The following quote is attributed to Beth Moore, a writer and teacher of Christian spirituality

"Life shouldn't be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather, to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly shouting, 'Wow! What a ride! Thank You, Lord!' "

I'm feeling it this morning...

"The foolish things, they will shame the wise.
The strong boast, the weak survive.
And what we see, our faith believes.
The world's turned by things unseen"

One by U2

Phillipians 2:1-5

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

I request a moment of empathy for all the teachers out there whose only indication that they are doing a good job is that no one is happy in the class. "It is too hard" "It is too easy" "We follow the text too close" "We don't go over the text enough" "This is like an [easy] class" "I have no idea what is going on". All on one evaluation. It's like being a politician. You know you are doing a good job if everyone hates you, but you get reelected.

From CNN this morning - the final thoughts of the candidates:

From the Bible:

Micah 6:8 (New International Version):
" He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God."

Barack Obama on Jesus Christ (more)

"You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it. You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away - because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.

"It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth. "

Philippians 1:18(New International Version)
"But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice."

Abraham Lincoln was amazing. He shouldered such an incredible weight during such an uncertain time. The way he wrote about the role of God in the civil war continues to astound me.

After an uncomfortable evening of political discussions regarding the fate of our nation, often cast in terms of an internal, invisible war, I am reminded of what he said at the moment the Civil War of the United States was on the knife edge. This election doesn't have anything to do with slavery, but the emotions and philosophical issues that Lincoln was grappling with are relevant this hour.

"One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether"

President Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address was delivered March 5, 1865 before the end of the Civil War. Lincoln was assassinated a few weeks later on April 14, 1865.

(text copied from here)

Source:United Stated National Debt

"Look around you: Everything you see is God's—the heavens above and beyond, the Earth, and everything on it. But it was your ancestors who God fell in love with; he picked their children—that's you!—out of all the other peoples. That's where we are right now. So cut away the thick calluses from your heart and stop being so willfully hardheaded. God, your God, is the God of all gods, he's the Master of all masters, a God immense and powerful and awesome. He doesn't play favorites, takes no bribes, makes sure orphans and widows are treated fairly, takes loving care of foreigners by seeing that they get food and clothing.

You must treat foreigners with the same loving care—
remember, you were once foreigners in Egypt.
Reverently respect God, your God, serve him, hold tight to him,
back up your promises with the authority of his name.
He's your praise! He's your God!
He did all these tremendous, these staggering things
that you saw with your own eyes. "
Deut. 10:17-20

Now that I have successfully pissed off a ton of people with my last abortion related post, I will continue on...

Today I am musing about whether it is possible to be "anti-abortion" and not actually be "pro-life". I wonder this because I see a lot of people that are really happy to make abortion illegal (something for which I would vote for if was ever asked), but not particularly active in helping to alleviate the pain associated with poverty, war and disease. So, great, we bring a lot of kids into the world and leave them to suffer? That is lame.

Note to self: When people tell you that there is an alien fungus growing in your office, do not blow them off with some vague statement about the reproductive cycle of tropical plants. Instead put on your Sigourney Weaver and get fierce...

This is my account of being called to jury duty in Orange County:

Day one:

I spent the morning in the Orange County Jury Assembly room trying to get my laptop to connect to the internet using my GPRS phone. The Jury Assembly room was a big room filled with ~150 people. It was reminiscent of the DMV, but it was a little nicer and the people were dressed better than at the DMV. My local friends tell me that this is because of which court this is, not because it is *a* court in general. A woman with an English accent, friendly, but no nonsense, was in charge of managing this mostly disgruntled group of potential jurors. The role of the people in this room was to hang out for 8 hours in case there was a trial which needed a jury. In fact there were at least three. For each trial about 30 people were called out of the room. From each pool of 30, 12 jurors get picked for a trial.

So below is a little quiz that my wife and I put together. It challenges you to guess which presumed presidential candidate made which statement. It's a little eye-opening to see how similar the vacant rhetoric is. On the other hand its also a little surprising to see who stands on which slightly less vacant rhetoric. Hopefully it will challenge your preconceptions about which party stands for which issues.

In a discussion with my daughter last night we stumbled on to two of life's most challenging questions. Do crabs have heads? and the related questions: Do whales have heads?

What do you think? Comment below.

I previously blogged about a presentation that Cory Doctorow gave on campus. One of the points that I made to him during the presentation and then blogged about was that fighting for net neutrality is a waste of time:

"My prediction is that this fight is going to disappear because it's already lost. The net is not neutral any more. There was never any law saying it had to be. Let it go. We would be better off finding a way to publicly and objectively analyze the service from different providers."

It appears that Google is tacitly agreeing with me. They have recently announced that they are developing tools to identify when carriers are biasing your traffic based on relationships formed with other companies. So now, by using Google's forthcoming tools, consumers can compare the services provided by different providers and decide if having super fast access to ESPN is worth super slow access to to your favorite independently hosted blog.

" We're trying to develop tools, software tools...that allow people to detect what's happening with their broadband connections, so they can let [ISPs] know that they're not happy with what they're getting -- that they think certain services are being tampered with," Google senior policy director Richard Whitt said this morning during a panel discussion at Santa Clara University, an hour south of San Francisco.

The Patterson household predicts that Obama will pick Caroline Kennedy as the vice presidential running mate. By doing so he will win the female vote that was sympathetic to Sen. Clinton, he will capitalize on sympathy for Sen. Kennedy, he will tap into a very popular presidents legacy, he will win over the white northeastern Democratic vote.

Its a brilliant move.

And now I hate myself for making a political comment which has nothing to do with policy and everything to do personality, demographics and strategy. Where is the substance!

Also I don't want to imply that my endorsement is what eventually made the difference, but I do need to point out that it was way back on November 9th when that strategic microdelegate threw his support behind Obama.

At this moment, I am enjoying being a professor. When people ask me what it is like to be a professor I find it hard to answer. Sometimes I say it's like being a Senator, because it is very political and your job is evaluated based on how a group of peers think you are doing. Sometimes I say it's like being an entrepreneur because you spend a lot of time selling ideas, raising money and training people on a vision. Today it's like being a writer. My desk is covered with manuscripts and writing guides and empty coffee mugs. On the whole, I like doing all these things.

