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)!

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 any church 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

On The Efficasy of Prayer

I was reading an essay by C.S. Lewis whose title I've chosen for this note. He proposed a few experiments whereby one might test the efficasy of prayer. Things like praying for all the patients in one hospital and none in another hospital. Lewis dismissed these experiments. Lewis notes that prayer isn't magic. It's a request between persons. God is a person and he responds to our prayers in a personal way.

Science works in a mechanistic, impersonal fashion. F=ma always works the same way in an impersonal fashion. If God were the Force, there might be a way to do some religious rite, recite some prayer, and you'd get a predictable result. But God is personal. When you ask something from a person, the person may or may not comply.

The reliaility of the person, the character of the person, is revealed by how he keeps his promises. The business of salvation, forgiveness and redemption is applicable here. God has made promises on our behalf and we can count on him to keep them. How he keeps those promises is how he makes it personal.

Nevertheless, I am enough of a fan of science that I've thought about those experiments whereby one can measure the efficasy of prayer given the limitations described above.

I've observed two things that indicate the efficasy of prayer. First, my mother died back in the late '70s. I didn't notice it until much later, but I felt the loss of her prayers on my behalf. If Mom's in heaven, the's going to be too busy with heaven's busines to bother with me. I suppose if I were Catholic, I'd think that the saints in heaven pray for the living, but I'm Protestant and think they do not.

The second thing I noticed was years back when was first elected to serve as a deacon at my old baptist church. I felt some kind of uplift/support that I later realized was that someone in my church was praying for me. A few years later, I went into surgery for cancer. I asked for and got a lot of prayer from a broad spectrum of folks. It was an amazing sensation that I could feel.

Of course, citing anecdotes does not science make. Nevertheless, I think that one can directly and unscientifically gauge the efficasy of prayer when it goes away. And when it starts.

When you consider the nature of God, remember that God exists outside time. It seems hard to realize that all our prayers reach God simultaneously. This boggles the mind that God hears all of us talking all at once and all of our talk arrives at the same time. How shall God reply? And why would God reply?

First, God doesn't need anything from us. That's the nature of God. God is motivated to reply to our prayers to disclose something about himself. To do so he's got to be understood. This means God has to virtualize his responses to our prayers. God then shows his character through his answers.

In his essay Lewis notes that God seems less inclined to answer the prayers of those who know him best. He seems to withdraw. It's clear that God has nothing to prove to the faithful. They already know his character and have a relationship with them. Lewis seems to suggest that God's strong followers don't need coddling.

I think of those prayers that others have prayed for me. I know their prayers were answered. But they don't. And what of the prayers I pray for the stranger I see suffering or someone on the news or in another country? I'll never know how those prayers are answered.

That comes to the basic nature of prayer. It's relational. If I trust and love God, there's plenty of room to give him the benefit of the doubt. When there's things I know I'll never know, there's doubt. And love entails giving the benefit of the doubt. Thus considerations of the efficasy of prayer aren't necessary, if I trust and love God.

Mark Twain's and Bill Bennet's Racism

Years back when I was a grad student at Michigan State, there was this huge liberal professor who wrote a column in the college paper. One time he wrote a sarcastic attack on racism. It was a clever use of irony and I recognized it immediately as such. However, a superficial reading of the column could give a stupid reader the impression that he was endorsing racism.

It was embarassing, because he got into big trouble when the Usual Suspects in the Racism Business jumped up and denounced him with anger and passion.

Maybe you've read that racist tract, Huck Finn, but Mark Twain. The author makes liberal use of the dreaded N-word as he describes the wise black slave Jim and the underclass Huck and their interactions with a menagerie of white fools.

Today, Mr. Bill Bennet is being condemned by the White House for making some kind of racist statement. I've heard the remarks in context. And I've heard others condemning stipulate that Mr. Bennet is not a racist.

In logic there is the notion of a reducio ad absurdum argument. A reducio argument follows this pattern: "If you believe 'a' then some absurd thing follows." For example, "If murdering Jews is a good then, then Hitler is a saint."

Perhaps the White House critics of Mr. Bennet will now accuse me of numbering that murderous tyrant among the saints.

Sabbath Keeping

I was with a group of friends and the topic of Sabbath keeping came up. Grand Rapids has a lot of Dutch Reformed folks and they treat Sunday like a Sabbath. You know, that commandment right after misusing the name of deity and honoring parents. But the Hollanders go hog wild and may make you wear a green "L" on your chest if they catch your mowing your LAWN on Sunday. (OK, they won't, but they are intense about such things. And the Scarlet Letter allusion is probably unclear, either. I should delete that last sentence.)

