W: Background, & Personal Update

I've been putting together background material and creating characters that I hope to use in some stories and a novel that I hope to write. Between that, the holidays, and work on my shift, I am just about spent and too tired to do much blogging. I try to avoid thinking too hard about the news (that is the real news, that I have sifted out from all the Pravdas out there), because the truth is terrible to behold as I see my civilization in irrecoverable decline. As I go through life expending my life-energy to accumulate enough capital to finish my education and write those novels, I see the material world just circlin' the drain.

It is good that there is at least a transcendent hope in the final resurrection unto salvation that will surely make our vaporous material history look like it had never happened.

So one must look to the sublime and good in our miserable short lives and really cherish those moments we still have together with our families and friends. This is a lesson my father never quite learned adequately, and not to be too smug, I have done much of the same in my neglects and omissions. I'd like to think that I have made an incremental improvement in my generation and that my son will even do better. But you know it isn't true, we all fail to truly live up to what we know is true as God has revealed ultimate truth to us. But the second great truth (after the first being made alive in Christ) is to love one-another, and my great need for Grace is in this area. I need to relax and just put aside my self more often in place of time and being with my loved ones.

But what does a storyteller do when no one has time to listen to a story?

Ephemera: Yea Verily

The show must go on...

"Come on everyone, dig deep!"

Feeeel the healin' pow'r (of more money).



One scientist is now admitting what the data shows.





]

Technos: A very merry Tesla Christmas Tree

Personal Update: Slow on posting

I was looking at this blog today and realized that we are already into the month of December. In the last few weeks I got real busy getting ready for the holidays, and I had to work the Thanksgiving Day holiday while fighting a cold. As the cold was starting to be defeated, it mutated and opened the door for a sinus infection. So today I start antibiotics and hope to feel better as I get back to work tonight.

Everything went well for the holiday, and now after I recover from my illness, I will eventually post something more to think about here. May everyone enjoy this Advent Season.

{:)>

Theology: (The prince of the sciences): EW_Bullinger

EW Bullinger writes in the preface of the companion bible (his study notes system & analysis),

The structures referred to on p. vii make The Companion Bible an unique edition, and requires a special notice.

They give, not a mere Analysis evolved from the Text by human ingenuity, but a Symmetrical Exhibition of the Word itself, which may be discerned by the humblest reader of the Sacred Text, and seen to be one of the most important evidences of the Divine Inspiration of its words...This distinguishing feature is caused by the repetition of subjects which reappear, either in alternation or introversion, or a combination of both in many divers manners.
This repetition is called "Correspondence", which may be by way of similarity of contrast; synthetic or antithetic.

Bullinger then goes on to describe how he used the letters of the alphabet to mark the words, phrases, verses, paragraphs, etc. of the text of the bible. As I was thumbing through this bible I noticed all this and marveled to myself how very like a computer program all this was. So if we just hack the nuances of this master program and transfer the code to an executable program on a suitably complex machine...

In Steampunk terms it would be like having the pattern of the bible entered into punch-card form and the truckloads of cards were brought to the great Napoleon Mainframe Difference engine in Paris, or the ultra-secret Big Brother of MI6 in London, and not to be outdone, one could read the cards into a Hollerith reader electrically attached to the new relay-based switching Mainframe of the German Confederacy sponsored national Computer Science Labs in Munich...

Novo Visum
Neue Ansicht.

Aesthetics: Fine Arts: Post-Modern: Laurie Anderson

My educational upbringing, excepting the institutional portions, was largely self-taught. The first types of the humanities to come into my consciousness aside from fiction and literature were products of modernism and post-modernism. And as I have had bits of time over the decades to read history, I can even see the threads of modernism in some of the intellectual achievements of the 17th through the 19th centuries. In the 1980's I discovered more artifacts of this post-modern era in the form of the artist-musician, Laurie Anderson. After a brief biographical search and sample of some of her other works, I conclude that the album, "Big Science", shall remain in my library. The album, like understanding folk literature, must be viewed in context. You must hear the musical portions with the lyrics. In Laurie's case, one should also view the visual performance with the music and lyrics. Because of the RIAA and other associated fascists, it is difficult for me to set forth in this blog a full multimedia representation of some of the songs that I quote here. So get the album.

The following lyrics are from the song, "O Superman":

O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad.
O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad.
Hi. I'm not home
right now. But if you want to leave a
message, just start talking at the sound of the tone.
Hello? This is your Mother. Are you there? Are you
coming home?
Hello? Is anybody home? Well, you don't know me,
but I know you.
And I've got a message to give to you.
Here come the planes.
So you better get ready. Ready to go. You can come
as you are, but pay as you go. Pay as you go.
And I said: OK. Who is this really? And the voice said:
This is the hand, the hand that takes. This is the
hand, the hand that takes.
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
Here come the planes.
They're American planes. Made in America.
Smoking or non-smoking?
And the voice said: Neither snow nor rain nor gloom
of night shall stay these couriers from the swift
completion of their appointed rounds.
'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justive is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom!
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms. So hold me,
Mom, in your long arms.
In your automatic arms. Your electronic
arms.
In your arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
Your petrochemical arms. Your military
arms.
In your electronic arms.

Social Philosophy: Liberty: updated quotes list

]

I updated my list of random quotes on liberty, freedom, et al. But here is a great list that I am starting to pick from.

[

Natural Philosophy: Time: a quick link to...

An internet chronometer.

Social Philosophy: Liberty: a few quotes

Here are a few quotes that I stumbled upon while doing a few quick information surf actions. For my fellow Libertarian types:

"Did you learn how to think or how to believe?"

*******

"The state is made for man, not man for the state.... That is to say,
the state should be our servant and not we its slaves."
- Albert Einstein

"Civilization is the progress of a society toward privacy. The
savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his
tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from man."
- Ayn Rand, 1943

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are
injurious to others."
- Thomas Jefferson, in Notes on the State of Virginia

"If they can get you to ask the wrong questions, they don't have to
worry about the answers."
- Thomas Pynchon

"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the
freedom of thought which they avoid."
- Soren Kierkegaard

"All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the
indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of
their inherent natural rights. For happily the govenment of the United
States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,
requires only that they who live under its protection should demean [bear]
themselves as good citizens."
- George Washington, "To the Jewish Congregation, New Port, RI", 1790

"Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or
stretched?"
- Thomas Jefferson

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of
one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that
oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the
beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
- H.L. Mencken

"Government is not reason.
Government is not eloquence.
It is force.
And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master"
- George Washington, first US President

"The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is it's inefficiency."
- Eugene McCarthy




"Go to work,
send your kids to school,
follow fashion,
act normal,
walk on the pavement,
watch tv,
save for your old age,
obey the law,

Repeat after me: I am free."




"they tell you cannabis is illegal because you are easier to control and enslave without cannabis." -Anonymous


]

Social Philosophy: Individual vs. The State: A Few Thoughts 01

Here are a few thoughts from the Consistency Argument regarding the nature of the State vs. an individual:

Freedom and private property are total, indivisible concepts that are compromised wherever and whenever the State exists.

Since all things are related to one another in our complicated social world, if one man's freedom or private property may be violated (regardless of the justification), then every man's freedom and property are insecure.

The superior man can only be sure of his freedom if the inferior man is secure in his rights.

Personal Update & Social Philosophy

I have been busy with extra work & side jobs to both provide money for the various on-going family needs (like the untimely need to purchase a new dryer-$818.00 later) and of course to serve the needs for which I am being hired. Everything extra seems to have slowed down in my life, I now seem to only have time to work, sleep, hygiene, eating and a few bible studies. My intellectual life suffers, but if God allows my job to continue long enough, I may get to retire and spend my time studying. Of course I recognize that one must be open to reality changing one's plans, so if I have to keep working in this trade until I die then so be it. Even if I didn't get my fifteen minutes of fame, none of the events of my life will even be noticed in the noise of history's narrative.

On a different note (& thanks to Mark Horne for first linking to this writer), I read the following article, "Intellectual Self Defense for Libertarians" by Lila Rajiva. There is some great common sense in some of the points made in this article. {I've linked to the article and quoted it here for reference.}
Take a look:

“There are two ways to approach the world.

In one, the popular one now, you try to control the bad actors. You create laws to trip them up before hand, or round them up after. You rely on regulations and regulators.

Nothing wrong with that, except that we already have lots of regulators and it didn’t help.

Why?

The reason is so obvious you question the intelligence of anyone who can’t see it. It’s simple. People willing and able to scam the system are going to be willing and able to game the regulations too.

