including that of my RadioShark. I don't use my basement computer much. It basically sits down there and waits until Sunday morning whereupon it wakes up and runs a Tivo-like program on my RadioShark that records Jazz Brunch on my local classic rock station, WLAV. About a month went by and I had a lot of recorded stuff downstairs piling up. (Jazz Brunch runs when I'm in church and I figure it's a fair use to time-shift it for listening during the week. Disagree? Sue me.)
After a while, I copied the recordings to a thumb drive and took it upstairs to my laptop to listen to. Didn't work. I was distracted and I let more time pass. I figured the problem was some stupid DRM on the Windows WMA recording format. I switched to WAV. It seemed to work at the expense of massive files. After working once, that failed, too. A week later, I switched to MP3s. Still no workie.
Hmmmmm. I really am not dumb, though I act that way occasionally. I finally got bothered enough by what was obviously something that should be working not working that I payed attention to what I was doing. And I couldn't find my no-name high capacity thumb drive, so I picked up a 1GB drive from PNY. It took all the files and carried them to my laptop safely.
This is what they say in the detective business is called a clue.
(Oddly, I had already done an XCOPY/v and it said everything was fine. Liar.)
Then I formatted the cheapo 4GB drive and carried files to my laptop just fine. I copied more files and this time I tested each file after copying it. After a dozen or so files, everything I copied afterwards would be corrupted. Strangely, even if I deleted some files, subsequent files would be corrupt. So, I reformatted the 4GB drive and copied a bunch of MP3s thereto. I looked at each file to see where the file corruption started.
Turned out that the first bunch of files were OK, but the next one was bad half-way through and all files copied thereafter were bad. I deleted just the bad and half-bad files and then checked the properties of the good files. They summed to 933MB and the half-bad file had been over 100mb.
OK, the drive lets me format and thereafter copy up to 1GB of files thereto correctly. After that WinXP, and even DOS's XCOPY, say that all is fine while copying data into corrupt data. Just writing to that 2nd GB and beyond causes the thumbdrive to thereafter store corrupt data without warning. Not good.
Is this a cautionary tale? Not to buy el cheapo thumb drives off eBay from insidious Hong Kong merchants, but to stick with known vendors like PNY or SanDisk?
Idunno. I'm going to repeat this experiment with a different cheapo drive. And I'm CERTAINLY going to be more thorough about testing thumbdrives in the future.
Update: I performed these experiments on the 2nd el-cheapo thumb drive and also on a 4GB SanDisk Cruzer drive as described here
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Atheist/Agnostic Evangelical Christians
I received some spam just now. The subject line said, "Christianity in America Won't Survive Another Decade..." There's part of me that resonates with this sentiment. This is an atheistic and/or agnostic sentiment.
The spam continues: "Christianity in America won’t survive another decade… unless we do something now."
I think that if Christianity in America didn't survive the next decade, that would be a catastrophicly Bad Thing.
This spam message starts by saying Christianity in America WON'T SURVIVE. But then it says Christianity in America won't survive UNLESS WE DO SOMETHING NOW. Which is it? Will Christianity in America NOT survive or not survive UNLESS I do something? I suspect that the SOMETHING includes sending money to whoever spammed me.
All this is an atheistic sentiment because it presumes the success or failure of Christianity depends upon something humans do (or fail to do).
Does God get any say in this matter?
I've had the opportunity to visit a couple Baptist churches whose membership has rapidly declined of late. I feel a little bad about this. But my bad feeling is moderated by the knowledge that every true church is the property of God--not the preacher or the board or the membership.
I believe in the Sovereignty of God and I believe God works through people. But the ultimate ownership of a true church lies in God's hands. If you're someone like Kierkegaard or Bonhoeffer and you think there's something wrong with your church, it might be that it's not God's church. If there's any message we should take from Kierkegaard or Bonhoeffer, it is to make your calling and election sure, and apply that not just individually but corporately.
I'll grant that false churches may belong to the preacher or the board or the membership. And most probably such churches will not survive unless their owners do something. If you're in the business of selling Christian-oriented kitsch this will probably hurt your bottom line.
Therefore, here is my modest proposal for all those churches that won't survive unless we do something now: Get corporate sponsorship from those people who make so much money selling Christian-oriented kitsch. It's clearly in their financial interst.
The spam continues: "Christianity in America won’t survive another decade… unless we do something now."
I think that if Christianity in America didn't survive the next decade, that would be a catastrophicly Bad Thing.
This spam message starts by saying Christianity in America WON'T SURVIVE. But then it says Christianity in America won't survive UNLESS WE DO SOMETHING NOW. Which is it? Will Christianity in America NOT survive or not survive UNLESS I do something? I suspect that the SOMETHING includes sending money to whoever spammed me.
All this is an atheistic sentiment because it presumes the success or failure of Christianity depends upon something humans do (or fail to do).
Does God get any say in this matter?
I've had the opportunity to visit a couple Baptist churches whose membership has rapidly declined of late. I feel a little bad about this. But my bad feeling is moderated by the knowledge that every true church is the property of God--not the preacher or the board or the membership.
I believe in the Sovereignty of God and I believe God works through people. But the ultimate ownership of a true church lies in God's hands. If you're someone like Kierkegaard or Bonhoeffer and you think there's something wrong with your church, it might be that it's not God's church. If there's any message we should take from Kierkegaard or Bonhoeffer, it is to make your calling and election sure, and apply that not just individually but corporately.
I'll grant that false churches may belong to the preacher or the board or the membership. And most probably such churches will not survive unless their owners do something. If you're in the business of selling Christian-oriented kitsch this will probably hurt your bottom line.
Therefore, here is my modest proposal for all those churches that won't survive unless we do something now: Get corporate sponsorship from those people who make so much money selling Christian-oriented kitsch. It's clearly in their financial interst.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Messengers we're not allowed to reply to
Months back I read a book by a New Yorker columnist that I found quite apt. And last week, a friend sent a book review this guy had written in the New Yorker. It looked interesting and decided to buy this book. I'm on vacation. So, I had to find a bookstore in Grand Haven, MI. The Bookman is a nice place. Not as mega-huge as Barnes & Noble, but bigger than most mom and pop stores. I like book people. The girl behind the counter looked up the book I was seeking in her computer and led me to it in the stacks. Since it was the first day of my vacation, I asked her where I might find the penny dreadfuls. She led me to the Science Fiction section and I accepted her recommendation. I was pleased to work with someone who like myself loves books and reads widely. As I was paying for the books, I looked arount for my daughter to let her know we'd be leaving soon. My eyes fell upon the visage of a beautiful blonde in a low cut blouse: Ann Coulter.
I had just read one of my favorite right-wing bloggers criticize her (agreeing with Mrs. Hillary Clinton) for insulting about the 9/11 widows. In the narrow context cited by the critics, Ms. Coulter's prose was indefensible.
When someone gets condemned by BOTH the Left and Right, I figure I'd better see for myself what's up. (For instance, I read The Duh Vinci Code, and found out that, yup, both liberal and conservative scholars were right that it's historical fantasy.) Thus, I added "Godless: The Church of Liberalism" to my purchase. I recited the reasons above to justify my purchase. Nevertheless, I sensed disappointment/disapproval.
Yesterday, I started reading Ann Coulter's book and I started laughing. This is red-meat for conservatives. If you're a liberal, you'll froth at the mouth. If you're a liberal with a heart condition, Yeah, read this book BEFORE the next election. I joked to my daughter, "Ann Coulter is crack cocaine for conservatives!" And I've been reading aloud passages and laughing ever since.
Then I came to chapter 5 "Liberals' Doctrine Of Infallibility: Sobbing Hysterical Women." This is the exact point where everyone criticizes Ann Coulter, so I paid closer attention. Here is the first sentence of this chapter: "Liberals are perennially enraged that Republicans are allowed to talk back."
I'll grant that the junior Senator from New York is enraged. I also see that this thesis cannot be attacked directly.