One friend complained that his father enforced rules about Sunday behaviour that seemed inconsistent. He could shoot hoops in his driveway, but he couldn't go down to his neighbor's and play a game. Other stories of Sunday rules were exchanged the general tenor of which was bemusement at the oddness of divergent standards of conduct.

This eventually reminded me of a story that my philosophy teacher, another preacher's kid, told about how HIS father kept the sabbath long ago: The family would sit quietly reading in the living room until Father would nod off, and then Mother would pull out her knitting and the kids could listen to the radio or otherwise occupy themselves while Father napped.

It sounds intolerably strict. But it WAS consistent. My friend's father and my philosophy teacher are roughly the same age and have both been Baptist pastors of note. So, I imagine some kind of generational process is going on. I think the previous generation rejected Strict Sabbath Keeping of the '40s and relaxed things a bit in the '70s. But that commandment is still around in the '00s. And WE'VE got to figure out what to tell OUR kids.

Loosening things up didn't evoke gratitude (because the kid never had to live under grampa's stricter standard), but it did evoke frustration at the inconsistency of the looser standard. The parent thinks his kid has it "a lot better" than what he had to put up with. But the kid doesn't appreciate it because the looser standard just moves the boundary, but it's still a boundary. And it's inconsistent, to boot!

I think the issue, the real issue, is in understanding God's Commandment. If you're the kind of guy who works 24x7 and never takes a break, you're not reflecting the Sabbath part of God's character. Something has to be different on Sabbath. But what is it?

My work calls upon me to sit in front of a keyboard (when I'm lucky on my deck) in a comfortable chair and write software. I love to write software and I think I'm good at it. Conversely, I got quite sweaty this afternoon digging a trench alongside my deck. That's not my day job and it was work, too. But I've done other things that make me sweaty that I thought were fun. They're not work. Can I do those non-trench-digging sweaty activities on Sunday? It's not simple. Jesus said that Sabbath was made for man, not vice-versa. Thus I think my relaxation and recreation is a legal Sabbath activity.

But I think that this line of thinking, "can I do this or not?" misses the point and falls into the Pharisee trap. You keep God's law not as a means to stay out of hell, but because of what kind of person lawkeeping makes you into. The ten commandments are a reflection of God's character. If you think someone who consistently acts like that is a fuddy-duddy, you really don't want to go to Heaven, because you'll find the place intolerable because the center of attention, God, is just like that. (And you don't want to be saved from your sins, just their penalty.)

My church meets on Sunday and it stresses is that the worship service is a particular time and space where the body's intention is to fellowship with God. Sabbath is an extension of that. The whole day should be lived mindful of God. Indeed this is like every other day, but this is a day to do so without the cares of work.

This results in an ethic that seems even more incoherent. The basketball game with the neighbor is legit provided it's a mindful-of-God game, but isn't if its not. I suppose that means you'll have to call your own fouls.

Theodicy

When I was a child I hated gravity. It made high places unsafe. Falling hurt, climbing hills on my bike was hard. Why couldn't we just not have gravity and we'd be able to fly by just flapping our arms. Of course you know that was wrong. If God turned off gravity right now, all the air would go spinning off the earth and we'd all be launched into space because the Earth is spinning and without gravity, we'd fly off like water droplets on a spinning bike-tire.

I changed my mind so completely, I advise new parents to be as consistent as gravity when raising kids.

A long time ago, I came to see a unity between Law of the moral 10 Commandments sort and of the natural F=ma sort. The ancient Greeks called this organizing unity behind phenomena Logos. In the beginning was the Word. This led me to see Christ in this Logos either as its archetype, or something deeper. God is immutable and his essential laws won't change. Some laws directly reflect the moral character of God, whereas God told Moses things that had only a ceremonial basis back then. Maybe God will repeal the law of gravity, but he doesn't change laws capriciously.

Some weeks ago there was a tsunami and people questioned the goodness of God. But water and techtonic plates were merely obeying he laws of physics. These same laws of physics allow us to live. If nature behaves in a consistent, predictable fashion then there will be times when nature's forces can crush us.

That's the rub. We now understand the consistent, predictable behaviour of nature. We can detect tsunami's and issue warnings. We can track hurricanes by satellites. We can build levees to hold back water. We can evacuate threatened areas. God has given us sufficient gray matter to see these things coming and get ot of the way.

Then there's the matter of preparation. Nobody planned on building New Orleans below sea level. Last year another hurricane missed New Orleans. The word then was that levees couldn't handle a direct hit and after the city was flooded, it would be difficult to pump it dry again. I don't think signing the Kyoto protocol would have evaporated hurricane Katrina. But I do think that after last year's near miss, some serious attention should have been given to the problem of flooding.

That discloses the role of government in natural disasters. Shoddy governments can skate by for a long time. Something like a natural disaster discloses its failures. Ferinstance, inspectors are bribed and then buildings collapse. Emergency management roles may go to political cronies who prove unable to cope. It's up to the electorate to insist upon integrity in government.

