burndive: hacking my mind

Book Recommendation: Seven Days That Divide the World

2011-08-27T23:58:00.000-07:00

I was too late in formulating my question to be able to ask it at John Lennox's recent lecture at UPC in Seattle. I was going to ask him whether and to what extent he believed the generally accepted scientific narratives of the history of the universe, the earth, and man were consistent with the Bible.

I thought it a meaningful and relevant question to ask him because he regularly engages in dialogue and debates with atheist philosophers and scientists, and therefore he is likely to have a well-informed opinion, and one he has put a great deal of thought and criticism into.

Fortunately I was able to speak with him afterwards, and his response was to direct me to his latest book, which I ordered as soon as I got home (they had sold out of copies there before the lecture ended).

It was a very quick read, and densely packed with information and analysis. I highly recommend it to anyone who desires to engage in a grown-up discussion of the Genesis creation account and the controversy between creation and evolution.

My First Con

2011-03-07T21:15:00.000-08:00

I think I will consider my birthday this year to have officially started on the morning of Friday, March 4th, when my sister-in-law Kim (who lives in China, where at the time it was indeed March 5th--12:18 AM to be precise) wished me a happy birthday on my Facebook wall.

Earlier in the week, Dave Kellett, the comic artist behind Sheldon and Drive, had posted to his feeds that he was going to be at Emerald City ComiCon this weekend. I had half-seriously thought about going on Saturday, but then Elizabeth scheduled my birthday party Saturday afternoon and evening, and I had already made morning plans, so I had decided not to go.

Until, that is, free lunch Friday. Every other Friday, which is the day after payday at work, my team goes out for a free lunch. Free, that is, to everyone but the person whose turn it is to pick the restaurant. On this particular Friday, it was Josh's turn, and we went to Jimmy Mac's in Renton. Jimmy Mac's has amazing bread, among other things.

Somehow or other it came out that one of my co-workers, Andrew, was planning on leaving for ComiCon in the afternoon, whereat he would attend "The Hour of Awesomeness with Wil Wheaton" and get a photo with him as well. Wouldn't it be great, he suggested, if I (who look uncannily like Wil Wheaton) would come along and get a photo with my slightly shorter doppelganger? Josh, who is ever the instigator, and also a fan of Dave Kellett, decided to throw his support behind the plan.

Entirely aside from our visigial similarities, I have come to appreciate Wil Wheaton. His championship of the gamer geek ethos, his antics, his blog, and his contributions to The Guild and The Big Bang Theory have made me a fan.

I was therefore easily persuaded, but there were some logistical details to work out. In the car on the way back to work, I gave Elizabeth a call. Yes of course she totally wanted to come, and she would check with her mom about taking Shoshana while we were there. She would bring the camera and the shirt I had made last Halloween [reference]. Thankfully my work schedule is flexible enough that I can usually leave 5 hours earlier than planned on a whim.

At 2:00 PM we left for the convention. I had never been to a "con" as they say, and so I had a few preconceived ideas, but in general didn't know what to expect. The first thing we did after meeting up with Andrew's girlfriend, buying tickets, and entering the convention hall, was head for Dave Kellett's booth.

Dave had kindly provided his fans with a map showing his "impossible to miss" location on the show floor. It was indeed easy to find, and Mr. Kellett was perfectly personable and helpful. Liz and I bought the first Sheldon book, and Josh bought the fourth (since, I believe, he has the first three). He drew Flaco (the lizard) in our book, and Arthur (the duck) in Josh's book.

After that, we wondered the floor for a bit. We each entered a drawing entitling us to a free superhero pin--I picked Wolverine. There were a couple other artists I recognized, but none I was interested in interacting with at that point, so after making a lazy circuit, we headed back out and found the place where Wil Wheaton's Awesome Hour was to take place.

We were about half an hour early, but still the center section was occupied pretty far back. We settled into a row of seats in a side section near one of the microphones they had set up for questions. In short, the Hour was indeed awesome. Wil Wheaton, in his entertaining style, told stories about video games, growing up, his family, and life. The last fifteen minutes or so were dedicated to questions. A few people asked him to answer "as Evil Wil Wheaton", which, he did (though usually in brief, as he was on the spot, and I imagine it's difficult for him to get into an "evil" mindset amidst thousands of adoring fans.

One kid (about 10 years old) asked what "he" would do if Sheldon Cooper showed up. He said he would get right in his face, just to make sure he had made his bed in "his house" (referring to a comment that Evil Wil Wheaton had made on BBT, that he was living rent free in Sheldon's head.) I was sitting at the end of the isle about three feet away from the kid, wearing my replica of Wil Wheaton's recursive shirt. I was quite tempted to surprise the kid by getting in his face on my knees as Evil Wil Wheaton, but he had already started to walk away.

When he had left the stage, I decided it would be fun to get some pictures of me behind the podium, so I did. As I stepped down, a rather gruff looking heavyset man addressed me, asking whether I still keep in touch with the actors from Stand By Me. I had never actually heard of Stand By Me, so I was at first a bit dumbfounded. "No," I said, "but then, I'm not Wil Wheaton." It took him a few seconds to register what I had said, and afterwards, I'm not entirely sure he believed me. I had, after all, just alighted from the very stage he had occupied for the last hour, and he had quite possibly just made his way to this spot upon the conclusion of Wil's remarks.

After the Awesome Hour, we all headed to Wil Wheaton's "line". On the way, I learned about Stand By Me. Upon arriving, I was told that they had been chanting my name. Indeed. We got in line, and learned that, unlike most of the other celebrities, Wil did not charge for autographs and photos. Nice. The program had led us to believe that it would be something like $70. While in line, there were a trio of guys behind us who were wondering who "that redhead over there" was. Seriously: they didn't know who Felicia Day was! Apparently, they hadn't seen anything of Wil Wheaton since his role in Stand By Me, the DVD case of which they had brought for him to sign. "What else has he been in?" they asked. We blinked.

We then patiently explained to them about The Guild, and also threw in a little bit about his appearances in The Big Bang Theory. Oh, yeah, and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

A couple of groups in front of us were a trio of female superheroes. One of whom, dressed as Wonder Woman, held a crocheted doll that reminded me of a Little Big Planet character. I asked her what it was, and she showed it to me. She had made Wil Wheaton a doll of his character Fawkes from The Guild, complete with kilt and Axis of Anarchy shirt. It was adorable; it was incredible. She was a bit self-conscious about the hair. I told her it was awesome, and he would love it. He totally did. I'm pretty sure it made his day.

When we got to the front, Andrew went first, and told him all about how he became an engineer, in part, because of Star Trek. "Hello," I said, approaching. "I'm Evil Wil Wheaton, and I'm here to sign your breast." (Perhaps that comment warrants some context.)

"Where did you get my shirt?" he exclaimed. I replied that I had made it, and that it was superior to his because it glowed in the dark. He retorted that HIS was superior in that he had worn it. I conceded, but pointed out that that could be fixed. I asked him, however, if there was a pen appropriate to sign the shirt, which there was. I took it off (I was wearing a shirt underneath), and he autographed it, signing each of the shirts in the recursion.

Wil Wheaton demonstrates the signed shirt.

We asked Wil what he thought I should do when people confused me for him. He said I ought to play along with it, and keep making things up that were so wild and crazy that eventually they would figure out I wasn't the real him. Everyone was all for it, except of course, that I'm a terrible liar.

After that, Liz and I got a quick picture with him (which was on Andrew's camera, so I don't have access to it yet), and we were off. Andrew wanted to catch the end of Jonathan Frakes' panel, so we headed back to the hall. While he met up with his girlfriend, Elizabeth, Josh and I sat in the back to watch.

When it was over, we were mulling around what to do next, and how long to stay, when a short and petite woman asked me whether I remembered a charity race from a few years back. "Not really," I said, "I'm not Wil Wheaton." She was taken aback for a moment, but then exclaimed at how much I look like him. The shirt doesn't help matters, I conceded. She wanted to take a picture with me, so I obliged. I offered to kneel down to be closer to her height, but she said that she hated when people did that.

As the photo was being taken, another girl walked up and started taking my picture when she had left. I asked her if she wanted a picture with me instead of just of me, to which she eagerly assented. After that picture, a little kid wanted a photo with me. I didn't have the heart to mislead him, so I told him who I wasn't, but did he still want a picture. He did, and I obliged.

As we were finishing, the girl from before came back. She shyly said she was sorry to bother me again, but she had forgotten to ask for my autograph. Flabbergasted, I realized what I had done. Taking pictures was one thing, but I didn't think I could forge his autograph in good conscience (or very well, without practice, and my only reference on my own chest upside-down in dim lighting).

"I'm not Wil Wheaton, I just look like him. No really. If you want me to sign your book," I offered, " I can still do it as Evil Wil Wheaton." Confused, sad puppy eyes. I felt like I had tainted her world. She recovered quickly, though, and I scrawled my doppelganger identity, and asked if I could take a picture of her with my very first autograph. She obliged:

My very first autograph.

What is Worship?

2011-01-11T13:50:00.000-08:00

Over Christmas break I was down in California, and attended a bible conference. I was asked to speak at that conference the previous week, and I chose the topic of worship. Worship is something I've been thinking about for a while, and have mentioned before.

The audio recording of my talk is here (31 minutes MP3). If you want links to the other speakers' messages, they can be found here.

Enjoy. Think. Discuss.

LastPass vs. Xmarks: Password Synchronization

2010-12-09T23:04:00.000-08:00

Since Xmarks announced that they were being bought by LastPass, I decided to give LastPass another try. In the past week I have done so. Here are my thoughts.

LastPass Vault

Last time I tried the LastPass Firefox extension, I was put off by the requirement to log in every time I started the browser. Subsequently, I've taken a different posture with regard to the security of my sensitive data on computers, and in particular on laptops. I have now taken the tack that sensitive data needs to remain secure, even if a data thief has access to the hard drive. As such, I started using KeePass to store my non-web passwords (whereas before I kept them in a plain text file), I created a TrueCrypt vault in my Dropbox folder in which I keep tax records and other sensitive documents, and I have started encrypting the passwords stored in the browser.