Ms. Coulter goes on to say that liberals have sought "sobbing hysterical women" to carry their message. When Ms. Coulter refers to "sobbing hysterical women" she is (figuratively) referring as much to Mr. Max Cleland and Mr. John Murtha as she (literally) referring is to Casey Sheehan's mother or any 9/11 widows. Ms. Coulter writes, "Finally, the Democrats hit on an ingenious strategy: They would choose only messengers whom we're not allowed to reply to. That's why all Democratic spokesmen these days are sobbing, hysterical women. You can't respond to them because would be questioning the authenticity of their suffering."
Now, that's an interesting point that hasn't made it into the open! Mrs. Clinton certainly does not want us to dwell upon this point and would dearly love to distract us from. It is a point that my friends on the right should not miss.
Let's suppose Mr. Michael Moore posits some goofball policy position. With the advent of Fox News and the non-traditional media, we can have a dialog whereby his ideas can be critiqued. Ms. Coulter has identified a key trick in the liberal playbook: select mouthpieces (sobbing hysterical women) who cannot be contradicted. If a "sobbing hysterical woman" proposes policy that doesn't hold together, like proposing we move our troops from Iraq to a quick-deployment staging point 5,000 miles away, I can't critique it because I am not a Vietnam veteran like Mr. Murtha. (How dare I be insensitive to Mr. Murtha's post-traumatic stress disorder!) We really can't trust the judgement of "hysterical sobbing women." We owe them a modicum of courtesy and sympathy, but that's it. When "hysterical sobbing women" make a career of their victimhood, we mustn't forget the limits of courtesy and sympathy.
Is Ms. Coulter over the top? Yes. If you agree with her, you'll get a huge laugh and if you disagree, you'll foam at the mouth. However, she has a point: Policy positions should be the subject of open discussion and debate. Shame on the Democrats for exploiting "hysterical sobbing women" to squelch policy debate.
Should Rush Limbaugh refer to the 9/11 widows as the "Jersey Girls" and should Ann Coulter refer to them as "harpies" or "witches of East Brunswick." Probably not. On one hand, I like the idea that such things give liberals an excuse to underestimate the Right. I enjoy the laughs that such over-the-topness evoke. On the other hand, I prefer civility in public discourse. It's enlightening that the Right manages to say some very tough things about the other side while never uttering vulgarities. However, I've never been able to scope out a Lefty blog without being exposed to multiple obsenities. Ms. Coulter does not use dirty words when she eviscerates her political opponents. Nevertheless, she does coarsen the discussion.
I think that Ms. Coulter muddies her thesis that "Democrats choose only messengers whom we're not allowed to reply to" with a second thesis that "personal tragedy does not immunize against criticism." I agree with both theses, but lament the fact that the first hasn't gotten more attention.
I had just read one of my favorite right-wing bloggers criticize her (agreeing with Mrs. Hillary Clinton) for insulting about the 9/11 widows. In the narrow context cited by the critics, Ms. Coulter's prose was indefensible.
When someone gets condemned by BOTH the Left and Right, I figure I'd better see for myself what's up. (For instance, I read The Duh Vinci Code, and found out that, yup, both liberal and conservative scholars were right that it's historical fantasy.) Thus, I added "Godless: The Church of Liberalism" to my purchase. I recited the reasons above to justify my purchase. Nevertheless, I sensed disappointment/disapproval.
Yesterday, I started reading Ann Coulter's book and I started laughing. This is red-meat for conservatives. If you're a liberal, you'll froth at the mouth. If you're a liberal with a heart condition, Yeah, read this book BEFORE the next election. I joked to my daughter, "Ann Coulter is crack cocaine for conservatives!" And I've been reading aloud passages and laughing ever since.
Then I came to chapter 5 "Liberals' Doctrine Of Infallibility: Sobbing Hysterical Women." This is the exact point where everyone criticizes Ann Coulter, so I paid closer attention. Here is the first sentence of this chapter: "Liberals are perennially enraged that Republicans are allowed to talk back."
I'll grant that the junior Senator from New York is enraged. I also see that this thesis cannot be attacked directly.
Ms. Coulter goes on to say that liberals have sought "sobbing hysterical women" to carry their message. When Ms. Coulter refers to "sobbing hysterical women" she is (figuratively) referring as much to Mr. Max Cleland and Mr. John Murtha as she (literally) referring is to Casey Sheehan's mother or any 9/11 widows. Ms. Coulter writes, "Finally, the Democrats hit on an ingenious strategy: They would choose only messengers whom we're not allowed to reply to. That's why all Democratic spokesmen these days are sobbing, hysterical women. You can't respond to them because would be questioning the authenticity of their suffering."
Now, that's an interesting point that hasn't made it into the open! Mrs. Clinton certainly does not want us to dwell upon this point and would dearly love to distract us from. It is a point that my friends on the right should not miss.
Let's suppose Mr. Michael Moore posits some goofball policy position. With the advent of Fox News and the non-traditional media, we can have a dialog whereby his ideas can be critiqued. Ms. Coulter has identified a key trick in the liberal playbook: select mouthpieces (sobbing hysterical women) who cannot be contradicted. If a "sobbing hysterical woman" proposes policy that doesn't hold together, like proposing we move our troops from Iraq to a quick-deployment staging point 5,000 miles away, I can't critique it because I am not a Vietnam veteran like Mr. Murtha. (How dare I be insensitive to Mr. Murtha's post-traumatic stress disorder!) We really can't trust the judgement of "hysterical sobbing women." We owe them a modicum of courtesy and sympathy, but that's it. When "hysterical sobbing women" make a career of their victimhood, we mustn't forget the limits of courtesy and sympathy.
Is Ms. Coulter over the top? Yes. If you agree with her, you'll get a huge laugh and if you disagree, you'll foam at the mouth. However, she has a point: Policy positions should be the subject of open discussion and debate. Shame on the Democrats for exploiting "hysterical sobbing women" to squelch policy debate.
Should Rush Limbaugh refer to the 9/11 widows as the "Jersey Girls" and should Ann Coulter refer to them as "harpies" or "witches of East Brunswick." Probably not. On one hand, I like the idea that such things give liberals an excuse to underestimate the Right. I enjoy the laughs that such over-the-topness evoke. On the other hand, I prefer civility in public discourse. It's enlightening that the Right manages to say some very tough things about the other side while never uttering vulgarities. However, I've never been able to scope out a Lefty blog without being exposed to multiple obsenities. Ms. Coulter does not use dirty words when she eviscerates her political opponents. Nevertheless, she does coarsen the discussion.
I think that Ms. Coulter muddies her thesis that "Democrats choose only messengers whom we're not allowed to reply to" with a second thesis that "personal tragedy does not immunize against criticism." I agree with both theses, but lament the fact that the first hasn't gotten more attention.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
An Inconvenient Unit Of Measure
It's wise to double-check your prejudices from time to time. I did this when I googled "How much have sea levels risen?"
I was rewarded with this link that graphically shows how sea levels have risen over the last 120 years. If you click the link you'll see a curve with the sea level inexorably and relentlessly rising. The article says this:
"From 3,000 years ago to the start of the 19th century sea level was almost constant, rising at 0.1 to 0.2 mm/yr; since 1900 the level has risen at 1 to 3 mm/yr ; since 1992 satellite altimetry from TOPEX/Poseidon indicates a rate of about 3 mm/yr. This change may be the first signs of the effect of global warming on sea level, which is predicted to cause significant rises in sea level over the course of the twenty-first century."
You've perhaps seen the movie "Waterworld" where the entire planet is flooded.
However, when you look at size of the numbers something startling appears: that is not 3 meters/year. It's 3 millimeters/year. By fortuitous coincidence, I have had to make some close measurements that reminded me how small a millimeter actually is. 3 mm is width of a capital letter E on the printed page. During the entire modern era, sea level has risen 7.87 inches.
Mt. Everest is 8,850m (29,035 feet) tall. If present trends continue, it'll be underwater in less than 3 million years (2,952,339 AD)!
I was rewarded with this link that graphically shows how sea levels have risen over the last 120 years. If you click the link you'll see a curve with the sea level inexorably and relentlessly rising. The article says this:
"From 3,000 years ago to the start of the 19th century sea level was almost constant, rising at 0.1 to 0.2 mm/yr; since 1900 the level has risen at 1 to 3 mm/yr ; since 1992 satellite altimetry from TOPEX/Poseidon indicates a rate of about 3 mm/yr. This change may be the first signs of the effect of global warming on sea level, which is predicted to cause significant rises in sea level over the course of the twenty-first century."