So, does something like a natural disaster indicate that God is malign? What would God do differently? Repeal the law of gravity? But there's that spinning off into space business.

In addition to law there is mercy.

Two objects can't coexist in the same place at the same time. If you and I drive through the same intersection at the same time, our cars will go bonk. That's why we have traffic lights. I sat at a traffic light a couple saturdays ago. Distracted, I saw it a flash of green and I started off into the empty intersection. The blast of a car horn roused me and I saw that the green was the LEFT TURN ARROW. The light in my lane was red. Mortified, I realized that I should have had a car crash, but it was only mercy that spared me.

Mercy tells me that God is good. I see mercy as those remarkable times when circumstances should crush us, but they work out much better than anyone deserves. Why is mercy remarkable instead of customary? If it is customary, it's law and law is not mercy.

Theodicy is always the lame attempt to defend God or vindicate his reputation. I think that's a bad idea. God can defend himself much more ably than I could. I hope nobody thought this was what I was trying to do just now.

CVS Camera Cable

I have been repurposing a CVS one-time use camcorder into a general purpose camcorder. I've written about this before. But I thought I'd say a little more about building the cable.

To repurpose the CVS camcorder you need a custom cable. You can do this by soldering the end-connector from a Palm Pilot synch cable to USB cable. USB connectors have 4 conductors: +5v, ground, +data, -data. The USB cable's wires are nominally colored black, white, green and red.

When you build a cable, you need to test it. Ohming out a cable entails attaching a multimeter to both ends of the cable. This can be a 3 or 4-handed job. To make this easier, I built a test jig as pictured here.

Someone gave me a dead motherboard with USB ports on it. I desoldered the USB sockets (with ethernet connector) pictured at the left. Then I soldered four clip leads to the USB signals coming out of the gizmo. Those four wires sticking out the top end in alligator clips. On the front of the block you'll see two USB sockets and an ethernet socket. The leads are connected to the top USB socket.

To ohm out your cable, plug the USB end in the socket and orient yourself with the Palm side of the cable. Orient the Palm connector with conductors facing upward, and the edge facing right. You'll see a row of 10 conductors. The first is on the left and the 10th is on the right.

Clip the black lead to your multimeter. Touch the other side of your multimeter to the 10th pin on the Palm connector. It should be connected. Move on to the white lead. Attach it to the multimeter and check the 9th pin on the Palm connector. The green lead should match the 8th pin. Skip the 7th pin and check that the red lead matches the 6th pin on the Palm connector.

If all these signals work, you should be good to go. BUT first check to make sure no adjacent lines are shorted together. There should be no connection between pin 10 and 9, 9 and 8, 8 and 7, or 7 and 6. A bit of solder bridged pins 6 and 7 and that prevented the cable from working (despite ohming out correctly). Use a bright light and a magnifying glass to inspect your solder connections.

Further reading:
http://www.rkawakami.net/dakota/index2.html
http://www.mrbill.net/cvscam/cvscamera-cable-howto.pdf
http://www.maushammer.com/systems/dakotadigital/usb-cable.html
http://www.camerahacking.com/

Acknowledgement: I lifted the second image from "Maxwell Smart" on the camerahacking disussion forum. I definately recommend lurking there.

Serious Fun

Scott opens the throttle all the way. Then he calls out numbers. Fifty. Sixty. Seventy. Eighty. Then I feel a bump and I know the wheels are up. He pulls up in a steep climb--as steep a climb as a Cessna 172 does. And I think, “This is fun.” But then I realize how little holds us in the air. A bit of aluminum, an engine that had sputtered to life after a few balky tries. I remember how diligently Scott had performed the pre-flight ritual. Yeah, this is riskier than sitting in front of the TV. And I think, “Serious fun.”

The flight is smooth as polished metal. On the ground, temperatures are just below freezing. The air is dense and quiet. I presume it’s dry enough that icing is no problem. We take off at sunset and fly to Lansing. The daylight’s last gleaming shows me the terrain around Riverview Airport.

Things look different from the air. You see lines and wonder, “Is that 28^th street?” It is. And you see long rows of headlights tracing a serpentine path across town and know it’s a freeway. After dark, you see mercury vapor and sodium floodlights. The bigger and brighter clusters must be shopping malls and the like.

When Scott gets in the air, he starts talking to Grand Rapids air traffic control. They tell him frequencies to use. They say a lot of numbers and I’m not used to simultaneously holding several multi-digit numbers in my head: the airplane’s call sign, the radio frequencies, the transponder squawk code. Scott asks me to enter that. It’s the only thing I feel comfortable doing. Someday I will touch the controls, but not tonight.

