joel's thoughts » Links

The growing gap between seminaries and churches

joel — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:50:03 +0000

Jonathan Walton over at Religion Dispatches Blog turns a critical eye to seminaries and churches, and how more and more they seem to inhabit completely different worlds. Good thoughts, and challenging. At first glance it may not seem relevant to the everyday layperson, but it seems to me we could all stand to be (and seek) a little less PowerPoint and MySpace and a little more deep and grounded truth.

Rebates for Wells

joel — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 05:20:12 +0000

Looking forward to your rebate check from Uncle Sam? How about a little perspective…

In a few months, every American is going to be getting $300-$600 rebate check to help “spur” on the economy. This is separate from your tax refund, and will cost the U.S. about $170 Billion.

Separately, did you know that the UN estimates that 25,000 people die EACH DAY (that’s eight 9/11 tragedies every day) because they lack access to clean water. They also estimate that $52 billion/year would provide the infrastructure to provide clean water to these folks. (WHO&UNICEF; Global Water Supply and Sanitation Assessment 2000 Report).

So we (whoever wants to) are going to be sending our rebate checks (part of it, all of it,… whatever) to help build wells in Africa instead of buying more junk to lay around the house (or more fast food, or more entertainment,…).

The org is called BareFootWorld, and their (current) project is to ask people to give them a portion (or all) of their rebate check so they can send it all on to 1000 wells to get clean water to people who need it. Want to give straight to 1000 wells instead? That’s cool too (it’s all going there anyway), just let the folks at BareFootWorld know so they can tally it in their total.

Or, you know, you could buy another toaster or something.

No words

joel — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 06:06:34 +0000

I usually try to think of something witty or insightful or even vaguely amusing or at the very least somewhat relevant when putting up a link that will just send you off somewhere else, but this time there’s nothing to say. Watch the first video for some stats that will make your eyes pop and your stomach sink. Then if you’ve got the guts, watch the second. Yes, that’s a challenge.

It’s high time we stop worrying about offending someone’s sensibilities. God help us…

Is this thing on?

joel — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:08:36 +0000

Right. A few trips to other countries, one to bring home two beautiful kids, and a house move later, and you start to wonder if there’s time to catch up on everything. Right now, no. But in the meantime, I’ll leave you with a couple of interesting reads by Paul Graham.

The Word “Hacker”
Good to clear up any misconceptions, especially since in some respects I consider myself somewhat in the category. Before you call the feds on me, go read it.

And in a not-altogether-unrelated vein, thoughts on why the land of America is rich but ugly:
Made in USA

And just in case you’re still around, thoughts on some of the mental aspects of programming:
Holding a Program in One’s Head
I especially like the image of walking around in a memory.

Be Not Afraid

joel — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 03:05:03 +0000

Go free up the next ten minutes or so, and read Michael Yon’s essay on what’s going on right now in Iraq. Incredibly insightful, and well worth the read.

(Hat tip: Dr. Bob)

A blend of poisons, dark and light

joel — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 17:36:54 +0000

Two links to share this afternoon, speciously connected by yours truly on the topic of poison (really I just happened to read them both and thought they were worth sharing). The first is actually part 4 in an ongoing series by Dr. Bob called “Moving the Ancient Boundaries”, on “the erosion of moral, cultural, and ethical boundaries in modern society.” I need to go back and read parts 1-3, but if part 4 is any indication it will be well worth my time. This man not only has excellent insight and analysis but a keen ability to express them in writing. Go read The Assault on Religious Authority.

The second is much lighter. Antique Mommy tells an amusing tale or two of those parenting moments that convince us that CPS will be showing up any minute. The comments that follow are just as good as the main post. Go check it out, and feel better about your own parenting skills.

Wandering rivers

joel — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 22:57:42 +0000

[Background]
Two weeks ago, my family and I made a visit to our local Family Christian Store. I was there primarily to pick up the Casting Crowns CD [Snapshot review: tracks 2-4 are absolutely fabulous, the rest ranges from 'good-thoughts' to 'eh'; overall musically solid but unremarkable, the strength is in the lyrics; really, tracks 2-4 alone are just about worth the price of the CD], but we ended up browsing for a bit anyway. I wandered over to the section with various bible translations and printings because I’ve been thinking about picking up one of those “thinline” bibles — softcover and very…well, thin. Since I went to Urbana ‘96 I’ve been using the bible I got there, but I’ve been thinking I might like something that would fit a little easier in my laptop bag. Yes, I know, we Americans and our conveniences. Anyway, I was looking over the various shelves of King James and NIV and NASB and…ESV? English Standard Version, eh? What’s that about? I asked Andi if she knew anything about it, and she hadn’t heard of it either. I shrugged and made a mental note to find out about it at some point. Time was running short, so I paid for my CD and we left, and I hadn’t thought about the ESV since.

[Today]
I get to work after a weeklong vacation and get back in to my usual morning routine — check/sort/read email, check the news, check my blog list (keep meaning to post that sometime). Craig, one of my roommates from Messiah, had the following post:

Fab rock band Queen and Internet meme All your Base are Belong to Us [explanatory link added -joel] are combined as a Flash video in Zero Wing Rhapsody. Youve been warned.

And really, the warning is appropriate. It was rather amusing, but…wow. Anyway, the credit screen at the end gives quite a bit of the production credit (including recording) to one Andrew Kepple, and I was immediately curious if it might be the same Dru Kepple who attended Lebanon Valley College while I was there in ‘93 – ‘95. We were both Sound Recording majors, had overlapping groups of friends, and as I recall we both had an interest in a certain violinist…but I digress.