You've perhaps seen the movie "Waterworld" where the entire planet is flooded.
However, when you look at size of the numbers something startling appears: that is not 3 meters/year. It's 3 millimeters/year. By fortuitous coincidence, I have had to make some close measurements that reminded me how small a millimeter actually is. 3 mm is width of a capital letter E on the printed page. During the entire modern era, sea level has risen 7.87 inches.
Mt. Everest is 8,850m (29,035 feet) tall. If present trends continue, it'll be underwater in less than 3 million years (2,952,339 AD)!
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Ecumenism and Virgins
A friend from my youth group wrote the book on Ecumenism. During college years I turned right and she turned left. In the olden days of my youth, Carl MacIntyre (when not waxing eloquent about the virtue of killing a Commie for Christ) railed upon the World Council Of Churches and other aspects of the apostasy that sprung from German Rationalism commonly called Modernism or Theological Liberalism.
Red baiting notwithstanding, I bought into Dr. MacIntyre's rejection to ecumenism. The reasoning is trivial: If you and I disagree on some point of faith, at least one of us has to be wrong. If you aren't going to change your beliefs to agree with me, and vice versa, then we can only fellowship if both of us compromise our faith. This compromise demonstrates a contempt for the content of that faith, or at least a subordination of one's faith to the end of organizational "unity."
This contempt for doctrine has taken on many forms over the years. In Evengelical circles, you see it expressed with hymnody bereft of any content, save, "Jesus loves me, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" (and it means so much more because they do the Powerpoint flying logos in a bigger typeface). It's also seen in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School materials that are so "gospel lite" that they can be sold to anychurch worship center that doesn't use a Crescent or a Star of David as a logo. The program of compromising doctrine that we rejected in the World Council of Churches has snuck in thru kitsch-dealing "Christian Stores."
Having anathematized one form of Ecumenism, I want to vindicate a second form of it.
I will not compromise the Baptist distinctives you can find expressed in the London Baptist Confession, the Philadelpha Baptist Confession or the New Hampshire Baptist Confession. I will gladly and enthusiastically assert them without qualm or reservation. And if you're not a Baptist...
Then what?
There's a joke by Emo Philips that suggests a "Die Heretic!" response. But this overlooks the fact that Baptists assert the soul liberty of the believer. You have a right to be wrong. So, don't look to me to run any Spanish Inquisition to change your mind.
To the contrary, if you disagree with me, I have an opportunity to learn from you. You don't ask the fish about the water. By talking to an Atheist, I was able to understand why it's necessary that the righteousness of God be inhumanly high. Similarly, talking to non-Baptists who I presume to be closer to God than my Atheist friend provides insights into how to approach scripture and how God relates to mankind. These insights only come out in dialog. This dialog and cooperation with non-Baptists could be construed to be Ecumenism, too.
Ecumenism can be construed to come in two flavors: 1) organizational mergers that compromise faith or 2) trans-denominational dialog that discovers and even sharpens theological distinctions with neither rancor nor bitterness.
So, I pointed out this to my Ecumenism book writing friend and she agreed that the first sort of Ecumenism was bad, but the second sort of Ecumenism is good. (She agreed with me so she must be right.)
I drank this Ecumenism flavored kool-aid a couple years ago. Right before my former church had a Revival. (That disaster deserves its very own essay.)
This brings us to this morning's sermon on the Parable of the Ten Virgins. There's a term Ecumenists use: Christian Identity. It's alien to my Evangelical ears, but I think you can get the idea. If I say I'm a Christian, and I do, it's an assertion of my Christian identity. You may think I'm a back-stabbing hypocrite, but i think I'm a Christian. Christian identity short-circuits considerations of bona fides or mala fide. Christian identity makes no distinction between wheat and tare. Ask Judas on Palm Sunday if he is a disciple of Christ and he'll sincerely say yes.
Same goes for the Ten Virgins of Matthew 25:1-13. All are invited and all respond affirmatively. But five are foolish and five are wise. The difference is only in preparation. The sermon is very good and you should listen to it for yourself. This is a scary thought because my Christian identity may not correspond to Christ's opinion of me. Louie said that if you name the name of Christ, you have a lamp: you're one of the virgins in this parable.
This is scary. I mentioned to my wife that the parable seems to indicate a 50-50 split between wheat and tares. And she fired back, that means one of us... And of course, I hadn't doubted my wife's bona fides until that point. We all like to think ourselves OK and if anybody is fooling himself it's the other guy. Reflecting further, I realized that 50-50 is likely an average-case ratio. There is good reason to think that there are frequently more wheat than tares (or vice versa). For instance, the small group of 12 people with Christ himself as facilitator had a 11-1 wheat to tare ratio. Presumably, groups led by tares would have more tares, too.
Sometimes I'll talk to someone who'll ask me if I think Catholics (or fill in any other denomination) are going to heaven. I can't answer, because I can't tell from here whether they've packed the extra oil like parable says of the wise virgins. But I will invariably answer that I believe for certain that some Baptists are going to Hell. I've written an essay on the subject (How To Go To Hell).
I believe the Wise and Foolish Virgins of the Parable represent individual believers, but it's harder to be an foolish virgin when everyone around you is reminding you to bring extra oil, and it's easier to be a foolish virgin when everyone around you thinks it unnecessary. That puts an onus upon each denomination to do everything they can to help as many as possible go past mere Christian Identity to actually identify with the Wise Virgins of the Parable.
Red baiting notwithstanding, I bought into Dr. MacIntyre's rejection to ecumenism. The reasoning is trivial: If you and I disagree on some point of faith, at least one of us has to be wrong. If you aren't going to change your beliefs to agree with me, and vice versa, then we can only fellowship if both of us compromise our faith. This compromise demonstrates a contempt for the content of that faith, or at least a subordination of one's faith to the end of organizational "unity."
This contempt for doctrine has taken on many forms over the years. In Evengelical circles, you see it expressed with hymnody bereft of any content, save, "Jesus loves me, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" (and it means so much more because they do the Powerpoint flying logos in a bigger typeface). It's also seen in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School materials that are so "gospel lite" that they can be sold to any
Having anathematized one form of Ecumenism, I want to vindicate a second form of it.
I will not compromise the Baptist distinctives you can find expressed in the London Baptist Confession, the Philadelpha Baptist Confession or the New Hampshire Baptist Confession. I will gladly and enthusiastically assert them without qualm or reservation. And if you're not a Baptist...
Then what?
There's a joke by Emo Philips that suggests a "Die Heretic!" response. But this overlooks the fact that Baptists assert the soul liberty of the believer. You have a right to be wrong. So, don't look to me to run any Spanish Inquisition to change your mind.
To the contrary, if you disagree with me, I have an opportunity to learn from you. You don't ask the fish about the water. By talking to an Atheist, I was able to understand why it's necessary that the righteousness of God be inhumanly high. Similarly, talking to non-Baptists who I presume to be closer to God than my Atheist friend provides insights into how to approach scripture and how God relates to mankind. These insights only come out in dialog. This dialog and cooperation with non-Baptists could be construed to be Ecumenism, too.
Ecumenism can be construed to come in two flavors: 1) organizational mergers that compromise faith or 2) trans-denominational dialog that discovers and even sharpens theological distinctions with neither rancor nor bitterness.
So, I pointed out this to my Ecumenism book writing friend and she agreed that the first sort of Ecumenism was bad, but the second sort of Ecumenism is good. (She agreed with me so she must be right.)
I drank this Ecumenism flavored kool-aid a couple years ago. Right before my former church had a Revival. (That disaster deserves its very own essay.)
This brings us to this morning's sermon on the Parable of the Ten Virgins. There's a term Ecumenists use: Christian Identity. It's alien to my Evangelical ears, but I think you can get the idea. If I say I'm a Christian, and I do, it's an assertion of my Christian identity. You may think I'm a back-stabbing hypocrite, but i think I'm a Christian. Christian identity short-circuits considerations of bona fides or mala fide. Christian identity makes no distinction between wheat and tare. Ask Judas on Palm Sunday if he is a disciple of Christ and he'll sincerely say yes.