Past Grand Rapids there is the business of navigating to Lansing. Scott shows me the VOR beacon and how we’ll follow a radial into Lansing. The Loran is something I have actually seen years back, but Scott is not familiar with it and I am clueless despite the fact that I really ought to know.

At the halfway point, Scott tweaks the heading indicator. He mutters something about precession. I remember forgotten gyroscope lore. Precession, nutation. Cool stuff. Scott mentions that the compass is fairly accurate and mentions the dipping angle--more forgotten lore recollected. I smile at the three-dimensionality of lines of magnetic force. Scott utters pilot jargon and I know the science it touches. Knowing obscure things puffs one up. Scott will do an instrument landing at Lansing and he shows me the glide path and all that. It all makes sense.

I start to grok the radio traffic: thinking like Scott is thinking and how Lansing control must be thinking. I remember bits of forgotten conversations with friends who worked air-traffic control or avionics systems. Everything is common sense if you think about it. I scan the horizon for the twinkling stars that are not stars. I scan the ground for the lights that blink every few seconds. Yard lights do not blink, but airport strobes do. Scott explains how north-south traffic owns one set of altitudes and east-west traffic owns another set of altitudes. It makes sense. Most of flight school must be learning the air traffic rules.

Lansing vectors us in a roundabout way so that we make our approach from the east. This business of lining up approaches to airstrips is a big deal. I could never get it right when I played with Flight Simulator. Scott tells me what a two-minute turn is. It makes sense.

Lansing is a sea of lights I have no clue where the airport is, but Scott finds it immediately. He mentions a rabbit chase and I see it. Big airports must be designed to accommodate dolts (like me) who need a big neon arrow pointing and saying Land Here. We make our descent into Lansing. Scott nails the glide slope, but he is a little off the centerline. No problem, Lansing’s runway is a mile wide. The tower asks Scott where he will to park. Scott names an FBO. What’s a FBO? A Fixed Base Operation is a rest stop for private pilots.

A guy comes out and chocks our wheels. We get out and he asks if we need gasoline. We don’t. We go inside and ask the girl where we can get the $100 hamburger that was the whole point of this trip. She directs us to the Airport Tavern. I wasn’t listening to directions, assuming Scott was. He assumed I was listening. No problem. The FBO lends us a nice car and we take a bunch of right turns and we’re on the main drag in front of the airport. I recognize the road. The last time I drove this road I was in grad school running some errand that took me to the north end of Lansing.
We pull into the Airport Tavern. It looks seedy as does the clientele. Not a problem. I briefly contemplate ordering a hamburger, but the special is Porterhouse steak. There’s no need to be too literal about his hundred-dollar-hamburger business. The steak is wonderful, cooked to perfection and tender and juicy. We eat steak and talk about airplanes and flying. It isn’t affected at all, it’s the most natural thing in the world. We finish and chat with the waitress. Nice lady, nice place. Well have to come back someday.

Back at the FBO we return the car and Scott’s return pre-flight is hurried and cursory. We’ve only been on the ground for an hour and the airplane is just wearing a skin of frost from sitting outside. Scott remembers to pull the chocks. It’s cold and we pile into the cockpit. The heater doesn’t work until we get in the air. Lansing is busy and we have to wait for a heavy to land and another light plane to take off ahead of us.

The Hobbs meter clicks off the same if we’re taxiing or if we’re flying. Note to self: future flights should go to smaller airports. Scott explains that a Hobbs meter is like a taxicab that clicks off time regardless of whether you’re sitting on the runway waiting to take off or flying. It’s a better deal if you’re billed according to the tachometer.

We’re back in the air and the flight home is as much fun as the flight out. There’s a deck of clouds at 3500 feet over Grand Rapids and we descend to 3200. When you fly, you don’t say hundred feet. You say 35 or 32 and the hundred feet are assumed. Scott could have filed an IFR flight-plan in Lansing, but there isn’t much to see inside the cloud.

We detour to the north and fly over my house. Scott circles while I call home on the cell phone. I can’t hear whether they pick up or not. I yell into the phone that we are circling overhead. Mary and the kids blink the yard lights for us. The rest of the flight goes over downtown and it is easy to pick out the landmarks.

We land at Riverview and Scott nails the centerline. The stall alarm squawks at the very moment the wheels touch down. It is perfect. It is serious fun.

Beyond Roe versus Wade

In 1973, Roe versus Wade legalized abortion in the the US, bypassing the politics courtesy of an appointed for life elite of jurists. Others have opined at length about the appropriateness of this legislation from the bench.

At the time Paul Ehrlich had written The Population Bomb and Malthusian scenarios were all the rage. Thomas Malthus and his followers has a long history of scary predictions that haven't panned out. According to these people, we should have all died sometime in the second term of the Reagan administration.