Initially, this meant that I had to swallow the enter-a-password-whenever-you-start-the-browser pill. I didn't like this, but I adjusted my behavior to minimize instead of close the browser, and I used suspend or hibernate whenever possible instead of shutting down.

Well, with LastPass, you don't need to keep your browser running in order to stay logged in. They have a desktop app which stores your logged-in state at the OS level, and communicates with all of your browsers. That means you sign in once in Firefox, and you're automatically signed in in Chrome. If (for some unknown reason) you are compelled to use MSIE for something and you're logged in there too. (LastPass also supports Safari and Opera, but I don't currently use those.)

This scores major points with me in the trade-off between security and convenience!

LastPass Menu

Since I'm comparing LastPass to Xmarks, I should mention the basics. Both services are ways of synchronizing your passwords between all of your web browsers on each of your computers. Both services encrypt your data on your computer before transmitting it to their servers. Xmarks uses your browser's built-in bookmarks database (which can be encrypted with a password or not), while LastPass uses its own encrypted vault to store the passwords.

The premise behind LastPass is that the password that encrypts your data could be "The Last Password You'll Have to Remember!" If you only need to remember one password, then it can be a strong password, with different character types and such.

They certainly do go a long way towards making it possible to not type in (or even know) your passwords for any website. LastPass can (optionally) create strong passwords for you that it will auto-fill and auto-login when you visit the appropriate site. They have excellent browser support across all the major platforms, including smartphones, which brings us to their business model: LastPass is a freemium service. They give you basic functionality for free, and when you're ready to be a power user, you can pay for the next level of service. In the case of LastPass, this next level comes in the form of their smartphone apps, which, as I am not a premium member, and do not have a smartphone, are beyond the scope of this review. I did, as promised, pay for Xmarks Premium, however.


Bookmarklets

So what happens when you can't install the LastPass extension? As it happens, I'm not allowed to install the LastPass extension on my work computer. That's OK though, because LastPass has some very excellent bookmarklets that allow you to fill in login information, form data, or simply log you in (as in automatically fill login information and submit).
A bookmarklet is a piece of Javascript that is stored in a bookmark. You drag a link to your bookmarks bar or right-click to add it. LastPass creates bookmarklets especially for your account (probably because it's more secure that way), so you'll need to log in to get them. Instructions are here.

Anyway, at work, I stuck the "LastPass Login!" bookmarklet in my bookmarks toolbar, logged in to LastPass, and viola! Instant access to my passwords. (Okay, I had to add lastpass.com to my third party cookies whitelist, but that isn't necessary unless you block third party cookies.) You can't add login information or form data to the LastPass vault with the bookmarklets, but you can do that with the website.

LastPass behaves much like your browser's normal password saving feature. When it detects something it can do, a bar will pop down from the top of the browser until you take an action or dismiss it. LastPass puts its logo inside form and password fields that it wants to interact with. You can also access the LastPass menu from a button installed in your toolbar.

If you choose to save some information, you are presented with more options:

Saving a site's login information with LastPass

More things that LastPass can do:

Stored Mint.com password

Store and fill shipping and contact information, credit card data, or any other specific form on the web. After installing the plugin, LastPass had collected much of this information from saved form fields (not credit card numbers though, obviously).
Store passwords and other form data for sites that normally prevent your browser from storing the information. One such site that blocks normal password saving is Mint.com.
Import passwords from browsers and just about anywhere they're stored (including KeePass). It will export to Firefox if you decide to stop using it.
Store, retrieve, and print secure notes - something that might come in handy should the need arise.
Share selected passwords with another user - this is useful if I want to be able to log in to Google and Facebook on my wife's computer and we each have separate accounts (or if we share access to a credit card account and the credentials change). If I update the password in my LastPass account, the correct password shows up in hers as well.

LastPass confused by a Facebook form

LastPass isn't perfect, but it's pretty good, and I've decided to use it going forward. One drawback of Xmarks' password syncing was that if you had more than one saved password with the same user ID (or no user ID) for a site, Xmarks would refuse to sync your passwords until you had either deleted one of the passwords or created separate profiles for each of the passwords. One reason you might have two passwords with no username is on sites such as live.com, which save your username, but don't create an auto-filled form field for it and ask you to just re-enter your password. LastPass handles this situation by giving you the option to select which credentials you want to use from a drop-down menu, or using keyboard shortcuts.

No More Xmarks: Now What?

2010-09-27T22:18:00.000-07:00

Update: Xmarks is not dead after all. Crisis averted. Yay! I'm keeping the post as-is below both for historical reasons and because it's still good information.

Xmarks just announced that they are closing up shop because they can't find a sustainable way to make money. Earlier, I did a post on this blog comparing Xmarks and Firefox Sync. It appears that now the option has been taken away from us.

What I ended up doing between the two services was using Firefox Sync for keeping everything in sync between my Firefox installations (bookmarks, passwords, etc.), but using Xmarks to keep bookmarks non-Firefox browsers synced, and also to share a few bookmarks folders.

As noted on the Xmarks shutdown page, there isn't a good replacement for inter-browser sync out there. The closest I can think of is Delicious, but that site is built around sharing, not synchronization.

On the other hand, Delicious does an excellent job sharing bookmarks. Since I was only really sharing one folder on the web with Xmarks, I installed the Delicious add-on for Firefox and imported that folder's bookmarks. I made them public and gave them a unique tag, so that they could be shared as a collection.

I've used Delicious for a while, mostly to collect links that I consider share-worthy. I did this using the bookmarklet. For a while, I was importing them into Facebook. This appears not to be working anymore.

The Delicious add-on didn't work in Firefox 4 beta (which is what I'm running on my laptop). I installed it, and (after banishing the toolbar and other annoying features) attempted to "import" the folder in question according to this guide. It simply didn't work. Literally nothing happened. The "Import to Delicious" button was in black text on a mostly black toolbar at the top of the window, so they clearly haven't started integrating with Firefox 4.

I still have Firefox 3.6 installed, so I loaded it up, selected the folder, and clicked the button. Nothing appeared to happen, but this time the bookmarks were uploaded. Annoyingly, the "imported" column still shows nothing for those bookmarks, but at least it worked. Well, sort of. It didn't upload any of the tags I have assigned to the bookmarks locally to the cloud. It just tagged them "imported". Maybe this is expected behavior. If so, there should be an option to upload the tags as well.

Clearly, I'm not going to be using the Delicious extension for a while, but I don't know that I'll ever use it to keep all of my bookmarks in sync. Delicious wants you to adopt their system of organization and interaction, and I'm not ready to do that.

At this point without Xmarks, I'm without a good solution to the following problems:

Cross-browser syncing - Google will sync Chrome; Firefox Sync will sync Firefox; Windows Live Mesh will sync MSIE; but only Xmarks syncs between all three.Bookmarks profiles - Some bookmarks only need to be on certain computers. Profiles allow you to selectively unsync the ones you don't need on computer A and B, while still keeping them on computers C and D.
Bookmarks history - Xmarks allowed you to restore bookmarks from any point in your account history. This came in very handy when I deleted more than I thought I had while cleaning up and only found out about it months later.
Bookmarks sharing - Yeah, Delicious will let me share collections of bookmarks, but, at least currently, it's a pain to do so. I've disabled the Delicious add-on. I intend to keep the list up-to-date, but I will have to do so on the Delicious website, not from my bookmarks collection in the browser, and the two versions of the list will become out of sync. The Delicious bookmarks also aren't sorted, and there's no way to store an introduction to them: the tag is just a tag, and contains no meta-data.
Bookmarks favicons - It seems nit-picky, but it's a huge inconvenience if you re-install operating systems a lot. Hopefully, the Firefox Sync developers will solve this one. It's most annoying for toolbar bookmarks, because for me those are icon-only. With Xmarks, all favicons are synced along with the bookmarks. When you first sync with Firefox Sync, the toolbar icons all look the same. In order to get the favicons to load, you have to visit each link.
Bookmarks browsing from non-synced machines - I don't sync my bookmarks at work. I can't access my bookmarks from other people's browser installations with Firefox Sync. Xmarks gives me access to all of my bookmarks on the web, and I can even make changes and re-organize using the web interface.

My letter to Groupon after creating an account

2010-09-19T16:47:00.000-07:00

Dear Groupon,

I like what you do. Thanks for being there and doing it.

I signed up in order to take advantage of a recent deal. In my e-mail inbox, there was a welcome message with the following: "Every morning, you'll find one exclusive deal waiting in your inbox. We can't wait to help you discover huge discounts on all the cool things to do in your city."

Wait, what!?! No. No no no no no no. Nowhere in the account-creation process did I knowingly authorize you to send these deals to my e-mail address, much less every single day. That's a horrible default behavior, and if I let companies do that my inbox would become an impenetrable pile of junk.

Now, I realize that many people who sign up aren't familiar with RSS readers, or Twitter, or other, more organized methods of receiving periodical offers. E-mail is fine for those people. It is NOT fine for me. My inbox is precious. No offense.

Now relax. I do know that I can unsubscribe from your e-mails, and I have done so using the link provided in the fine print of the aforementioned e-mail. What upsets me is that I needed to do this. I thought surely there would be a setting in the "My Account" preferences to easily manage this. Nope. Surely it's in the FAQ? Alas, no. Sticky forum post? Apparently not.

In fact, unsubscribing using the legally-mandated link in the e-mail was the very last thing I tried, because I shouldn't have to do it from there.

Maybe I made a mistake, and I simply missed the checkbox in the sign-up process. If that's the case, then the checkbox needs to be bigger, and other options, such as RSS, Facebook, and Twitter need to be offered. More to the point, you need to start thinking of your business as more than a mailing list.

Violating my trust by signing me up for a mailing list is not the best way to begin a customer relationship. Please, rethink your account sign-up process and default behavior. The "How Groupon Works" page made me think I would get to choose how I would be notified of new deals.

Meanwhile, keep offering those great local deals. I look forward to an increasingly net-savvy Groupon.

Phishing? Probably not, but still...