In a fight between regulators and scammers, my money’s on the scammers. They’re usually richer and nastier.

In the second approach, you don’t overlook the bad actors. You hope they get what they have coming to them. But you don’t rely on laws or lawyers because you’re old enough to have figured out that bit about the bad actors being bigger and nastier than the good ones.

So what do you do?

You focus on getting out of the way of the bad guys. You limit the damage they can do to you. And most of all, you figure out how to avoid them in the first place.

Here are five warnings I wish I’d heeded more:

1. Be careful whom you deal with

Don’t lie down with a dog and you won’t get up with fleas. Delousing yourself is much harder than not getting loused up in the first place.

But delousing is what we do a lot of these days. It’s practically the only thing going on in the economy now. Right now there are people all over the country delousing the SEC.. and the Congress… and the banks…and the hedge-funds. There’s even a global delousing effort going on. The fumigators are at work. Pest control is in full force and the exterminators are crawling over the baseboards in the cellar. There’s an international delousing effort at the BIS, with headquarters at Switzerland and local shops all over the world.

A Bug Czar has been crowned and fleas have been declared insecta non grata.
There - that should do it, eh? Any bug with a classical education should figure it out.

Which is another way of saying none of this will work. Or if it works, it won’t work the way you want it to.

The fact is, lice and ticks are at home on a dog. It’s R & R for them. Holiday Inn, Bed & Breakfast, and a luxury spa combined. Get them to leave? Good luck. Much better, don’t take your dog to bed in the first place. Much better, if you have a dog, let him drool in the kennel, not on your pillow.

The short version of all that is we do jack-ass things and then wonder who’s braying.

I say jack-ass with no disrespect. Some say that those who get conned “deserve what they get.”
That is the New Testament of the confidence man and the Sunday sermon of the predator.
As financial doctrine, it occasionally makes sense. As moral insight, it’s almost always junk. Very often victims are only weak, naive, or ignorant. The kind of people who wouldn’t know malice if they saw it in the dollar-bin with a white tag tied to its toe. They’re people who follow the rules, thinking other people follow them too. They’re honorable, so they believe in the honor of their fellow man.

Now, not only is being honorable not wrong, it’s the way things should be. But doves should learn not to coo at snakes, and beautiful souls have to wise up to what goes on in the rest of the world… or expect an ugly life.

So, rule number one. Research the people you plan to make your associates. And don’t dismiss your research. When you find out your prospective partner filed for bankruptcy six times in the last ten years, don’t tell yourself it will be different this time, because it won’t. One bankruptcy is a financial failure. Three is a losing streak. Six is a career decision. Follow your gut instinct.

If your boss conducts business with a wink and a leer, don’t pass it off as southern charm. He’s not Dagwood Bumstead looking for a lump of emotional candy. He’s a creep, and you’re a pawn in his narcissistic chess game. Ask for a transfer about two minutes after that. If you’re out of a job, so be it. There’s no guarantee you won’t be out of one, if you put up with it.

2. Never stop learning

Ignorance kills, as a lawyer friend of mine likes to say. Don’t be ignorant. Learn as much as you can about as many things as you can. Do your research. Know what you’re dealing with. With the internet, it’s much easier. You can do a google search on anything or anyone. You can go into google news archives and find newspaper articles and information from as far back as the 1980s.
So start reading.

Project Gutenberg has thousands of classic books online. PubMed allows you to access medical journals. LexisNexis will allow you to research law. Edgar will show you company filings. You can search houses for sale on Realtor.com and look up where a house is on Google Earth.You can go to WhoIs to find out about domain names and IP address. You can find out how well a website is doing by looking up Technorati or Alexa rankings. The Way Back Machine lets you look up old magazine articles, even when they’ve been pulled off the current site. Some sites like Zabasearch collect people’s information and put it all in one spot. That’s free information. If you pay, you can get much more.

Mind you, I find data sites downright creepy, especially when they’re online, and especially when they’re centralized and can be accessed with a key-stroke. If people have paid for their sins, why not let them start fresh? There may be a recording angel, but surely he lives farther north than DC.

On the other hand, just because the technology is already out there, it pays to keep up with what’s being done with it. Because if it’s out there, your business partner… or your employer… or your enemies ….or your friends.. probably know about it already. They might even have mined it for information to deploy against you. Shouldn’t you be prepared?

3. Limit what people know about you. Many of us from small towns grew up around trustworthy people. Our friends and our neighbors knew everything about us, and we didn’t mind, because no one was malicious enough to hurt anyone else.

The big world isn’t so nice. People who have things to hide themselves will be only too anxious to find something on you, attack being the best form of defense in their minds. If they can’t find anything wrong, they’ll hit you with whatever else they can, even a silly thing you said casually. They’ll dig out what your crazy cousin did fifteen years ago. Or perhaps you saved your husband’s latest rant about his mother online. Don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning to find it in the New Yorker.

So, keep things to yourself, even among close friends and relatives.

That’s a hard one for me. I’m a verbal person. I write, I talk, even if it’s only to myself. Leave me next to a blank wall and I’ll strike up a conversation. And it will be two-way.

Fortunately, most people are unlikely to hurt you. But occasionally you’ll run into a psychopath who will. And if you work in politics, the media, or in business, psychopathy is practically the norm.

So keep track of what’s being written about you on the net with Google alerts. Write to sites that aggregate information and ask for your name to be removed from their lists. You might have to repeat that every year . Put yourself on the national do-not-call list so that your telephone number’s out of the reach of marketers.

And then limit the information you give out, even to your lawyer.
It’s taken me half a lifetime to figure out that any questionnaire shoved under my nose doesn’t automatically deserve to be filled in. Leave things blank unless you’re told it’s mandatory to fill it in. Or become creative. Develop fictitious personalities, throw-away mail addresses, exotic, non-existent addresses. Use another name when doing business. Avoid registering products or filling out questionaires in your own name. Use fake birth-dates and vary them according to a system that you, and only you, know. Change your passwords every few weeks, using a system to keep track. Write them down broken up in alternate pages in a notebook, without anything to signify what the numbers mean. If the book is lost, no one will be able to make use of the information. Neither will you, of course, but losing a little time is better than losing your savings.

Hacking email, spying on private business, blackmailing and outing people, it’s all fair game these days. Attacking the privacy of public figures has become a national pastime - witness the Letterman case. But it’s not just public life. Private business is a circus of outing and shaming too. Corporations spy on and threaten each other, as well as their employees. Employees write tell-all books.

We live in a spy state, where every half-wit believes it’s his divine right to nose into anything, no matter how little it’s his business. So, these days not only is it wise to keep your own secrets, you might be wise to keep other people’s secrets.

But what should you do if inspite of that, you become a target of an attack on your privacy?
Often, nothing, unfortunately.

I’ll give you the example of an aunt of mine who didn’t want anyone to know she was sick, in case it would prejudice employers against hiring her. A colleague not only hacked her email but forwarded details about her illness to dozens of people. A frail, sensitive woman, her health broke down under the stress.

I’ll give you the advice I gave her. Say your piece once in private, and say it once in public. Then forget about it. Move on. You’re not the first person to have been screwed over and you won’t be the last. Innocent people are constantly being ruined by the powerful and the unscrupulous. That’s the ugly truth of our system. Reputations are often lost, unjustly.

Our salvation is to worry less about our reputations and more about our consiences.
What we do where no one can see and none can retaliate is the test of who we are.
As for what others think, the world is a large place. Move far away, if you need to. As for the system, stop trying to reform it. It’s beyond reform.

4. Learn to say no

Telling someone no doesn’t come naturally. We’re trained to go through life being agreeable. In fact, learning to say no might be the hardest thing you learn. But it might also be the most important, and once you learn it, it can become good sport.

Speaking for myself, I’ve come to relish saying no to pests. And the nay-saying that gives me the greatest pleasure of all is nay-saying to internet marketers. It’s not that I’m ever rude to one. I never hang up. My malice is much deeper. I let them prattle on, even asking polite questions. Then I stop them courteously and ask them why they think they have the right to call me on a weekend and waste half-an-hour selling me something I didn’t ask for. Occasionally, when they’re especially pushy, my toying becomes cruel. I turn the tables on them. Instead of selling me things, they find themselves signing petitions or supporting causes or accepting market analysis or invitations to baby showers or anything else at hand.

Can I call you, I ask. Tonight? Tomorrow? I press them to reply. Can you buy two? Now? Pretty soon, they’re begging to hang up.

Try it and see. It’s balm in gilead.

I advise you to use this technique on rude or uncooperative colleagues too. Give them a taste of their own medicine, and do it generously. Let their cup run over. You will get something better than love. You’ll get respect.

