Thu, 2008 Oct 30
A Halloween Pun
Beware the…
1970-01-01…2038-01-19
…EPOCH-ELLIPSE!
Sat, 2008 Oct 11
Cheap Yuppie Places
My wife and I ate a Panera Bread this evening. And when I saw “my wife and I”, I don’t mean to imply that I did any of the actual eating. There was a time when soups, sandwiches and salads where what is known as the “s-group appetizers”. This is a code phrase for “you’ll have an appetite to leave and go somewhere that serves food that ain’t on that goofy health pyramid.” But, no, all the yuppies with their hybrid Hummers (but 10 mpg is better than 8) apparently like this stuff.
I should note that my wife is not a yuppie, she just eats healthy. I know this because when she eats at these places, she gets a water, not some strange ultra-caffienated concoction. And not a bottled water.
Anyway, turns out the yuppies than run these things are cheap-ass. At McDonald’s, where I ate a full (if devoid of nutritious value) meal for six dollars, I take my tray over the trash can when I’m finished and dump the paper remains in. No biggee. Hey, it’s McDonald’s. I’m not paying for service. I’m barely paying for food. So, right, my wife gets a salad at Panera Bread. It comes on a plate (New yuppie motto: “We have non-paper dishes. So we’re better than you.”), with metal fork and knife. So far, so good. So she finishes eating, and takes her plate with her.
If you’re not saying WTF? right now, I’m sorry, but you’re a yuppie. Go buy an espresso.
Yes, this cheap-ass yuppie establishment gives her a plate and whatnot, but expects their customers to bus their own table! This is not McDonald’s. You sell bagels, people! Normal people buy bagels at 7-11, then promptly throw them away. It’s like playing the lottery except without the temptation to try again after you lose. But I digress. All I’m saying is if you’re fancy-shmancy enough to sell all these fancy bagels, you can hire someone to bus the freaking tables.
Which brings me to Q’doba. They’re only half-yuppie. You see, most of what they give you is cheap plastic, easily tossed right? Yes, of course. But, then–why the heck not, they were thinking–they add a metal plate under the plastic plate. Because metal conducts heat more quickly than plastic and they want to burn fingers? I don’t know.
But was that clever enough? No, of course not. You see, since most of the wares are plastic, they have trash cans. But, oh, no, some people might throw away the unneeded metal plates too? What to do?
- Step 1: make the hole on the trash can smaller than the metal plate
- Step 2: (and here is genius at work) make the plastic plate the exact same size as the metal plate!
One of my new (admittedly transient) life goals is to get rich enough so I can buy out Q’doba, find out who thought this up, and then fire his dumb ass. And I know it’s a guy. And I’m pretty sure he was drinking Bud Light when he had the idea.
Fri, 2008 Sep 19
My Sweet Lord
Are you familiar with George Harrison’s song, “My Sweet Lord”? It’s this worship song filled with so much longing and desire to just be closer, just be nearer. The subject is not Jesus, but Krishna. Ignoring that (I think) there are people who see Jesus and Krishna as one, every time I hear this song, I’m left wondering why I’ve never heard a song sung to Yahweh and/or Christ with that kind of heartfelt longing to be closer.
Thu, 2008 Feb 07
Being helpful, not stupid
I’ve probably mentioned this before but I actually have something of a life mission statement (how sick is that?): Provide the resources and environment to encourage and facilitate the ministry of others. I suppose, now that I think of it, I could spend an article or two dissecting what that statement means. And, for the record, I didn’t sit down with the intention to create a personal mission statement; it’s just something I came upon (with help from my wife) and it, well, it fits. Anyway, the basic point is that one of my major throughout-life goals is to help folks that have a vision and passion for doing some ‘good work’ to accomplish it. Again, that’s an article or two in itself.
Crap, I’m way off subject already. Reverse.
If one defines a goal of helping others achieve their goals, though, there is a tendency to, um, go to far. During a conversation with a friend a few weeks back, he mentioned that an organization he works with now has something like a two-month long training course for a two-year job. Of course, this is not on-the-job training. That happens later. Now, this could all be useful training, and there’s no doubt situations in which the training should even exceed the ‘actual work’, if you will. Here, I’m thinking: astronaut.
But I wonder if this is a situation where a group (the training organization) really wans to help others succeed, but has let the “helping” become an end to itself. It is very important to me that whatever I do in life, I avoid doing that: letting my work of helping others become more important to me than that those other folks achieve what they’ve set out to do.
I know there’s probably seven thousand fine lines there.
I think it must be important to always keep the end goal in mind, that is the goals of those I’m assisting (in whatever way). Without being stupid.
Mon, 2008 Jan 14
New American Bible
The last two years, I’ve read a version of the Bible through each year, Young’s Literal in 2006, the Contemporary English in 2007 (which was quite a contrast in readability). I’ve been doing this to get a better feel for and understanding of the Bible as a whole, in hopes that when studying various passages, I’m less likely to misinterpret–at least in a way which is inconsistent with the Bible as a whole; it also helps me in figuring out, when someone randomly quotes a “scripture”, if it’s likely really in the Bible, and where I might start looking for it. Although, I usually just hit BibleGateway’s search page.