2010-08-27T11:44:00.000-07:00

If you got this e-mail, what would you do?

I hadn't made any changes to my account. The e-mail headers looked legitimate.

Notice: Changes have been made to your Qwest^® customer profile.

Our records show you recently made these change(s) to your customer profile, either by contacting a Qwest representative, or through your MyAccount page at qwest.com.
Email Address Changes
*The e-mail address you provided for us to reach you.
For Qwest account ending in:####
At Qwest, we value the security of our customers’ information and are sending this notice as a confirmation. As long as this change was made intentionally, no action is necessary. However, if you feel this change has been made in error, please contact Qwest immediately at 1 866-450-6152(Residential) or 1 800-603-600(Small Business).
Thank you for helping us maintain the security of your account.

The first thing to do, of course, is to make sure that the account number matches up. My Qwest account has been inactive for almost a year, so I didn't have that readily available. I entered the phone number provided in quotes into Google. Others had gotten this same e-mail, and they hadn't made changes to their account either.

I certainly wasn't going to call the number and give whoever it was I was actually calling any information so they could "pull up my account".

I pulled up the Qwest website, called the customer service number listed there, and told them about the e-mail, and how suspicious it looked. The guy was unable to pull up my account because it wasn't active. He said he would pass my concerns on to his supervisors.

Nickels, Dimes, and Two Dollar Bills

2010-07-21T19:43:00.000-07:00

Today I spoke with an AT&T customer service representative about my bill.

On June 30th I had 24KB of data usage in a single instance. The purpose of this usage was to test my data connection at the request of an AT&T customer service representative who was restoring data service to my phone. Data had stopped working after I had requested that data be disabled on my parents' numbers. I had not asked for them to do the same for my number. I don't use "data" per se, but I do upload Multimedia Messages, which are charged to my Messaging plan along with SMS Text messages, but MMS rely on the phone's data capability. My parents and wife don't use Multimedia Messaging, and had become annoyed at the few cents charged every time they hit the wrong button. Getting rid of those charges was the motivation for blocking data on Elizabeth's and my parents accounts, especially since Shoshana had taken to mashing buttons on Elizabeth's phone.

When I got the bill, I called to see what the $2.00 charge was for. I had previously been on a $0.01/KB pay-per-use plan, but since that plan was no longer available when they added it back, I was now being charged $2.00/MB.

I had begrudgingly come to accept the few cents that I was charged almost every month when I accidentally hit a button or menu item that launched a web service. These buttons and menu items are, naturally, featured prominently everywhere on the phone. It's difficult to avoid them.

But this $2.00 for-the-first-byte thing crossed the line. This, I would not tolerate.

I called. I was told that my options were to block data on my phone or just pay the charges: the plan I was on before was no longer available. I told them that was ridiculous. I had not asked them to change the plan. They had changed the plan by mistake. I would not pay for their mistake. I would most certainly not pay month after month.

They told me it was impossible to enter the old code into their system. I laughed and told them that they were wrong. Perhaps they did not have the right permissions to do it, but it could be done.

I asked for a supervisor. They gave me a higher-ranking customer service agent who told me that they would refund the $2.00 as a one-time courtesy, but in the future I would either need a data plan or pay the charges.

I asked for a real supervisor. They told me they would probably say the same thing, but ok. I waited on hold for a while. The supervisor came on and told me that she could have a case written, and they would get back to me. She warned that if I did that, she couldn't have the $2.00 charge removed as a courtesy. I told her that it didn't scare me. She also warned me that I couln't appeal whatever they decided. I laughed and said I didn't believe her, but just to put it through.

They said I would hear from them by the afternoon of July 30th.

A Change in my Twitter/Facebook/Posterous Usage

2010-06-23T23:54:00.000-07:00

Originally, I started using Twitter so I could get the status updates of the few friends of mine with accounts. Not long after, I set it up so that my Facebook status imported from Twitter, and I have used that mechanism, with a few rare exceptions, to update my status.
I set up an account with TwitPic and used it to occasionally post links to photos uploaded from my phone. Back then, I didn't have a messaging plan (because I think that text messages are grossly overpriced--they are!), so I would pay 30 cents for each uploaded photo. I considered it worth the money with Multimedia Messaging, and as long as I sent fewer than 17 a month, it cost less than the lowest plan.

Eventually, I started uploading more and subscribing to others' tweets via SMS, and I sprung for the five dollar per month plan for 200 messages (text and multimedia combined). I have other things sending me text and multimedia messages, like Google Voice voicemail "transcriptions", certain Facebook events, and certain e-mail filters from Gmail.

Anyway, most people who actually look at (and certainly most people who comment on) my uploaded phone pictures have always been doing so through Facebook. When I switched from TwitPic to Posterous for phone uploads, I was able to have the actual pictures (and videos) themselves imported directly into Facebook, whereas with TwitPic, people had to click on the link the external site to view the pictures.

It occurs to me that this feature obviates the need for me to send my Posterous posts to Twitter. The exception would be someone with a smartphone who sees the pictures in (or from) their Twitter client, and wouldn't necessarily catch them on Facebook.

It also would have the effect of de-cluttering my Twitter feed for SMS-only followers. Someone (like me) with a non-smart phone isn't able (or rather willing) to open links in Twitter posts, because I don't have a data plan. Posts with hyperlinks are mostly useless, unless I manually transcribe the links into my computer's browser. If I'm going to be at a computer to enjoy the posts, I might as well just subscribe via RSS, and get them through Google Reader.

Currently, I don't subscribe via mobile to my Twitter followers who tweet a lot, because I'm still limited to 200 messages a month. I also don't want my phone going off five times an hour. It occurs to me that if I eliminate the Posterous auto-posts from my Twitter feed, and only--or mainly at least--send text through Twitter, others in similar situations as me will be more likely to follow me.

The down side is that I've been looking forward to Twitter's upcoming "Annotations" feature. Basically, Twitter is going to let you attach metadata to your tweets if you have a rich client. They already allow location information to be added, but soon it will be opened up to anything you can think of, which will almost certainly include embedding thumbnail pictures and blog post snippets into tweets. My guess is that Posterous will write support for this sort of thing into their auto-post feature.

If I quit sending pictures through Twitter, I suppose I can always start sending them again when the Annotations feature arrives and matures.

Right now, each picture I post to Posterous gets posted to Facebook three times: once via Twitter in my status message, once as a picture with a title in the "Posterous Photos" album, and once as a story to my wall, which includes the text of the body of the post. Eliminating the Twitter post reduces the number of posts to two. I could actually eliminate the photo method as well, but I like having the pictures inside of Facebook where they can be tagged and browsed and so forth.

I think what I'll do is keep the Twitter integration intact, but normally just post to the other services. If I want a post to go to Twitter, I can send it to post@posterous.com or twitter@posterous.com in addition to my new default facebook+picasa+youtube@posterous.com (which I will need to update if/when I add more services). That way, I still have the option of posting to Twitter in extraordinary circumstances, but it won't happen very frequently.

If you want to subscribe to my phone posts, please do so using the feed at my Posterous site.

Birth Story: Retrospective

2010-06-16T23:28:00.000-07:00

Today is the first anniversary of Shoshana's birth. Originally, I had intended to post a detailed birth story on my blog. I even had a couple of drafts. Eventually, I abandoned them, because I was busy (imagine that!), and also the original post was overly-detailed, long, and mostly boring to read.

So, on her first birthday, I think it's appropriate to simply relate the story without too much minute-by-minute contraction statistics and the like.

One year and one day ago, I was lying in bed, peacefully asleep, when I felt Elizabeth bolt from the bed. I heard her scramble for the bedroom door and charge to the bathroom. My working model of physics did not allow for a pregnant woman to move that fast. In the midst of my formulation of a new theory of mechanics, new information was presented to my brain, in the form of not-quite-water-sounding splatting noises, as if someone had scattered viscous liquid on the bathroom floor. I glanced at the clock. It was just shy of 5:00 AM.

I got out of bed, and started mopping up. Elizabeth had leaped from the bed and into the bathroom at a rather alarming rate for something as bulky as her pregnant body had become. The resulting mess was less than I had anticipated.

The immediate crisis having been handled, I called Amanda, our midwife on my cell phone. She assessed the situation, and instructed us to call her back when contractions started, and get some sleep in the meantime if we could. Next we called Bethany, our doula, and Elizabeth's sister Katherine. I changed the sheets, and Elizabeth went back to bed. I took care of the chickens and ducks, got a load of laundry started, and cleared the baby's room, where the birthing tub would be set up, and finally got to bed. Twenty minutes later, contractions started.

The contractions came on and off all morning. Sometimes they were clustered together, and then they would peter out. Amanda and her assistant Allison stopped by to monitor the baby's heart rate. At Amanda's advice, we took a brisk walk around the block in an attempt to get things going. Later, I installed the car seat in the car. Elizabeth's due date wasn't for another two weeks, but thankfully two weeks prior, she had had some contractions, after which we had purchased all of the remaining "must have" items on our registry.

At noon, we called some more relatives to let them know what was going on. Amanda and Allison stopped by again in the afternoon. They take some vitals and some blood from Elizabeth, to monitor her for infection.

Eventually that evening (about 11:00), the six of us (Elizabeth and I, Amanda, Allison, Bethany, and Sarah, Bethany's assistant) were sitting in the living room discussing the situation. The baby was not coming. It was decided that the two of us would get as much rest as possible, because we had a big day ahead of us tomorrow.

Elizabeth and I went to bed sometime around midnight. When I woke up at 11:00 the next morning, Elizabeth had been up for several hours, and everyone was over again, sitting in the living room. I made myself some breakfast and joined them. They were discussing their options going forward.

For whatever reason, the baby did not seem to be coming. Since Elizabeth's water was broken, the longer we waited, the more the danger of infection increased. Since Elizabeth was not being "checked" at all, this danger was significantly less than it would have been in a hospital situation, where standard procedure is to check every hour (giving germs a free ride!).