5. Learn how to retaliate

Despite all the myths propagated about forgiveness, I’ve learned that submitting meekly to injustice usually breeds weakness, resentment, and ill- health. There’s nothing that drives up your self-respect as much as socking it back to bullies. I’m not advising being unduly aggressive. Try a friendly approach as long as you can. But when that doesn’t work, time to get tough. Throw some metaphoric crockery. Thumb your nose and thumb it publicly. Turn on the spotlight and watch the cockroaches run.

In other cases, all you may need to do is wait. Time has a knack of delivering even the biggest fish to a patient angler…and when that moment comes, don’t flinch. Yank that line and watch your target flop and wriggle on the sand.

Watch with a smile. Defy the received wisdom and develop a healthy conscience about revenge. It’s highly moral. Only our wimpy but violent age derides its feline nobility and grace.

The uncomfortable truth is the New Testament is meant for people on the same moral level of development….for family.. and for friends. But in the big, dirty world, the Old Testament works much better.

Gandhi said an eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind. I say an eye for an eye, and after the first blind man, everyone else’s eyesight gets better in a hurry.

Become a moral vigilante. Why waste time going through the system if you can get better results outside of it? Use the law to warn, to shame, to threaten. But don’t labor under the delusion that a court case always helps. Your enemy will pour his time and money into creating mushroom clouds of paper. He’ll drown you in verbiage and “accidentally-on-purposes.” He’ll postpone and prevaricate and petition. He’ll appeal and block and delay…. and hide behind a fog of corporate black ink like an injured squid.

Instead, if you’re obliged by professional ethics to speak up, consider other channels of actions besides the court. Try mediation or arbitration. Perhaps you’re better off complaining to the Better Business Bureau. Or posting on a consumer forum.

Monetary compensation is often not the best justice either. It can make you look like an extortionist. Try going public. Give the bully a taste of his own medicine. Post the hacker’s private information on a website. Put him on the run. That might not make you rich, but the moral satisfaction is tremendous.

Of course, it could also be dangerous. You risk violating the law yourself. In that case, you might be best off to leave your job. Maybe even leave town. Leave the thugs to the mercies of the universe. It sometimes does a better job of retribution than it’s given credit for. Villains do not always go to jail. And if the skeptics are right, they might never go to hell. But they often get dragged into divorce court, which is a good deal worse, from all accounts.

And meanwhile, there are all those other ways the wicked verily get their reward.
Envious rivals cut their throats; the tax man cometh, and the SEC with him; and then cometh old age, failing libido, dead-beat in-laws and brain-dead grandchildren. The inheritance get squandered and the sycophants and courtiers vanish with the money. The trash-mouth gets acid reflux, the glutton gets dyspepsia and the aging lecher ends up alone, romancing his own hairless skull and wrinkled hide.

Then at the end comes the greatest punishment of all for persisting in evil deeds. You stare into the mirror and evil stares back at you, looking not so much devilish as hollow and bewildered, less like a fiend from hell and more like a Goldman CEO at a Congressional hearing.

Hannah Arendt taught us about the banality of evil. It was left to our age to practice the evil of banality. Habit, laziness, gullibility, ignorance, vanity, greed, fear, cowardice, bravado. We are duped not by heroic evil, but by humdrum vice.

The greatest and best defense we have against the charlatans and knaves who brought our society to its knees is not the law.

It is self-knowledge and discipline.”

Technos: Electric Automotive: "Trabant is due for a remake."

I am very much interested in finding a good electric car for a commuter vehicle some day soon. If I get to keep this great job I have, I will (Lord willing...) save up and get one. So to that end I have decided to create yet another category for the electric automobile. I will from time to time post links to articles about the many various proposals in the field of the electric car.

This link has an article about the idea of building a modern remake of the environmental nightmare that is the Communist built Trabant. This lame attempt to compete against Volkswagen has some charm in it's hideous design, but this time it could not be so bad if it had an electric drive-train and the price was really cheap. Perhaps the German company could have the cars built in China or maybe in partnership w/ companies like BYD battery company et al, etc.

Aesthetics: Fine Arts: Current Music: Sia, 'Soon We'll Be Found' -- Video of the Day - Spinner

Sia again:

Sia, 'Soon We'll Be Found' -- Video of the Day - Spinner

Check this out before they take it down.

This video reminds me of Laurie Anderson a tiny bit, but of course Sia is a better vocalist by definition and I like the aesthetics of her current packaging better.

Aesthetics: Fine Arts: Current Music: Sia

I just discovered this musician from one of my son's friends. Her name is Sia Furler from Adelaide. I have to say there is something about her voice that evokes melodrama in my emotions. I like her latest album entitled "Some People Have Real Problems". The following song, Lentil, is not the best one on the album among a number of good songs, but there's just something about that voice.....

Social Philosophy: Economics: Business in the World

The following is excerpted from someone I know who has a small engineering firm in a certain Middle Eastern Country. When I first read it I thought yep that sounds about right for over there, then I got to thinkin' is this any different from the way big business is done in the USA (except for maybe the scale)?

BUSINESS… September 09

Business in this country is financial and relational – if you pay the right amount to the right person, you continue in business.

Business laws are made because they are expected, mostly from Western pressure, not because they are needed or expected to be used. They are not always written for function and ease. But this lack of precision is acceptable. Here is why…
For Example: Instead of law-abiding, an importer has a
relationship with the customs office in which both
understand how much cash the customs office employee
needs to complete the paperwork. And if the importer has
no relationship with the customs office, this niche is filled by
many competing individuals or companies that are
dedicated to liaison specifically between the importer and
the customs office. The tax office runs the same – relations
not rules. The same for the municipalities – the fees for
garbage collecting is negotiable. For instance an oil-change
and car repair shop wisely agrees to pay a long-term once-ayear
street set clean up fee to the government
representative, rather than leave it open, being vulnerable
to large increases that would force him to move the shop, or
close.
Large operations pay large people. Or, for simplicity, large
companies simply put a ruling government party head on the distribution of net profits, as if an investor. This ‘protects’ the company from lower-level government employee extortion attempts, for no one can ask something of someone above them on the ladder, only down.

“FREE MARKET” Government
Actually, in an odd sense the government is a good example of the free market. The government office employees are highly opportunistic. Any time a business needs something like import license renewal or tax payment receipt, the government employee meets the need, not the paperwork and laws. In other words, prices for business fees and taxes are negotiated with the government employee. Unfortunately, there is a lie stuck in this process – the government employee only reports to the government a small portion of the collected fees.
But in this government staff oligopoly, there remains a small competition between employees, each vying for the right to process the applicant’s, let’s say customer’s, paperwork, lowering the market price slightly for the consumer.
In another odd sense, there is free market investment within the government. Individuals, given the right opportunity and, again relationship, purchase an open government position with cash paid to someone in a higher position in that same office.
Or maybe someone owes a family or individual.
Instead of paying they might assign them to a controlling, ‘opportunity’ position. This position gives them hopes that they will have a good return on investment. Return on
investment is, of course, not the token government salary, but the opportunity to extort from the rich and squeeze the poor and, of course, eventually appoint others, pocketing the cash paid for the sale of the position, minus fees that continually leak up the hierarchy.
So, in the end maybe the government is more free business than the government allows the industry to be free market.

Relationships build strong business
Let’s get back to business. Earning customers is based
on relationship. If someone doesn’t like a family or
tribe, then they will not buy from them, no matter
the financial benefits. This does not always work the other way.
A company won’t buy product from a friend if the price is inflated.
Risking the loss of relationship, they might kindly point out the
price difference, or instead give an excuse that it was maybe a staff
mistake. Family is one tie, another is tribe, and another is like-
mindedness. There is commonly a beautiful cooperation between
believers in business. One believer recently sacrificed time and
investment to help jump start another in a cooperative service
business. As in most countries, trickery, back-stabbing and thievery
are common. Wickedness is generally only found under the table.
In other words, a local would not want to be known to have been
evil or wicked or even disrespectful. It would reflect poorly on their
family, lowering their status and potential. So if evil business
practices can be hidden, it can be done.

Social Philosophy: Property: Information Rights

Here is an excellent essay by Vern Poythress that deals with intellectual property from the perspective of God's law and common sense. Thanks to a commentator on Mark Horne's blog who left the link.

I like this phrase that describes our modern US culture:

"...the government is using bad laws to subsidize monopolists."

This one phrase demonstrates the problem of living in a Fascist-Oligarchy, which is what our government has devolved into from the ideals of a Republic.