Anyway, this year, I wanted to read a version including some of the apocraphyl books I’ve never read, having grown up Protestant. After some (admittedly limited) research, I settled on the New American Bible, reading the version online at USCCB.org. I’m most of the way through Genesis (reading 5-10 chapters a day).
Anyway, now that I’m past the introductory information, I can make my point. The NAB–at least the version I am reading, and through Genesis 40–includes footnotes with critical reading comments. Most interesting to me is the discussion of the contribution of Yahwist and Elohist sources and considerations on the effects of their combination in the current text; something I hope to study more in the future.
However, there’s another aspect of these footnotes which has struck me, that a number of footnotes state that a passage or portion thereof is illustrative and with minimal or no historical value (no, I’m not going to quote any; that it does so is not my point, but rather my reaction thereunto). My tendency when reading Genesis (including in my FromGenesis study) is to give the recordings benefit of the doubt in considering their historical accuracy, while placing minimal value on the particularly accuracy of each telling. That is, the effects of passages in Genesis on me–what I learn from them, how I apply them–are largely the same regardless of the historicity of, say, Cain.
Still, reading footnotes that confidently question historical precision in these accounts is very different to me than books I’ve read and sermons I’ve heard that have considered these accounts a literal historic retelling. I suppose I’d like to research how the various branches of Christianity came to place such different value on figurative verses literal readings of, especially, the Torah. These thoughts rolling through my head have also served to emphasize to me, once again, the value in reading a variety of translations, and indeed, of learning the original languages, which I hope someday to do.
No point, just some thoughts.
Thu, 2008 Jan 10
Generations
Something I hear from Christians a lot, especially middle-age or so, is discussions of how much worse (rude, etc.) today’s kids are than those in the past. I’ll grant that, being twenty-something, I cannot speak with particular authority as to whether youth are getting any more obnoxious, worse-behaved, etc. Having studied a bit of history, I’m very skeptical of any “Those were the good old days” stories.
More importantly, to me, is how this attitude attacks people at one of the points in their lives when they most need encouragement. I had the blessing of parents and some other adults who were always very encouraging to me, but during high school I saw in one of my friend’s life, in particular, how the adults in his life always tore down “his generation”. Everything that could be attributed to his generational group was at least questionable. His response, naturally, was to try out most of the things his parents claimed to be evil about his generation, never mind that these activities (smoking, cussing, rock music) were quite common in their generation. The good news, I suppose, was these adults were so stuck on those things (none of which I have any moral issue with) that they didn’t get around into driving him into, say, murder. Hatred of them, probably.
At what point in one’s life do you look at kids and teenagers and stop seeing their potential, indeed, stop seeing great things they’re doing right now, and focus instead on your perception of what’s wrong with their generation? I hope that I never get to that point. I want to be excited about what each new generation can bring.
Maybe it’s because I’m at the stage in my life where I want kids. A lot of the folks I know who whine about “today’s teenagers” seem to regret having children. But maybe the causality is reversed. Perhaps it’s because all they did was whine about their children’s friends and culture that those same children go through so many struggles later in life.
Or, I could be full of shit. But, I’d rather err on the side of encouragement, at least in theory. In practice, I maybe tend to err the other way. Uh-oh, introspection.
Sun, 2007 Dec 23
A different holiday
I’m a nerd. Probably a mega-nerd. Except when it comes to sci-fi tv. So, I’m transitioning the interface to my personal database from PHP to Rails. Yes, really, I have a database with my journals, Bible study thoughts, random writings, letters, etc. Like I said, I’m a nerd. Anyway, whilst fixing some little data formatting problems, I came across what is probably my favorite poem that I’ve written.
I wrote it April of 2001. I think it would be a lot more interesting if I had written in October of that year, or maybe summer of 2002. Alas.
Anyway, I thought I’d share it.
Sometime After the Fourth of July
Well, in the end,
the June bugs die,
apple cores rot under sticky heat,
and even the star-spangled banner
fades, thank god.
A while back,
daydreams circled to a beat;
rain formed above.
Once, I smelled perfume while sucking juice
from a lemon.
August has a deadly moon;
a mood for erasing connections
and leaving children tossing mindless fist
or sleeping
by the ancient burial grounds
of locusts.
Edit, a few minutes later:
I was really happy when I wrote this poem; or maybe, really content. There was no particular reason, except that it was a nice spring day and I was sitting at one of the tables in the UMSL quad and had nothing particular to worry me. And that’s the way I read this poem, is a happy poem, full of no-worry.
I’m not sure that it matters.
Sat, 2007 Nov 10
Celebration
I sort of follow college football. I usually know who the top five teams in the country are and how the OU Sooners are doing. I also check out si.com or espn.com during the college football season to see what’s going on. And I enjoy watching the strategy during the games. But I’m not really up to “fan” status. I mean, strategy is great and all but you’re not going to see me freezing my rear off for four hours in the stands. Nuh-uh, son.