It was decided that Elizabeth would take some sort of herbal "tincture" to help move things along, which was a kind of inducement, though obviously not as powerful as what would be given at a hospital. I called Elizabeth's mom, and she went to the store and dropped off the ingredients that were necessary. It was also decided that everyone would leave Elizabeth and I alone, so that we could have a peaceful, low-stress, comfortable time in which to allow labor to start.

And boy did it start!

At about 1:00, we called Amanda, asking if we should take the second dose of the tincture, given the strength of the contractions. Midwives have this thing where they keep you on the phone and listen to your body, not so much your words, while they get you to talk and stay on the phone. It's quite a clever trick, actually. In any case, labor had started for real, and so she was on her way, and when we hung up the phone, we called Bethany over as well.

The next seven hours were full of pain and holding and pushing, and then a short break before it all happened again. They made me leave Elizabeth's side once so I could eat. I shoved half of a bowl of cereal down my throat and returned to her side. As the contractions got more intense, we moved from the bed to the birthing tub. Elizabeth was in a lot of pain for a long time. Periodically, she would get out to go to the bathroom.

Amanda pulled me aside. Elizabeth was ready, physically. She had been for a while. But she had no urge to push. We needed to get her out of the tub. Elizabeth didn't want to leave the tub. Leaving the tub made it hurt more. Pain bad. Tub good. At this point, she just wanted the pain to go away. She said she wanted an epidural, which you can only get in the hospital. She agreed to leave the tub and be checked, and then go to the hospital. Amanda checked her. She wouldn't make it to the hospital, so it was at home or in the car.

She was almost fully dilated; all but one part. Amanda said she could help her and it would go faster, but it would hurt. Elizabeth wanted the baby out NOW. So she helped her. And it hurt.

Amanda and Allison erected a birthing stool, which is like a chair without a seat. They stuck a bowl under it, and told me what I had to do to catch the baby. Elizabeth was going to get the head out, and then slow down, and then push the rest out. I was ready. The head was coming out, but Elizabeth wasn't going to wait for the next push. She wanted it out NOW, so she kept pushing, and Allison caught Shoshana.

After that, there was a lot less screaming. We moved Elizabeth back to the bed, and she held Shoshana. Amanda noticed that there was a lot of blood, and indeed there was a tear. According to Elizabeth, the pain of getting stitches is nothing compared to giving birth (I believe her).

My daughter was beautiful! My wife was amazing! I was a daddy!

One year. Just a year? Wow.

Happy birthday, Shoshana.

Firefox Sync vs. Xmarks

2010-06-10T00:33:00.000-07:00

The "Mozilla Weave" extension was recently brought out of beta testing and renamed Firefox Sync. I decided to try it out, and compare it to the add-in that I currently use for browser sync, Xmarks.

First, the similarities: Both Xmarks and Firefox Sync work basically the same. You install a browser extension, and your bookmarks, passwords, and open tabs are kept in sync across all your browser instances (each browser on each computer that you use). This is accomplished by keeping a master copy on a server. Both Xmarks and Firefox Sync will host your data, or, for advanced users, will allow you to set up and use your own server.

There are a number of differences between the services, however:
First off, Firefox Sync doesn't work with Chrome, MSIE, Safari, or Opera, at least not yet. Xmarks works in pretty much any browser. I don't anticipate that this will be the case for too much longer, but it is worth mentioning at this stage.

The major difference between the two services is encryption. Both services encrypt the data that you send to their servers so that no one can snoop in on the traffic as it's sent over the Internet. The difference is that Xmarks can read your data on their server, and Firefox Sync cannot.

Firefox Sync encrypts your data on the client side (before it leaves the browser), and therefore its servers have no access to the data that it stores. The obvious advantage to this approach for the user is that you don't need to worry that they will sell your data, or analyze it, or do anything with it other than store it for you and allow you to retrieve it. If the servers get hacked, there won't be anything usable on them. If Mozilla turns evil and wants to snoop on you, they can't: they don't have the decryption key. You do, and it was never sent to them.

This is not to say that Xmarks' approach is a bad one. Yes, Xmarks can read your data. Therefore they can enable you to easily share portions of it. They can also provide you with easy access to your bookmarks on their website, for those instances when you don't control the browser you're using. They also keep a history of changes, so you can restore from back before you shortsightedly deleted that folder a few months (or even years) ago.

Xmarks also lets you create profiles and manage them from their website, which can contain a subset of your bookmarks, so it's possible to sync certain bookmarks with one group of browsers, but not with others. This is useful if you have a folder or two that you only need on certain computers, or if you want to have a stripped-down set of bookmarks on your media PC or netbook.

The Xmarks approach isn't all good, though. They have "discovery" features that I prefer to turn off, since their business model relies on "recommending" links, their extension will alter search results pages by default in order to show you their recommendations. Still, you can turn them off, which prevents it from being a real negative in my book.

So, what am I going to use going forward? Both, at least for now. As you can see from the screenshots above, I have disabled password and tab syncing with Xmarks, and only use that for bookmarks. This enables me to easily share certain content, use profiles, and manage my bookmarks from the web interface. There's no reason for me to have my passwords on anyone else's server in an accessible form, or my currently open tabs, for that matter, so I'm using Firefox Sync for that. Firefox Sync is also set up to sync my History, Preferences, and Settings, which is something that Xmarks can't do.

I'm syncing my bookmarks to Xmarks on my Linux box only (which is always on, and usually has Firefox open), that way it will keep up-to-date with changes that happen over Firefox Sync which is enabled and syncing everything on all of my Firefox browsers. I'm currently not doing much with Xmarks profiles, but if I want to use them in the future, I can have Xmarks handle bookmarks sync on the browsers with non-default profiles. I use Firefox by default, but I also occasionally use other browsers, so I have Xmarks set up on non-Mozilla browsers as well.

Such is His love to me

2010-04-11T13:40:00.000-07:00

Today's sermon brought to my mind an old hymn.

The sermon was on Colossians 1:12-22; 2:9-15. It was about how complete our salvation is: how perfect the redeemer and act of redemption.

Christ so triumphed when he died on the cross and rose from the grave, that we can rest in the truth:

That even though we had by our own decisions and actions joined ourselves to the kingdom of darkness as Satan's rightful property, in the transaction and conquest of the cross, we have been made holy, and transferred into the kingdom of light, where we are sons and heirs of God with Christ.

Even though we were once guilty, and judgements against us that kept us from the presence of God, instead of being cashed in at the price of our soul in hell forever, those judgements were taken and nailed to the cross, and are no longer valid. Their legal status is null and void, and we are deemed to be as holy as Jesus Christ.

Even though we were hostile to God, and had broken our relationship with him, Christ has made peace, and restored that relationship, so that there is no longer any offense that God can hold against us, and we can freely enjoy his unobstructed love and friendship.

Though we were once dominated by a powerful enemy, Christ has rendered our enemies powerless against us. He has disarmed, completely defeated, and triumphed over them. His victory is so complete that there is no way that we can fall back into their hands. We are 100% secure from spiritual loss.

Because we know these things, we don't need to believe the lies that say otherwise. We are free to live the life of Christ!

The part of it that was most precious to me this morning is that I am completely reconciled to God in my relationship with him: that I am dear to him, and nothing can stand in the way of how precious I am to him as his child. He longs for me to enjoy him.

Here is the hymn that I was singing in my mind when I reflected on this:

A mind at "perfect peace" with God:
Oh, what a word is this!
A sinner reconciled through blood:
This, this indeed is peace!

By nature and by practice far,
How very far from God!
Yet now by grace brought nigh to Him,
Through faith in Jesus' blood.

So nigh, so very nigh to God,
I cannot nearer be;
For in the person of His Son,
I am as near as He.

So dear, so very dear to God,
More dear I cannot be;
The love wherewith He loves the Son,
Such is His love to me.

Why should I ever careful be,
Since such a God is mine?
He watches o'er me night and day,
And tells me, "Thou art mine".

~ C. Paget, 19th century

I love to tell the story, for those who know it best
Seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.
And when, in scenes of glory, I sing the new, new song,
’Twill be the old, old story that I have loved so long.

~ A. Katherine Hankey, 1866.

Posterous Posting from my Phone

2010-03-13T13:37:00.000-08:00

I just finished describing a script I created in order to have a thumbnail image in my Blogger sidebar widget whenever I send a post to Posterous from my phone. If you are inclined (and have any idea what I'm talking about) please head over there and check it out.

Okay, über-nerd content is over! Sorry to scare you like that. From here on out, normal levels of nerdiness only.

I like to post pictures from my phone to the Internet. To accomplish this, I have been using TwitPic, which takes the MMS message, posts the picture on the web, and then takes the subject and posts that on Twitter along with a link to the picture page.

It's a well-oiled machine, and it works, but it is not ideal. For one thing, TwitPic has yet to implement OAuth with Twitter, which means that they require you give them your Twitter password in order to use the service. This fact alone had me looking for alternatives, and I had been considering switching to img.ly.

Recently, a friend of mine I follow on Twitter started posting videos using TwitVid, and I thought that was pretty cool, so I decided to check it out. They use OAuth (at least, it's available--they also let you just give them your password), so that was nice. But I decided to take a look around at other similar services to see what they had to offer. In my experiment with TwitVid, the video I uploaded never made it to Twitter because it was still processing the video several hours later. I canceled the account.

In looking around, I found that Posterous came highly recommended for phone content, and so I did some looking. Normally, I wouldn't have thought of Posterous as the right tool for the job, most of what I see on Posterous is barrages of information that people share, mostly re-posts of others' material with commentary (similar to Google Reader, but much more like Tumblr). However, I had seen a good example of original content on Posterous, and I liked the format.

So, after looking into Posterous' features, I created an account and started using it. Here's what I like about Posterous.

It supports OAuth, so I don't ever have give them your passwords for other services.
I can post by e-mail, or, more specific to my case, MMS from my phone.
Like TwitPic, it will post pictures to Twitter. Like TwitVid, it will post video to Twitter. Unlike both those services, it will post pretty much anything to pretty much anywhere and everywhere I choose.
Whereas before, people on Facebook had to click on the TwitPic link on my imported status update to see the picture, now, the actual picture/video is posted to Facebook (and YouTube, in the case of video).
It supports pretty much anything you throw at it: text, images, video, audio. It will store, organize, publish, and push my content out to other services in the way that I specify.
It supports a bunch of other services that I'm not using yet, but would be simple to set up if I started using them.
If I want, I can restrict a post to show up on only the services I specify for that particular message--on the spot, over MMS.