Theology (the Prince of the Sciences): Credenda: Federal Vision 002

I have just completed reading of the first essay in the book, Federal Vision, entitled "Covenant and Election" by John Barach. In this essay, Mr. Barach explores the relationship between covenant and election (thus the title). The big concern for the writer is the pastoral concern for the church member who is struggling with questions like these: "Am I elect? How do I know? Can I really be confident of these things?" And he also wants to address the others who just view election as another theological subject to study, polish, and put back on the shelf. I recommend reading the essay in its entirety to get the whole treatment of the subject.

Lest I find myself compelled to write an essay on the subject myself, I will just confine myself to a few observations and quotes from the essay.

Here is something that caught my eye:
(from p.31-32 of the above mentioned book)

We need to hold three things together as we think about the relationship between covenant and election.

First, God has eternally predestined an unchanging number of people out of the whole world to eternal glory with Christ. We read that from Genesis 1:1 on. We know that from Ephesians 1:11: God "works all things after the counsel of His will."

Second, God's covenant includes some who have been so predestined to eternal glory with Christ, but it also includes others who have not been predestined to eternal glory with Christ but who will apostatize.

Third, God addresses His people as a whole, and that includes each one in the covenant, head for head, as His elect. That is the big issue we need to think through. God, in the Bible, through His prophets and apostles, addresses His people publicly as elect, as chosen.

Now the big question is this: May we speak the language of Scripture? May pastors address their congregations the way Moses and the Psalms and Peter and Paul do, the way that God does? Or maybe the bigger question is this: May we do anything but? Shall we not learn from Scripture how congregations are to be addressed?

If we try to do our theologizing and our pastoring and our speaking to God's people from the perspective of God's eternal predestination we run into all kinds of difficulties with the way God speaks in Scripture. We start to think that God shouldn't talk the way He does, and we don't want to talk that way either.

We are uncomfortable sometimes saying to our churches or to members of our churches or to our children, "God chose you." But God speaks that way. We are uncomfortable sometimes saying to them, "Jesus died for your sins." We start to reason that Jesus died for the full and final salvation of those and those only whom God has predestined to eternal glory in Christ and we don't know with infallible certainty that this child, this church member, this congregation has been predestined.

If we try to work from the perspective of God's eternal predestination, we have trouble saying things to the flesh-and-blood people in our churches that Peter and Paul and the other writers of Scripture had no trouble saying to the churches they addressed.

If we try to do our theologizing, our pastoring, our preaching from the perspective of what God has hidden, on the basis of the secret things of His predestination, we discover that we have a hard time applying not only the promises but also the warnings of Scripture to the real flesh-and-blood people in the pews.

To illustrate how one should preach a passage of scripture such that the emphasis is God's emphasis, I link here the sermon that first gave offense to the departing elder.

My pastor's Sunday evening sermon on the topic of Federal Vision is fairly clear (at least from the middle road position on the issue), and gives an explanation that makes me wonder why the departing gentleman had to do the "I'll take my toys and go home" approach. But we must all love our brothers even if they are mistaken.

We'll have to wait until the sermon is posted on my church's web site so that I can link to it here. When the sermon is posted I'll make an entry linking to it.

Novo Visum.
Neue Ansicht.

Social Philosophy: Cold War Memory: Nena's song

For those of us who grew up during the (supposedly) final part of the Cold war until everyone began to believe that it was over, I quote here a song that still has a message for today:

Hast Du etwas Zeit für mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied fuer Dich
Von 99 Luftballons
Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
Denkst Du vielleicht grad' an mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied fuer Dich
Von 99 Luftballons
Und dass sowas von sowas kommt

99 Luftballons
Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
Hielt man fuer UFOs aus dem All
Darum schickte ein General
Eine Fliegerstaffel hinterher
Alarm zu geben, wenn es so war
Dabei war da am Horizont
Nur 99 Luftballons

99 Duesenjaeger
Jeder war ein grosser Krieger
Hielten sich fuer Captain Kirk
Das gab ein grosses Feuerwerk
Die Nachbarn haben nichts gerafft
Und fuehlten sich gleich angemacht
Dabei schoss man am Horizont
Auf 99 Luftballons

99 Kriegsminister
Streichholz und Benzinkanister
Hielten sich fuer schlaue Leute
Witterten schon fette Beute
Riefen: Krieg und wollten Macht
Mann, wer haette das gedacht
Dass es einmal soweit kommt
Wegen 99 Luftballons

99 Jahre Krieg
Liessen keinen Platz fuer Sieger
Kriegsminister gibt es nicht mehr
Und auch keine Duesenflieger
Heute zieh ich meine Runden
Seh die Welt in Truemmern liegen
Hab' nen Luftballon gefunden
Denk' an Dich und lass' ihn fliegen

Following is the English translation of the song (which I happen to think is not as good as it could be--perhaps later I'll do my own translation):

You and I in a little toy shop
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got.
Set them free at the break of dawn
'Til one by one, they were gone.
Back at base, bugs in the software
Flash the message, Something's out there.
Floating in the summer sky.
99 red balloons go by.

99 red balloons
floating in the summer sky.
Panic bells, it's red alert.
There's something here from somewhere else.
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky,
Where 99 red balloons go by.

99 Decision Street.
99 ministers meet.
To worry, worry, super-scurry.
Call the troops out in a hurry.
This is what we've waited for.
This is it boys, this is war.
The president is on the line
As 99 red balloons go by.

99 Knights of the air
Ride super-high-tech jet fighters
Everyone's a superhero.
Everyone's a Captain Kirk.
With orders to identify.
To clarify and classify.
Scramble in the summer sky.
As 99 red balloons go by.

99 dreams I have had;
In every one a red balloon.
It's all over and I'm standing pretty
In this dust that was a city.
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here.
And here is a red balloon
I think of you and let it go.

[bold emphasis mine]

7 The first angel blew his trumpet, and there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, and these were thrown upon the earth. And a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.
8 The second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. 9 A third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.
10 The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water.
ESV, Rev. 8:8-10.

Theology (the Prince of the Sciences): Credenda: Federal Vision 001

I am entering the discussion of "Federal Vision" with great trepidation. From brief data scans of the blogosphere, it appears that much more heat has been generated than light. So I have to set aside my reading of literature to deal with the issue. Therefore, to begin my study of the controversy, I am reading the book, Federal Vision, ed. by Steve Wilkins & Duane Garner (ISBN 0-9753914-0-2). This book is a collection of essays by various modern Reformed Christian theologians and ministers on various topics of theology from the bible as they relate to the Reformed tradition. I am also reading the wikipedia article on Federal Vision mainly for the bibliography.

It is ironic that one of the things, the primacy of reason over emotion, that has drawn me to this tradition within Christianity is sadly lacking in many pundits and pillars of the church. I hope to avoid this by studying directly the essays of the proponents of what is broad stroked the Federal Vision and then comparing their positions with Scripture. I have only just begun, but from what I have read thus far, there is no reason to "freak & peak". I just don't understand the ridiculous visceral emotional reaction of otherwise reasonable men; what a sad day for a small branch of Christianity that cannot afford to be divisive.

So, I will post a few observations of my study of this topic when I have time. And then hopefully we can get back to some more wholesome topics like the literature of the English language, etc.

Novo Visum
Neue Ansicht

Personal Update: general

We've been going through some changes in our family. Sam just turned 17 years old and it is quite apparent (no details necessary) that I have failed as a father. That and my many other sins have only emphasized how much I am counting on Christ's redemption. The only thing that will allow me to survive judgment day is Jesus' blood cleansing me.

I have just started Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" in my literary group, and I am finding it to be an excellent novel. I haven't had time to post my observations about it, but I am glad that I am reading it closer now. In my American Literature class in high school, we covered this novel, but I just watched the movie and read Cliff's notes. I missed so much by not having read the book at the time, but at least now I can really 'get into it'.

ORP: PKD again: LOA releases 3rd vol. in PKD series

I just finished reading the first of four novels in volume three of Library of America's edition of the definitive Philip K. Dick novels. This story was entitled "Maze of Death". The novel (really a novella by some standards) is a nice yarn about the dwindling crew of a colonizing starship marooned in a dead star system. With his insight into human psyche, PKD shows through the device of a virtual reality machine used on this starship originally for recreation and now used by the crew to escape from the reality of coming doom, how lost humanity turns in on themselves. We get this psychological exploration in many (if not all) of PKD's stories, but it is in sharp focus here in the final four novels by this writer. In this novel and the coming three of this volume we also get some interesting explorations of philosophy and religion. From what I have read so far of this author's novels, especially at the end of his works, I mourn the writer. To quote Maxwell Smart without the irony, he "missed it by that much," that is eternity. Man, I want to explore the multiverse, but I sure don't want to have lost heaven!