The point of the previous paragraph is that I don’t really know what I’m talking about here.
I have two complaints about college football. Well, I probably have more, but two I’m going to share. One is the “perfect season” ideal. For generally good teams, one loss in a season can be a big deal. As in, your hopes for the season are over. There’s probably no fix for that, but it just seems goofy to me, and detrimental to teaching the players life skills, or whatever the stated reason for collegiate athletics is these days.
My bigger complaint is the “excessive celebration” rules. I don’t know the history behind them. No doubt, there are at least some good and thought out historical reasons for such penalties. But I’m not going to check them right now. While there is a danger in not knowing history (the tendency to repeat the bad parts), there is also a danger in not examining something at its current state. For example, there are good historical reasons for why email sucks. It still sucks, and it needs to replaced, because the historical evolution of email, via each of its positive steps, produced a bad product.
NB: This is a rant. Grain of salt, please.
The problem I have is these guys get on the field in front of thousands of drunken people, under crazy pressure, making mistakes, getting booed and yelled at, not to mention their own self degradation, and then, finally all that practicing, all that work comes together and they make an amazing play, and by the rules of the game, they…smile…and, um, high five. Does nobody else think it a wee bit goofy that the fans at home with popcorn propped precariously on their laps celebrate more than the actual players? Cos, it just doesn’t make sense to me.
Let’s talk about self-esteem. Because I imagine that has more than necessary place in the argument against excessive celebration. Self-esteem and celebration of accomplishments are not separable. Yes, sometimes the celebration is very quiet, but let’s face it, the only things about football that could be described as quiet are celebration and the University of Nebraska’s ability to fire its dumb— coach.
Perhaps, though, the reason for the continuance of such anti-celebration tactics is the purity line. You know, “We must keep amateur sports pure”. This is the reason that teams lose their wins because a player got paid too much; meanwhile, the games are interrupted for commercials. To keep the game pure and non-commercialized, right?
Celebration likewise disrupts the purity of the game. To see this clearly, we must go back to the early days of American football. The game was invented as a practice of religious penance. A few folks in the village of G’nash were getting too prideful. So, the religious leaders invented a game that required dedication, training, effort, brute strength, and intelligence, so that when a player succeeded, he, she, or it would have every reason to be proud, but…here’s the catch…they had to content themselves with a head butt. Instant humility, baby.
What would I like to see instead? I don’t know. But I would like to see the “minimal celebration obsession” be at least re-evaluated, because I think it leaves out one of the best parts of any game: rejoicing for no “real life” reason.
Sat, 2007 Sep 01
Organization
I suppose I should read a book. I mean, I read lot of books. Sometimes on my own, sometimes with my wife. All sort of subjects too, from fiction to…um…non-fiction. Except that I don’t really believe in non-fiction. My wife had a professor who talked about things as “fictions”. That is, if I understand correctly, all of our “knowledge” is really simply fictions on which we base our actions. The point is that I do read books.
I suppose I should read, in particular, a book on organization. Or see a psychiatrist. Probably the latter, come to think of it. But that is not the point. No, the point is to see if I can manage to ramble long enough in order to start writing something genuinely funny. This seems unlikely to me, here, in this second paragraph. The secondary point is a question regarding organization, which I suppose, some book answers rather more concisely than I am asking the question.
Because, hey, where would the twentieth century be without stream-of-conciousness? Over, as it turns out. Actually, over, regardless. Even if you’re an alien many light years away watching Earth’s so-called twentieth century coming to you at the speed of light, it is now, I know since you are reading this, over. Unless Einstein was wrong. Which seems unlikely considering that scientists can’t even decide whether string theory is supposed to be good or bad these days. But relativity? Doing OK.
My question: What are the best methods of organization which retain organization the longest.
I’m something of an obsessive organizing. Excepting, perhaps, in regards to my thought patterns. But I find myself re-organizing far more often than I think I should. In part, I simple enjoy reorganization, be it changing where stuff is in my office, moving folders in my home folder, refactoring code, etc. And yet, I seem, very quickly, to find disorganized what once had seemed quite clean and simple.
Perhaps part of what I miss is actually completing the organization project. That is, as I approach completion, my interest in the project tends to drop exponentially, so that I probably never actually complete a re-organization project. I suppose, like I said, there’s some books out there. In the mean time, it’s a subject to ponder. And about which to ramble.
Yep, this article was pointless. Oh, well…
Tue, 2007 Aug 28
Movements and Community
Hey, another foray into desk-chair philosophy, including herein such warnings and disclaimers as to that these are merely thoughts, based on no research, etc., etc…
Those of you have have regularly attended Christian church services are probably familiar with the “Life-Saving Station” story. The gist is that some folks set up a life-saving station near a dangerous shore. At first, they focus on their mission, but gradually it transforms into more of a clubhouse. Ultimately, a small group splinters off, returns to original mission, cycle ensues.