I was talking with some friends this week. Since we are in Orange County and since conversation here always goes toward real estate (plus we were in a new house) we started talking about the real estate crash. Locally many people have lost their jobs because of the crash and, although this group is strongly opinionated anyway, there were strong opinions about the appropriateness around any sort of government bail-out of the people involved.

It also turns out that these men are also attempting to follow Christ in their lives. Eventually our conversation shifted to the moral culpability of the real estate crash. This reminded me about the distinction between rich and poor vs. righteous and unrighteous.

Now, I'm no religious scholar, secular or otherwise, but I have a working definition for "religion" that I use which includes three components. Religion..

1. makes claims about meta-physical truths. (e.g., What is my purpose? What is the goal of humanity?)
2. has symbols which support those claims. (e.g., cross, crescent, pentagram)
3. has symbolic ceremonies which also support those claims (e.g,. communion, ritualized prayer)

Religion differs from philosophy because philosophy largely ignores the second two points.

Given my working definition, the olympic "movement" is totally a religion. It is a religion of humanism. Hope in the power of man to be unified

On the left is a link to the lighting of the torch. It is so explicitly pagan in its references to ancient Greek religion that it's troubling to me. Below are the lyrics to the song they are singing. As a Christian I find these philosophies, symbols and ceremonies run counter to what I believe to be true. They are worthy goals which the Olympics will never achieve.

I submit the following two signs that the economy is tanking.

1. The bus that I have been taking for two years now is suddenly packed with people for no apparent reason. It used to be that if I got on the 7:10 Route 79 I could sit down, spread out and use my laptop. Now there are mornings when it is standing room only. Same thing on the way home. I attribute this to people having less money to afford gas and parking.
2. In the same vein, four new signs showed up on the path on the way into campus this morning, all of them warning students that if you park in the shopping center next to campus and go to class, your car will be towed at your expense. Again, price sensitive students are no longer footing the bill for a parking pass and are trying to get away with parking nearby instead.

I might feel differently about these things if it was the start of the school year, but it's the second week of spring quarter. No big changes to anything that I can otherwise identify.

Finally, there is something besides rhetoric published about the Iraq war. The graph on the left comes from the BBC. (Because British people are smarter) This graph shows that the surge was actually quite modest and that there was a drastic drop in military deaths during the time the surge was going on.

While correlation is not causality - meaning that it is not shown at all from this graph that the surge was responsible for the drop in deaths (although that is clearly implied.) It is nice to see some hard data to actually reason about.

The reason why the surge might not have anything to do with the drop in deaths is because a cease fire from one of the militia armies (I am not an expert) has widely been attributed as being behind the drop in violence rather than the surge

I just finished submitting a paper. The following pertains:

O bed!
O bed!
delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head.
- Thomas Hood, Miss Kilmansegg--Her Dream

"Jesus, Jesus help me
I'm alone in this world
And a fucked up world it is too
Tell me, tell me the story
The one about eternity
And the way it's all gonna be

Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man

Jesus, I'm waiting here boss
I know you're looking out for us
But maybe your hands aren't free
Your father, He made the world in seven
He's in charge of heaven
Will you put a word in for me

Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man

Jesus, were you just around the corner
Did You think to try and warn her
Or are you working on something new
If there's an order in all of this disorder
Is it like a tape recorder
Can we rewind it just once more

Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man"

Photo courtesy of ã¨ã³ã²ã¼ã

"You know I ran across an old box of letters
While I was bagging up some clothes for Goodwill
But you Know I had to laugh at the same old struggles
That plagued me then are plaguing me still
I know the road is long from the ground to glory
But a boy can hope he's getting some place
But you see, I'm running from the very clothes I'm wearing
And dressed like this I'm fit for the chase

'Cause no, there is none righteous
Not one who understands
There is none who seek God
No not one, I said no not one

So I am thankful that I'm incapable
Of doing any good on my own

'Cause we're all stillborn and dead in our transgressions
We're shackled up to the sin we hold so dear
So what part can I play in the work of redemption
I can't refuse, I cannot add a thing

'Cause I am just like Lazarus and I can hear your voice
I stand and rub my eyes and walk to You
Because I have no choice

I am thankful that I'm incapable
Of doing any good on my own
I'm so thankful that I'm incapable
Of doing any good on my own

'Cause by grace I have been saved
Through faith that's not my own
It is a gift of God and not by works
Lest anyone should boast"

"The Death of Lazarus

1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent to him, saying, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." 4 But when Jesus heard it he said, "This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it."

5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So, when he heard that Lazarus[a] was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. 7 Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again." 8 The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?" 9 Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. 10 But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him." 11 After saying these things, he said to them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him." 12 The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover." 13 Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep. 14 Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus has died, 15 and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him." 16 So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."

17 Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary(R) to console them concerning their brother. 20 So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. 21 Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you." 23 Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." 24 Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." 25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" 27 She said to him, "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world."

28 When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you." 29 And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. 31 When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. 34 And he said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." 35 Jesus wept. 36 So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" 37 But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?"

38Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. 39 Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days." 40Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?" 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me." 43When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." 44 The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."

My Uncle Bill passed away yesterday afternoon after a lengthy battle with lung cancer. Uncle Bill was a person that always reminded me of an old photograph where somber looking black and white weather beaten farmers are leaning on a tractor while kids play in the background. He was given a difficult life but it never seemed to get him down.

Uncle Bill married my Aunt Penny years ago. Shortly afterward my Aunt was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy multiple sclerosis. They had one son, my cousin Billy, who also has M.D. M.S. as well as a variety of other medical issues.

So the part of my life that I knew Uncle Bill, I knew him as a man who was faithfully taking care of a very sick wife and son. I remember visiting him in a very literal shack in Ohio. I was a kid, so I didn't quite realize how poor they were, but the floors were sloped and the roof leaked. I think the house was held together by the linoleum on the floor more than the wood underneath. Uncle Bill had a garden out back where he grew a pretty big chunk of the food that they ate. He lived next to some horses. That was were I learned about electric fences and how not to touch them. He fixed tractors and lawn mowers for a living. Most of the support that they got came from grants from the National M.D. M.S. Society. There were a lot of cigarettes, beer and good ole boys around Uncle Bill.