Though PKD lived completely within the drug culture of the 1960s and 1970s, he was quick to point out the lies told about where excessive use and abuse could lead you. This the overt message of his novel, "A Scanner Darkly".
But his analysis of madness is the best. Check out this passage from "V.A.L.I.S." (the second of the four novels in the LoA volume):

(p.190)...a beleaguered mind to make sense out of the inscrutable. Perhaps this is the bottom line to mental illness: incomprehensible events occur; your life becomes a bin for hoax-like fluctuations of what used to be reality. And not only that--as if that weren't enough--but you, like Fat, ponder forever over these fluctuations in an effort to order them into a coherency, when in fact the only sense they make is the sense you impose on them, out of the necessity to restore everything into shapes and processes you can recognize. The first thing to depart in mental illness is the familiar. And what takes its place is bad news because not only can you not understand it, you also cannot communicate it to other people. The madman experiences something, but what it is or where it comes from he does not know.

Social Philosophy: Arbitrary Fortune & God's Sovereignty

I recently read an excellent post by Mark Horne on his blog about the nature of good and bad Providences and our response to the arbitrary position in life we each find ourselves in. The article (appropriately entitled "Notes from the Underground") was provoking enough that as I thought about it (not having time to make a comment right away), I decided to just make a blog entry. There are a lot of directions one can go with the thoughts in this article, and I want to make just a few observations, so read the article from the link above to understand why I make the few comments that I am making.

In thinking about having good fortune or not (comfort or suffering), and without regard to the underlying spiritual reality of our universe, I immediately thought of the lyrics to the Tracy Chapman song, "Mountains O' Things" which I quote here:

The life I've always wanted
I guess I'll never have
I'll be working for somebody else
Until I'm in my grave
I'll be dreaming of a live of ease
And mountains
Oh mountains o things

To have a big expensive car
Drag my furs on the ground
And have a maid that I can tell
To bring me anything
Everyone will look at me with envy and with greed
I'll revel in their attention
And mountains
Oh mountains o things

Sweet lazy life
Champagne and caviar
I hope you'll come and find me
'Cause you know who we are
Those who deserve the best in life
And know what money's worth
And those whose sole misfortune
Was having mountains o nothing at birth

Oh they tell me
There's still time to save my soul
They tell me
Renounce all
Renounce all those material things you gained by
Exploiting other human beings

Consume more than you need
This is the dream
Make you pauper
Or make you queen
I wont die lonely
I'll have it all prearranged
A grave that's deep and wide enough
For me and all my mountains o things

Mostly I feel lonely
Good good people are
Good people are only
My stepping stones
It's gonna take all my mountains o things
To surround me
Keep all my enemies away
Keep my sadness and loneliness at bay

I'll be dreaming, dreaming...
Dreaming...

You can see that this song reflects the psychological response of the people in our materialistic society.

I have felt myself, albeit on a much smaller level, the range of mental outlook that Mark mentions in his article. I have been at the bottom and have gradually moved up the socio-economic ladder, but I have had setbacks like my 40 month sojourn in the financial wilderness where I nearly lost my house. But it is true that it can all go away in an instant.

The other comment I wanted to make was that in the Church, I think that one of the (asymptotically close to) infinite purposes of God in the arbitrary elevation of some and denigration of others within the same body or within the same world, is that God wants to force us sinful humans to have to take care of each other. As we are drawn together, God's purposes are served in making us love one another. But since we are depraved beyond belief, we go through the mental gyrations that Mark describes. How many of you have seen a peer (or coworker, fellow student, etc.) once lifted up in life, completely forget where he/she just came from? How often I have seen the exploited, once lifted up only to join the exploiters themselves. We humans are so sick. {Shakes head.}

ORP: LeGuin's The Dispossessed part n+1

I am slowly moving back toward thinking and reading again. I picked up again the novel, “The Dispossessed” by Ursula K. Le Guin and in the course of the flashbacks to the earlier life of the main character and scientist, Shevek, we come across the following nugget of philosophy and contemplation concerning the nature and reality of suffering:

…They talked about what happiness was.
“Suffering is a misunderstanding,” Shevek said, leaning forward, his eyes wide and light. He was still lanky, with big hands, protruding ears, and angular joints, but in the perfect health and strength of early manhood he was very beautiful. His dun-colored hair, like the others’, was fine and straight, worn at its full length and kept off the forehead with a band. Only one of them wore her hair differently, a girl with high cheekbones and a flat nose; she had cut her dark hair to a shiny cap all round. She was watching Shevek with a steady, serious gaze. Her lips were greasy from eating fried cakes, and there was a crumb on her chin.
“It exists,” Shevek said, spreading out his hands. “It’s real. I can call it a misunderstanding, but I can’t pretend that it doesn’t exist, or will ever cease to exist. Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes, you know it. You know it as the truth. Of course it’s right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and injustice, as the social organism does. But no society can change the nature of existence. We can’t prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality. All of us here are going to know grief; if we live fifty years, we’ll have known pain for fifty years. And in the end we’ll die. That’s the condition we’re born on. I’m afraid of life! There are times I—I am very frightened. Any happiness seems trivial. And yet, I wonder if it isn’t all a misunderstanding—this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain…If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could … get through it, go beyond it. There is something beyond it. It’s the self that suffers, and there’s a place where the self—ceases. I don’t know how to say it. But I believe that the reality—the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don’t in comfort and happiness—that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.”
“The reality of our life is in love, in solidarity,” said a tall, soft-eyed girl. “Love is the true condition of human life.”
Bedap shook his head. “No. Shev’s right,” he said. “Love’s just one of the ways through, and it can go wrong, and miss. Pain never misses. But therefore we don’t have much choice about enduring it! We will, whether we want to or not.”
The girl with short hair shook her head vehemently. “But we won’t! One in a hundred, one in a thousand, goes all the way, all the way through. The rest of us keep pretending we’re happy, or else go numb. We suffer, but not enough. And so we suffer for nothing.”
“What are we supposed to do,” said Tirin, “go hit our heads with hammers for an hour every day to make sure we suffer enough?”
“You’re making a cult of pain,” another said. “An Odonian’s goal is positive, not negative. Suffering is dysfunctional, except as a bodily warning against danger. Psychologically and socially it’s merely destructive.”
“What motivated Odo but an exceptional sensitivity to suffering—her own and others’?” Bedap retorted.
“But the whole principle of mutual aid is designed to prevent suffering!”
Shevek was sitting on the table, his long legs dangling, his face intense and quiet. “Have you ever seen anybody die?” he asked the others. Most of them had, in domicile or on volunteer hospital duty. All but one had helped at one time or another to bury the dead.
“There was a man when I was in camp in Southeast. It was the first time I saw anything like this. There was some defect in the aircar engine, it crashed lifting off and caught fire. They got him out burned all over. He lived about two hours. He couldn’t have been saved; there was no reason for him to live that long, no justification for those two hours. We were waiting for them to fly in anesthetics from the coast. I stayed with him, along with a couple of girls. We’d been there loading the plane. There wasn’t a doctor. You couldn’t do anything for him, except just stay there, be with him. He was in shock but mostly conscious. He was in terrible pain, mostly from his hands. I don’t think he knew the rest of his body was all charred, he felt it mostly in his hands. You couldn’t touch him to comfort him, the skin and flesh would come away at your touch, and he’d scream. You couldn’t do anything for him. There was no aid to give. Maybe he knew we were there, I don’t know. It didn’t do him any good. You couldn’t do anything for him. Then I saw…you see…I saw that you can’t do anything for anybody. We can’t save each other. Or ourselves.”
“What have you left, then? Isolation and despair! You’re denying brotherhood, Shevek!” the tall girl cried.
“No—no, I’m not. I’m trying to say what I think brotherhood really is. It begins—it begins with shared pain.”
“Then where does it end?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know yet.”

Personal Update: Ephemera: Cultural Threads of '90's: "The X Files"

With apologies to all who twitter, I sometimes like to write about thought as it occurs. Time is the major constraint to allowing proper development of thought. And yet I just don't like to utter unformed thought, hastily said. So and since I like everyone, are time constrained, we don't post. To aggravate matters worse, I chose to burn some hours watching the Mythology Arc of the X-Files. I now feel as if I have listened to several years of that old radio show, "Coast to Coast". The series creators were reasonably creative and I enjoyed the characterization. It was a mine for ideas for stories. So thus I have given a twitter sized explanation in Jim terms.