This reality is not at all limited to the Christian church, but seems to me to be quite widespread amongst any “movement”, be it a political party, an environmental movement, another religion, a *-rights movement, or any other. While for some people, the cause of the degradation from active movement to clubhouse is due to laziness or the infiltration of an existing group for a pat on the back, etc., I realized another avenue I had not previously considered: community.
Movements tend to be both born out of, and create communities. It is probably not necessary to state this, but it happens to be the principle axiom of my ill-formed argument. That is, membership in a movement tends to come from within communities to which the initial members belong, and the movement itself creates, or perhaps even becomes, a community. This makes sense. Communities tend to be defined shared identities of the members. It is no surprise that a feminist will hang out with another feminist, a FairTax supporter with another supporter.
The crucial difference to my mind between a community and a movement is in how the members value immediate needs. Successful movements (according to my lax observation) focus on meeting a need and recruiting others to share in meeting that need. A movement which fails to meet any immediate needs of those being “reached” will not have any success. Hence, preaching is often best paired with meeting some physical need. Most movements have initial success because whatever the movement offers includes some immediate and significant benefit. La la la. A movement sustains its growth only so long as it continues to provide such benefit.
Initial excitement and conviction, however, tend to wane. For most people, resources are scarce (or, at least, they view resources as scarce). Decisions must be made. A movement says focus the resources on the external mission. However, a community has developed within the movement. A community places greater relative value on needs within the community. Hence, it says that internal needs are more important, regardless of “objective” comparison between the needs. A person with a sprained ankle within the community will receive more care from the community than a person having a heart attack outside.
Now, we have arrived at the clubhouse. Our community is now outweighing our movement when distributing resources. The movement suffers. Outsiders, examining the movement, see it as a failure, hypocritical, no longer caring. Insiders continue to see value, because of the community. A few insiders will receive the external criticism, relaunch the movement, refocus on meeting the external need. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Perhaps, this is a “natural” social balancing mechanism. It doesn’t seem to be overly problematic. While those at the point of “movement re-ignition”, if you will, will perhaps inevitably be frustrated with the system, but with a frustration necessary for its continuance. On the other hand, it does strike me as an imperfect balancing act.
As a thought problem, I suppose a movement whose beneficiaries are necessarily inside that community. Probably among those within the community who do not receive as much, some will become resentful, and perhaps split into another community, but in general this setup seems intuitively (read: my guess) to be more stable, hence more often focused on the goals of the movement because those goals coincide with needs within the community. As to what movements could fall into such a category, I don’t have any immediate ideas.
I wonder how possible it is to intentionally define our communities in such a way as to include the beneficiaries of our movements. For example, as a Christian, one of the communities I consider myself to belong to is that of “Christians” with a movement (that is, the movement from which the community was born) of telling the general world populace the good news of Jesus (NB: that’s “telling”, not “beating”). Is there a way to internally–both within the movement and within myself–redefine our community from “Christians in [city]” to “people in city”. If possible, is it a) beneficial and/or b) sustainable?
Again, just some desk-chair thoughts.
A final note: my wife and I finished reading (well, she had already read it, but finished reading together) Sherri S. Tepper’s The Companions. There’s a discussion towards the end about some humans acting as “pack animals”, which (for the main characters, at least) is presented as a negative thing for a people with a language because it leads to exclusion of those outside the pack (movement? community?). So, I’m rethinking the previous discussion in those terms. Maybe I will have more to say…
Fri, 2007 Aug 10
Some Favorite Websites
Well, I thought I’d take a break from thinking this week and just list some of my favorite websites to visit, maybe introduce some people to a few new ways to waste time, eh?
- sheldoncomics.com - Sheldon is a comic strip about a ten-year billionaire, his grandfather, a talking duck, and the duck’s adopted son, who happens to be a lizard. If that isn’t enough for you, let me say that this is probably one of the best comics of all time. Especially funny if you’re a nerd, although the targets of humor are quite varied. The author/artist, Dave Kellett, keeps a blog on this site, which is usually pretty interesting, when I read it.
- seenonslash.com - Comments from slashdot, usually the funniest or most interesting. If you read slashdot primarily for comments, as I do, this is a great quick fix.
- barkeaterlake.com - Another comic strip. Barkeater Lake is often one of my favorite comics. The strips, now, are somewhat irregular (a new one a couple of times a week).
- icanhascheezburger.com - lots of lolcats. Some are hilarious.
- worsethanfailure.com - Basically stories of stupidity in IT. Quality varies from day to day, but usually either funny or interesting. Sometimes pretty instructive, as well. If nothing else, the Virtudyne saga is a must-read.
Tue, 2007 Aug 07
A little help...
NB: The following article is purely desk-chair philosophy. It has no other basis than the beautiful (?) randomness of my thoughts. There is no research, no call to ancient works, no reliance on political stump speeches (except insofar as what I may have internalized over time). I’m not altogether sure I believe it.