I like it, and I would recommend it.

Google Buzz Reprieve

2010-02-12T22:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I posted some of my thoughts on Google Buzz on my other blog. Basically, I decided to disable it, because the way it was set up, it formed a connection between my full name and my online content.

I did some thinking after that post, and I believe there's a way to get what I want out of Google Buzz without discarding my mantle of online anonymity: remove all the links from my Google Profile, and only post to Google Buzz privately.

That way, there will be a public profile with my name on it, but it won't be publicly associated with anything that I produce online.

It makes the Google Profile much less useful, but it allows me to use the service in the way that I feel comfortable with.

On a related note, here are two posts from LifeHacker that I found very helpful:

I don't want Google Buzz in my Gmail inbox. In fact, I would prefer it to be in a separate page, like Google Reader, so the first article was especially helpful. I don't think I would continue to use it if it kept filling my inbox with other people's imported posts.

Anyway, I'm going to try enabling it again, after I have purged all of my content sources from my Google Profile. All of my sharing will be private, and my name will show up publicly on other peoples' public posts that I comment on (which is just fine). If it annoys me (or distracts me too much), I'll turn it off again, but that will be on preference, not on principle.

Facebook Pet Peeves

2010-01-29T00:22:00.000-08:00

Six things on Facebook doth Tim hate. Yea, seven are an abomination unto him:

Profile pictures that don't actually contain the person. (No, your child is still not you.)
Friend requests from people who, though we are in the same social circle, I have never interacted with.
Invitations to waste time and/or clutter my profile with some application. This includes "interacting" with me from applications I have not installed.
Also, lost cows.
Event invitations that unnecessarily last for weeks. This screws up my Google Calendar, which imports my Facebook events.
Profiles that are not for people. (Non-personal entities should have a page or a group, not a profile.)
Couples that share a single account. This one bugs me on a much deeper level than the others.

Now go, and sin no more.

Firefox Extensions Collection

2010-01-28T23:52:00.000-08:00

A while ago, I wrote a post in which I create a list of software to install on a new Windows box. I did this mostly for my own reference, but it might be useful to others.

The first item on my list is Firefox, but (until now) I didn't include any extensions. Firefox is all about customizations, and extensions are the most powerful way to customize it. But who wants to go through the trouble of sorting through the thousands of extensions to find the useful ones? Well, it's more a matter of keeping your ear to the ground and trying out the ones that sound good and/or come recommended.

After years of research, I've created a collection of extensions! I didn't write any of them, I just bunched them together because they were all useful to me.

I plan on updating the collection as time goes on, so here's the link:

burndive's essential extensions

You can choose to install them individually, or as a group. I hope you find them as useful as I have.

Khaki Campbells and Marans

2009-12-12T18:09:00.000-08:00

Today, Elizabeth and I picked up two ducks and two roosters that we got off of Craigslist.

The ducks are female Khaki Campbells, and the roosters are copper black Marans. Elizabeth has wanted Khaki Campbells for a while, since they're good layers. It's a breed that her family has had before.

Our rooster, Mr. Darcy, died last week, so Elizabeth asked the seller if she knew of anyone who had a rooster. As it happened, she had a pair of roosters and was looking for a good home for them.

Does anyone have any names to suggest? If I name one of the roosters Mr. Knightly, what should the other one be named? They're a bit young, and they timidly stayed in the chicken coop, and away from the hens. Maybe I should call them Sheldon and Koothrappali.

The ducks, on the other hand, made right for our Pekins, and they seemed to be getting along fine.

Google Wave (Preview)

2009-11-13T00:42:00.000-08:00

I just posted my initial thoughts on the Google Wave preview over at my tuxbox blog.

Submission

2009-09-30T22:47:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've been involved in a rather lengthy, but in my mind worth-while discussion, mostly regarding what the Bible teaches (or doesn't teach, depending on who you ask) about wives submitting to their husbands.

It's long. Very long. And lots of people chime in. Some of whom just want to argue. Be warned.

If that doesn't dissuade you, here's the post.

On Fatherhood, Thus Far

2009-09-19T23:04:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, a friend of mine (who is a mommy) asked me to post a blog entry on being a father. Then another mom chimed in to say that would be a good idea, and still another mom, (this one happened to be my wife) said that she, too, would be interested to hear what I have to say about being a father.

I don't think I have anything especially profound to say on this topic, but then, perhaps some of the things I consider mundane will be new to someone coming from a different perspective.

There does seem to be quite a bit of lopsidedness when it comes to mommy vs. daddy blogging. Perhaps it's not considered manly to talk about having kids, or maybe kids aren't as central in the lives of men who blog.

In my case, blogging in general has suffered ever since our daughter was born, and it has much more to do with the new demands on me in my role as husband than as father.

And those just aren't the things one blogs about, mostly out of consideration for the privacy of one's wife. The Internet does not need to know it when my wife feels like she can't get anything done around the house, or when she feels awkward about the changes in her body, or frustrated with the loss of liberty.

When I get home from work, if I head over to the computer and sit there for hours composing an eloquent entry on the latest escapades of a certain three-month-old (or perhaps my life in relation to her), there is someone who all day has been cooped up with a baby, and might possibly appreciate some adult conversation, and perhaps someone to see to her needs after meeting someone else's needs all day.

Not that being a husband (or a mother, for that matter) is unrewarding. It's just that blogging might not be the best use of my time and attention in certain situations.

So anyway, you get the picture: blogging is not as high on my list as it used to be, and sometimes what occupies my thought-life is not for me to share.

So... fatherhood...

First of all, we didn't plan for this. Not this soon, at least.

When we bought our house there were plans to subdivide and develop the property, and in the meantime, we could easily afford the mortgage on the combined salary of a nurse and a software engineer. This house was supposed to be a tear-down, and now it's our baby's nursery.

It's not like we weren't being responsible. Elizabeth is a nurse, after all: she knows how this stuff works (or, I should say, usually works), and we were supposed to be okay. But the Lord had other plans, and here we are, in the middle of them. My temperament is such that typically I can just roll with the punches. For Elizabeth, accepting the situation took more effort.

I enjoy kids. I always have. I have just as much fun playing peek-a-boo as the child. My brothers and I used to throw kids up in the air, and back and forth to one another, seeing how far apart we could get. Mostly at church. We would chase them, and be chased. They would steal our keys, watches, and wallets just to get us to chase them. They would sneak up behind us and jump on our backs, so that we would have to give them a piggy-back ride. (This still happens, come to think of it.) I also enjoy talking with children. Too many adults treat children like children when they speak to them, that is, they don't treat them like people: they treat them like non-people: like sub-beings. When I was a kid, I always liked the adults that didn't talk down to me, and I like to think that I've become one of those adults.

Shoshana isn't quite up to full sentences yet, but it's not about linguistic structure, it's about coming down to her level, but not thinking that I am somehow too good for that level.

Oh, yes. Fatherhood comes with a bunch of other things besides having a little person in your house. Things like changing diapers, taking a weighted car seat or a stroller everywhere. For some reason I had to move all of the computer equipment and several book cases out of our second bedroom. These are just the background noise of fatherhood, though.

Being a father right now means that my wife needs me to be there for her more than before. Also, there's a wonderful little person living in my house!

Regarding My Calvinism Comment

2009-07-16T02:14:00.000-07:00

In this post, I said,

Calvinists tend to see God’s knowledge from outside of time of events as the thing that makes them come to be, rather than the actual efficient cause within time.

A friend asked me to clarify that statement. This was my original response: That is actually something which I have observed both Calvinists and Arminians to do. Observing that God knows what our responses to his actions will be "before" he acts, they regard God as being the one who authors the events, rather than, well, the people who are actually the ones responsible. In fact, I suspect that if Calvinists and Arminians got over this hump, they would have a lot less to argue about, and be more comfortable acknowledging all of the truths stated in the Bible in stead of pitting one set against another. And then a couple hours later, I added this: After thinking about my comment (and not sleeping, like I should be doing), I would like to clarify it some more. There are Calvinists who maintain that there must be no "real" free will, since everything that happens is God's plan, and therefore "decreed" or "planned" to be so (and actively brought about by God). We are saved simply because God wanted us saved and not others, only for His glory, and our participation in salvation has nothing to do with our will, other than the fact that it was changed on us. People sin and reject him because he decreed it to be so for his glory (somehow). The Arminians who make this same mistake of seeing God's knowledge as a cause tend to be open theists, who, when presented with the above scenario accept the assumption that God's knowledge of events (including sin) would cause them to be, but reject the scenario by concluding that God must therefore not know exactly what's coming, and is not the author of sin because he didn't know for sure that it would happen, (even though his plan accounted for the possibility, perfect as it was). People who make the "God's knowledge causes events" assumption tend to think of it in terms of God "seeing ahead" into the future. I prefer to look at it as God interacting with the timeline all laid out in front of him. He doesn't dive himself in at one end of time, travel in one direction, and emerge at the other end: he touches all points of the timeline in one eternal instant, not arriving at them from the moment before, but directly from his eternal now. That is, incidentally, why he is the Same. You cannot step into the same river twice, but you can step into the same God at any and every moment of your existence. That is also how he sees us as already perfected in Christ: not because he's planning (or hoping!) to make us so, but because he knows us as being so (and God does not play pretend). Old testament sacrifices pointed to the offering of Christ, and they were accepted for sins, not because the real atonement would happen "at some point," but because Christ's offering was there in the presence of God for him to accept. And I would add this: Please notice that I am not speaking of all who call themselves Calvinists or Arminians. There is a tendency in the extremes of both, however, to fall into this same trap.