Same goes for the Ten Virgins of Matthew 25:1-13. All are invited and all respond affirmatively. But five are foolish and five are wise. The difference is only in preparation. The sermon is very good and you should listen to it for yourself. This is a scary thought because my Christian identity may not correspond to Christ's opinion of me. Louie said that if you name the name of Christ, you have a lamp: you're one of the virgins in this parable.
This is scary. I mentioned to my wife that the parable seems to indicate a 50-50 split between wheat and tares. And she fired back, that means one of us... And of course, I hadn't doubted my wife's bona fides until that point. We all like to think ourselves OK and if anybody is fooling himself it's the other guy. Reflecting further, I realized that 50-50 is likely an average-case ratio. There is good reason to think that there are frequently more wheat than tares (or vice versa). For instance, the small group of 12 people with Christ himself as facilitator had a 11-1 wheat to tare ratio. Presumably, groups led by tares would have more tares, too.
Sometimes I'll talk to someone who'll ask me if I think Catholics (or fill in any other denomination) are going to heaven. I can't answer, because I can't tell from here whether they've packed the extra oil like parable says of the wise virgins. But I will invariably answer that I believe for certain that some Baptists are going to Hell. I've written an essay on the subject (How To Go To Hell).
I believe the Wise and Foolish Virgins of the Parable represent individual believers, but it's harder to be an foolish virgin when everyone around you is reminding you to bring extra oil, and it's easier to be a foolish virgin when everyone around you thinks it unnecessary. That puts an onus upon each denomination to do everything they can to help as many as possible go past mere Christian Identity to actually identify with the Wise Virgins of the Parable.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
The Duh Vinci Code
OK, Dan Brown wrote a potboiler/thriller about some super-secret conspiracy to suppress a story about Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail is really his blood line. This is supposed to be based on the history of the Gnostic heresy and has been covered up because everybody knows the winners write history and cover up whatever the losers said.
My church is overreacting to this. A couple generations ago Baptists overreacted by camping outside theatres, getting mad, organizing boycotts and generally doing the work of the movie's publicist. Now they're trying to make this into some kind of "outreach" thing. "People will ask questions, blah, blah, blah."
I have some observations:
1) If, instead of Jesus, this movie was talking about Mohammed, you'd see riots, etc. Dan Brown would be rooming with Salman Rushdie in some witless protection program. Imagine the HOLLYWOOD sign with flames wicking up the letters. This says that either Islam is a lot more childish or that Christianity is a lot more wimpy. You decide.
2) The gnostic heresy was 180 degrees out of phase with what the Duh Vinci Code claims in two critical points: a) the gnostics were not feminist-friendly, claiming a woman had to become a man to get to heaven. b) the gnostics were heretical because they asserted the Divinity of Christ, while denying the Humanity of Christ. Orthodox Christianity claims he was fully Divine And fully Human. Contemporary heresies including the Duh Vinci Code claims Christ was just a really good teacher, but not God. ((And if you're not God, but say you are God, how does that really good business work?))
3) The Duh Vinci Code's story about the Holy Grail is as historically accurate as Monty Python's Holy Grail. The Duh Vinci Code should be taken just as seriously.
It is ironic that the contemporary heresy tries to assert the sacred feminine in Mary Magdalene while ignoring the sacred feminine in the Blessed Virgin Mary. Trouble is that the BVM fails to deliver for contemporary heretics because she's not as cool and edgy as the demon-possessed hooker who was rescued by Christ.
There's an agenda and it's very simple: ABC. Anything But Christianity.
C.S. Lewis said in "Funeral For A Great Myth" that there was a pent up demand that reversed the normal flow of information from laboratory to popular culture when Darwin found a naturalistic explanation of origins. Here we're seeing another such inversion between pop culture and history. All the historians say that the Duh Vinci Code is bunk. But people want to believe something new and hidden and different that helps explain the phenomenon of Christianity without having to grasp the prickly bits of God's law and sin and redemption.
My church is overreacting to this. A couple generations ago Baptists overreacted by camping outside theatres, getting mad, organizing boycotts and generally doing the work of the movie's publicist. Now they're trying to make this into some kind of "outreach" thing. "People will ask questions, blah, blah, blah."
I have some observations:
1) If, instead of Jesus, this movie was talking about Mohammed, you'd see riots, etc. Dan Brown would be rooming with Salman Rushdie in some witless protection program. Imagine the HOLLYWOOD sign with flames wicking up the letters. This says that either Islam is a lot more childish or that Christianity is a lot more wimpy. You decide.
2) The gnostic heresy was 180 degrees out of phase with what the Duh Vinci Code claims in two critical points: a) the gnostics were not feminist-friendly, claiming a woman had to become a man to get to heaven. b) the gnostics were heretical because they asserted the Divinity of Christ, while denying the Humanity of Christ. Orthodox Christianity claims he was fully Divine And fully Human. Contemporary heresies including the Duh Vinci Code claims Christ was just a really good teacher, but not God. ((And if you're not God, but say you are God, how does that really good business work?))
3) The Duh Vinci Code's story about the Holy Grail is as historically accurate as Monty Python's Holy Grail. The Duh Vinci Code should be taken just as seriously.
It is ironic that the contemporary heresy tries to assert the sacred feminine in Mary Magdalene while ignoring the sacred feminine in the Blessed Virgin Mary. Trouble is that the BVM fails to deliver for contemporary heretics because she's not as cool and edgy as the demon-possessed hooker who was rescued by Christ.
There's an agenda and it's very simple: ABC. Anything But Christianity.
C.S. Lewis said in "Funeral For A Great Myth" that there was a pent up demand that reversed the normal flow of information from laboratory to popular culture when Darwin found a naturalistic explanation of origins. Here we're seeing another such inversion between pop culture and history. All the historians say that the Duh Vinci Code is bunk. But people want to believe something new and hidden and different that helps explain the phenomenon of Christianity without having to grasp the prickly bits of God's law and sin and redemption.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Political Hacks In The Intelligence Community
On the heels of the disclosures that the NSA had recorded the telephone calls of foreign nationals suspected to be al qaeda terrorists dialing into the US came another embarassing leak, this time from CIA, that terrorists were being held in secret prisons somewhere in Europe. Probably in the countries that used to live under Soviet domination. Distressing stuff. The Wingnut in me says, "yeah right!" and the Moonbat in me says, "just like those Bushies."
It's been my opinion that the CIA has spent the last couple decades being "the gang who couldn't shoot straight." Starting with the total surprise of the collapse of the Soviet empire and leading to 9/11 made me think the humint side of the intelligence community was woefully inept. This isn't new. When he was in his cups ole Tailgunner Joe MacCarthy thought the place was full of commies. (Until he sobered up and whereupon he issued a retraction.) But I try not to ascribe malice when mere incompetence explains.
Speaking of MacCarthy, a McCarthy named Mary McCarthy is, depending upon who you listen to, either a demon of MacCarthy-like dimensions or a saint along the lines of Joseph Wilson or Valery Plame. Seems she dropped the dime on the CIA prisons deal. Heroic leaker, right?
Based on this morning's reading this is what happened:
She worked in CIA and when the Clinton's took power, she was quickly promoted. According to financial statements, she gives money to their kind of people. All the Clintonistas she worked for and who advised Mr. Kerry (who incidentally served in Vietnam) in the recent election describe her in glowing terms. But there are veiled murmerings from the right side of the blogosphere that she's a political hack.
Now, imagine a hypothetical. (Extended hypotheticals are best read while wearing tinfoil headgear.) You're Porter Goss who was a former spook before becoming a politician and you take over a politicized CIA. Spooks are certifiable "sneaky bastards" and if you're not a spook, remember you're only an amature sneak. (Ms. McCarthy has spent her career in the non-spook side of CIA.) Pause hypothetical.
When you work for the government and you see something bad going on, you can follow several procedures short of leaking the story to the New York Times. There will be an office of the Inspector General to whom you should file a complaint. Ms. McCarthy went to some kind of seminar that put her in contact with CIA officers in the Inspector General's office.