A lot of people I know have a deep desire to help those who are (in some way or another) “less fortunate”. In such desire (calling, if you will), there’s often the complementary question of what is the best way to do so. And, probably, there is no anywhere-near-universal answer to that question. Which is okay.
NB-sub-2: By weak and strong, throughout the rest of this post, I meaning something very general which I’ve yet to define well. It could be more or less wealthy, more or less intelligent, more or less technologically advanced (your pick which is the strong), etc.
But I have noticed a tendency on the part of some people to try focus their help on the weakest. Meanwhile, I find myself wanting more to focus my efforts to help on those only slightly weaker in a given area. It occurs to me that this could actually be a pretty good system, that is that most people focus their help on those slightly weaker, while a few–those with a calling, if you will–focus on those much weaker than themselves. It’s not a system one might institute formally, but I think it could benefit people who feel guilted into helping in a way which is wrong for them. So, let me dig a bit deeper here.
Here’s what I’m seeing: The majority of people would focus on helping those “slightly weaker” in a given area. For example, I might help someone who knows a little about Subversion Ruby bindings but not a lot, or someone who is looking at buying their first rental property (although with an understanding that I may not be a lot of help); rather than someone who has never used a computer, or, for a more extreme example, a child with cancer on a different continent. The main point here is that I know about the former things–I can actually provide real help. I don’t know how best to introduce someone to computers for the first time, and I certainly don’t know what a child with cancer on another continent needs.
However, there is a very real danger of simply ignoring those more extreme problems. I might occasionally do something along the lines of traveling to [wherever] and giving a child [what do you give a child with cancer?], in order to raise my awareness and understanding, but, for me, it should be for that purpose, rather than imagining that I somehow making a definitive difference. Because, frankly, I know that I’m not going to save this kid’s life. Pretending that I can, in my opinion, serves only to foolishly boost my pride. How I am actually going to help this kid is by helping those who will more directly help the child.
That is, some people are both skilled and called to help those much weaker than themselves in some area. This is wonderful and I admire such people, but I think they’re in the minority. To do so requires an exceptional dedication to studying and addressing the deepest problems of the weakness. It probably should be a full-time occupation or risk causing hurt rather than help. The beauty (and maybe part of God’s plan, if I’m not just talking out of my rear here) is that these people need help from “the rest of us” in areas in which we are slightly stronger.
So, then, a secondary benefit of occasionally participating in helping the much weaker is being better prepared to help those who help them. And, again, I don’t mean weaker in all it’s negative connotations, just more in need in a particular area. So, yeah, a bunch of thoughts. Probably in need of greater clarification.
Sun, 2007 Jun 10
Ramblings on economics
NB: These are ramblings. Don’t read too much into them, por favor
The odd thing to me is that there a lot of people who rather enjoy working. Me, for example. That’s not to say I enjoy all aspects of my job or that I would do it if I wasn’t being paid, but I like feeling productive. I like the challenge of building systems. Actually, that’s a bit of a problem. I like building systems so much that I tend to want to replace them about as quick as I get them built.
The other part of the odd thing is that some people apparently don’t like work. I rather see the major problem of socialism (the fake-world examples, not the theory, the problem of which apparently has something or other to do with math) as ignorance of this odd thing. Of course, when building any social system, odd things can create problems.
Take for example, the entertainment industry. The odd thing here is that most people seem to want at least one of sex, violence, or bad puns. That they want it is not the odd part (judging by human history). The odd part is that they apparently don’t want anyone else to have those items in their entertainment. This has created problems.
Of course, in capitalism, odd things creating problems can be rather profitable. At least for the lawyers.
Socialism, sadly lacking such litigious forces, is ill-equipped to deal with odd things, in particular, the odd thing that some people like to “work” (as in, produce economically viable goods or services) and some people don’t. So, everybody has to work, which means that the people who really like working can’t work as much or as well because they’re having to deal with all these otherwise nice and valuable people who don’t like working.
Actually, capitalism doesn’t deal with this so well either. There’s this odd thing that the staunchest anti-communism/socialism folks think that the most important thing is for everybody to be a productive member of society. And, in another odd twist, productive for them means playing golf, whereas for others it means flipping burgers, etc.
Anyway, I’m just saying that it all strikes me as odd. Count it for ramblings.
Sat, 2007 Jun 09
CADing the Bible
I was reading Ezekiel 42 this morning. This is part of an extended vision given to Ezekiel in which a temple (among other things, later, I believe) is described in pretty significant detail. Very little of which I could follow. So, I had the idea of trying to CAD this temple. Indeed, I can think of several other descriptions in the people that would make good CADing exercises (most of them temples).
I spent about 15 minutes trying and despite finding some diagrams, I’m pretty sure I’m more confused than when I started. It’s just not particularly clear to me what Ezekiel is saying much of the time. On the other hand, I learned more about this temple in the 15 minutes of trying to CAD than in the several times I’ve read the passage. That comes as no surprise, and in fact was a major part of the reason for trying.