There was a real fear that overpopulation would be a real problem our society would have to solve. Abortion on demand seemed a reasonable component in solving the overpopulation problem. The fact that it dovetailed with what was then called "women's lib" contributed to its appeal. Today equal rights based on one's sex is acknowledged by all.

And today we're seeing some interesting demographics. In each country of the developed world, birth rates are flat and population growth has stopped. In the near future, nations will have to deal with the problem of population decline.

How can a society encourage population growth? One way is to pay women to have babies. That notion won't see much support in the next century when a large portion of the budget is going to Social Security recipients. It's cheaper to simply to pass laws against contraception.

That's an intrusive measure, but since the geezers of 2020 won't be much affected by laws against contraception, it's sure to get as many votes as those which increase Social Security benefits.

This looks like a bad thing and I think it is. I also think that once this thinking takes hold outside the ranks of the pro-life movement, the first change will be Roe versus Wade.

People want Roe versus Wade because they don't want babies. There are times when a child is a harmful disruption. The mother may not be prepared emotionally, financially, and otherwise for the demands of motherhood. There may be no support system (e.g. family) in place for nurturing the child. Moreover, it takes a lot of money to raise and educate a child. A lot of folks can't afford a large family.

Adoption has always existed because there are folks who want children, but cannot. The fact that these people are willing to do almost anything for a child has created a market that governments and lawyers have stepped into. There are legitimate concerns about adoptions and things must be done orderly and carefully. This has put pressure on the system to increase the price of adoption.

It seems that those who have an interest in the demographics of a stable population should put pressure on the system to reduce the price of adoption. Moreover, crisis pregnancy centers successfully discourage abortions. However, they often come with a heavy-handed religious message that some may not like. Perhaps non-church groups could establish homes for wayward mothers (a victorian term) where they'd be encouraged to give up unwanted children for adoption and supported in that choice.

Think of the hordes of unborn Democrat voters who'd be saved.

CVS Disposable Camcorder Project

I saw a hacking project on Make: Blog to repurpose a CVS Disposable Camcorder and this note describes what I did.

Saturday after breakfast I dropped into CVS and paid $30 for a disposable camera. This camera is supposed to be used once and then returned to CVS for video extraction for an additional fee whereupon they will give you a DVD of your video and they'll recycle the camera.

I had read about various efforts to repurpose this camera by buying it, fabricating a cable for it, and then installing software to unlock and then extract the video onto my computer.

The project had hack value, so I bought the camera and started researching the project. Happily, others have done all the hard work, so I was able to glom onto a couple HOWTOs and download all the software.

The project seems to be well within the grasp of a technically oriented teenager. It doesn't entail anything more dangerous than cutting wires and soldering them. I should put my son to work building another interface cable and installing the drivers on my other laptop.

The first thing I did was to study the camcorder I'd just purchased. It had 3 buttons on the back and by pressing them all simultaneously while powering up the device, I was able to ascertain its firmware id. At the top of the camcorder is a sticker. Beneath it is a slot wherein you can see the edge of a circuit board and ten contacts.

Those contacts match the docking port of a Palm Pilot. Happily, I have several and I also had some surplus Handspring Prism docking stations. I decided to sacrifice one of these. That was a mistake. After I dremelled free the connector from my Prism docking station, I noticed its pins were spaced 8-wide instead of 10-wide. Ooops, discard that.

Second try I sacrificed a Palm Pilot M100 docking station. It had the right number of pins at the right spacing. I disassembled, and then desoldered it to get a little circuit board with nice plated-through holes. Sweet. I got the circuit board nice and clean and then picked around to find a USB cable to plug into it.

This is how you tell if a cable is wrong: you hook up the camcorder on one side and the computer on the other side, and nobody does anything. If the cable is good, you'll hear Windows make a bloop-beep sound of something being plugged into the USB port, and you'll hear the camera light up, beep and power on. (You don't need to install any software to get this much response.) But my cable was bad and I got nada.

Remember that Handspring Prism USB docking port? I tried that. Advice: DON'T. It has a nonstandard USB connector that doesn't pass through the red signal. More Advice: Ohm out (test continuity) all the wires of any cable you try to fabricate.

I went sorting through junk boxes and a friend gave me a USB cable for my second attempt.

The Palm docking cradle's circuit board didn't clean up as nicely the second time I desoldered all its wires. I didn't have any solder wick, and discovered that air-in-a-can works wonder on hot solder. It removed the excess and got the board relatively clean without more than a few pinprick burns. (I became a Mathematician instead of an Electrical Engineer, because when I was in High School I couldn't solder. Go figure.)

After you have a working cable, you can connect the camcorder to your Windows XP box and it'll tell you that new hardware has been detected and ask, "Do you want to install drivers for it?"