Counting Down

2009-07-05T20:55:00.000-07:00

Last week, I had to bury our two goats. The neighbors, who had been feeding them weeds and grass clippings, did not know that rhododendrons are very poisonous plants, and so when they trimmed their rhododendron bushes, they put the clippings over the fence so the goats could eat the leaves. They did. Then they got very sick, and then they died. Princess died first during the night, and Fluffy died the following evening. It was done in ignorance, and they profusely apologized and offered to replace the goats. I feel partly responsible because I didn't warn them and I knew they were feeding them, but I had no idea that they had rhododendrons. The neighbors even helped us dig one of the graves. We're not holding it against them, obviously. Actually, it was kind of a nice opportunity to bond with our neighbors. Except for the nice part, that is. Since the goats died in the evening, I didn't get to burying them until after work the following day, and it's been quite hot lately. If anyone wants to purchase a certain tarp at a discount price, I have a deal for you. Anyway, the neighbors know someone who rescues goats, and if we tell them which breed we're looking for, they can have them look out for that breed. Elizabeth would like to have milking goats at some point, but right now she's a little busy, so we decided to hold off on replacing the goats until next spring. This, along with the birth of our daughter, and 1 kitten so far that who has found a home, brings the population of our farm down from a high of 31 to 28: 3 humans, 14 chickens, 6 ducks, 2 cats, and 3 kittens.

Theology Discussion Continues

2009-07-04T22:59:00.000-07:00

For the background on this post, see Jonathan’s initial post here: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=92607669390 and my response here: http://burndive.blogspot.com/2009/06/re-theology-experment-1.html then his reply here: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=94589404390 (You might need a Facebook account to see his posts.) Without further ado: Jonathan, Thanks again for having this discussion with me (and others). It’s given me another opportunity to examine what it is that I actually believe and why, and to consider its merits. First of all, I don’t really apologize for pulling in all of Christian theology, other than the consequent verbosity. Every part of Christian theology is linked to the other parts, such that it’s difficult to discuss one concept without at least touching on others around it. My statement about “coherence” was an attempt to capture the point of our disagreement. I was trying to lay out the scope of our discussion: namely that you believe that the Christian worldview is false: that it can not be reconciled to reality, and I believe that the Christian worldview that I hold is both internally consistent (with itself) and externally coherent (with reality). What I got from your post was: given that the following are true of Christianity and of external reality, here are the consequences. The consequences contradict Christianity and reality, therefore Christianity is incoherent with reality, QED. You then asked for clarification in case your perception of Christianity or reality was incorrect, and that after all the two could be reconciled. (Digression: By no means is anyone obliged to accept a worldview as true simply because it does not observably contradict reality. However, rational people have no business holding any other kind of world view. Also, one rational person can have respect for another’s world view which he does not hold. Ockham’s Razor, as well as other criteria apply, etc.) Please do me a favor and don’t call me a Calvinist. There are worse things to be called (e.g., Arminian), but Calvinists tend to see God’s knowledge from outside of time of events as the thing that makes them come to be, rather than the actual efficient cause within time. You seem to be making the same mistake when you say that since God knew what the genetic as well as environmental factors would be before he created a person, he would not be good if he created a being which he knew would make bad choices. I say that God knows (from beyond time) the choices that people make, which are facilitated by genetics and environment, but ultimately determined by the will of the soul, and that he creates them anyway. He is not culpable for the consequences of their bad choices any more than the US government is to blame for Afghanistan’s recent bill of regulations permitting spousal rape. Does the US government like the regulations? No. Could they stop them? Yes. Why don’t they? Because it is the intent of the US government to establish Afghanistan as a sovereign nation, and that would be a violation of the sovereignty that it wishes them to use for good. Stopping them from exercising their “free will”/soverignty every time Afghanistan did something the US didn’t like would nullify it. I’m not trying to make a political statement here about the war. It’s not a perfect analogy (for starters, the US is not omniscient), but I think it brings the point across. [Hell in this analogy would not be nuclear obliteration: it would be similar to the situation of Cuba: (economically at least), they are cut off from the USA: as if they live in a world without us.] Perhaps Loren has abdicated his responsibility as a thinking being, and that was very unmanly of him. He should buck up and address reality. Your definition of “free”, as in “free to act without coercion or fear of consequence” is also very unmanly in that it is a desire to escape from reality. If Loren goes off into his own little world where there are no difficult questions to answer, then you can live next to him in your little world where you get to pick the rules of reality and consequence as you see fit, rather than facing them as they are. Reality is defined by God’s existence, not yours. You may wish to be your own god (that is exactly what you are saying), but that will not make it so. Or rather, it may wind you up as the god of your own personal hell. Be careful what you wish for, you might actually get it. Your Sword of Damocles analogy is incorrect. God isn’t holding it over you, you’re throwing yourself onto it, and God has taken the trouble to make you aware of the consequences of what you are going to do (I know you dislike consequences—deal with it), and has made available to you a way out of your situation that you of your own free will can choose (“free” demonstrated by the fact that you are able even to make choices that insult him and he won’t nullify those decisions). Reality, and therefore, the way of escape, are on God's terms. You take issue with my description of the Christian idea of a triune human being (body, soul, spirit), but then you digress before getting to your point, so I will have to address that topic specifically when you have clarified your point. For now, here's an example of it in scripture:

Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground (body), and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (spirit); and man became a living being (soul). (Genesis 2:7, NASB)

On to the puppy analogy. Suddenly, you’re OK with consequences again. You don’t want your puppy to behave as if it runs the house: you run the house, and rightfully so, especially since if a house is full of poop, it isn’t pleasant for man or beast. You are indeed more qualified, dare I say worthy, to be in charge of your house, in part because you have this larger perspective. If that puppy should insist on pooping and peeing all over the place, and then growling and barking at and biting you whenever you approached: if all attempts at discipline failed, no doubt you would find a dog house for it to live in where it could wallow in its own filth and be its own master, but there it could not be your best friend: you would have to accept that consequence. And that’s why you wanted a puppy in the first place, isn’t it? To be its friend. But I digress. You’re talking about Adam and Eve and how God didn’t discipline mankind: he simply sent them all to hell without warning after the first sin. Oh, wait. No he didn’t. First of all: God did tell Adam that if he disobeyed, “dying he would die”—or, to paraphrase: he would die and die and die until he was dead. Now, did God use a word that wasn’t in Adam’s vocabulary, “die”? I don’t think so. Adam was basically put in charge of all of the earth: including plants and animals, and he took the time to get to know each kind of animal, and name it. Before Eve was formed, Adam had gone through all the animals, and he noticed that he was different from them in a way that made each one of them fail to be a suitable companion for him. [Tangent: I don’t have a problem with evolutionary biology. If the pre-humans were still around from which God mutated Adam, Adam would have noticed this difference between them and him, and determined that something (the “breath/spirit of life”) was missing in them.] Plants die. Animals die. Human beings didn’t die because God’s life flowed to them through their spirit. Adam had a pretty good idea what death meant. But that brings me to the next point (to which I’ve already alluded above). When mankind sinned, did God immediately send them to hell? No. The sin had consequences, as God had said, but those consequences were mitigated (in this case, symbolically passed along to Christ in the animal sacrifice), and, as I tried to lay out in my last post, they were told of a way that the broken relationship could be restored and death overcome. Regarding 1 Corinthians 13. That passage is not a definition of love: it is a description of the behavior that love produces. That doesn’t absolve me of answering the question, however. So, how is God’s behavior toward sinners loving according to 1 Corinthians 13? Here we go: Love suffers long, and is kind – God doesn’t send us to hell when we first sin. Because he loves us, he kindly reaches out to us to restore the relationship for as long as we live. Love does not envy - To envy is to seek to take that to which you have no right. God is certainly jealous: jealousy is when you seek to maintain (or regain) that which is rightfully yours. Love does not brag and is not arrogant – God respects us as people, and does not tread on our personal sovereignty. Rather than wishing to assert his infinite superiority, he condescends to our level, and seeks to bring us into a relationship with him and share his glory. Does not behave rudely – God approached Adam and Eve and asked them to explain what had happened. He didn’t throw a fit: he took steps to mitigate the problem, and spoke of the resolution to the divide that now existed between them. Does not seek its own – The resolution to the divide would involve God becoming a human being, and then dying, having taken on himself the guilt of the ones who had just insulted him and showed by their actions that they did not want him. Is not easily provoked – Again, God’s reaction was not anger. It was patience and a promise of reconciliation. Instances in the Bible where God responds in anger are cases in which it has been demonstrated over a period of time that the objects of his wrath have no intention of accepting God’s olive branch, and would in fact prefer to whack him over the head with it if they could. Does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth – God did not indulge Adam and Eve’s fantasy that they could be their own self-determining gods. The consequences of their actions were structured so that the solution to their problems was to acknowledge their inadequacy and turn to the real, true God. Bears all things – God set aside the personal insult of their rejection, and acted to benefit them. Believes all things – God did not simply judge them once they had committed the act: rather he talked to them about it, and asked them to explain their actions. If there had been a legitimate excuse for their actions, he was giving them an opportunity to make that clear. Hopes all things – God did not give up on humanity. He pointed to the way that the relationship could be repaired. A reconciliation that counted on human beings being willing to accept the offer and restore the relationship. Endures all things – The heel that crushed the serpent’s head was crushed with equal force. That was the price, and Jesus was willing to pay that price: to endure pain, rejection, hate, and our sin. Love never fails – God never stopped loving Adam and Eve. He never stops loving anyone, even those who cannot be with him because of the way they have oriented their soul. Love is all about submission. In order to love, it is necessary to sacrifice something of yourself for the benefit of another: to put yourself lower than them and treat them as more important and deserving (regardless of whether or not they are deserving). In a Christian marriage, it is the husband’s responsibility to see to the needs of his wife (physical, emotional, spiritual), even at the cost of his own needs. In doing so, he is subordinating (i.e., submitting) his needs to her needs. That is what Jesus Christ did for us in becoming human and dying for our sins (which we could not do ourselves). The appropriate response to this kind of self-giving love, which I’m afraid you might hate even more, is for the Christian to subordinate his will to Christ, and choose to do things his way. That is what is meant by "loving submission": both the giving of self and the rendering of will. Often, especially in our culture, the rendering of will has been improperly emphasized and the giving of self entirely absent, which has distorted the popular perception of God. The next issue you address is doing good things apart from God, and how I seem to say that we can do good, but somehow good isn’t good enough. I will try to clarify what I mean and show further evidence that this is what the Bible teaches. First, the Bible:

For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. (Romans 8:5-9, NASB)

What I mean by “I’m not disparaging” good deeds, but “they don’t score any points with God”, is that doing good things is good: that is, it’s what we should be doing, and there’s nothing wrong with doing good things, in fact, you ought to be doing them, and if you’re not, that’s a problem.