And once again I find myself wondering why we Christians so often limit ourselves in studying the Bible (expand to why we humans so often limit ourselves in studying anything). Some people, like me, rather enjoy reading and can get a lot from just reading. Even for those like me, this is really not enough. That’s part of the reason I started my FromGenesis blog, to encourage me to write about scriptural passages, as writing is another way I learn.
We Christians tend to confine recommended methods of understanding scripture to reading and listening, sometimes with a illustrative video, drama, or discussion group thrown in. Particularly disappointing in this is the lack of active methods of comprehension, of “doing something”. I know, for some people reading can be an active method, but I doubt it’s the majority, particularly when large parts of the book have references rather more understandable to a nomadic herding culture.
So, I’ve thought of a couple of ways that work for me, writing about passages and drafting buildings described in the Bible. I don’t know what sort of effort I’ll make on the CADing, but I imagine that any effort will gain me some. Again, some thoughts.
Mon, 2007 May 21
The Ethics of Slow History
Bear with me here. I’m getting to a point. Also, I’m not a futurist and I don’t read futurists and I can’t actually believe that’s a career, so other people may well have discussed some of these items far better. Oh, well.
I was pondering the consequences of scientific advances in relation to food. That is, if we as a society–and this seems likely–create a method of “synthetic” photosynthesis, along with advances in synthesizing proteins and vitamins, eating as we know could become a purely luxury activity, with nourishment coming perhaps in the form of pills, or a machine people carry around that performs the photosynthesis, or whatever method–none of these thoughts are in the least original.
That led me, naturally, to the thought that at this point, many of the human organs–particularly digestive–could become expendable; follow the train a bit and the potential for a human which is basically just brain. I’m not at all implying that such a lifestyle would appeal to most, but perhaps to a few. Again, nothing particularly innovative here. But then, I found myself in a fun new line of thought.
From what I read, the speed of light is constant, and the inability to accelerate to it is one of the grand frustrations of sci-fi writers. Who, after all, is going to live long enough to explore distant solar systems? Ah, but I stumble upon a solution. Slow down history. That is, if all humans–or at least all of one culture, say, the random space-exploring-brain-only culture–are pretty much just brains inside some casing, would it not be conceivable to establish some wave, some function within that casing that slows all brain activity, even by tens of orders of magnitude? Then, all of history–for that group–would slow down and create the perception of much speedier distance travel. One could indeed travel to distant solar systems and return within what feels to that society as only a few years, few months, few days. If applied wholesale, the galaxy could become a much smaller place.
This ploy sounds rather silly to me, but even then I found myself considering ethical issues that this society would face. To wit, it would immediately seem useful to allow law enforcement to break into “normal” time in order to solve cases more quickly. The opportunity to prevent a serial killer’s next strike seems inviting enough. This becomes possible if the slow time mechanism is applied on an individual basis. But we all know that the criminals can easily catch up with the innovations of law enforcement. Indeed, this would be trivial. They need only to turn off their individual mechanism.
So, now, in order for this society to function, the slow time mechanism must be applied to a planet or solar system at least, or be applied in such a way that requires some authoritative intervention to turn it off. Ah, but do we trust the government–or any institution–with the power over time. I do not. It must be wholesale then.
But what of those who want to see the seasons, to live as God or nature or whatever “intended”? Perhaps they should be “re-educated”. No? Then sent to a distant system. Of course, they may choose to attack those who stay, requiring normal time armies for the slow time community. Think a military draft is bad now? Those serving will age rapidly. Indeed, an additional society will have to be formed that reproduces in normal time. Inherently separated from the main society, born on to serve them. A slave class. Who can rebel before the rest of society even knows.
I’m beginning to think this slow time would be problematic.
Fri, 2007 Apr 27
Pi
A couple of months ago, my wife and I found out she was pregnant with our first child. Lacking either a name or a useful pronoun (thanks to the English language’s psychotic half-gendered nature), we decided to call the baby Pi.
Last week we found out the possibility that my wife had a blighted ovum, meaning she was no longer pregnant, but still appeared to me. My understanding is that this is normally caused by a very early miscarriage. After two ultrasounds, a week apart, this was confirmed.
When we found out, I was just getting a hold on the idea that somewhere inside my wife, our child was growing. Our kid. Walking out of the hospital today, with my mom and my wife’s parents, we passed a family. Just as I was approaching them, one of the family members said to the new dad, “So, you’re a father now.”
The pregnancy, the loss (whatever the right word, there, is, I may never know), it’s been hard for me to find any reality in it. My wife could feel changes in her body, the surgery today was her surgery, but for me there’s never been anything to hold on to and say, yes, this is real.
Walking out of the hospital, passing by a new dad, seeing his joy–and his acknowledgment that, yes, his life is really going to change–that maybe made it more real to me than anything else. I prayed for that baby a couple of hours ago. This side of heaven, I may never have a grasp on the reality of Pi, but knowing that God is blessing that other child, that new dad and mom, that means a lot to me.
