Facts and Theories

Beer Part Two

2011-08-20T23:48:00.003-04:00

So since my first post I've actually had occasion to try a couple of other beers. My buddy Ryan brought over a can of Labatt Blue Light Lime. I'm not sure I enjoy the addition of lime flavor to beer.

That same evening, I split a bottle of Blue Moon Summer Honey Wheat with him. That I did enjoy. Wheat beers comprise the majority of what I've had so far, and I must say they are growing on me. I don't think honey can help but improve most things. Beer turned out to be no exception.

Finally, since Ryan is leaving for Germany, another friend and I took him to the RIT-local bar: MacGregors. The selection for the three of us that evening was a pint each of Great Lakes Holy Moses (another wheat beer, with orange and coriander). Though it seemed a bit stronger than the Blue Moon, (the time separation is enough that direct comparison isn't possible) it was quite enjoyable alongside a burger on wheat bread.

That puts me up to date blogging about beer.

Granola

2011-08-13T20:39:00.003-04:00

I've been tweaking this through a few batches and this is what seems to work.

3 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup honey

Combine oats and brown sugar. Melt butter, stir in honey. Combine with dry ingredients and stir until oats are coated. Spread evenly on a cookie sheet with foil. Bake at 325F for 13-20 minutes (until just lighter than golden brown), stirring every 5-7 minutes.

Beer

2011-08-05T19:04:00.002-04:00

My wonderful Aunt was in town, and since my 21st (legal age for alcohol possession in the US) birthday was a couple of weeks ago, she bought some beer for me. So I now have several to try, and I'll be blogging about what I've discovered.

Initial Inventory

Sam Adams Blackberry Witbier x6
Sam Adams Boston Lager x1
Blue Moon Summer Ale x2
Ellicotville Blueberry Wheat Beer x2
Ithaca Nut Brown x1
Saranac Adirondack Lager x1

Tonight I had a friend over for dinner, and we each had a Blackberry Witbier. The blackberry flavor was there, but barely detectable. The beer overall was slightly bitter but very enjoyable.

I'll continue to post my brief thoughts on the beers as I try them. Next up is most likely the Summer Ale.

From Chesterton's "Orthodoxy"

2011-07-18T18:57:00.001-04:00

But remember that this text is too lightly interpreted. It is constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is—Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? THAT is the problem the Church attempted; THAT is the miracle she achieved.

Garlic Fries Success!

2011-07-13T20:51:00.002-04:00

On my second attempt at making garlic fries, I was successful, modulo a few undercooked fries which can be attributed to a college apartment stove and cheap pan with very uneven heat distribution. Rather than follow the recipe which called for a two-step process of baking the oil-coated fries and then frying them in garlic butter, I went straight to the frying. I also decided to substitute cheddar for parmesan and chives for parsley.

Ingredients

3 cu. inches (approx) sharp white cheddar cheese
4 cloves of garlic
2 chives
4 tablespoons butter 1 large baking potato

Procedure

Slice potato into 1/4in by 1/4in strips. Melt butter over low-to-medium heat. Begin frying the potato strips in the butter. Increase heat to medium. Crumble cheddar cheese. Finely chop garlic. Chop chives. Combine these ingredients. Turn potato strips as they cook. When strips are golden brown on all sides, add cheese, garlic, and chives, stir with spatula. Place fries on plate covered with paper towel to drain excess butter. Serve immediately.

Abstract of Research in Transactional Events

2011-07-12T12:43:00.004-04:00

I'll be revising my abstract in this post. Comments appreciated.

Revision 1 (Initial Revision)

Transactional Events is an abstraction (a well-defined concept hiding implementation details) for communication between concurrent processes (multiple programs running at once). The current implementation of Transactional Events provides only the guarantee that a communication will happen if one is possible.

A particularly attractive possible guarantee is that of "fairness," which guarantees that for a concurrent thread which is repeatedly capable of communicating, there is no point after which it never communicates.

In each of our attempts to enforce this property in the implementation, we have been able to construct counterexamples which either prevent the system from making progress or escape the enforcement of the fairness guarantee. This leads us to suspect that enforcing fairness requires the solution of an undecidable problem.