Resume hypothetical. Suppose some sneaky bastard files a false report about human rights violations in covert Eastern Europe prisons. After abu ghraib, the story is not only plausible, but "too good to check." Someone from the analytical side of CIA, who couldn't catch a clue if it were delivered by a hijacked jetliner at several hundred mph, would take the complaint at face value. End hypothetical.
I find it an interesting coincidence that on the very same weekend that Ms. McCarthy was indicted for disclosing classified information, the feds disclosed that they can find no proof of the these covert prisons.
With the aforementioned hypothetical in mind, I suspect that the CIA is getting back into the covert ops business.
It's been my opinion that the CIA has spent the last couple decades being "the gang who couldn't shoot straight." Starting with the total surprise of the collapse of the Soviet empire and leading to 9/11 made me think the humint side of the intelligence community was woefully inept. This isn't new. When he was in his cups ole Tailgunner Joe MacCarthy thought the place was full of commies. (Until he sobered up and whereupon he issued a retraction.) But I try not to ascribe malice when mere incompetence explains.
Speaking of MacCarthy, a McCarthy named Mary McCarthy is, depending upon who you listen to, either a demon of MacCarthy-like dimensions or a saint along the lines of Joseph Wilson or Valery Plame. Seems she dropped the dime on the CIA prisons deal. Heroic leaker, right?
Based on this morning's reading this is what happened:
She worked in CIA and when the Clinton's took power, she was quickly promoted. According to financial statements, she gives money to their kind of people. All the Clintonistas she worked for and who advised Mr. Kerry (who incidentally served in Vietnam) in the recent election describe her in glowing terms. But there are veiled murmerings from the right side of the blogosphere that she's a political hack.
Now, imagine a hypothetical. (Extended hypotheticals are best read while wearing tinfoil headgear.) You're Porter Goss who was a former spook before becoming a politician and you take over a politicized CIA. Spooks are certifiable "sneaky bastards" and if you're not a spook, remember you're only an amature sneak. (Ms. McCarthy has spent her career in the non-spook side of CIA.) Pause hypothetical.
When you work for the government and you see something bad going on, you can follow several procedures short of leaking the story to the New York Times. There will be an office of the Inspector General to whom you should file a complaint. Ms. McCarthy went to some kind of seminar that put her in contact with CIA officers in the Inspector General's office.
Resume hypothetical. Suppose some sneaky bastard files a false report about human rights violations in covert Eastern Europe prisons. After abu ghraib, the story is not only plausible, but "too good to check." Someone from the analytical side of CIA, who couldn't catch a clue if it were delivered by a hijacked jetliner at several hundred mph, would take the complaint at face value. End hypothetical.
I find it an interesting coincidence that on the very same weekend that Ms. McCarthy was indicted for disclosing classified information, the feds disclosed that they can find no proof of the these covert prisons.
With the aforementioned hypothetical in mind, I suspect that the CIA is getting back into the covert ops business.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
useless cable news
Someone down south has charged some jocks with having raped her. Racist and sexist politics are all in play. What I found most annoying just now is (beside the fact that I was watching this tripe) that in the same sentence where Alan Colmes accuses Sean Hannity for being sexist for mentioning that the accusing party is a stripper, he says she's a mother.
Now, if it is sexist for Sean Hannity to say the woman is a stripper. Isn't it also sexist to say she is a mother? To my knowledge, you have to be a member of the female sex to be a mother.
I don't care what anyone says. The only thing that's pertinent is what happened in this case. Since the case has not yet gone to trial, nothing of what happened has been established. There's nothing but hearsay and gossip until facts are brought out in court.
The bottom line of all this is that 24x7 cable news coverage needs a new "trial of the century" every three weeks or so. At this rate we can look forward to a total of 1733 trials of the century between now and 2106.
Now, if it is sexist for Sean Hannity to say the woman is a stripper. Isn't it also sexist to say she is a mother? To my knowledge, you have to be a member of the female sex to be a mother.
I don't care what anyone says. The only thing that's pertinent is what happened in this case. Since the case has not yet gone to trial, nothing of what happened has been established. There's nothing but hearsay and gossip until facts are brought out in court.
The bottom line of all this is that 24x7 cable news coverage needs a new "trial of the century" every three weeks or so. At this rate we can look forward to a total of 1733 trials of the century between now and 2106.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
ABC Gnosticism
i read the Da Vinci Code months back and thought it an amusing potboiler. A few scenes made me think, "this will cheese off the Catholics." But the rest just read like fiction, Harry Turtledove kinds of stories where the premise is "what if so and so didn't happen."
But Da Vinci Code gets a lot of traction. There's talk of the "sacred feminine" that some people take seriously and apply it to Mary Magdalene, but never to the Blessed Virgin Mary. (I've said before that there's a reason why there's so much goddess kitsch in the PBS Wireless catalogue.) I think this is because of something I call ABC religion: Anything But Christianity.
There's a lot of people who want to put forth a different ethic than that personnified by the God that Is. And adopting a different ethic, one that's more politically correct about homosexual acts, for instance, is something contemporary culture wants very much, but contemporary culture doesn't have the guts to openly pull out a golden calf. So, there's a lot of effort that goes into redefining Christianity and its ethic to fit their social agenda.
This worked a century ago when the Social Gospel had its expression in theological Liberalism had a primarily economic thrust and we didn't know that socialist economics was the Road To Serfdom. The commies at least had the guts to throw off those ancient myths. But Liberal Christianity has been unable to get traction of late.
So we're seeing different attempts at ABC replacements or redefinitions of Christianity along different lines. Since Christianity has an inherently Historical component, redefinition of Christianity has looked to the historical losers who fought to define Christianity in the first place.
Enter the Gnostics. That was a long time ago and their gospels are coming out of obscure historical places to serve in a contemporary attempt at redefining Christianity. Indeed, it is easy to look at Gnostic texts out of context and put together things that serve the contemporary redefinition/reinterpretation of Christ and his religion.
There's just one problem, when you interpret the Gnostic texts, it is easy to forget why they wee rejected in the early centuries of Christianity. Whereas orthodox/traditional Christianity makes a big deal of the dual human & divine nature of Christ, the Gnostics got his human nature wrong. The 1st century Gnostics would say Christ's humanity was a facade or illusion. Because matter to the Greek mind was inherently evil, Christ being good and God required Christ to be non-material.
In today's context, the heresy of Liberalism said Christ was a nice teacher, a human on spiritual steroids, but not wholly divine. Unless you mean by divine this panentheistic notion where there's a Newage sense in which everything is god. Contemporary society has rejected metaphysical notions that are the linchpins of Gnosticism.
The result is a sort of cafeteria theology where bits that advance the cause of the day are incorporated whilst conveniently ignoring the bits that don't fit. Nor is there any attempt to adhere to any systemmatic thinking to explain the connection beetween the bits you embrace. Sounds like a Cargo Cult, but that's another story.
Moreover, if you are to use the Gnostics to advance some feminist agenda, you've got a little problem with the antifeminist assertions of the Gnostic gospels themselves.
This shows a real risk of dealing with old texts. You can't read an old text with contemporary eyes. You have to understand the old text's philosophical-historical context and read it with that in mind. The ancient greeks had odd notions of substances and essences. Those notions drive a lot of the arguments of the early church fathers. But we're modern scientific rationalist readers, and we should take pains to interpret old texts in their ancient context before trying to translate their message into our contemporary context.
This applies to the traditionalist Christian as well as the new gnostic heretic. I leave it to the reader to supply examples.
But Da Vinci Code gets a lot of traction. There's talk of the "sacred feminine" that some people take seriously and apply it to Mary Magdalene, but never to the Blessed Virgin Mary. (I've said before that there's a reason why there's so much goddess kitsch in the PBS Wireless catalogue.) I think this is because of something I call ABC religion: Anything But Christianity.
There's a lot of people who want to put forth a different ethic than that personnified by the God that Is. And adopting a different ethic, one that's more politically correct about homosexual acts, for instance, is something contemporary culture wants very much, but contemporary culture doesn't have the guts to openly pull out a golden calf. So, there's a lot of effort that goes into redefining Christianity and its ethic to fit their social agenda.