So, yeah. And, yeah, it sucks.
Fri, 2007 Mar 23
Ramblings of Spam
I don’t like spam. You know that. You know that already because I’m blogging on the internet, and so the exchange of largely useless content for the purposes of possible profit is clearly something I dislike. (Oops, I should get some ads back up to make that funnier). But, to an extent, I’m okay with email spam. After all, there are ways to eradicate it. An authenticated messaging system is not, I would imagine, beyond the programming abilities of, say, the NSA. Or, my cat. Or, the federal executive branch. I mean, this is not as complicated as figuring out that firing a bunch of lawyers might lead to trouble.
But the spam that really bothers me is snail mail spam. Specifically, “newspapers”. You know, the stupid things that show up more-or-less daily with one story and five hundred grocery coupons. They, like email spam, go into the trash. Except that none of it is in Russian (I assume. For all I know, there’s a million dollar check in every one of those things.). And that’s what makes me upset–the trashing, not the lack of Russian. The “news”-mail people force me to choose between being a responsible person and recycling or adding to our rather pretty landfills.
Speaking of which, how exactly are our landfills so different than, for example, the Cahokia mounds? Maybe Cahokia was less a thriving center of civilization and more a thriving garbage industry. Perhaps, a predecessor of Mobro 4000 went up and down the Mississippi for a few years and then finally somebody said, “Hey, let’s just dump it in Cleveland.” Due to Cleveland’s non-existence at the time, they just ran the thing up on shore and told the teenagers to push it until they got back from the riverboats.
This is just conjecture, of course. I’ll need a grant to further research.
On a more serious note, I highly recommend 1491.
Hey, let’s talk about Amazon.com’s inability to do pretty URIs. Or maybe how most of the URI that’s displayed serves no apparent purpose. Or, why the —- they don’t have a —-ing logout button.
But, anyway, snail mail spam. I realize the US government is unlikely to do anything about this, since it helps pay the bills of the USPS, and apparently it works for somebody. After all, I can’t believe it’s nearly as cheap as its online cousin. Okay, well, I guess I’m stuck with it. Great article. Yay.
Fri, 2007 Jan 12
Counterinsurgency
I’ve found the past week’s buzz about Lt. Gen. Petraeus interesting enough to start reading the Counterinsurgency Manual (big pdf) which he co-authored. It was probably Slate’s Fred Kaplan’s assertion that Petraeus “is probably the smartest active-duty general in the U.S. Army today” (http://slate.com/id/2157155) that got me intrigued enough to start into a 282 page military manual. Well that and my recent interest in the Ottoman Empire and its military history.
Military history and strategy interest me, but I’ve spent only a minimal amount of time studying them, so I’m not going to make a fool of myself by trying to analyze the assertions of Petraeus and co-author Lt. Gen. Amos. But I did want to comment a little. I’m at page 19 (or 1-7), so I can also attest that I would be amiss to comment much at this point anyway.
All that said, I have been very impressed with the willingness of Petraeus and Amos to respect the “other”. By respect I mean that they do not dismiss the tactics of insurgencies simply because, in the context of this manual, they are the “enemy”, but rather acknowledge both the benefits of an insurgent approach by those others, as well as the astuteness of their tactics. In particular, I just completed a section in which the manual outlines Mao’s tactics for overthrowing the previous Chinese government (another note: I know next to nothing about Chinese history). Instead of questioning his assertions, the authors let Mao’s strategy speak for itself, because they acknowledge it was effective, and is often replicated.
Okay, actually that’s all I had to say about that. Should I manage to finish the manual, I might comment more. Just interesting thoughts.
Sun, 2006 Dec 31
Chasing the Holidays
Well, I for one am glad the winter holiday mess is drawing to a close. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy a lot of it, but rather that at some point is starts to drag on. Sort of the same concept as getting two-thirds of the way through a novel you’ve rather enjoyed but could have had a lot cut out of it. You’re tired of the book, but you’ve got to finish it.
My biggest frustration with the holidays is how everything gets off schedule. As I’ve been known to recently mention, I’m rather fond of security and stability (Both points, btw, probably contribute a great deal to my distrust of the ‘War on Terra’). Which brings me to the concept of a sanctuary. One of the most important features of a sanctuary, for me, is stability. Hence, eating at Chili’s is a sanctuary for me, precisely because any Chili’s is pretty much the same as any other.
Church is sometimes a sanctuary for me, sometimes not. The particular time that it is not is November and December of each year. Yes, the holidays. For example, my church has changed service times three weeks in a row now. And I’m not sure when the last ‘non-special’ service was. Now, I’m quite willing to accept that what qualifies something as a sanctuary for me is different from others’ qualifications. However, it seems to me that a congregation’s leadership ought to at least balance the confusion and irregularity of Christmas-time, instead of actively contributing to it.
Regardless of my desires, it seems our culture requires instability during this season. I’m curious as to why, but more curious as to why people, such as church leadership, do not try to combat it, do not even seem to realize that they are a part of it. Or perhaps they do, and rather like it. I can see how for more adventerous types than I, the coming of Thanksgiving might be a more than welcome change.