To prove that enforcing fairness requires this solution we are attempting to demonstrate that an implementation which enforces fairness would permit the solution of such an undecidable problem. Such a demonstration would prove the impossibility of enforcing the fairness condition.

Finally, we are exploring if a condition similar to fairness but weak enough to enforce would still be useful.

Summer Research: Transactional Events (and other summer stuff)

2011-06-04T19:02:00.005-04:00

I'm in Rochester for the summer, primarily to do research with Matthew Fluet on Transactional Events. I'll be working on Dr. Fluet's implementation of Transactional Events (TxEvents) in Haskell.

I'll also be working with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship over the summer. I'm hoping to perhaps lead a "GIG" ("Group Investigating God") this summer, certainly in the fall. I'll also be working with the IV staff to explore our resources for outreach.

Hopefully I'll get to go to a baseball game in or two this summer. I'd like to make a trip to Cincinnati to finally see my Reds play at home, but who knows.

A Survey of Functional Reactive Programming [Link PDF]

2011-05-20T17:06:00.002-04:00

I just completed a survey paper of the literature on Functional Reactive Programming for an independent study. I'm posting it in the hope that it is useful to someone investigating FRP. http://www.cs.rit.edu/~eca7215/frp-independent-study/Survey.pdf

Project Ideas for the summer

2011-05-02T20:29:00.003-04:00

I'll be here over the summer working 30 hours/week on research, so I should have time to do other productive things. I plan on editing this list whenever I get more ideas. I've listed these in order of decreasing overall difficulty.

Ridiculous

Dalvik code generator for GHC
Bindings to Android libraries to go along with the above

Hard

Haskell bindings for the Cocoa API
Comms app for Android

Medium

Driving app for Android
FRP optimization benchmarking

Easy

Howto: Install GHC 7.0.3 on OS X 64-bit with shared library support

2011-04-03T17:28:00.004-04:00

I have JackOSX installed on my computer, which provides the JACK client libraries only as a dynamic library. I want to build Sonke Hahn and Henning Theilmann's Haskell bindings to the JACK library, but GHC doesn't come build with dynamic library support for OS X x86_64 in the Haskell Platform. I grabbed the GHC 7.0.3 sources and discovered the following steps to get a GHC install with dynamic library support. (You must have a working 64-bit GHC installed, I used 7.0.2 from HP 2011.2.)

Install libgmp (I used Homebrew). Though the GHC sources include libgmp, it doesn't build libgmp as a shared library, which causes problems linking integer-gmp later on. Installing libgmp through homebrew or macports will build libgmp as a shared library.
In the build tree, copy "mk/build.mk.sample" to "mk/build.mk".
Edit the "mk/config.mk" file, and find the line that says "PlatformSupportsSharedLibs = ..."
In the platform list on this line, add "x86_64-apple-darwin"
Run the configure script, making sure to use "--with-gmp-includes" and "--with-gmp-libraries" to tell configure where to find your preinstalled libgmp headers and libraries.
make && sudo make install

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for any damage caused by following these instructions. Building OS X 64 bit shared library code is obviously not officially supported by GHC, and I'm not sure it works for anything other than the simplest programs.

Edit: Don Stewart commented that a release of the Haskell Platform with support for dynamic libraries on OS X is due in early April 2011.

Demonstrating a Time Leak in Arrowized FRP

2011-03-22T14:32:00.005-04:00

One of the motivations for expressing FRP (Functional Reactive Programming) as signal functions is to avoid time leaks [1].

A time leak is a situation in which a value is dependent on past values for an arbitrary time interval, and they are not evaluated as they are produced, thus, suddenly forcing a value may take an arbitrary amount of time. This occurs in the following pathological example in Haskell with Yampa, but should be true in the general case for continuation-based signal function implementations in non-strict languages:

{-# LANGUAGE Arrows #-} 
module Main where 
 
import Data.Time.Clock
import Data.IORef
import FRP.Yampa
import System.Random
 
alt :: SF a b -> SF a b -> SF a (Event ()) -> SF a b
alt sf1 sf2 sfEv = proc inp -> do 
  outPair <- sf1 &&& sf2 -< inp
  evt <- sfEv -< inp
  swappedEvt <- accum (arr fst) -< evt `tag` (arr swap >>>) 
  rSwitch (arr fst) -< (outPair, swappedEvt) 
  
average = proc inp -> do 
  inpIntegral <- integral -< inp
  t <- time -< inp
  returnA -< inpIntegral / t
  
leak = (time &&& after 30 ()) >>> alt (constant 0) (arr fst >>> average) (arr snd) 
              
         
main = do 
  t <- getCurrentTime
  timeRef <- newIORef t 
  let init = return ()
      sense = (\_ -> do 
                  t' <- getCurrentTime
                  t <- readIORef timeRef 
                  let dt = realToFrac (t' `diffUTCTime` t) 
                  writeIORef timeRef t'
                  return (dt, Nothing) 
              ) 
      actuate = (\_ x -> do 
                    print x
                    return $ snd x > 60 
                ) 
  reactimate init sense actuate (leak &&& time)

Since the integral (within the average function) is dependent on all past values, and the average function is part of the network from the beginning, but its output is not required until 30 seconds into evaluation, it builds up an extremely long sequence of thunks. On my machine, one can observe the behavior as at the 30 second mark the program pauses for a short time and then trips a stack overflow, caused by running out of stack space for the chain of evaluations.

"Functional Reactive Programming, continued" Nilsson, Henrik and Courtney, Antony and Peterson, John, Haskell '02

Edited for forgotten citation

Corrected Instances for the MonadAttempt class

2011-01-19T10:13:00.003-05:00

In my previous post, I outlined the MonadAttempt class that I had created to solve a problem with code generation using a state monad in Haskell. This morning, with a much clearer mind, I was able to create much cleaner instances for the StateT and ErrorT monads:

instance (Monad m, MonadAttempt m) => MonadAttempt (StateT s m) where
  attempt a m = do s <- get
                   lift $ attempt a $ do (x, _) <- runStateT m s
                                         return x
 
instance (Error e, Monad m, MonadAttempt m) => MonadAttempt (ErrorT e m) where
  attempt a m = lift $ attempt a $ do e <- runErrorT m
                                      case e of
                                        Left _ -> return a
                                        Right x -> return x

The MonadAttempt Class

2011-01-18T22:51:00.006-05:00

While working on the code generator for my compiler construction class, I ran across a rather somewhat sticky issue. I am using a state monad to store code as it is generated. This allows me to very quickly build up sequences generated from an AST. However, for conditional instructions, I needed a jump location, which depends on the length of code generated *after* the conditional. There are several ways I could do this, but the solution I invented allows me to generate the code and then 'rewind', knowing the length of the code, and generating the jump instruction. I'm only going to demonstrate instances that I used in my code generator here, as I have not taken the time to write any others. I also haven't spent a lot of time verifying correctness or elegance, so I'd love to hear about any mistakes in the comments.


class Monad m => MonadAttempt m where
  attempt :: a -> m a -> m a

The MonadAttempt class defines 'attempt', which takes a default value and monadic action, and returns the result of the monadic action without its side effects, or the monadic action returning the default value if the input action fails.


instance MonadAttempt Identity where
  attempt _ m = m

The instance for the Identity monad is trivial. There are no side effects, so we can simply produce the action.

 
instance (Monad m, MonadAttempt m) => MonadAttempt (StateT s m) where
  attempt a m = do s <- get
                   (x, _) <- lift $ attempt (a, s) $ runStateT m s
                   return x

I suppose a more elegant solution would be a do block to extract just the return value from runStateT, but this worked for what I needed. runStateT is used to isolate the side effects, the transformed monad is recursively attempted with a new default value, and the the result is then lifted. But since lift is pure in the transformer (not necessarily the transformed) monad, the state is not updated, and we can extract just the value. (Note that we explicitly get the state and then use it to run the monad.)

 
 
instance (Error e, Monad m, MonadAttempt m) => MonadAttempt (ErrorT e m) where
  attempt a m = do e <- lift $ attempt (Right a) $ runErrorT m
                   case e of
                     Left _ -> return a
                     Right x -> return x

For ErrorT, we attempt the computation, return its result if we can, and if not, return the default value. Again, a do block for extracting the value is probably in order.