And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat’? But will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’ (Luke 17:7-10 NKJV)

For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. (1 Corinthians 3:11-15, NASB)

I hate to bust your “Biblical method” for talking about doing good without God. It’s simply not there. This is a passage that is talking about doing good works of lasting value. Notice that the “foundation” upon which these works are built is Jesus Christ. Without Jesus, there is no building because there is no foundation. Beyond that, those works that even Christians do which are good things, but do not flow from the Spirit of God in us are described as “wood, hay, and straw” to be burned. To the extent that we do things through the Spirit, they are composed of “gold, silver, and precious stones” which show their enduring value in that they are able to withstand the test of fire. Later on in this passage, the author (Paul) has been accused of doing good works for personal gratification. Here is what he says:

But to me it is a very small thing that I may be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact, I do not even examine myself. For I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted; but the one who examines me is the Lord. Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in darkness and disclose the motives of men’s hearts; and then each man’s praise will come to him from God. (1 Corinthians 4:3-5, NASB)

The value of a good deed to God is measured by where the desires come from. It may not be possible to sift out all of your own motivations for doing an action to make sure that it comes from the Spirit and not the flesh, or how much of each. Paul doesn’t worry himself over this. He has a clear conscience regarding his conduct, and will leave the sifting of mixed motives to the Lord. My point in quoting this passage is to try to give you more material in understanding what the Bible says about the value of good works. It’s not what is done, it’s where the motives come from. God’s goal is not merely to have people doing good things: he could have made robots with no will for that. He wants the good things to be a conduit of his own good by free beings voluntarily carrying out his desires. [I find myself irresistibly drawn to the word “squelcheth”, and will have to take every opportunity to use it in the future.] Seriously, though, if, “in the day you will eat of it, dying you will die,” doesn’t mean that they will lose something vital to their existence instantly upon eating it, what else could it mean? Death is a separation: in this case from God. In the ‘mundane’ case, from your body.

But you deal with the “immediately” thing later, to your credit (though I still don’t really get it). Meanwhile, you talk about God’s style. I have to say you lost me for a bit. You seem to describe a sort of cantankerous inventor type. Who hides away working on his latest project, and just when you think he’s royally screwed the pooch, he comes out with his most amazing invention yet! The only problem I see here is that you really don’t seem to be describing something/someone who is both omniscient and omnipotent.

I don’t get why an omniscient omnipotent being can’t conceal his work from general view while he’s doing it, especially if he wishes us to come to trust him. That’s not just his style in making the physical world, it’s also his way of transforming people. If we could constantly look over God’s shoulder while he worked, we would never learn to simply trust that he knows what he’s doing and get with his program. He’s working on us, too.

I know the saved by grace story, but this puts it in an interesting way. Still, you’re basically saying “God created sin, God created man, sin separates God from Man, and God sacrificed himself so Man could reconnect with God.” For me, this equates to someone smearing dog poop on me and then expecting me to be grateful when he also offers me ointment to keep the flies away.

Correction: man committed sin, God didn’t create it. Man smeared on his own poop. I suppose now you’re going to fault God for giving him a anus?

While they might have had the “template” to repair their spirit, the explicit method of accepting Jesus and God as their savior hadn’t been invented as far as they were concerned. Again, creating a method for salvation, but then letting two millennia-worth of people sit on their thumbs because they don’t know how to exercise it is kind of a prick move.

But they did have access to the method of salvation! God basically said: “There’s this guy coming and he’ll fix things, but he’ll need to get hurt doing it—look, just trust me.” That’s the point, though: “trust me”.

And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is (i.e., that he exists and is who he says he is—that’s the “me” part) and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him (that’s the “trust” part). (Hebrews 11:6, NASB)

As for the thousands of years, I’m going to have to pull God’s ‘style’ card out again: he was doing it his way, and in his timing. Thinking about it, if God hadn’t done all of that old testament stuff, there would have been no vocabulary through which to reveal the full extent and nature of the salvation. He’s not done. He never will be done:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. (Eph 2:4-10 (NASB)

This. This right here is why the thought of Christianity being wrong, makes me very, very, happy. I should qualify that. I know this will be one of the things we see differently. The above is a belief system derived from interpretation. I interpret it differently from you, and react to it differently. I know what I’m saying is just opinion, and I want to make sure that’s understood, but while you look at the paragraph above and see bliss, I look at it and see annihilation in the purest form of the word. That moment of abject “agree to disagree” aside, this basically reads to me like God created us with “free” will and then demands we let it go. Then ultimately the only parts of ourselves we get to keep, are the parts we give up….I don’t get it.

Exactly:

But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life. And who is adequate for these things? (2 Corinthians 2:14-16, NASB)

It smells like death to you because it is death. The death of your will, your self-determinism.

And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? Mark 8:34-36: (NASB)

For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? (Luke 14:28, NASB)

Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. (Romans 6:3-7, NASB)

Go back and read that again, I’ll wait. Done? Notice the irony?

See there? The attitude is so prevalent that when I try to explain how Christians shouldn’t reject people just because they’re sinners (God didn’t reject us, and we’re sinners too), you hear me saying the exact opposite of what I said, and think I’m doing it! You point out that homosexuality occurs in nature. Animals don’t have marriage as a picture from God of who God is. Humans do. I recognize that non-Christians typically don’t hold that view of marriage and—guess what—I don’t expect non-Christians to behave as if they do. Sin is still wrong: we can’t make our own reality by denying the one that is, but I cannot expect anyone to act upon something they do not believe.

I’m not sure whether your talk of “harmony with God” is a step further, or a step away from, the whole John 3:16 thing. I have to say, I find the idea of “burned and consumed by God’s holiness” to be a bit messed up as well. Put that up there with “loving submission”. You use the word Hell in the next paragraph but you still leave out the whole “burning for all time” thing?

Not exactly sure what you're getting at, but here's a larger view of John 3:16:

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. (John 3:16-19, NASB)

Here’s an analogy: Think of people as planets, and God as the sun. Those planets that have life, and are therefore able to take in the sun’s rays and channel the energy into life are not overcome by the sun’s heat: they are energized by it. Those planets that have no life and cannot take into themselves the sun’s energy will be stripped of their atmospheres, and parched by the sun’s rays. Not a perfect analogy, but you can see how two planets can accept the same input, one being burned and one being energized, the sun giving off the same good light, heat, and energy to both. The planet that cannot benefit from the sun’s rays, but would be destroyed by them is instead sent to a place far away where the sun’s rays do not reach. There, it is cold, dark, and void.

Overall, pretty standard Christian dogma, one point though: “took upon himself the antithesis of himself: our sin” I know how this plays into the story. I’ve just always wondered how something could create the “antithesis” of itself. If God created everything, including sin, and sin is the antithesis and separates you from God….meh, his ways are higher than mine, right?

Again with the “God created sin” thing. NO HE DIDN’T. We create sin whenever we act in rebellion toward God. Sin isn’t a “thing” that “is”. You’re treating it like a concrete Platonic ideal or template that God created so that we could implement it. “Sin” is ‘that which is against God’s nature’, or ‘that which falls short of it’. I suppose you might try to say that God, by having a particular nature and therefore not being the antithesis of that nature defined a “region” that was the negation of him, and things that fall in that region are “sin”. But even so, nothing is there until *we* imagine and implement it. And as I have said, God wanted us to be free beings, so he does not prevent us from doing or being things that he does not want us to do or be.

Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. (James 1:13-15)

Regards, -Tim

Kittens For Sale!

2009-07-03T20:45:00.000-07:00

**Composed by my wife, Elizabeth** On May 17th, our cat Zoe gave birth to four kittens. Sadly, they are weaned and ready to be sold. There are three females and one male. In the descriptions below, I use the names that we have given the kittens, but please feel free to give them a different name should you buy them. The kittens are box trained (though not yet 100%), vaccinated, and are free of both fleas and ear mites. They have been handled a lot, so they are well accustomed to being around humans. Subsequently, they will all make good lap cats besides their quirky, individual personalities. They are also great with kids. Ideally, I would love to sell the kittens in pairs as well-handled cats want more companionship than your typical house cat. As an experienced cat breeder matching your household with a personality-appropriate cat is my primary goal so that both you and the cat can have the best opportunity for a great experience. Therefore, I will interview you about your household and living situation before even considering selling you a cat. Should one of my cats not be a good fit for you I have no qualms about refusing to sell you a cat. Also, if you have your heart set on a cat with certain markings but I determine that your household would not be a good fit for his or her personality, that is also grounds for refusal. That is how passionate I feel about ensuring that both you and the cat are a match.

This is Tiger. He is a short-haired gray tabby. He has a wonderful combination of being a sweet lap cat and aggressive in play. Given additional handling and training he will be an excellent hunter (which he may gift to you sometimes) and he will, and does, regularly curl up on you to sleep.

This is Bandit. She is a short-hair standard black and white. Besides her nose and chest, she has a white belly and four white paws. Don't let the surprised look on her face fool you. She is surprisingly sweet and compliant. She is also my personal favorite so I won't sell her to just anyone. ;) Bandit was the runt of the litter, and the first to crawl, walk, run, jump, and respond to her name. She is the smartest of the litter, and she is the most curious and adventurous. She will require companionship to have a full and fulfilled life.

This is Sherpa. She is a long-hair with markings reminiscent of a Himalayan Siamese. She is incredibly sweet and loves to romp with her siblings. She has a special affinity to battle over who has control over the very top of the carpeted scratching post barely visible on the left of the picture.