Dale Dougherty writes, in this very timely piece, a response to the MacWorld Apple announcements and the realization that many of the technological advancements that get "us" excited are worthless to most of the world.

The Rest of the Rest of Us

"It's unacceptable that our government is indifferent to the poor. But let me reframe this argument again in terms of technology, lest you think I'm trying to make a political point. (I hope you understand that I'm not trying to argue on behalf of a candidate but rather for the importance of poverty as an issue deserving our full attention.)

Is the high-tech world indifferent to the problems of the poor? Do we have any competence that matters in helping them find a better life? Or are we just making "the happy few" that much happier?

What is a social network if the people facing the toughest problems are not part of it? They don't need more signs that tell them that they are on their own. The have-nots don't do networking. It doesn't get them anywhere."

My Uncle Larry passed away yesterday after a couple years of battling cancer:

"This emphasis on thinking as the solution to our problems fails to introduce the Person who has come not only to change the way we think about life, but to change us as well. We are more than thinkers. We are worshipers who enter into relationship with the person or thing we think will give us life. Jesus comes to transform our entire being, not just our mind. He comes as a person, not as a cognitive concept we insert into a new formula for life."

from How People Change.

This quote resonates with me on lots of levels. I like the reference to the fact that we are worshipers. Whether it is Apple, Jaguar, Starbucks, Barry Bonds, or John Calvin, people naturally devote themselves to things. I also like the reminder that a relationship with Christ is not all about theory. It is a whole body, mind, soul, heart, experience because it is a relationship not a technique. Finally an error that the quote refers to is the error of thinking that good design will solve all problems. This thought is the institutional sin of my entire line of work.

The religious right (in the media) are complete hypocrites. I cannot believe that anyone is endorsing Guiliani just so that they can support a Republican candidate. It tells me that their all consuming issues of homosexuality and abortion are nothing more than manipulations to keep an iron in the fire of power. Because now, sticking to their guns on those issues promises to kick them out of the Republican power circle because Guiliani supports both homosexual rights and abortion. What is a modern-day Pharisee to do? Just change your convictions. Now they shift the focus of the fear away from gays and unwed pregnant teens to terrorists. They continue to keep Christians afraid so that they can retain power. News flash: Jesus commands Christians "Do not be afraid" here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Of course, "not being afraid" only makes sense if God is guiding your steps, sanctifying your suffering, and guarding your future. So if you aren't a Christian, then being afraid is completely rational. Maybe that explains the religious right's constant fear.

So, I've had it. Facing a future of Hillary Clinton vs. Rudy Giuliani. I've switched parties to being a Democrat so that I can vote for Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries.

He is not the savior. He is a politician. His administration will be sinful and corrupt. But I think he is a better option then the rest of the field.

Here is a brilliant speech by Obama on reconciling faith and politics.

"Folks tend to forget during our founding that it wasn't the atheists and civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the 1st amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn't want the Congregationalists and the established churches from imposing thier views on people who were getting happy in the fields and teaching the Scriptures to slaves. It was the forebears of the Evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religion because they did not want state sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their religion as they understood it."

I am happy to report that as of paying off my vehicle I am 100% debt-free. This is a goal that I try and stick to as much as possible. Being satisfied with what you have is a God-enabled gift. Living within your means is a good indicator that you are achieving this. Unfortunately, debt-free will all go out the window in a few months when I finance a new home. Now I need to focus more on "Inbox-zero".

"What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him." Ecc.3:9-14

Over 1000 people were at my Aunt Nancy's viewing this weekend. At the end of the day, that says something basic about her. She knew lots of people and they cared for her and our family. It was extremely touching.

If 1000 people come to my funeral I think I would be shocked. Not because I don't think I have friends, but just because my social network is more geographically diverse and by necessity not as deep.

Getting the most number of people to your funeral as possible is a dumb life goal. But thinking about who would go to your funeral is an interesting way to evaluate friendships and decide who to invest in. There are some people who you know are just using you to get something they want. They take time away from people who actually care about you and about whom you care.

Goal for today: Invest in the people who will be at my funeral if I'm not at theirs first.

O Lord
two God-days
since you walked earth
fingertip dust on swirling galaxy arm.
billions, billions
rushing, rushing
tongues madly flapping
ears stopped with self
eyes closed to glory.
dare we ask?
mud-wipe eyes to clarity
unplug ears to rock cries
cease rattling bustle
melt hearts in shekinah blaze
do God-work in us.
Amen.

by a friend of mine, Aaron T. Hicks

Departing for Africa in about two weeks.

Song from Rich Mullins, "The Other Side of the World":

Well the other side of the world
Is not so far away as I thought that it was
As I thought that it was so far away
But the other side of the world
Is not so far away
And the distance just dissolves into the love
Into the love

And the New Jerusalem won't be as easy to build
As I hoped it would be
As I hoped it would be easy to build
But the New Jerusalem won't be so easy to build
There's many bellies to fill and many hearts to free
Got to set them free

But I see a people who've learned to walk in faith
With mercy in their hearts
And glory on their faces
And I can see the people
And I pray it won't be long
Until Your kingdom comes

"Respect—not tolerance—must be our goal if we would diminish prejudice in our time. For tolerance is often but a gentle disguise for prejudice: the tolerant often behave as self-appointed connoisseurs of weaknesses in others, or self-appointed protectors of those whom they deem to be their inferiors. Psychologically, there is a strong resemblance between the stridently “tolerant” and the prejudiced. For while the one may descend to attacking whole groups of men and the other may rise to a passionate defense of them, both are equally indiscriminate in their attack or defense; and neither has any concern whatsoever for individual character." - Selma G. Hirsch", U.S. social scientist ,The Fears Men Live By, ch. 9, Harper & Brothers (1955).