Novo Visum,
Neue Ansicht.

Personal Update: general & on education

The various mental exercises, reading projects and the like, have all been disrupted recently. In the last month Sam finished his second year of high school at Covenant HS. We have decided to enroll him at Tacoma Community College in the Fresh Start program, and he started driver's training. Then Janie was gone for three weeks to visit her mother and attend her brother's wedding. All this activity and Janie's absence for this time period prompted me to spend some time gaming (mostly Civ.4) and real light reading, so consequently I have not taken any time to do some writing in this blog.

But, to get back to our decision to move Sam from Covenant HS to TCC, he really needed some help in some of his academics, but because our family is not a first tier family in the church, our requests for help fell on deaf ears. The community college, however, has excellent English labs and Mathematics labs that may give Sam the help that he needs. I have to ask the question, if it is so important to provide your child a Christian education, why is it that the proponents of sending your children to a Christian school are stuck in the same narrow box as the socialist public school educators in regard to the "one size fits all" false paradigm???

All of the children going to Covenant (and I suspect many other Christian schools) are expected to be of one major learning type and to have a narrow academic bent. What is there for children of other learning types and gifting? What of the artistic child? What of the mechanic child? I am so disappointed in the Christian school system as practiced. One would think that learning to walk with the Lord would be more important than mere academics. Anyway, it is sad that I have go to a secular institution to get help for my son when the Church should be leading the way in educating all children (not just the ones destined for high academics).

And another thing, why are there only "Liberal Arts" Christian schools and no Christian Polytechnic Schools in higher education and at the secondary level???

If our civilization persists, and I have my doubts that it will--another topic for another discussion, but how will the Church lead in the fields of technology and science? Or how will the Church lead in the necessary service fields like the trades or mechanics or fill-in-the-blank???

Or is the Church in America going to continue it's slow death and descent into irrelevance??

ORP: LeGuin's The Dispossessed & misc. observations about writing

In her book, Ursula uses the following few short paragraphs to describe the arrival of the main character, Dr. Shevek, as he steps foot on Urras:

...Now he and all the strangers around him were going down a covered ramp, all the voices very loud, words echoing off the walls. The clatter of voices thinned. A strange air touched his face.

He looked up, and as he stepped off the ramp onto the level ground he stumbled and nearly fell. He thought of death, in that gap between the beginning of a step and its completion, and at the end of the step he stood on a new earth.

A broad, grey evening was around him. Blue lights, mist blurred, burned far away across a foggy field. The air on his face and hands, in his nostrils and throat and lungs, was cool, damp, many-scented, mild. It was not strange. It was the air of the world from which his race had come, it was the air of home.

Not only does our author give good visual descriptions, but she also does not forget to utilize the other senses. The prose is rather unremarkable, but somehow in those few words above, we still get the moment, the impact of what it must be like to return to the planet of your ancestry, when you were born and raised on another.

Now that we have completed the first chapter, in chapter two, the author begins to flashback to earlier times in the life of the main protagonist. It's been awhile since I've read this novel (30yrs), so I have forgotten enough of the details of the story to be able to enjoy it again as if it were a new story. So far, I am still recommending this novel.

We, in our Literary Group have completed an unabridged edition of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. It was work to get through the epic, but we are all better for our experience. May you all find truth in your reading experience, because if one has eyes to see, one can catch those glimpses of the sublime.

Novo Visum
Neue Ansicht.

PING

Subspace transmission: stardate 2295 message reads:

I am a Decentralizationist, Techno-libertarian.

Stop.

Ephemera: How Cheap Our privacy has been sold

I stumbled upon this one example of thousands such sites.

Technos: Kindle DX

Now we're talkin', check it out:
Kindle DX

I would like to have one of these, but it's more important to get those debts paid off first. (But I so want one.)

ORP: Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Dispossessed"

I first read Ursula's book, The Dispossessed, back in the mid to late 1970's. On the surface the story is about a physicist who discovers the Grand Unified Field Theory linking gravity, electromagnetism, and weak & strong nuclear force into one comprehensive theory. This scientist comes from a planet settled by a utopianist group and travels to the main planet that this planet orbits to visit other scientists etc. One does expect there to be some socio-political ideas explored in this book, but I was surprised at how philosophical and deep the novel gets right from the beginning of the story. The planet the scientist is from has as it's governmental form an Anarcho-syndicalist construct. Anarchism, in its theoretical form, is a very close cousin to Libertarianism and now that I am reading this novel to my son, Sam, I am re-reading the story for myself and I am finding the concepts in this novel resonating with my views on a number of topics.

Here is a great summary of this novel from another blogger.

Here is how the story opens (emphasis mine):

There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall.
Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.
Looked at from one side, the wall enclosed a barren sixty-acre field called the Port of Anarres. On the field there were...

Thus begins the novel. Perhaps all the concepts in the book are obvious to some, but I think that everyone should read the story as a springboard for meaningful discussion about the many ideas represented in the novel.

Novo Visum,
Neue Ansicht.

W: FW: TASion: Snapshots of the first mission at Earth0

Our warp drive rebuild being tested at our observation station on the third planet is here represented by the station manager giving the engage command to a warp drive static test.

W: FW: TASion

In the barn of this remote homestead is the hiding place for our landing craft.


In a few hours I have the opportunity to enjoy my great books literature group. This constitutes the second to last meeting before we have completed the Unabridged Les Misérables (1450-some-odd pages). I have slowed down in my other reading projects, but I have been developing details for a Traveller Campaign; to this end, I have created a blog just for the game.

Personal Update: general

Picture of me splitting a round (of wood) made it to Chris Granberry's blog from the Saturday work party.



I've been too busy to do any deep thinking and subsequent writing and posting here. I just got Ubuntu Linux installed on my Toshiba Laptop which I will take to the Linux Fest this coming weekend. I will try to post from Bellingham if I find some free wireless or ether ports to connect with. Otherwise I'll post photos and commentary when I get back.

Technos: Battleship Yamato

As a fan of Lego, especially when I was a child, I had to share the following amazing video:

Youtube video of Battleship Yamato

Ah, the existential pleasures of engineering!

Theology (the Prince of the Sciences): Agenda: work party in Yakima WA

Sam and I had the opportunity this past weekend to participate in a father-son work party in support of Sacred Road Ministries in Yakima. I had been learning, in the past and now, the terrible exploitation and extermination of the Indians* in North America. Howard Zinn wrote a book on history with a view to see it from native peoples p.o.v., but the book has the problem of Marxist Revisionist influence. I will still read it because I will now have a new book to compare it to from a professor of our own University of Washington. I need to get more information on the book, and then I will report on it here. Anyway, terrible things were done to the Indians, but it is the Church (the universal invisible church; and for all you pedantics out there, I mean those who are true Christians) that needs to hold out the gospel and love our neighbors. As Chris Granberry likes to say, the Indians were neighbors to the church first when the pilgrims showed up under-equipped for North America; they literally saved their bacon.

Sacred Road Ministries seeks to heal these past wrongs the only way we can (unless someone invents a time machine), that is to bring salvation and a new hope. Understand, this is in the context of a more enlightened church that does not seek to eradicate another culture, but rather to understand this other culture and tell about the hope and solution of all the cultures of mankind; it is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that is this hope.

Please check out the ministry website above to see what they are about and to pray for them. I will also have their blog linked in my blogroll. They have some new people on staff including an excellent young Christian woman who will be their graphic designer and will likely keep their blog updated for Chris Granberry. As anyone knows who has studied how missionary ministries work, all the new staff there in White Swan at the Yakima nation will wear many hats. We wish them well and I am thankful for the opportunity to help in their mercy ministry. This aspect of the ministry was to help out one of the people, a Christian widow who has no sons or grandsons available to cut and split her year's supply of firewood; we had the opportunity to step in and do this small work for her.

I hope to help out more in the Sacred Road ministry in the future, but for now I urge everyone to pray for this ministry.

Novo Visum, Neue Ansicht.







}

A number of the Yakima people refer to themselves as Indians, rather than "Native Americans". So, when you talk to a liberal or a spineless jellyfish Anglo-American, you can use the term "Native American", otherwise to some of (to use the Canadian/Australian phrase) the "First Peoples", they call themselves Indians.

Theology (the Prince of the Sciences): Text of Good Friday Service

Following here I will be posting the text of our Good Friday Service Liturgy; the service was profound to me, but the text may not communicate this since there is the element of the influence of the Holy Spirit and the excellent music also. Still, I post it here to think about.

Prelude: Music of the hymn, "O Sacred Head Now Wounded"
then...