Naturally I turned to Google to find out if there was any connection. “Andrew Kepple” turned up several links for the guy in the Zero Wing Rhapsody thing, including this page where a guy named Glutnix in New Zealand met him and took a few pictures. Checked the pix — nope, that’s not Dru. Oh well, I wonder what did happen to him? So I Google for “Dru Kepple” (since that’s what he always went by) and found this page for a guy named Shawn Smith and his band, which page mentions the onetime involvement of a Dru Kepple, who (it says) is now in PA being church organist, guitar instructor, and youth band leader. Yep, that’s the guy, and he’s not the other guy. End of story.

Except something on Glutnix’s page had caught my eye, and I wandered back to have another look. I saw “Christianity” in his categories list, with one post. Intrigued (remember I got here by a link from a search on some guy in that silly Zero Wing parody), I went to see what he had to say on the topic and was delighted to see somewhat of a review of the online edition of none other than the ESV! (I had overlooked his right-nav “about” block mentioning Jesus Christ as one of the things he’s passionate about.) So I made a mental note, forgot about it (as usual ), and ended up here anyway, courtesy of Zero Wing. God indeed has a sense of humor.

So of course I followed the links and quickly discovered both esv.org (the main site) and gnpcb.org/esv (the online version), and I’m quite intrigued. I’m nowhere near a bible scholar, but it looks like their translation philosophy is pretty decent. It’s a fairly recent translation (copyright 2001) by Good News Publishers, built off of the Revised Standard Version (1971) as a starting point and relying on the 1983 and 1993 versions of the Masoretic (Hebrew) and Greek texts, respectively. And it aims to be an “essentially literal” translation, emphasizing as much as possible word-for-word correspondence, which I tend to prefer, rather than a more general “thought-for-thought” translation. I’ll have to give it some more thought and prayer, but it looks like I might have a winner…

Still Shaking

joel — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 17:11:29 +0000

I can’t get this out of my head. I came across a news item this morning on MSNBC about a UN-commissioned public service spot on stopping landmines that’s hardly getting any airtime. Turns out I’m a bit behind the curve on this one, as news of this hit the blogs over a month ago:

The explosion appears to kill and injure some girls, sparking panic and chaos among parents and other children. Shrieks of horror are heard through much of the spot, and a father is shown cradling his daughter’s lifeless body, moments after celebrating a goal she had scored.
It closes with a tag line reading: “If there were landmines here, would you stand for them anywhere? Help the U.N. eradicate landmines everywhere.”

It’s not a graphic video at all — just a puff of smoke and dirt, chaos and confusion, and a limp body. But it still manages to connect at a very visceral level. You can talk about landmines all you want, but there’s something about a visual depiction that is so much more effective at getting the message across.

A little too effective for the tv networks, it seems. We enjoy our reality tv, as long as it’s not too real. We can watch movies like Saving Private Ryan, because that’s history and wasn’t it tough back then? We can even handle live footage of a war going on (now with New Improved Embedded Reporting!), because that’s what soldiers are paid for, as long as it doesn’t get too graphic. But the hypothesis that you and your family can be going about your everyday life and suddenly lose a leg or, you know, a child, because someone buried a landmine fifty years ago and forgot about it? And the truth that for far too many people in the world that’s not a hypothesis but their reality? That people really live like that? No, that’s a little too close to home. Thanks, tv networks, for keeping our bubble firmly intact. Thank goodness we didn’t have to collectively think about that one.

Whatever. I’m still shaking from seeing the video. StopLandmines.org has the streaming video (Windows Media format), or you can get the 8Mb Quicktime version here. Yes, it’s disturbing. That’s the point.

Touch-Screen Voting

joel — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 14:38:36 +0000

I haven’t posted much about this issue yet, but touch-screen voting is something that concerns me deeply. Much has been said in various media and such about the issue, but I recently came across a very good post by Bruce Schneier, a well-regarded expert in the areas of cryptography and computer security, so I thought I might share it with you. He clearly lays out the major issues and concerns, and sticks with clear non-technical language. If you have any desire to know whether or not our current election process can be trusted as accurate and reliable, or just want to know what all the fuss is about, I highly recommend reading his post.

Cybernetics, continued

joel — Thu, 14 Oct 2004 14:36:34 +0000

Back in February I posted about some remarkable developments in the area of cybernetics, and mentioned the possibility of allowing people with paralysis to perform complex tasks. Well, here we are only eight months later (eight months!!) and that wall has been breached. In an FDA-approved trial, a company called Cyberkinetics has implanted 100 sensors in the brain of a 25-year old quadriplegic with wires running to a computer. Just by thinking, the patient is able to “control a computer well enough to operate a TV, open e-mail and play Pong with 70% accuracy.” That’s pretty incredible. The article clarifies that this is obviously still at a very early stage, likening the technology to “the first pacemaker in 1950, which was the size of a boombox and delivered jolts through wires implanted in the heart.” For one thing, they’re only capturing a small part of the signals the brain is sending. For another, there’s still the wires-poking-through-the-skull issue.

Not surprisingly the question of medical ethics comes up, and our friend Art Caplan gets a few quotes about how the brain isn’t “some sacrosanct organ you can’t touch” and that we shouldn’t hold up this kind of research for those who fear a slippery slope of body modifications and human enhancements. And this time, I couldn’t agree with him more. This needs to be monitored, to be sure, but the potential vastly outweighs the risk that some mad scientist is going to start churning out cyborgs or something.