There are an amazing number of passages in the Bible devoted to prostitutes. Warnings against hiring them, Jesus healing them in a variety of ways, metaphors likening God's people to them, etc.

As one who works deeply with technology I am daily confronted with pornography in various forms. I dare say there is no new technology that comes about anymore that isn't tainted by hints of pornography just around the corner. YouTube, Second Life, BitTorrent, are all potential gateways to getting it. I find it's pervasiveness depressing and exploitative. It is a flimsy paper replica of what God has blessed me with in my marriage, but is still something that I have to daily resist. I choose to resist it because I think it is poison to real life.

Anyway as I was musing on this on the bus ride in this morning it occured to me the way the term "adult film star" has come into common parlance. And as I thought about the teachings and actions of Jesus and reflected on technology and pornography I also came to the realization that "adult film star" is a pleasant sounding euphemism for prositute, "a person, typically a woman, who engages in sexual activity for payment". When you frame pornography as prosititution and chasing after it as chasing after a prostitute, it brings the teachings of the Bible and modern life together in a somewhat stark way.

My son, pay attention to my wisdom, listen well to my words of insight, that you may maintain discretion and your lips may preserve knowledge. For the lips of an adult film star drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave. She gives no thought to the way of life; her paths are crooked, but she knows it not. (paraphrased from Proverbs)

I am swamped by email. I have so much of it, that it is starting to become not very useful to people sending things to me. Honestly I think the alternative is to batch process stuff in meetings. Rather than emailing everyone everything, bring it to the meetings which we have anyway and present it, decide on it and act on it then.

To see how bad my personal problem is, I graphed the age of emails in my inbox. The histogram is on the left. I think what this suggests is that there are three types of emails. Quick questions which are answered in 1-2 days, slow questions which are answered in 16 days (or less) and things which I can't easily respond to by email and they therefore don't get answered for months.

THE ORPHANS OF GOD
by Mark Heard.

I will rise from my bed with a question again
As I work to inherit the restless wind
The view from my window is cold and obscene
I want to touch what my eyes haven't seen

But they have packaged our virtue in cellulose dreams
And sold us the remnants 'til our pockets are clean
Til our hopes fall 'round our feet
Like the dust and dead leaves
And we end up looking like what we believe

We are soot-covered urchins running wild and unshod
We will always be remembered as the orphans of God
They will dig up these ruins and make flutes of our bones
And blow a hymn to the memory of the orphans of God

Like bees in a bottle we are flying at fate
Beating our wings against the walls of this place
Unaware that the struggle is the blood of the proof
In choosing to believe the unbelievable truth

But they have captured our siblings and rendered them mute
They've disputed our lineage and poisoned our roots
We have bought from the brokers who have broken their oaths
And we're out on the streets with a lump in our throats

We are soot-covered urchins running wild and unshod
We will always be remembered as the orphans of God
They will dig up these ruins
And make flutes of our bones
And blow a hymn to the memory of the orphans of God

Sunrise in my office this morning

All of life is repentence:"Am I doing what I am doing for God's glory and the good of others or am i being driven by fears, need for approval, love of comfort and ease, need for control, hunger for acclaim and power, or the 'fear of man?' Am I looking at anyone with envy? Am I giving in to any of even the first motions of lust or gluttony? Am I spending my time on urgent things rather than important things because of these inordinate desires?"

U2, Beautiful Day:
"What you don't have you don't need it now
What you don't know you can feel it somehow
What you don't have you don't need it now
Don't need it now
Was a beautiful day"

"You are the salt of the earth." - Jesus

Three things about housing prices today.

First a video of housing prices since 1890 viewed as a ride on a roller coaster. Watch that here.

Second a review of the book that motivated the roller coaster video here. Here is an excerpt of that article:

"Other than those two periods, real home prices overall have been mostly flat or declining. Moreover, the overall increase, including the booms, is not very impressive -- 0.4 percent a year."

Finally the graphic from the end of the video is here. (click for better resolution)

From: The Hutch: I Seek Imbalance

"This world wants us to believe a lie: that giving of ourselves creates a void that worldly pleasures can refill. Are you buying it?"

Well as a follow up to this previous post, we bought a new minivan.

We looked at all the top rated minivans on Consumer Reports, Honda, Toyota and Kia/Hyundai (Sedona = Entourage now). We test drove them and checked out the prices and decided on the Toyota Sienna LE with option package #3 (although we ended up with option #4 for no extra cost). It seats 8 passengers, has dual power sliding doors, an aux input for an iPod, and stow-and go rear seats. No DVD player, no satellite navigation, no Lo-Jack ubiquitous garbage. We also got a 7 year/100,000 mile extended comprehensive warranty. Total cost out the door was $30,000. (Financed through USAA at 5.99%)

Our minivan is dying. We need at least one car in order to survive here in Orange County. So now I must buy a new car. It makes me sick to think that I'm about to drop $25,000 - $35,000 on a new minivan just so that I can survive around here. Given that I could buy an entire South African orphanage that would sustain 12-25 orphans indefinitely for $75,000. It literally makes my stomach get tied up in knots.

On the one hand how can I possibly justify spending this amount of money, but on the other hand what choice do I have? I spent about $4,000 last year in maintenance on the current car. Depreciation on a new Honda minivan runs about $2750 a year and total value of the car falls off linearly over time. So there isn't any point in even buying a cheaper used minivan. In the long run it will be cheaper for me to buy this hypothetical new car.

How can this be okay? This is horribly wrong. I am trapped in a situation I hate and I can get out of it. It makes me crazy and I have no choice. I have to participate in this mind-numbing march of consumption or I can't get my kids to the doctor, I can't get to church, I can't get to a grocery store that sells gel-free diapers.

There is a great bumper sticker that says, "If you aren't outraged you aren't paying attention". I'm feeling that today.

As I was trolling the radio dials this morning I thought about how interesting it would be if every song had it's own radio station. That would be the extreme of a genre-based broadcast: a genre which is so specific that only one song fits the description.

It would be annoying because you would most likely tune in, in the middle of the song. But it would be cool because you could always find a station that was playing something decent.