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi;
Miserere nobis.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,
Dona nobis pacem.

Lamb of God, you who take away the sins of the world,
Have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you who take away the sins of the world,
Grant us peace.

--music by Franz Schubert

Welcome

Call to Worship

Hymn: "Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted"

Stricken, smitten, and afflicted, see him dying on the tree!
'Tis the Christ by man rejected; yes, my soul, 'tis he, 'tis he!
'Tis the long expected Prophet, David's son, yet David's Lord;
by his Son God now has spoken: 'tis the true and faithful Word.

Tell me, ye who hear him groaning, was there ever grief like his?
Friends thro' fear his cause disowning, foes insulting his distress;
many hands were raised to wound him, none would interpose to save;
but the deepest stroke that pierced him was the stroke that Justice gave.

Ye who think of sin but lightly nor suppose the evil great
here may view its nature rightly, here its guilt may estimate.
Mark the sacrifice appointed, see who bears the awful load;
'tis the Word, the Lord's Anointed, Son of Man and Son of God.

Here we have a firm foundation, here the refuge of the lost;
Christ's the Rock of our salvation, his the name of which we boast.
Lamb of God, for sinners wounded, sacrifice to cancel guilt!
None shall ever be confounded who on him their hope have built.

Lesson No. 1: Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12

13 Behold, my servant shall act wisely;
he shall be high and lifted up,
and shall be exalted.
14 As many were astonished at you—
chis appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—
15 so shall he sprinkle many nations;
kings shall shut their mouths because of him;
for that which has not been told them they see,
and that which they have not heard they understand.
53 Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has hthe arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
pand with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
9 And they made his grave with the wicked
wand with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.

Lesson No. 2: Luke 7:36-50

36 One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table. 37 And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, 38 and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. 39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” 40 And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.”

41 “A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” 43 Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” 44 Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” 48 And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” 49 Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” 50 And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Then song:

Drop, drop, slow tears
And bathe those beauteous feet,
Which brought from heaven
The news and Prince of Peace.

Cease not, wet eyes,
His mercies to entreat;
To cry for vengeance
Sin doth never cease.

In your deep floods
Drown all my faults and fears;
Nor let his eye
See sin, but through my tears.

Lesson No. 3: John 1:29-34

29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” 32 And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33 I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”

Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris
Qui tollis pecatta
Domine Deus Rexcaelestis
Domine Fili Unigenite.
Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris
Qui tollis peccata mundi
Miserere, Agnus Dei, Miserere, Filius Patris miserere nobis.

O thou our Lord God, Lamb of God, and Son of the Father
Who bearest transgressions O Thou our Lord God, King of heaven
Only begotten Lord and Son of God.
O Thou our Lord God, Lamb of God, and Son of the Father
Who bearest the world's transgressions
Have Thou Mercy, Lamb of God, have Thou mercy Son of the Father, have mercy on us.

Music by Antonio Vivaldi

Lesson No. 4: Luke 22:39-46

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ORP & Personal Update: Reading W. Gibson's newer novel

Wednesday, I had to spend an entire day in bureaucratic hell trying to get my badge renewed so that I could go to work that night. Read Joseph Heller's "Catch 22", apply it to paperwork and you will get the idea of what I went through. So when I realized my Customs seal wasn't going to be ready right away, I went to Half-price books at lunch and found a cheaper copy of William Gibson's '06 book, "Spook Country". This is an entertaining story involving espionage-type intelligence, the arts community, and cutting edge technology involving wireless, GPS, & virtual reality.

I mention all this because as I started plowing into the novel, I had a greater appreciation for the artist characters in the story since I have my own artist character in my household in the person of my son, Sam the artist.

I've just started the novel, but so far it's a good read. All my other reading projects are going on; Les Misérables is about half-way complete and as I have mentioned I am reading Lewis' "Screwtape Letters" to the family. We are almost finished with the "Love Dare" book, and the second of Andrée Seu's collection of her writings from World Magazine. When Jane gets back from her three week trip to Anchorage in June we'll get into some summer family reading projects and I'll post any interesting observations here in the blog. Also I have been listening to an Audible.com download of Ayn Rand's "We the Living"; it is more excellent than I expected and ties in nicely with the Dostoevsky that I was reading earlier in the academic year. I am going to get a text copy of the novel and I expect to be posting on that novel as well.

I have been focusing much of my self-study on literature since I still don't have the funding to continue my own education, but I have always enjoyed reading. In late April a bunch of us guys are going to Linux Fest in Bellingham, so I may get back into a few more technical posts.

Well, I'm trying to think positive and hope our nation doesn't dissolve into tyranny or chaos as the Obamanistas continue their power grab. My prayer for all Americans is that we will not lose our freedom, but of course the moral behavior of America doesn't give me any expectation that we will even deserve mercy. I advise all to flee to the protection of God.

Technos: A review of the march toward a digitalized life.

This article has an interesting recap of recent trends in technology and how are we to adapt socially (& psychologically).

Multiverse: PKD's Android goes missing.

Philip K. Dick's android copy is lost. Check out this article.

ORP & Personal Update: CS Lewis on Bureaucracy

At home, I have engaged in another reading project--this time, I am reading C.S. Lewis' "Screwtape Letters" to my family. I am reading a revised edition which includes the additional materials called "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" and an introduction written in 1960. This introduction is fascinating and recounts some of Lewis' motives and why he chose his symbols. In this introduction he shows why he chose a metaphor for how hell is run and shows his attitude, like mine, toward bureaucracy. I have to deal with bureaucracy in my job at the Port of Seattle, SeaTac airport, and since we are undergoing a transformation of our society into an amalgam of Sovietism and Fascism, this is especially relevant. Thus the eternally true adage, "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." Here is the quote in words only Lewis could put together:

I like bats much better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.

Social Philosophy: Everyday Mind Control

With a nod to Mark Horne, I give you the following link:

You have been assimilated.

Fortunately, for now, the state of Washington has a very good home-school law. So if and when my son gets married and has children, and since he and his spouse will likely have to both work because of the policies of the current administration, I may have the opportunity to teach my grandchildren to protect them from our wonderful Fascist society. LORD willing, of course.

Technos: Linux-fest is coming.

I may edit this entry later, but for now here is the Totem for the Linux-fest (held in Bellingham, Washington):

Personal Update: Chronos, misc.

Life is spinning by fast these days. I have, by the grace of God, managed to survive to the seventh anniversary of my 39th year, calender bench mark being the Ides of March. I had a great time celebrating my birthday this past weekend with my brother Stuart in attendance and drop-ins from a few friends. Janie graciously hosted all us men with superb skill; we had good eats, and I brought out some good drinkables to share and we just enjoyed the company with good conversation and a few movies. In today's troubled economy, it was great to still be able to have a good time at home (and yes to have a home, and a job, etc.).

Many thought provoking events seem to be occurring in quick succession, so much to think about with the collapse of personal liberty and prosperity around the world. I pray that God helps us all to endure. I was today feeling a little tired of pinching pennies, when there are Macs, and music, and books, and travel, and education to buy. My emotions tend to flux like a roller coaster, like the rage at every day's new outrage--during the Clinton years it was a new outrage of the moral failings of the Leader and his betrayal at the security level of our nation, but now we have a regime that is a virtual clone of the last Bush administration, but nobody sees it. And now our military will be betrayed, and the economy, all bruised and bleeding by it's abuse from the banking criminals, will die a death of thousand "stimulus" knife wounds, while the tax cheats and assorted petty criminals running Washington D.C. race their Mercedes' though the park after midnight looking for a few more taxpayers to mug. There is just too much confusion here--I can't get no relief...

Another thing that just frosts my donkey's hind end, is the profound waste of my life energy that I have to piss away only to pay all the creditors, and government thugs, etc. while my personal goals and dreams evaporate before my eyes. There really is nothing sublime and beautiful anymore about life, because just when you start to maybe feel a little joy in the Lord, SIN rears it's ugly head.

Well enough of the whining, it seems I just now forgot how much I have to be thankful for. It's so easy to lose perspective.

Praise to God for His Salvation, for His making possible our communication with Him. Praise to God, that He has given us (those appointed to salvation) the power and ability to choose Him, to enjoy Him, to worship Him.
Praise to God, that though nothing is different between us and any that do not believe in regard to our sinfulness, yet He has given us this salvation.