This worked a century ago when the Social Gospel had its expression in theological Liberalism had a primarily economic thrust and we didn't know that socialist economics was the Road To Serfdom. The commies at least had the guts to throw off those ancient myths. But Liberal Christianity has been unable to get traction of late.
So we're seeing different attempts at ABC replacements or redefinitions of Christianity along different lines. Since Christianity has an inherently Historical component, redefinition of Christianity has looked to the historical losers who fought to define Christianity in the first place.
Enter the Gnostics. That was a long time ago and their gospels are coming out of obscure historical places to serve in a contemporary attempt at redefining Christianity. Indeed, it is easy to look at Gnostic texts out of context and put together things that serve the contemporary redefinition/reinterpretation of Christ and his religion.
There's just one problem, when you interpret the Gnostic texts, it is easy to forget why they wee rejected in the early centuries of Christianity. Whereas orthodox/traditional Christianity makes a big deal of the dual human & divine nature of Christ, the Gnostics got his human nature wrong. The 1st century Gnostics would say Christ's humanity was a facade or illusion. Because matter to the Greek mind was inherently evil, Christ being good and God required Christ to be non-material.
In today's context, the heresy of Liberalism said Christ was a nice teacher, a human on spiritual steroids, but not wholly divine. Unless you mean by divine this panentheistic notion where there's a Newage sense in which everything is god. Contemporary society has rejected metaphysical notions that are the linchpins of Gnosticism.
The result is a sort of cafeteria theology where bits that advance the cause of the day are incorporated whilst conveniently ignoring the bits that don't fit. Nor is there any attempt to adhere to any systemmatic thinking to explain the connection beetween the bits you embrace. Sounds like a Cargo Cult, but that's another story.
Moreover, if you are to use the Gnostics to advance some feminist agenda, you've got a little problem with the antifeminist assertions of the Gnostic gospels themselves.
This shows a real risk of dealing with old texts. You can't read an old text with contemporary eyes. You have to understand the old text's philosophical-historical context and read it with that in mind. The ancient greeks had odd notions of substances and essences. Those notions drive a lot of the arguments of the early church fathers. But we're modern scientific rationalist readers, and we should take pains to interpret old texts in their ancient context before trying to translate their message into our contemporary context.
This applies to the traditionalist Christian as well as the new gnostic heretic. I leave it to the reader to supply examples.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Does God Reject People?
So, I'm watching TV and there's this ad with these people sitting in church and you see a finger hit a button and this spring under their chair shoots them off into space. They show a black woman with a baby. Then two guys who look like they want to make out right there in church. Then an arab looking guy. Then you see a handicapper's walker go sailing off. The last scene shows a homeless woman and the white bread folks next slide away.
ha ha ha.
Then the screen goes black and you see letters say, "God Doesn't Reject People" followed by a few seconds then "Neither do we."
Sweet.
So, I turned to my son, and asked, "I wonder what would REALLY happen if you got a bunch of Nazi storm troopers and sat them down in the pew?" And we got our own laugh.
My opinion about what's right or wrong is completely irrelevant. But God's opinion about what's right or wrong is most important. God has either spoken or he has not. And if he has done so, it is unwise to confuse our own moral opinions with whatever God has said.
ha ha ha.
Then the screen goes black and you see letters say, "God Doesn't Reject People" followed by a few seconds then "Neither do we."
Sweet.
So, I turned to my son, and asked, "I wonder what would REALLY happen if you got a bunch of Nazi storm troopers and sat them down in the pew?" And we got our own laugh.
My opinion about what's right or wrong is completely irrelevant. But God's opinion about what's right or wrong is most important. God has either spoken or he has not. And if he has done so, it is unwise to confuse our own moral opinions with whatever God has said.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Story-Driven Development And Cargo Cult Science
Recently at church the Sunday School teacher asked, "does anyone have a story about what that means?" I have noticed a shift to the post-modern emphasis upon narrative over the old-fashioned emphasis upon doctrine. Thus I started thinking thru a thesis/antithesis with "story" at one end pole. What was the other pole? I figured "explanation." A generation ago, the teacher would ask the class for an "explanation" instead of a "story."
Story-driven methodologies appear at church and in software engineering. In both contexts relevant facts are brought to light in a narrative descrptive structure. In church people tell their stories or use stories to point to something deeper--an encounter with the divine or some insight into our nature. This approach has pushed aside doctrinal or dogmatic teaching.
Similarly, some software development teams have adopted a story-driven development model. The software engineer interacts with the customer to discover "stories" that guide the software development process. Each story is a Use Case of the system expressed in narrative form. A story provides a scenario of stimuli from users or external systems and responses by the software solution. The narrative provides a structure whereby phenomena can be elaborated upon and described in measureable, repeatable terms. The distinction between Story Driven Development and Use Cases is that UML is the domain of Big Up-Front Design whereas Story Driven Development is more incremental and iterative just as Test Driven Development is so.
Stories are good in software engineering because every software project is a learning exercize. It invariably starts at "the point of maximum ignorance" and proceeds from there. Similarly, religion today is characterized by more doubt than faith.
Stories are a strategy for coping with incomplete and imperfect knowledge. This seems apt during requirements discovery. At this point, the client is more likely to know less consciously than he knows unconsciously. When a conscious explanation is demanded from him, he may offer something spurious. Conversely, if he were to offer a narrative description, implicit and unconscious information is more likely to slip into the "story." (See Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink: The Power Of Unconscious Thinking." )
Story or testimony places only one demand, that of honesty. The reader has to trust the story reflects the phenomena as perceived by the story-teller. This approach is very post-modern. It arrogates to itself minimal demands of "truth" or of "how" the phenomena come to be.
Reductionism is a necessary survival trait in both religion and in software engineering. Nothing will turn a pleasant philosophical/theological chat ugly faster than the assertion of some point of dogma someone else in the room anathamatizes. And I cannot say how many times a productive engineering meeting has ground to a halt upon getting bogged down in the "hows" while the "what's" remain only partially known. Story-based approaches focus everyone on the "what." This focus lets us all describe and clarify these things most immediately pertinent while deferring the deeper parts to the experts.
Mention of the experts brings us to note that story-based techniques work best in mixed company: in the mixed multitude of believers and skeptics in the theological domain, or in the mix of customer and solution-provider in the software domain.
The Bible was written by and to pre-scientific people. A lot of trouble springs from ignoring this point. The current approach is to interpret it phenomenologically. If the Bible says "sunrise" or "sunset" it means the same thing the weatherman on television means. Neither is making a statement about astronomy, both are saying when the day starts or ends.
There are at least three models that describe the motion of celestial bodies. Ptolemy articulated a system of wheels within wheels with the Earth at the center of the universe and everything moving around it. Copernicus created a model with the Sun at the center of the universe with the earth moving around it. Meanwhile, the Babylonians had created a purely mathematical description that made no attempt to get to the underlying mechanisms underlying the observed phenomena.
In his 1974 Caltech commencement address Dr. Richard Feynman described the Cargo Cult of the south seas. He describes them with this: "During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land."
This shows a risk of the story-driven approach. The Cargo Cultists grasp phenomena, they know the story. We must not stop there. We understand why cargo planes came to remote islands and we understand why with the war over, they quit coming.
You have to think about the stories, put them together and underlying mechanisms that explain the phenomena. It is hard to go beyond phenomena we all agree about and add something to it. It paints a target on you. People will argue and your explanation will compete with others' explanations. A few centuries ago folks got burned at the stake when their explanations were shot down. As you may recall the competition between heliocentric and geocentric models gave rise to a lot of angry debate. Had it not been for Galileo's invention of the telescope, the debate might still be ongoing.
Feynman says that real science requires honesty. There will be parts of the story that don't fit your explanation. In fact, when Copernican astronomy specified circular instead of elliptical planetary orbits, its predictions fit the phenomena worse than Ptolemaic astronomy. Galileo's telescope added stories about Jupiter's moons. It's said that some refused to look through his telescope. No honest. Honestly dealing with the bits that don't fit replace some theories and correct other theories.