DON'T tell it you do unless the following drivers have been installed. And do tell it you want it to ask again the next time it sees this unknown device. (There's a checkbox you want to keep clear.)

Drivers are fairly straightforward, but there's not much handholding. You need two programs: one low-level usb library thang and one higher-level talk to the camcorder thang.

The low-level thang is LibUsb-Win32 on Source Forge you'll need to decide which version you like and then download, not one, but two files. I downloaded these:

• libusb-win32-device-bin-0.1.10.1.tar.gz
• libusb-win32-filter-bin-0.1.10.1.exe

If you just download the EXE, it'll install itself, but NOT the inf-wizard.exe that you'll need. (I suppose if you've got mad Windoze Device Driver skills, you won't need inf-wizard.) Thus you need to get the "device bin tar" file, too. I put that in a directory under the libusb-win32 install.

Once you've got this installed on your machine, you're ready to plug in the camcorder again. Still don't setup the device driver, but DO run inf-wizard. It'll look at the USB and ask you some questions you can click through, and it'll create an INF file. Pay attention to that and where you put it.

Then go back to Windoze and tell it you do want to install the device driver, and you do want to specify where it goes to pick up the device driver and you will tell it get the device driver out of that INF file.

Windows should then be satisfied and you should be ready to talk to the camcorder.

At this point, there are two perfectly suitable programs: Ops and SaturnDownload. They probably share a lot of code. Ops is a clicky windows MFC program and SaturnDownload is a command-line program. It's simpler and I think I prefer it because it leaves no room for mistakes. Just run it and it'll download your videos.

To recap, this is what you'll have to do:

1. scrape up $30 from a paper route or something for the CVS camera
2. scrounge parts for a cable from an old Palm synch cable and a USB cable. Learn to solder them together. If you're a True Hack, you could install a USB socket in the camcorder case. That idea has some appeal. Assemble the cable.
3. install libusb-win32, create an INF, give it to Windows, install SaturnDownload
4. take a lot of videos and gloat about how much cheaper this is than theKodak EasyShare that I paid 10x more for six months ago.
   

Further Reading:

• http://www.maushammer.com/systems/cvscamcorder/
• http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/08/how_to_cvs_vide_1.html
• http://camerahacks.10.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=621
• http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/182/94/
• http://www.suburbanninja.com/

Acknowledgements: I didn't do NOTHING except scope out what everybody else had posted and follow the instructions they left for me. This missive exists to point out the parts where I had to scratch my head and figure out what I was doing wrong.

UPDATE: some have complained of being unable to see the video despite hearing the audio. Problem is lack of the xvid codec. I found the following files in my c:\windows\system32 directory. I presume they are vital to getting the codec to work. (You probably need to google for someone who knows what he's doing.)

• 09/06/2004 05:06 PM 53,248 xvid.ax
• 07/03/2004 09:59 PM 524,288 xvidcore.dll
• 07/03/2004 10:08 PM 139,264 xvidvfw.dll

The Candidate

Some weeks back there was a knock at the door. I answered and a pleasant volunteer stood there exhorting me to vote for someone. When asked why she affirmed that the person she represented would help:

• strengthen families
• strengthen the city
• create jobs and improve the environment

My reply was, "Wonderful. These are fantastic things that I want! But how will your candidate accomplish this? You know, even Atilla the Hun could advocate such things."

Her response was a bit of deer-in-the-headlights quickly followed by, "let me get the candidate." It wasn't necessary and I thanked the volunteer nonetheless. My neighbor dropped in a bit later and we were chatting when the candidate showed up a minute after that.

The Candidate was an altogether pleasant person and I could tell that if elected, she'd do everything she could to accomplish those admirable goals she enumerated. But she was a bit vague on how she'd accomplish them. I figured that it would be rude to press her at this point and changed the subject.

Our cul-de-sac is evenly split into two factions as fierce as the slave-state vs free-state conflict of years bygone. You can characterize our conflict in our cul-de-sac as the Forces of Light versus the Forces of Darkness. I explained to her that in the last year or so the business of putting up street lights has come before the city commission and I asked how she'd vote. (I think the lights we have now work fine without the city dunning us a few thousand bucks to put them in.)

Her answer showed her skill as a politician, because she said what I wanted to hear, but didn't actually commit herself to either Light or Darkness.

At this point, I wanted to know who's team this rising star was playing on. I had a suspicion, but I wanted it confirmed. The race is a non-partisan one so one has to ask sneaky questions to ascertain Republican versus Democrat. What's her resume look like? She's worked in child-protection stuff. I said, "Oh, that's how Hillary Clinton got her start." I figured that if she flashed on the name, she'd out herself as flaming lib or raging clinton-hater. She said nothing. Very astute.