Theology (The Prince of the Sciences): The correct perspective on God's Judgment

I am completely caught up to real-time in reviewing Dr. Rayburn's sermons on the book of Numbers, and I had to bring attention to his sermon on 02/22/09 which would allow this entry to be filed under Historica because of his excellent short historical analysis about the ancient Canaanite civilization (also variously called the Phoenician civilization) and how the modern Western civilization is a perfect analog of this ancient civilization (with all that that implies--like judgment, etc.). When the sermon is typed up and posted to the church website, I will link to it here and probably excerpt from it here also; until then here is the link to the MP3 of the sermon (I recommend that everyone listen to it immediately.).

Social Philosophy: Economics, part 2: Solutions to the Financial Market failure

In the interest of finding the sublime and beautiful in all of life, I thought I would give mention of a good article offering an elegant solution to some failures in the financial market. I came across this article in the March 2009 (dead tree version of) Wired Magazine. Among other things, there is an interesting application of the idea of Open Source. Read the whole article, you will all find it edifying.

Theology (the Prince of the Sciences): Faith vs. unbelief; life vs. death

As I review Dr. Rayburn's series on Numbers I continue to feel compelled to share some of them here. Sermon number 16, concerns itself with Numbers 14 and Israel's unbelief. The first part of the sermon I want to quote is the part where certain verses of the passage are analyzed, so get the context here is the scripture followed by the sermon quote:

11 And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? 12 I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.”

The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (Nu 14:11-12). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

The Lord’s remark about Israel’s refusal to believe in defiance of the signs and wonders performed before their eyes immediately cannot help but remind us of many similar statements made by the Lord Jesus during his ministry. In any case, there is it in black and white: “they refuse to believe in me.” The issue is a lack of faith. It is always faith in the OT as it in the NT, the presence of it or the want of it, that tells the tale.

Here is the central part of the sermon, but again read (or hear the whole thing):

I. Well, first we can say that this unbelief in the church is worse than the ordinary, simple unbelief of the world because the lack of true and living faith is masked by the appearance of spiritual life. It is, therefore, deceptive in a way that naked unbelief in a world is not and so it has the power to undermine the faith of members of the church in a way that unbelief outside of the church never can.

This is what makes this unbelief so pernicious and why the Bible is warning us against it at every turn. Unbelief can do so much more damage in the church than it can do in the world because in the church it can be disguised. It can beguile. It can appear as an angel of light. Israel in the wilderness was certainly not a community of atheists; it was not even yet a community of polytheists, though that would come. We read in v. 3 that it occurred to these people in their despair over the report of the ten scouts to ask “Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword?” They were still reckoning with Yahweh; still accepting that he had brought them to the borders of the Promised Land. We might well have thought, surely we should think, “If these people had the sense to say that the Lord had brought them to this land, why would they not realize that the Lord would give them the land no matter the impressive military obstacles in their way?” By invoking the name of Yahweh they were as much as reminding themselves of the ten plagues by which the Lord had delivered them from their slavery in Egypt, the parted waters of the Yam Suph, water from the rock, the manna and the quail, the thunder and lightning at Mt. Sinai, and the pillar of fire. After all that had happened, seen and experienced how could a people invoke Yahweh’s name and yet have no confidence in the power of that name? It seems bizarre to us.

And it is not simply that churchly unbelief is masked by adherence to certain articles of faith. There are also laws such people presume to keep among the others that they do not and will not. So they not only believe things real believers believe, they do things that real believers do. These folk who turned away at Kadesh still worshipped at the sanctuary and still observed the Sabbath. There is a kind of churchly activity that likewise masks a fundamental spirit of unbelief.

In this case they sent an army into Canaan. It was not what they were supposed to do when they did it but it was what they had been told to do previously. They knew it was what the Lord had expected them to do. They did it at the wrong time and in the wrong way, but the difference wasn’t apparent to them. They were still invading the Promised Land and that was the whole point wasn’t it? But despite many similarities, there is a great deal of difference between the activity of a spurious faith, a faith that doesn’t really get it, and true and living submission to and confidence in the Lord, his presence, power, and promise. These people presumed; they did not believe. They did their will, not Yahweh’s. And they found themselves in Canaan without the Lord and, left to their own devices, they were mauled. Nevertheless, they did certain things precisely because of their relationship with Yahweh, broken as it was.

What is more, these unbelieving Israelites even felt some things that real believers feel. When they heard the Lord’s judgment pronounced against them and when they saw the ten scouts die we read that they mourned bitterly. They even felt driven to confess their sin! They weren’t, of course, truly repentant; there was no change in their posture toward God. They were sorry for the consequences of their sin, not for the sin itself. But there is something so real, so right about the Christian faith that a great many people circle its periphery precisely because they sniff its reality and are drawn to the glory of its truth. They feel its authenticity. Why does an unbeliever go to seminary and enter the ministry? That is something that has often puzzled real Christians. We think: if you don’t really believe the Bible, why be a student of it and why devote your life to being a pastor and a preacher? But the answer, I think, lies here in vv. 39-40. There is a partial belief, a partial acceptance, a partial recognition of reality that is powerful enough even in its partiality to shape a person’s life.

Throughout the history of the church this phenomenon of churchly unbelief has appeared and reappeared. It is born in some real semblance of belief and continues in some real appearance of belief and does its deadly work in the congregation precisely because it looks so much like the real thing it is not recognized for what it actually is until it is too late.

II. Second, we can say this about churchly unbelief: it never prospers, it may die slowly, but it always dies. It has no principle of life and so cannot sustain itself through the generations.

What is explicitly pointed out in our text is that, when in v. 20 the Lord told Moses after his intercession for the people that he had forgiven them, the Lord meant only that he had stayed the immediate punishment that he had threatened. He would not destroy the people then and there. But he had not restored them to true and living fellowship with himself. That is not what he meant by saying he had forgiven them. They remained after this pardon a wicked community as we read in vv. 27 and 35. They had no more faith after the Lord’s pardon than they did before. They would, we read in v. 34 “suffer for their sins” and know what it is like to have the Lord against them. And so it would be. Israel remained in the wilderness for forty years, actually some 38 plus years after her rebellion at Kadesh. They spun their wheels. They went nowhere in particular. And through those years the generation of Israelites responsible for the rebellion died out. The people got older and died.

It is intended to be a perfect picture of what happens in such communities of unbelieving Christians. The churches die. The Christian families die. All over Europe you see the evidence of once living congregations of Christians that have now completely disappeared. And you are seeing that more and more in our land. We know what to expect of such denominations and churches. They grow smaller and older year by year until they can no longer pay the light bill and must sell the building to the hospital next door.

One of the greatest challenges facing mission churches in our day is the immense cost of land and church buildings. Now that we are planting churches more regularly in the Pacific Northwest Presbytery we have wondered: how will these mission churches ever be able to afford to buy sufficient land in Seattle or Redmond or Kirkland upon which to build a house of worship? Ah, but all is not lost. There are empty church buildings coming available here and there; perhaps one of those can be bought. And in virtually every case the church building now or soon to be for sale once housed a congregation of unbelieving Christians who were dying out in the wilderness for want of true and living faith in God.

The Lord can be against a people and they still continue as a church for years, even for a generation or two, but they get smaller and smaller and eventually there is nothing left. But given their unbelief, the lack of any true spiritual understanding and commitment, such people do not usually ask why they are dying. They never draw the connection between their own unbelief and the judgment of the Lord. Unbelief being what it is, I don’t suppose that over the coming thirty-eight years that Israel wandered in the wilderness the Israelites who had been condemned to die in the desert were ever found carefully, humbly counting down the number of survivors left from the disaster at Kadesh, remembering and taking to heart funeral after funeral the consequence of their unbelief. These people, in fact, as we will read later in this same book, would be quite prepared to commit other sins of unbelief against the Lord.

Which brings us to the third thing we can say about this phenomenon of churchly unbelief.

III. The greatest danger of unbelief in the church is its power to harden the heart against the possibility of conviction of sin, faith, and repentance.

What is most frightening about Israel’s experience in the wilderness is that they never got it. They never wised up. They never learned their lesson. They never really repented and they never really believed. After all they suffered, after all they lost, they were at the end as spiritually dull and stupid and sermon-proof and sickness-proof as ever.

And this bizarre phenomenon has occurred through the ages. Individual churches and entire denominations invoke the divine name, offer him worship on the Lord’s Day, presume by various ways and means to further his kingdom in the world, and yet they openly disagree with much of what he has revealed in his Word – that same Bible they read in their services and in which they propose to find the parts of the faith they agree with –, they openly disobey some of his laws, and all the while they seem utterly unconcerned that in their unbelief and their disobedience they are parting company with not only the teaching of Holy Scripture but the long tradition of Christian faith in the world. How is this not the same contempt for Yahweh that Israel displayed at Kadesh? Any why can they not see that?