It would change the notion of a playlist from one which plays content to one which switches channels at timed intervals.

I wonder if there is a way to make the bandwidth support playing every song ever recorded?

You know, when I was young, I used to be confused about the cultural message that told me to not like going to the dentist. Honestly, I didn't understand why everyone disliked it so much. The people were friendly, the atmosphere was decent considering the medicine that was being performed there, you got out of school and you got a bouncy ball at the end of an appointment.

I am a "Getting Things Done" devotee. It's a personal productivity system that is marketed and taught by David Allen.

Merlin Mann, a commentator about personal productivity on the web site 43 folders, did an interview with him about GTD. The result is called "Productive Talk" and it was a good little pep talk to keep me going with GTD. I recommend listening to it.

Get it here.

I've been thinking about what topics of conversation seem to dominate all the social interactions that I undertake. I realized that many of them were location specific. For example:

• Seattle, WA: Conversations frequently mentioned the rain.
• Irvine,CA : Conversations always get around to real estate prices.
• Washington, D.C. : National politics because they are also local politics.

Others report:

• Annapolis, MD: Boats and the Army-Navy football game (according to Luke)
• Amherst, MA: Yard machines: leaf blowers, snow throwers, riding mowers, and community supported agriculture.

Maybe not the most incredible thing ever observed but very real when you are at these places. What are the periennal topics where you live?

The Beam Machine from November 2004

In November 2004 I wrote about a toy that I wanted called "The Beam Machine". It was basically a spy-style laser trip wire system that you could install in your yard/home to enhance games of capture the flag or tag or whatever. It appears that someone read my blog and created the toy - because certainly no one else could have come up with the idea on their own.

Sold at HearthSong, where you can buy toys that you feel good about giving - like the Laser Trip Wire -MUHAHAHAHAH

I just went through a life insurance reevaluation with Excel, some online tools and a rep at USAA, my financial services company (which I highly recommend - they rock).

One interesting thing I discovered is that even if I wasn't going to up my coverage, which I'm doing in response to a new baby and living in Southen California, I should have "refinanced" my coverage anyway.

About a year ago insurance companies changed their actuarial forecasts for life expectancies. People are living longer, so people are dying later. So the cost of term life insurance has gone down. Policies taken out before the change don't typically change their rates. New policies can be bought that cover you starting immediately (and hence covering you for longer than previous policies started earlier) for less, given the same coverage level and no changes in health, at least in my age bracket.

From the totally boring, but useful files

One of life's great questions:

Do I have a headache because I've had too much caffeine or because I haven't had enough caffeine?

And for the record, it will take 151.57 shots of Espresso to kill me.

I have had very poor success trying to share my Wi-Fi connection with my neighbors. The few conversations I have had about it with neighbors end with suspicious glances and fears about terrorists and pornography. Yet none of them seem to think twice about paying $60.00 a month for a connection they use, maybe, um... one hour a day.

I think it's tragic because it is another indicator of the breakdown in community that is happening broadly in the U.S. I live less than 20 feet away from a guy I know absolutely nothing about (at least nothing that I can't learn from his cars).

The one family that I was successfully sharing Wi-Fi with just recently quit because they got service bundled into their cable bill for about the cost of what he was paying to share my connection. That's understandable, but still too bad.

Now, a great potential solution has entered the field, "La Fonera". It is a wi-fi sharing community in which you share your home connection in exchange for getting to use other people's connections. What a great idea. Plus on top of that they will sell you a cheap AP ($15.00) that prioritizes your traffic when you are at home. There are some other options that let you try and make money off your access point as well.

I signed up and am going to give it a shot.

A nice summary of the service is here

The actual website is here.

"An evolutionary arms race between early snakes and mammals triggered the development of improved vision and large brains in primates, a radical new theory suggests."

File this under "Heretical", but I can't help but think that there is something deep going on when you juxtapose the role that Satan as a snake had in the account of creation and the theory that is suggested by Dr. Isbell at UC Davis (see FOXNews.com - Fear of Snakes May Have Driven Pre-Human Evolution - Evolution and Paleontology) that snakes caused mammals brains to change.

In the account of creation in the Bible, Satan as a snake was instrumental in the fall of man. An event which fundamentally changed the nature of humanity forever, both physically (because people immediately started thinking differently) and spiritually (because people were suddenly under the curse of the law)

No doubt I don't understand Genesis accurately and no doubt the anthropologist doesn't understand evolution accurately, but I love it when the two start to have similar refrains. It reinforces my faith in the Bible and gives me hope that science isn't steering us entirely wrong.

From Ambiguous:

"I think someone should try to blow up a plane with a piece of ID, just to watch the TSA's mind implode.

From: We Want You to Be a Christian Hedonist by John Piper

"As Christian Hedonists we know that everyone longs for happiness. And we will never tell them to deny or repress that desire. It is never a problem to want to be satisfied. The problem is being satisfied too easily. We believe that everyone who longs for satisfaction should no longer seek it from money or power or lust, but should come glut their soul-hunger on the grace of God."

From Ecclesiastes 6:1-8 aka the Bible:

I have seen another evil under the sun, and it weighs heavily on men: God gives a man wealth, possessions and honor, so that he lacks nothing his heart desires, but God does not enable him to enjoy them, and a stranger enjoys them instead. This is meaningless, a grievous evil.

A man may have a hundred children and live many years; yet no matter how long he lives, if he cannot enjoy his prosperity and does not receive proper burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. It comes without meaning, it departs in darkness, and in darkness its name is shrouded. Though it never saw the sun or knew anything, it has more rest than does that man- even if he lives a thousand years twice over but fails to enjoy his prosperity. Do not all go to the same place?

All man's efforts are for his mouth,
yet his appetite is never satisfied.

What advantage has a wise man
over a fool?
What does a poor man gain
by knowing how to conduct himself before others?

And finally from my musician/song-writer/etc. friend Mike Wilkerson, the following song perfored by The Parsons: Meaningless

A never-ending source of conversation in Orange County is the current [insane] state of the real estate market. It has clearly been cooling off, but what seemed like an inevitable continued rise in real estate value has a risk which many didn't consider. That would be the cost of the mortgage payments when the market changes.