She left me with her campaign literature and my neighbor went home too. Scanning the literature I went through the names of endorsers. Ah, the usual suspects appeared, all of whom are more-or-less identified with one party. OK, good to know which team she's on.

I figure she has a bright future in politics. At least she's following to the template of her party. It becomes clear when you look deeper and compare/contrast with the other candidates that this party has put up in the last few election cycles.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan won a landslide election over a fellow who complained of malaise as he blamed the American people for his failings. Listening to NPR at the time, the complaint was that Reagan's politics were vague and sugarcoated and they obscured hard things that must be done. The response was a fellow from Minnesota who promised to raise taxes and another landslide followed. After another Massachusetts liberal lost another election, Mr. Clinton reversed this losing streak by promising middle-class tax cuts and complaining the worst economy in 50 years was caused by 12 years of greed.

I believe Mr. Clinton's party didn't understand why Mr. Reagan won. They thought his success was pure charm & platitudes. And Mr. Clinton's success seemed to vindicate this opinion. Since then I've seen a pattern repeated in campaigns from folks on that side of the aisle.

There are a lot of yard signs for the candiddate. She dispatched another volunteer who handed out her retooled literature today. No policy details, but lots of endorsements. I am grateful for her brother's service to our country in Iraq. Her opponent has caught up somewhat in the lawn sign department.

To be fair, the candidate hasn't made a secret of what she wants to do. If you goto her website, she provides a vision of getting every penny of tax money due our community and funding safety programs (such as more street lighting!) and stricter regulation to protect our children. In fact, we'll create jobs while restoring the environment. I wonder why her volunteer didn't say this at the beginning?

The election is August 2nd. It should be interesting to see how the candidate does.

What's Wrong With The Dutch

I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where a large number of Hollanders settled upon leaving their imperfect homeland for a better land. They've enriched the west side of Michigan by their presence. (And I'm not being sarcastic.) But I have a problem with the Dutch.

Same problem with Dr. Laura. I think a lot of Grand Rapids Dutch people like Dr. Laura. I quit listening to Dr. Laura when a woman called who was distraught, consumed with guilt after having broken one of the Ten Commandments. (About which Dr. Laura wrote a very good book I used in my Baptist Sunday School class several years back.) What made me turn off Dr. Laura was her reply to the guilt-consumed woman: You did it. Suffer. (She probably said something kinder, but that's what I heard.)

Dr. Laura is right to condemn Christians for being too quick to forgive or expect forgiveness. Catholics with their crucifixen helpfully remind us that though grace is free, its price is infinite.

But humans are only human and certain reasonable accommodations are in order when you live in this fallen world. Human nature is flawed and humans make mistakes. Sometimes humans choose an expedient over the right thing.

Obviously, one can lose weight by eating less and exercizing more. The mere application of the will and self-control suffices to make one lean and strong. I have a friend of Dutch descent who accurately put forth this opinion when I went on an Atkins kick. And he's right. Ask Ten Dutchmen and you will hear the right answer. I like being around folks of Dutch descent because they keep me sharp and keep me trying 100% to stay on top of things. My complaint here is that being right isn't enough.

At my writers' group I was chatting with a friend of Dutch descent and the topic of children in public came up. Ah yes. I recall how it was when my kids were very young and what it was like taking them out in public. A harrowing affair. My attitude toward parents with misbehaving children changed when I saw how difficult it was to keep rein on my own tykes. No, my kids were all very well behaved, but the peril that they might not struck fear into my heart. Mindful of this, I'm more inclined to shrug when kids slip the leash of their parents' iron discipline.

It's said that Germans make no small mistakes. Since everyone makes mistakes, that should hint at the kind of mistakes that Germans make. And I think Dutch and the Germans are a lot alike. (Being of both Dutch and German ancestry, there's a lot of that in me.)

Having described the behaviours of the Dutch that trouble me, I'll try to explain what I think the problem is. Let me explain.

A decade back I bought a book entitled "Design Patterns." I gave it a quick skim and put it on my bookshelf. I noted the chapter headings and a few buzzwords. Design Patterns are cool and I'd feel a bit of a poseur if the topic came up. I knew of patterns better than I knew patterns. I never had a need to use patterns and if I did, I'd learn then. It wasn't that the book wasn't interesting. It's just that the book was a little bit like a dictionary or an encyclopedia. Something you read when you're in high school on a lazy summer day and you're bored. Thus the book's excellent contents never made it from the bookshelf into my brain.

My boss went on a trip and he read another book on the plane. "Head First Design Patterns" He came back and bought a copy for everyone in his department. My first reaction was an eye-roll. "This stuff is fluff," I thought. But the publisher was O'Reilly. I read the first chapter and it consisted of an apology for the fluffy appearance of pictures and cartoons, etc. Ferinstance, it told me to drink lots of water so my brain would work better. And it got across the point that if the info in the book didn't make it into my brain, the book failed in its purpose.