This is Teddy Bear. Teddy is a long-hair gray tabby with a name to match her personality. She is the most laid-back of the four and would be content with a quiet, indoor life.

The kittens are $40 each. If you're interested, you can call Tim or Elizabeth (if you have our numbers), or you can e-mail one of us, contact us through Facebook, or post a comment.

Re: Theology Experment 1

2009-06-13T14:01:00.000-07:00

Note: this is a response to a note on Facebook. Jonathan, A mutual friend pointed me to your post. First of all, thank you for your invitation to discussion. Your attitude and your desire for genuine understanding of the Christian worldview and how it might actually be coherent with reality if properly understood is evident and commendable, and I respect you for it. Too many people in your situation would express bitterness, simply wanting to prove themselves right. Right off the bat, the first thing that I, as a Christian, disagree with is one of your premises: "Genetics determines (at the least) how we approach experiences and decisions in our lives, and perhaps even how we make those decisions." I'm not saying that genetics doesn't set us up in life: each of us are certainly dealt a hand, and certainly from the perspective of a person coming into existence, genetics can be taken straight from God. What you seem to be taking from this assumption is that people are deterministic. The Christian model of a person is that he or she consists of a body, a soul, and a spirit. More specifically, that they are the soul, and that they have a body and spirit. In any case, every human soul has free will: that is, they can make free choices among the options presented to them. The human spirit was meant to be that part of our being which is our interface toward God: part of our purpose is to be connected to God in a relationship of trust and love. Human free will is the ability to choose from the options available to us. You cannot choose to become a bird and fly, but you can choose to fulfill your body's inclination to eat a sandwich, or scratch your nose, or read a book, or sit around and do nothing. You can even choose to become a pilot and fly. Our body, through our brain, isn't the only source of inclinations that we were designed to have. Our spirit was also designed to give us desires and insight: to present our will with a set of options and desires to fulfill or to ignore. Whenever we do something or nothing, we are fulfilling certain desires/impulses and not others. Our mind can also train our desires: if we choose to always indulge a certain desire, that desire will become reinforced at the expense of the alternatives (at the very least, the pathways in our brain associated with it will develop more efficiently, and so the desire will present itself more powerfully and be fulfilled with more ease and less mental effort). This in itself is neither morally good nor bad. The mind is a powerful rudder for what the body does, and we are continually shaping the landscape of how our desires will present themselves to us. What the Bible says about our desires is that our spirit has become dead to God. Admittedly, this is through no personal fault of our own: we can attribute this fact to our ancestors: Adam and Eve. Our spirit being dead to God means that without his intervention to restore that link and reestablish the relationship, we have no way to fulfill godly desires, since they do not even present themselves to us. This is what is known in Christian philosphly as total depravity: we cannot, of ourselves, please God because we cannot respond to him in loving submission: our spirit is broken. Even when we choose to do things that are the same kinds of things that our spirit would be prompting us to do if it were connected to God, we are doing them merely in response to our bodies' and minds' desires, not in response to him. I want to be very clear: when I say, "merely in response to our bodies' and minds' desires", I am not disparaging the good deeds that are done: what I am saying is that such good deeds do not "score any points", as it were, with God (not that we're on a point system with God!). The book of Proverbs says that "the plowing of the wicked is sin." This does not mean that it is wrong to plow. What is meant is that the wicked (those who do not respond to God) are incapable of true good no matter what their actions are. This is because what he designed us for is response to him in relationship, not simply certain actions and not others. To be sure, a relationship with him *will* produce actions that look a certain way, but acting in this certain way does not produce the relationship, nor will it transform the person, and the relationship with God and resultant transformation of the person is what counts. When Adam and Eve sinned, they were choosing to squelch that interface between God and themselves through their spirits, and thus their spirits became dead with respect to God. He could no longer stimulate them in that way, and they therefore defaulted to merely indulging in their other impulses. It may seem unfortunate that this spirit-death is commutable: that is, we inherit it from our parents, but because of the inheritability of the disease, the cure is also commutable from one Human to another. You see, God knew that man would sin, and he planned to turn that into something greater than it would have been if we had never been sinful. God didn't simply look at our situation of being born in depravity and say, "Well, it certainly sucks to be you." He's loves us and longs for us to be everything that he made us to be. Therefore immediately when sin entered the human race, he provided a way to re-connect ourselves with him. This reconnection, rather than being just like the original connection, is unbreakable, and, in its final state, an even closer and more glorious connection than the original. Sure, it's messy in the meantime, but God's not done with us. That's kind of God's style of creation: an "evening" and then a "morning"; a time of darkness and obscurity where things look confusing and out of place, followed by the emergence of what he has been making in the darkness into the light in its intended form. What that looked like at the time of Adam and Eve was a promise that a redeemer would come into the human race and destroy the devil's work at great cost to himself. God told Adam and Eve that "the seed of the woman" would come and crush the serpent in the head, though he would be crushed in the heel. God also provided an example of a substitute sacrifice when he covered their nakedness (a symbol of their now being exposed in shame) with the skin of an animal, which had to die for this to happen. Since that time, the "Messiah", or "Christ", has been God's way in which to reestablish that connection between God and man. Throughout history, God has been in the process of revealing how exactly this would be accomplished. Basically, that it was impossible to reconnect God and man from the man side, so God entered into humanity and did it from his side. Jesus was a human being whose spirit was not merely connected to God, it was God. Jesus Christ, in living a life in which everything he did flowed from God through his spirit, created a template that can be applied to other human beings: a cure for our condition that we can inherit directly from him. Since God is not *in* time (the past, the present, and a billion years from now are all equally accessible to him), this template was available to those who lived before Christ, as well as those of us who live after Christ. More succinctly put, because Jesus sinlessly and in righteousness toward God died a sinners' death, our old spirit's twisted God-ward connection can be done away with, and because Jesus sinlessly and in righteousness toward God lived a perfect life, his righteousness can be applied to us, such that we can now receive God's desires, and freely choose to do them. That isn't automatic, however. It's an elective surgery, and God is the ultimate gentleman: he didn't create us as people just to trample on the autonomy of our personhood. He will only perform the transplant at our invitation. That is what it means to be a Christian: not going to church, not believing certain things, but giving God permission to take away your broken, twisted, dead antenna, and replace it with the Holy Spirit of Christ, such that you will be able to "tune in" to God's desires, and make them yours. That is the choice that Adam and Eve got wrong in the first place to get us into this mess: they rejected God's desires, and we must personally reverse the decision in this way to participate in God's solution. Yes, by doing this, you are agreeing that you will surrender your competing desires and choose his instead: that ultimately, the only parts of you that survive will be those you have surrendered to him. But God made us who we are, and he values who we are even more than we do, and so he will work with you to help you surrender who you think you want to be and become who he knows you really are and ought to be. And no, none of us does it perfectly in this life. Doing it perfectly is not the point: re-establishing the relationship is the point. Perfection will come later, in the 'morning'. This life is the 'evening'. I've been a bit long-winded. I hope that you take the time to read and understand what I've said. Coming from this perspective, I will now respond to some of the specifics of the scenarios which you have put forth, hoping that it will shed more light on what Christianity really is. First, as I already have said, the universe is not physically deterministic. Any physicist worth his salt will tell you that at the particle level, there is no way to predict anything that will happen. For me, it is not too far a leap to say that our minds inhabit our brains and influence them and are influenced in return (whether or not that influence relates to quantum chaos): like a car and a driver, you cannot tell the car to fly, but you can steer, open the windows, lock the doors, and operate the pedals. Some people have a good interface to their brains, and some peoples brains are defective, or hard to handle: God knows this. He is just and loving. He works with what we have. You seem to have been blessed with a good brain and a good mind-brain interface. Second, just because Joe Sixpack has a genetic predisposition to addiction to alcohol does not mean that he has no choice but to revel in drunkenness. He is responsible for who or what he makes his god (i.e., the source of the desires to which he yields), and he will become that which he makes of himself, and bear the consequences. I would apply the same logic to homosexuality. There are a lot of people who make a big stink about how homosexuality is worse than other forms of God-rejection (i.e., sin). It is true that when we distort the beautiful gift of sexuality into what God did not intend, we can screw ourselves and others up a lot quicker and a lot more severely than in other ways, but homosexuality is not qualitatively different from other sins. It's sad to see Christians hypocritically condemn someone for succumbing to their personal weakness, while they themselves are giving in to pride. I don't see any specific evidence in your description of the two children to suggest that either child goes to heaven. Heaven and hell are what happens when the physical world is stripped away from a soul, and they are naked before their Creator God. Those souls that are in harmony with God: those who have responded to him and have a relationship with him will experience a quantum leap in the intimacy of that relationship, and the wonders that it does in them and through them. Those who have rejected God, who have no interface to him other than rejection will be burned and consumed by God's holiness. Since God respects our personhood and so will not unmake us, he has prepared a place for such souls: a place where, unlike all of the rest of reality, he is not there. The problem is that human beings were created to be with God and to know him and enjoy him. This place without God, known as hell, is characterized by the lack of the one thing that makes a human being complete: God. The irony is that this is what we tell him that we want whenever we reject him. This is the fate that He wants to save us from so much that he became part of humanity, lived perfectly, took upon himself the antithesis of himself: our sin, and died with it on our behalf. Again, rejection or acceptance of Jesus Christ does not mean going to church or believing that the Bible is true. It means accepting Christ's death as our own death to our ungodly desires, and accepting Christ's life as what we will now live because we want to desire God's desires (which we can't do without that fixed interface). The other stuff follows. Thinking we can be be righteous without God is putting the cart before the horse, and is the ultimate statement of "I don't want or need you" to God. I hope that his sheds some light on what real Christianity is and isn't. If you don't think that I'm presenting an accurate picture of what the Bible says on any point, or wish to know more specifically what the Bible says, let me know, and I can provide some backing. I didn't want to litter my paragraphs with references, and they would have taken a long time to compile, but I am certainly willing to do so upon request. If you find that my logic has holes or I'm misrepresenting something, or if you wish to discuss anything further, please let me know and we can discuss. Sincerely, Tim