This article ('Exotic' mortgages seen losing their allure - Real Estate - MSNBC.com) talks about what happens when many over-leveraged people have to face the music.

"Now these cheap mortgages that fueled the real-estate boom are beginning to hurt the homeowners they once helped. Higher interest rates and the end of honeymoon periods for too-good-to-be-true teaser rates are increasingly causing payment shock for borrowers.

'Nationwide, approximately $400 billion of [home-purchase adjustable-rate mortgages] are scheduled to reset at some point in 2006,' said Frank Nothaft, chief economist with Freddie Mac in McLean, Va. 'A significant number of homeowners will face some adjustments.' In fact, the ARMs with scheduled payment increases this year work out to about 5 percent of all single-family debt outstanding in the country now, he said."

I take a little bit of selfish-evil glee in this because when we moved to the O.C. I had a real estate agent trying to convince me that if I wanted to buy a house that this was what I had to do. I told him it was insane and he gave a little head shake and a disparaging you-just-don't-understand look.

One of my former professors, Oren Etzioni, who was briefly my advisor, just launched Farecast. This website uses machine learning to predict whether or not an airplane ticket price is going to go up or go down in the future. If it is probably going to go up, then the site recommends buying now. If it is probably going to go down, then the site recommends waiting to buy.

This is such a compelling business model because of the fundamental problem of airline ticket pricing. No one understands how to optimize the price they pay for a ticket. I'm not even 100% sure that anyone actually understands how the ticket pricing scheme works, including the airlines. It involves evaluation of passenger demand and evaluation of competitive pricing strategies.

Some airlines, like RyanAir, are experimenting with different pricing schemes. Flat rates are obviously hugely popular with passengers because it allows a passenger to plan and comparison shop and not be put under pressure that a ticket price is going to change. On the other hand airlines want to differentiate the prices that they offer to different customers. They want to charge people who are less sensitive to ticket price more, but not risk flying an empty airplane.

The opaque ticket pricing scheme coupled with security is putting pressure on the airlines to change the way they do business. I have two ideas which I will describe over the next few days.

"The task of all Christian scholarship—not just biblical studies—is to study reality as a manifestation of God's glory, to speak and write about it with accuracy, and to savor the beauty of God in it. It is a massive abdication of scholarship that so many Christians do academic work with so little reference to God."
(John Piper, The Pleasures of God, p. 298)

I just got back from traveling across the U.S. the day after the would-be terrorists with their gel and liquids tried to bring their explosives onto the plane. Furthermore my flight was from LAX to Logan in Boston, two of the most targeted airport locations. I have some observations about air travel now:

• Even though gels and liquids are clearly prohibited on planes, there is no one actually checking to see that it is happening. I saw lots of people bring liquids on board the plane while casting a sideways glance at the trash cans set up for voluntary collection of contraband. No one is prepared to search for this stuff.
• The carry-on space is nearly empty now. All those people who were trying to get away without checking a bag, can't anymore (according to the rules anyway). On my packed flight home, I was the only one with a carry-on in my bin.
• The BodyShop and all those stores that sell liquor in the airports are hurting. Good luck making a profit on bottles of liquor and massage oil when your customers can't take them out of the store.

Figure out how much your commercial coffee habit is costing you here. Over 10 years I would waste $18,123.59. But I make my own in a machine that cost me $199.00. I'm so virtuous.

I have no idea what in the world was going on in my office over the weekend, but when I showed up this morning there was a freaky-DisneyLand-invades-where-are-the-fairies mushroom growing in my *cactus* pot. Now typically I think of cacti as dry and mushrooms as wet, so I don't know what in the world this is all about. Furthermore, I didn't water anything on Friday. A picture of the primary mushroom is above, although there are siblings growing toward the back of the pot. Oooo - I said pot. Pot and mushrooms in the same blog entry. There goes my google ad account keyword index.

The only logical explanation is that a gang of malicious fairies is holding my computing resources hostage. They are causing my programs to not compile and my network connections to bog down. Because they are invisible 99% of the time, they had to communicate thier presence by planting Play-doh colored yellow mushrooms in my office.

Fortunately now that I understand that fairies are running rampant on campus it explains a lot of things. So, I for one, welcome our new fairy overlords.

I'm feeling a little cyncial this morning. It's a good question - "What would Jesus do?" Courtesy of the LA Weekly.

What Would Jesus Do? An animated short By MR. FISH

Well it's a new day and there's another mind-blowing development. Sun has deployed a pay as you go computer. For $1 per hour per CPU you can run anything you want on Sun's CPU farm.

So in contrast to Amazon's S3 system which I mentioned a day or two ago, Sun isn't offering "pure" CPU cycles as their business. That would be *so* much cooler. Instead they allow you to upload your program, and whatever data it needs to chew on. Then they run your program, keep track of the usage and let you store the results.

Amazon has launched S3. This is a pay-as-you go internet-based storage system for digital files. This changes everything and I can't get my head around it. I spend so much time trying to figure out how to back up my data, where to host it, how to get more storage and where to put web pages, and now I have to factor this into the equation. Everything is moving so fast. Wheez!

Here are the key points I can get from it. First, while this is unlimited pay-as-you-go storage it isn't hosting. Meaning, Amazon is selling storage, not CPU cycles. In fact, they aren't selling any CPU cycles to go along with it that aren't required for storage. I can't run any arbitrary programs from the Amazon servers. So that means that while I can store files there, it isn't easy to run a blog from S3. Conceptually, blogging software can be rewritten to leverage storage at S3, but you still need a place that is accessible via the web that will burn cycles for you. Eventually lots of programs will be probably add the capability to read and write from services like S3. But for now it is really just a place to dump data that you know you want saved somewhere. Things like backups work well with S3. So do big hosted files, like movies and genome databases. But lots of little files that need programmatic support to manage, like a blog, do not work well with S3.

S3 supports Bittorrents - this will eventually be a big deal because it means that P2P is going mainstream. This is critical for scalability and to eliminate spikes in bandwidth usage. That's cool.