That's what I think is wrong with the Dutch. They (we) fail to take imperfect human nature into account. Like Dr. Laura they throw up their hands in the face of human failings. Seeing this response to failure motivates those around them. If you haven't failed this time around, you'll be terrified into making sure you don't fail next time around. Or maybe you just shut down in response.

My whole point is effectiveness. People are motivated by high standards. The Dutch set high standards. When standards are too high, standards demotivate and discourage. What's wrong with the Dutch is they can forget to take imperfect human nature into account and act accordingly. The Heads First book lowers its sights to accommodate the shortened attention spans of harried software professionals. Thus it accomplishes something The Gang Of Four didn't.

For further reading:

• Head First Design Patterns

• Design Patterns (aka Gang Of Four)
  

• The Ten Commandments : The Significance of God's Laws in Everyday Life

• A.C. Van Raalte Institute
  

Harry Potter And The Half-Wit Fundamentalist

No, I'm not going to bash fundies. Well, maybe a little. There's times when I cringe, because I identify myself as a fundamentalist Christian. Or maybe an Evangelical. What makes me cringe the most is when a preacher starts talking about science. Since science guys have tended to bash bible thumpers, thumper preachers like to bash back. And when you're a science guy and a bible thumper... that's another story.

This essay is about Harry Potter. But before I go there, I'll recommend you go here to take this quiz. http://www.tk421.net/character/ I took the quiz and my score most closely matched Harry Potter!

Well, if i'm Harry Potter, I'd better explain how one does magic. I figure there's two approaches you can take to do magic:

1) bargain with some powerful being who performs some magic task for you. Ferinstance, the Devil and Daniel Webster. This kind of magic is a very personal thing. You have to establish some relationship with some being with whom you become codependent. Sorry, Alladin. The Witch of Endor (not Endora, that was on TV) summoned the prophet Samuel and that was personal, too. The Bible is pretty clear that this is a Bad Thing and Not Approved. Though, I suppose you could count Moses and the Prophets in this category as they did miracles thru their personal relationship with God. And that explains why this sort of magic is disapproved. The First Commandment says to have no other gods before God.

2) the second way to do magic is impersonal. pretty much anybody who says the incantation and does the gestures right unlocks some magic-power that does something. Larry Niven's Magic Goes Away stories. And Wiz Zumwalt. And of course, Harry Potter.

Ok, i've been playing fast and loose with fact and fiction to this point. But think of what it must have been like to be Isaac Newton. You've just invented calculus and you've stuck knitting needles in your eyes to figure out optics. You're messing with maths and formulae. And the some guy on the other side of campus is trying to turn lead into gold and figuring out physical chemistry in the process.

Newton didn't have these neat categories we have today of science and magic and alchemy. They were all smashed together in his head. I imagine he could have looked at the alchemists and their dark arts and foul smells and felt a twinge of guilt that he was doing something Not Right. Indeed, Newton managed to make a muddle of alchemy and physics, never really untangling them.

Of course, alchemy has to become chemistry, chemistry has to figure out electron orbitals and physics has to elaborate the quantum mechanics of those orbitals. All this stuff is uniformly repeatable, but as it has been frequently said, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Since I was trained in the sciences in the 20th century at a Christian college, I had the advantage of having all those cool things figured out by the science boys for me, and I had a Christian world-life-view that indicated this thing called science was really Natural Law. Francis Bacon's two-books, with one of them being nature that discloses organizing principles of itself that we can figure out and we can build technology upon. Thus, incantational magic begat alchemy, alchemy begat science, science begat Natural Law, a new way to appreciate deity.

I guess that makes me the half-wit fundamentalist, because I buy into that Natural Law stuff that came to us through the circuitous route described in the last paragraph. I cringe when CNN has various preachers on who say Harry Potter readers are going to hell. (Remind me to revisit hell.)

I'm not cringing about the pope's criticism of Harry Potter. But I figure that catholics are magic-users as I've described above. But they can get away with type #1 magic described above since they are appealing to God for that magic.

And I suppose I'm OK with that. I'll pray to God and trust him to do the miracles of redeeming me in a type #1 mode. And I'll continue to play with technology and science and that's the kind of #2 mode magic.

It's important not to mix up the two. You can't approach God impersonally. If God were the force, you could do the right thing 100% every time you'd get a predictable result. But if God's a person, then he'll grant favors and hear requests on his terms and on his schedule. And as a person, he may even give you what you need instead of what you ask for or want. If God were 100% predictable when you did things like pray the prayer of Jabez, it would be strong evidence that God is not a personal being.