There is a certain arrogance in an "explanation" emphasis that's absent from "story" emphasis. "Explanation" presumes that one knows more than what's immediately apparent. "Story" acknowledges the limitations of perspective and scope. And it is much less likely to be contradicted by things like Copernican revolutions. On many software projects one learns that the underlying model formulated at one time is inadequate when you learn more later. Thus I think a "story" with its focus upon a sequence of immediate phenomena is less likely to prove wrong than an "explanation". Later stories will elaborate details latent in earlier stories, but not contradict them. (See Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolution.")
Stories should feed theories. Theories inspire disagreement and argument. Debate may scrape the frothy bits off a theory, but the real advancement comes as more stories are incorporated into those theories. This iterative process is the synthesis of "story" and "explanation."
Story-driven methodologies appear at church and in software engineering. In both contexts relevant facts are brought to light in a narrative descrptive structure. In church people tell their stories or use stories to point to something deeper--an encounter with the divine or some insight into our nature. This approach has pushed aside doctrinal or dogmatic teaching.
Similarly, some software development teams have adopted a story-driven development model. The software engineer interacts with the customer to discover "stories" that guide the software development process. Each story is a Use Case of the system expressed in narrative form. A story provides a scenario of stimuli from users or external systems and responses by the software solution. The narrative provides a structure whereby phenomena can be elaborated upon and described in measureable, repeatable terms. The distinction between Story Driven Development and Use Cases is that UML is the domain of Big Up-Front Design whereas Story Driven Development is more incremental and iterative just as Test Driven Development is so.
Stories are good in software engineering because every software project is a learning exercize. It invariably starts at "the point of maximum ignorance" and proceeds from there. Similarly, religion today is characterized by more doubt than faith.
Stories are a strategy for coping with incomplete and imperfect knowledge. This seems apt during requirements discovery. At this point, the client is more likely to know less consciously than he knows unconsciously. When a conscious explanation is demanded from him, he may offer something spurious. Conversely, if he were to offer a narrative description, implicit and unconscious information is more likely to slip into the "story." (See Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink: The Power Of Unconscious Thinking." )
Story or testimony places only one demand, that of honesty. The reader has to trust the story reflects the phenomena as perceived by the story-teller. This approach is very post-modern. It arrogates to itself minimal demands of "truth" or of "how" the phenomena come to be.
Reductionism is a necessary survival trait in both religion and in software engineering. Nothing will turn a pleasant philosophical/theological chat ugly faster than the assertion of some point of dogma someone else in the room anathamatizes. And I cannot say how many times a productive engineering meeting has ground to a halt upon getting bogged down in the "hows" while the "what's" remain only partially known. Story-based approaches focus everyone on the "what." This focus lets us all describe and clarify these things most immediately pertinent while deferring the deeper parts to the experts.
Mention of the experts brings us to note that story-based techniques work best in mixed company: in the mixed multitude of believers and skeptics in the theological domain, or in the mix of customer and solution-provider in the software domain.
The Bible was written by and to pre-scientific people. A lot of trouble springs from ignoring this point. The current approach is to interpret it phenomenologically. If the Bible says "sunrise" or "sunset" it means the same thing the weatherman on television means. Neither is making a statement about astronomy, both are saying when the day starts or ends.
There are at least three models that describe the motion of celestial bodies. Ptolemy articulated a system of wheels within wheels with the Earth at the center of the universe and everything moving around it. Copernicus created a model with the Sun at the center of the universe with the earth moving around it. Meanwhile, the Babylonians had created a purely mathematical description that made no attempt to get to the underlying mechanisms underlying the observed phenomena.
In his 1974 Caltech commencement address Dr. Richard Feynman described the Cargo Cult of the south seas. He describes them with this: "During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land."
This shows a risk of the story-driven approach. The Cargo Cultists grasp phenomena, they know the story. We must not stop there. We understand why cargo planes came to remote islands and we understand why with the war over, they quit coming.
You have to think about the stories, put them together and underlying mechanisms that explain the phenomena. It is hard to go beyond phenomena we all agree about and add something to it. It paints a target on you. People will argue and your explanation will compete with others' explanations. A few centuries ago folks got burned at the stake when their explanations were shot down. As you may recall the competition between heliocentric and geocentric models gave rise to a lot of angry debate. Had it not been for Galileo's invention of the telescope, the debate might still be ongoing.
Feynman says that real science requires honesty. There will be parts of the story that don't fit your explanation. In fact, when Copernican astronomy specified circular instead of elliptical planetary orbits, its predictions fit the phenomena worse than Ptolemaic astronomy. Galileo's telescope added stories about Jupiter's moons. It's said that some refused to look through his telescope. No honest. Honestly dealing with the bits that don't fit replace some theories and correct other theories.
There is a certain arrogance in an "explanation" emphasis that's absent from "story" emphasis. "Explanation" presumes that one knows more than what's immediately apparent. "Story" acknowledges the limitations of perspective and scope. And it is much less likely to be contradicted by things like Copernican revolutions. On many software projects one learns that the underlying model formulated at one time is inadequate when you learn more later. Thus I think a "story" with its focus upon a sequence of immediate phenomena is less likely to prove wrong than an "explanation". Later stories will elaborate details latent in earlier stories, but not contradict them. (See Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolution.")
Stories should feed theories. Theories inspire disagreement and argument. Debate may scrape the frothy bits off a theory, but the real advancement comes as more stories are incorporated into those theories. This iterative process is the synthesis of "story" and "explanation."
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Hypocrisy is cancer
A running sore may lie under a purple robe. -- Stephen Charnock
Last week in church I saw the above quote. I didn't like it. The notion of a running sore is disgusting. I guess that's why the quote works. We like to think ourselves something nice when our inner natures are in truth disgusting.
I own a book by Stephen Charnock. He's a cool dude. He's also been dead for a few centuries. Let's see, Mr. Google? Born 1628. I figure in those days one might have more occasion to encounter running sores than in antiseptic America. So, I arrogated to myself the task of updating Mr. Charnock's metaphor to something I could more directly relate to.
A running sore is a wound that does not heal. One of the interesting findings of recent medical science is that Cancer hijacks the healing mechanism of the body. The body sees the cancerous tumor as a wound that does not heal. So, it grows. Cancer I know something about.
Hypocrisy is cancer.
When you look at a cancer patient, you see someone whose skin looks deathly, their hair is falling out, and they look bloated and puffy. The cancer does not do that. It's chemotherapy that does all that bad stuff.
I don't know how long I had cancer. I didn't feel particularly bad for the years I now know that I had the disease. For most of the time, I looked pretty healthy. The cancer caused some blood loss through my colon but it was reabsorbed so the net effect was a bit of anemia. And the anemia didn't feel that bad except for the weakness and loss of stamina. And a craving for ice chips.
The functioning hypocrite probably doesn't notice anything either, just a little spiritual anemia. I don't know about the ice chips cravings.
The hypocrite looks as healthy as an undiagnosed cancer victim. He's probably as unaware of the hypocrisy as I was of my cancer. When you're fooling yourself, you can't try to fool God, because you've fooled yourself and think you've nothing to hide. That's what the prophet meant when he said the heart is deceitful.
Another thing about cancer and hypocrisy is denial. Both my parents died of cancer. So, when I felt chest pains, I thought it was heart disease, not anemia caused by cancer. Hypocrites are the people Jesus beat up on the most. Our unchurched friends tell us the church is full of hypocrites. And we say or think to ourselves, maybe where you were, but not my church, not me. A lot of self-image is tied up in NOT being a hypocrite. So, this business of fooling myself into thinking myself free of hypocrisy is just denial.
But what about my accountability partners? Won't they proof me against hypocrisy? I suppose if you're trolling the web for porn, they'll catch you there. But if you're doing that, you know that's wrong. To get denial right, you have to hide all the yardsticks. The great evil of any society is its replacement of God's law with its divergent standards. My philosophy teacher said that Idols define a culture. The Pharisees replaced the law of God with their traditions. God's Law reflects God's character, replacing the law with tradition is a form of idolatry. If you have replaced God's Law with prohibitions against smoking, dancing and drinking, all your accountability partners have done the same. You probably got that from your parents. Which is why God said that idolaters are cursed through several generations. (And if you have replace God's Law with the tradition of deprecating others who have those prohibitions, see above.)