Also cool is the fact that you can encrypt data and put it on Amazon's servers. It's like a storage rental unit. You rent it, you keep the key, no one knows what you are doing there.

It also suggests an alternate Internet. If Amazon's service is valuable and everyone ends up using it, then the Internet will effectively all live on S3's servers. I think this is what Google is trying to do. Amazon seems to have beat them to the punch here. If there are just a few big players who are hosting the Internet because it is cheaper, more reliable and faster to do that then the landscape of the Internet will be changing soon.

These are mind-blowing times.

I wonder if anyone has any plans to sell CPU cycles the way that Amazon is selling storage? That would be something like "grid-computing" I guess. It seems that companies have tried that in the past and failed. Didn't IBM try to pull that off under the name of "adaptive architecture" or something.

I've spotted a new word in some of my readings, "Islamophobia" . The word was coined as a result of Muslim outrage over a cartoon published in a Danish newspaper recently. Apparently the cartoon was offensive to a bunch of Muslims - I haven't seen it. The response has varied from thoughtful to the ever-present Muslim-in-the-street-screaming-with-a-burning-flag images which dominate Middle East news coverage.

The thoughtful responses have been the ones using "Islamophobia," apparently the fear of Islam. Ironically it sounds like Muslims are taking a page out of the homosexual playbook whose proponents coined "homophobia."

Overheard in Southern California the birthplace of many a trend:

"Yea, that's the first time we've had a kickback"

Translation: That's the first time we've had a party.

"Yo, Dog! Cool scooter. Keep it real."

My best guess to the translation: cool scooter

One of the many reality bending experiences that go on in Southern California is the Sunday program at the Crystal Cathedral. This is Robert Schuller's church. It is widely viewed with disdain from the evangelical Christian community. I have driven by it on the way to DisneyLand because they are separated by about 3 miles. Honestly I've never been there, but all of the press that I've seen has suggested its a huge production with television involved. The building itself reminds me of a Mormon temple. Neither of these things appeal to me.

So it was with some surprise that I read an article by my former pastor speaking quite highly of Dr. Schuller. I'm glad I read this early on in my Southern California adventure (technically my third such adventure). It will allow me to speak more intelligently about such an influential local institution.

From: Lunch with the Schullers at the Crystal Cathedral | Resurgence

"This is the final week of Dr. Robert H. Schuller's tenure as senior pastor of the Crystal Cathedral in Southern California. He founded the church some fifty years ago and is handing the leadership of both his church and the "Hour of Power" television program, which he has led since 1970, to his son. Throughout his ministry, Dr. Schuller has been a controversial leader, lauded by some for pioneering cutting-edge ministry, and loathed by others for promoting over-the-edge doctrine..."

If you aren't familiar with the way the AdSense/AdWords program works at Google, it goes something like this: If you are someone with something to advertise you can set up an account that will place your ad on a search results page. You can specify which search results page you want your ad to show up on by specifying the keywords of the search query. So if you sell fruit, you can have Google put your ad up on the search results page when someone searches for "oranges". Google will charge an advertiser for this placement. But, clever people that Google are, they don't fix the price. The price is set in an auction that basically causes more profitable words to cost more. A very expensive word to advertise next to is "sex". Google will charge you over $1.00 everytime someone clicks on your ad advertised next to a search that includes "sex." In the course of a single day, (as of right now) it will cost you over $48,000 to place such an advertisement. (Meaning that 48,000 people will click on your ad) Google has some tools to help prevent you from spending more than you want and more than you plan, as you would expect, but this is the basic idea.

Another way that Google advertises is when people, like me, allow Google to put an ad on their site. (See the ad box on the right). In this case, the auction for advertisers is similar, but rather than placing ads based on words in a search query, ads are placed based on the words used on the web page. But anytime someone clicks on the ad on my site, I also get a portion of the revenue as a benefit for placing the ad on my site. So far the revenue ($1.00/month) is far less than the amount that I pay my hosting company to host this site ($9.00/month).

The University of Washington recently opened a resource center for gay and lesbian students called the "Q-Center". Only it's not just for gay and lesbian students. It's for gay, lesbian, queer, bisexual, transgender, two-spirit, intersex, questioning, same-gender-loving and allied people. When I write this I feel like I'm telling a joke, but I'm not, this is really who the center is targetted to.

I have lost my ability to relate to this community. 13 years ago it was about gay and lesbian folk - okay I understand that perspective. Then 11 years ago it was about gay, lesbian, and bisexual folk - mmm, okay, I guess I get that. 9 years ago transexuals were added to the mix - okay starting to not understand anymore. Then, in the last 9 years people started to express much more varied sexualities - many of which I can no longer relate to. But, whatever, I also don't feel like I have to relate to everyone anymore.

Nonetheless, it seems like this community is now defined as people who resist claiming a sexual label, but feel as if they would be in the minority if they did take a label and as a result advocate not labelling any person according to their sexuality. This seems like a far too complex statement to communicate to people who are making life hard for glqbttiqsa (still not joking) people. My outsider perspective is that they would be far better served arguing for personal freedom and leaving it at that.

If I ever get a job as a professor I want the following things:

• A tablet PC and a laptop to run Classroom Presenter, a better version of PowerPoint for teaching. It allows you to roam around the classroom and takes notes on a tablet PC that show up on the overhead copy of the slides that you are presenting.
• Somesort of digital whiteboard for recording whiteboard drawings

I read an article today about a system called VEIL. This is a system that transmits information via a side-channel on TV broadcasts so that television can be more interactive. It does this by imperceptible changes in the brightness of the screen that a computer vision system can pick up.

The obvious and spoken critique of this system was that it provides an incentive for people to watch more television. That's great for the corporations, but it's not so good for the kids and adults who need to be living life, not watching a fake one unfold before them. One way this is going to be used is in an attempt to grab viewers back from video games to television by merging the two.