Me? I’ve been programming a for-fun project the past week. And that, for me, is a sanctuary.
Tue, 2006 Nov 28
The state of radio
(NB: Yes, this is my third article for tonight. I try to do one from genesis entry a week and have been catching up tonight. This entry is a bit different).
So, I have this weird bit to my nature: I listen to music much more during cooler weather. It beats me why but I can go most of the summer barely listening to music, and avoid it when working. Once autumn hits, I suddenly start listening to the radio even whilst working. The big problem is that the height of my yearly desire to listen to music occurs about the point when every! bloody! radio! station! is playing Christmas music. Don’t get me wrong, I like Christmas music. I don’t like hearing otherwise decent bands trying to figure out how to make a new version of “Silver Bells” necessary.
And when I turn to a rock station, I do not want to hear Silent Night.
But of course, that’s what the radio stations think is exactly what should happen, for a full bloody month. Take, for example, Bob. Bob is a newish station in the OKC area. They generally play music I like and were, for a few months, one of my two favorite stations (KOMA, which plays oldies, is the perennial other favorite.) And then came Jack FM. Whilst I tend to like the selection of Jack better than Bob, what I liked most was that there were two decent non-Oldies stations. I mean, listening to Jack and Ron makes me feel better about myself, but that’s not really a compliment.
But now, Bob has decided that Christmas music is in order. This was a station that claimed to be free of the corporate moronness that dominates contemporary radio. Guess which dial no longer gets pressed?
So, the state of radio is that this year, I’m very thankful for Jack. Oh, and no DJ’s. Super plus. My only complaint is that their ad rates are apparently low, so they get some really dumb ads–If I have to hear that lady say “No, no, we don’t eat sand” one more time…
Oh, coincidentally, does REO Speedwagon’s “Take it on the run” strike anyone else as a really dumb move on some guy’s part. “I don’t believe it, but…” Yeah, bet that line worked well…
Mon, 2006 Oct 16
For Various Reasons
I’m going to go vaguely auto-biographical with this entry. I suppose that is really what a blog is supposed to be. But I imagine I’d quickly degenerate into gossip should I try that often. Or, possibly, into politics, which is a subject I would someday like to share my ideas on. But not today.
Anyway, my brother and I have been working on a video job this past week. It came up quick, but we put a quote together, got it approved and it looked like all things would go smoothly.
It hasn’t.
We decided to rent the camera, mics, and lights, which we had not done before, and for various reasons, to rent an HD camera. Like I said, problems galore. So, here I am, capturing the footage (finally, but not in HD), since my brother has to be at work, three days later than planned. Hopefully, nothing else goes amiss, because I know next to nothing about Final Cut. Sure, I can call, but it would be nice if I were able to bug him a little less.
So, I threw in Search for the Holy Grail, since I don’t much feel like websiteing, and can take a break today. And what do I see that I cannot but pause it and post an article? “Continuity editor”. Yes, that’s right, Holy Grail has a continuity editor. And the absurdity of that lifts my spirits.
Wed, 2006 Aug 02
Coolest Phishing Spam Ever
Today I got an spam claiming to be from Fifth Third Bank. The logo: 5/3. How great is that?
Tue, 2006 Jun 20
Calling Card Affiliate
As most of the people who I expect to read this blog know (although I
am getting hits from IPs I don’t recognize), a few months ago, I signed
up as an affiliate for SpeedyPin,
an online calling card store. I did this for a couple of
reasons: it seemed like a good way to–maybe–make some extra money,
and I wanted to use it to try out Yahoo and Google search marketing.
In contrast to my plan, the recommended approach seems to be
to add links to emails, banners to websites (see the top of this page),
etc. Using Yahoo search marketing (I haven’t yet tried
Google’s adwords) has been so far dissappointing. Although I
am generated sales from it, the revenue does not exceed the marketing
costs. No doubt this has at least some to do with my
inexperience.
In any event, I decided to sign up also as an affiliate for CallingCards.com
using the banner and link method (not to mention they have a signup,
get $25 promotion (assuming you eventually make another $25).
I’ve added banners to this site and Mythify. I
have also set up morganphonecards.com
(redirects to CallingCards.com) and morganphonecards.net
(SpeedyPin) [I should probably check to make sure this doesn’t violate
anything in affiliate agreements, though I can’t think why it would].
I am interested to compare effectiveness of the two methods.
Affiliates for both sites get 10% of most sales that they produce, and
customers are “for life”. Both offer quite a bit of
advertising tools (e.g. banners, etc.) They also get 2% (I think) of
sales from sub-affiliates, so if this has spiked your interest, sign up
as a sub-affiliate under me, using the following links!
Sign up as
callingcards.com affiliate
Sign up as
SpeedyPin affiliate – Link to Join is at the bottom right of
the page
(Get it, all a cheap ad to get me some sub-affiliates! Great!)
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