To detect whether you're a hypocrite or not, you can't trust your heart and you can't trust your traditions. You can only trust God who defines the goodness you are trying to show the world. I believe God has spoken in the Bible. It says things about God's character and God's law. If you want to know what God's character is like, know the Ten Commandments. If you want to know how those commands should be lived out, know how Jesus taught them in the Sermon on the Mount, know how Jesus lived them in the Gospels.
You may object, "But all this focus on God's LAW is legalism!" To which we add the subtext, "And not only were the Pharisees hypocrites, they were legalists, too! I mustn't be that!!!"
I am not talking about how to go to heaven. I am talking about how to detect whether you're a hypocrite or not. I'm talking about getting over denial. I'm talking about finding out whether you're fooling yourself or not.
A lot of Baptists just aren't Zen. God's law is not soap. God's law is a mirror. You do not wash your face with a mirror. Legalists try that and they only break the mirror and cut themselves with the shards.
You look in the mirror to see whether your face is dirty. You use the mirror to see which spots you missed shaving. And that's how you use God's Law. It is the way to disclose how you are fooling yourself.
Gentle reader, you are a hypocrite. I know that I am.
What are we to do about our hypocricy? There's something in us that's wrong and killing us and it has to die. If we don't kill it, it'll get worse and kill us. Even if all we notice now is a craving for ice chips. Hypocrisy is cancer. Our unchurched friends are right, church is full of hypocrites.
Chemotherapy kills cancer cells. That's good. Chemotherapy also kills healthy cells. That hurts. When I looked like "death warmed over" during chemotherapy, don't blame the cancer. Blame the chemotherapy. The part of me that was wrong had to die. It bothered me most when my hair fell out. At that point, I had to show to the world that I was dying. My mom bought a wig. My dad shaved his head. I didn't lose all my hair, but it got thin and I had that cancer patient look. But would I do, cancel chemotherapy for cosmetic reasons?
I said I'm a hypocrite, right? Getting rid of hypocrisy could hurt my reputation. Or enhance it, I imagine my adoring fans whispering to themselves, "He's such a great saint for admitting he's a hypocrite. He's probably just oversensitive about teeny little sins." Hypocrites like to imagine adoring fans whispering like this.
Ever have one of those times when you and the Mrs. have a little tiff that settles into a slow burn? Both of you don't obviously yell at each other, but things aren't right either. That's where my heart was when I sat down to write those deathless words of purple prose atop this page.
That's why I'll give short shrift to howto cure hypocrisy. Don't read about soap from me, pick up your Bible. I'm going to trust God's grace. Ask forgiveness and confess the trivial sin of mistreating my wife.
Last week in church I saw the above quote. I didn't like it. The notion of a running sore is disgusting. I guess that's why the quote works. We like to think ourselves something nice when our inner natures are in truth disgusting.
I own a book by Stephen Charnock. He's a cool dude. He's also been dead for a few centuries. Let's see, Mr. Google? Born 1628. I figure in those days one might have more occasion to encounter running sores than in antiseptic America. So, I arrogated to myself the task of updating Mr. Charnock's metaphor to something I could more directly relate to.
A running sore is a wound that does not heal. One of the interesting findings of recent medical science is that Cancer hijacks the healing mechanism of the body. The body sees the cancerous tumor as a wound that does not heal. So, it grows. Cancer I know something about.
Hypocrisy is cancer.
When you look at a cancer patient, you see someone whose skin looks deathly, their hair is falling out, and they look bloated and puffy. The cancer does not do that. It's chemotherapy that does all that bad stuff.
I don't know how long I had cancer. I didn't feel particularly bad for the years I now know that I had the disease. For most of the time, I looked pretty healthy. The cancer caused some blood loss through my colon but it was reabsorbed so the net effect was a bit of anemia. And the anemia didn't feel that bad except for the weakness and loss of stamina. And a craving for ice chips.
The functioning hypocrite probably doesn't notice anything either, just a little spiritual anemia. I don't know about the ice chips cravings.
The hypocrite looks as healthy as an undiagnosed cancer victim. He's probably as unaware of the hypocrisy as I was of my cancer. When you're fooling yourself, you can't try to fool God, because you've fooled yourself and think you've nothing to hide. That's what the prophet meant when he said the heart is deceitful.
Another thing about cancer and hypocrisy is denial. Both my parents died of cancer. So, when I felt chest pains, I thought it was heart disease, not anemia caused by cancer. Hypocrites are the people Jesus beat up on the most. Our unchurched friends tell us the church is full of hypocrites. And we say or think to ourselves, maybe where you were, but not my church, not me. A lot of self-image is tied up in NOT being a hypocrite. So, this business of fooling myself into thinking myself free of hypocrisy is just denial.
But what about my accountability partners? Won't they proof me against hypocrisy? I suppose if you're trolling the web for porn, they'll catch you there. But if you're doing that, you know that's wrong. To get denial right, you have to hide all the yardsticks. The great evil of any society is its replacement of God's law with its divergent standards. My philosophy teacher said that Idols define a culture. The Pharisees replaced the law of God with their traditions. God's Law reflects God's character, replacing the law with tradition is a form of idolatry. If you have replaced God's Law with prohibitions against smoking, dancing and drinking, all your accountability partners have done the same. You probably got that from your parents. Which is why God said that idolaters are cursed through several generations. (And if you have replace God's Law with the tradition of deprecating others who have those prohibitions, see above.)
To detect whether you're a hypocrite or not, you can't trust your heart and you can't trust your traditions. You can only trust God who defines the goodness you are trying to show the world. I believe God has spoken in the Bible. It says things about God's character and God's law. If you want to know what God's character is like, know the Ten Commandments. If you want to know how those commands should be lived out, know how Jesus taught them in the Sermon on the Mount, know how Jesus lived them in the Gospels.
You may object, "But all this focus on God's LAW is legalism!" To which we add the subtext, "And not only were the Pharisees hypocrites, they were legalists, too! I mustn't be that!!!"
I am not talking about how to go to heaven. I am talking about how to detect whether you're a hypocrite or not. I'm talking about getting over denial. I'm talking about finding out whether you're fooling yourself or not.
A lot of Baptists just aren't Zen. God's law is not soap. God's law is a mirror. You do not wash your face with a mirror. Legalists try that and they only break the mirror and cut themselves with the shards.
You look in the mirror to see whether your face is dirty. You use the mirror to see which spots you missed shaving. And that's how you use God's Law. It is the way to disclose how you are fooling yourself.
Gentle reader, you are a hypocrite. I know that I am.
What are we to do about our hypocricy? There's something in us that's wrong and killing us and it has to die. If we don't kill it, it'll get worse and kill us. Even if all we notice now is a craving for ice chips. Hypocrisy is cancer. Our unchurched friends are right, church is full of hypocrites.
Chemotherapy kills cancer cells. That's good. Chemotherapy also kills healthy cells. That hurts. When I looked like "death warmed over" during chemotherapy, don't blame the cancer. Blame the chemotherapy. The part of me that was wrong had to die. It bothered me most when my hair fell out. At that point, I had to show to the world that I was dying. My mom bought a wig. My dad shaved his head. I didn't lose all my hair, but it got thin and I had that cancer patient look. But would I do, cancel chemotherapy for cosmetic reasons?
I said I'm a hypocrite, right? Getting rid of hypocrisy could hurt my reputation. Or enhance it, I imagine my adoring fans whispering to themselves, "He's such a great saint for admitting he's a hypocrite. He's probably just oversensitive about teeny little sins." Hypocrites like to imagine adoring fans whispering like this.
Ever have one of those times when you and the Mrs. have a little tiff that settles into a slow burn? Both of you don't obviously yell at each other, but things aren't right either. That's where my heart was when I sat down to write those deathless words of purple prose atop this page.
That's why I'll give short shrift to howto cure hypocrisy. Don't read about soap from me, pick up your Bible. I'm going to trust God's grace. Ask forgiveness and confess the trivial sin of mistreating my wife.
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