So here's my idea instead. I want to merge video games and real-life. I want a toy that has two components, one which generates an invisible infra-red beam and the other which looks for it. When the beam is broken an alarm goes off on the receiving box. The alarm can have all kinds of sounds and or visual components. This would be a really fun toy to take outside and play capture the flag with or something. You could hide it in a critical spot so that you knew when someone was making a dash for the flag through a particular route. It would add a new dynamic to hide-and-seek or any kind of treasure hunt.

A brilliant article on the escalating violence that the United States finds itself in. It argues that Bin Laden will attempt to broaden the war on terror to bankrupt the U.S. and the best way to do that is to attack a Mid-west mega-church.

Read it here

"If a company must constantly deliver new value to its loyal customers just to keep them, those customers aren't loyal at all. Which means, save for a few perennials like Coke, brands have little or no value independent of what a company actually does. " Article

Hurray substance is triumphing over image!

I have some advice for the Democrats next election day

1. Quit believing things like, "The rest of the country is dumb and that's why they chose Bush" and "I'm liberal because I'm smart" Once you quit believing those things, quit saying it. That is entirely alienating to anyone who is trying to figure out the issues and vote responsibly. I heard my liberal friends espousing this and continuing to espouse this position throughout this election. It was so arrogant as to be distracting from the real decision.
2. Quit turning this into a religious culture war and learn your theology. The Republican platform is far from the Platform-that-Jesus-Would-Choose (PJWC). But there are Republicans who know their Bible and know that Evangelical Christian leaders are not swayed by arguments that boil down to "It makes me feel bad." Instead get to know Jesus. Then use Jesus' language (or at least the translator's language) to show a different side of Jesus. Universal health care, worker's rights, less-war-more-outreach, compassion for homosexuals. Democrats could be the moral leaders, but unfortunately they won't give up their hatred of Jesus.
3. Cross-reference this blog as an example of what is dividing the country as much as "religious fundamentalism".
4. For the record, I voted for Nader, not Bush, I love Jesus and I am scared of both Jerry Falwell and Donald Rumsfield.

My opinion on evolution vis-a-vis creationism, or more correctly, the inerrancy of the Bible is complicated. For the most part a creationist would call me an evolutionist and an atheistic evolutionist would call me a "fundamentalist creationist". In point of fact I think it's interesting to note that God could create life through a process like evolution which appears to be completely random. The key fact is that it only "appears" to be random. In the same way that I can write a deterministic computer program which will generate random numbers that will pass any statistical test of randomness you can devise, God could easily create a world through a process which appears random to our mathematical tools. The appearance of randomness isn't sufficient to eliminate the intrusive hand of God from our world. Just because a coin flip comes up heads says nothing about why it should come up heads now, or what the implications of the coin toss might be as a result of it being heads this particular time.

Q: How many kids with ADD does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: LET'S RIDE BIKES!

After realizing that by contributing money both to Campus Crusade for Christ and Amnesty International I had successfully managed to destroy the neat little demographic buckets that some data miner was trying to stuff me into, I have come across my next trick. For all subsequent flights I am going to choose a different "special" meal. First I will choose a Kosher meal. Then when the department of Homeland Security sniffs me I will be 90% likely to be Jewish. Then I will eat a Hindu meal and I will be some bizarre Kaballa thing. Then I will eat a Muslim meal and be a terrorist who wants to kill 90% of myself. Then I will eat a Vegetarian meal and be an anarcho-socialist communist who hates Starbuck's. (For the record I thank God for Starbuck$ when I am not in Seattle, when I am in Seattle I curse their bourgeois approach to coffee). Finally I will eat special low sodium diets so that I will be over 50 in the magic database and will get applications for AARP in the mail.

There is no such thing as privacy anymore. The only safe harbor for those concerned is to hide in the noise - break the models that successfully bucket all the other people. Start dirtying the databases entries of your information now, or you will be pigeon-holed when it matters.

So here is a reason why I like Mac better than Microsoft. I bought this cool new album, "The Light of Things Hoped For" by Brave Saint Saturn (click on the image on the left to buy it). It's about as hip as I get. I pop it into my Windows box and the obnoxious Windows CD player launches and tries to go to some "partner" to get the track names and album information. Of course it fails because it is an obscure album. Does this happen on the Mac also? No. It uses the community supported database GraceNote and everything works the first time with no effort.

It's just a pain to use Windows

I know that I'm a swing voter because in the mail today I got a fund raising letter from the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee. Clearly I have succeeded in messing up the database entries about me.

Click on the image on the left to go to Sojourners website. Where, among other things, you can get a bumper sticker like the image.

Cool bed cover with iconic people images.

Click on the image to go to the designer's website.

Try typing "why" as a command in Matlab.

Now, I am no evolutionary biologist, but... following a strictly evolutionary model, I would not expect that when one gets sick one would necessarily feel worse. Why for example don't I ever catch a cold and get really hopeful and energized? Why don't I catch a cold and just have to go out running for 12 miles? The effects of sicknesses are always negative - depression, exhaustion,etc. Does this mean that we tend to survive better when we feel worse? Why would a virus have a better chance of reproducing when its host feels worse?

This is just an example of how the same confimation bias that affects anecdotal religious observations affects evolution. I think I can make up a story about why any trait of any animal would be enhanced by evolution. Why does a peacock have enormous feathers? To attract a mate. Why does a penguin, not have enormous feathers? To swim fast and swiftly so that it may catch prey. Sort of opposite conclusions that can be made up to support any evolutionarily biased trait. I think people do this when they look for answers to prayers, and see their future unfold just like a horoscope says etc. We are very good at seeing patterns it data. Trying to figure out whether or not they are "real" is hard.

I was fortunate to get an article written about my research in MIT's Technology Review. Click on the picture on the left to read the article.

This is the Opportunity Knocks software that uses GPS to guide people around. It's also kind of cool that in addition to the real work, I took the picture that they used in the print version (although I don't get credit for either anywhere - such is academia).

This terrific quote from a terrific piece of front page reporting on CNN.com. In the midst of the Iraq war and on the day of the first debates between Bush and Kerry, CNN headlines this story of a whale hitting a surfer. The surfer pinched his finger.

Unfortunately the story isn't online anymore.