I will try to rewrite the StateT and ErrorT instances tomorrow such that they pass the same value to the recursive attempt calls (down the monad transformer stack). If I'm successful I'll post it here.

Update: I've posted corrected instances.

The Library

2010-11-06T01:28:00.002-04:00

I got a chance to do something that I have not done all quarter. I relaxed and read some stuff that I really enjoyed. Even when I've had spare time, sitting in my apartment, I wasn't able to do that. Something about the view from the fourth floor of the library, combined with the excitement of discovery (always available in a library) combined as God's gift of relaxation for me. Perhaps I will visit more often now.

Objectivism

2010-10-23T00:04:00.003-04:00

I like being curious. A number of great things come from it. I constantly come across interesting ideas and have my own ideas challenged. Today, on a whim (a prompting? likely...), I asked a guy from the RIT Objectivist society to describe objectivism for me. It's a good idea, and comes the nearest I've seen to creating a sound moral system without reference to an intentional lawgiver. Basically, objectivism takes rationality, and specifically rational pursuit of what is rationally good for oneself, as good. It fails, mainly on two counts:

It's circular. It insists that rationality is the highest good because it leads to altruism, fairness, liberty, and justice, which "we can all agree" are good. But this being philosophy, we have to demonstrate that they are good, upon which the objectivist insists they are rational, therefore they are good. This demonstrates objectivism's failure as a philosophy.

People aren't rational. This should be obvious to anyone whose interaction extends beyond people they agree with. Very few debates are ever kept rational, and interacting with the average person on the street will show you just how little people care about logic. This isn't to say rationality isn't a good or the good, simply that it's unattainable on the whole and thus objectivism is unrealistic as a societal system.

Focus, Procrastination, and Overdesign

2010-10-21T00:42:00.002-04:00

So tonight/this morning I finally accomplished a major task that has needed to be done since this summer, and had an absolute deadline of tomorrow evening. This, my friends, is procrastination at it's finest. Not that I'm proud of that, but I think I know why it happens.

With a deadline far off, I overthink and overdesign things, and then get frustrated. When I get frustrated, I lose focus and look for the first distraction. Being up against a deadline somehow eliminates overdesigning. I can't design anymore, I just do. My code flows out of my mind into the computer, I find bugs quickly, and solve problems on a dime. Suddenly I'm a model of efficiency.

Now if I could replicate that focus when I'm not up against a deadline, it would be great. Tricky, yes, but now that I have this realization and know what to look for, maybe I can find a way to focus well before deadlines.

A Captive Audience

2010-09-16T23:14:00.004-04:00

I was reminded again tonight why I often dislike going to things like small groups.

Since joining Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, I've been a part of some wonderful small groups. I was surrounded by people passionate about God, loving each other, discussing, agreeing, disagreeing, serving each other, serving others, and praying for each other. Other small group experiences have not gone so well.

A particular kind of problem plagues many small groups. The problem, like nearly all problems, comes attached to a person. This presents me the delicate task of attempting to neutralize the problem without attacking the person. Even though I am referring to an abstract, general person, concrete (though anonymous) examples will be necessary to explain my points.

I will begin by saying that I've been this person. I've probably driven people away from small groups by being this person. My intent here is not to condemn but to shine a light on this problem so that people can realize "Hey, I do that... Maybe it is harmful and I should work on it."

With the various though necessary disclaimers in place, I will pose a scenario familiar to almost anyone who has attended a small group. Awkwardness inevitably ensues during introductions, this is a necessary fact of human interaction. However, you might bump into someone who inserts their entire life testimony and a mini-sermon into their introduction. This introduces even more awkwardness because no one finds this particularly interesting, it's badly delivered, out of place, and distracting, but no one has the <insert pluralized necessary anatomical feature of choice> to say so.

The awkwardness of introductions over, Bible study commences. Depending on the competence of the leaders and the willingness of the group members to engage and politely discuss (and disagree), this can be a wonderful opportunity to learn something new. One thing will easily prevent all of this though. Someone will use the passage as a launching point for (once again) their sermon. (Not miniaturized this time). At this point, you're probably suppressing thoughts that you could interrupt them mid-word and then finish their sermon exactly for them, because you've heard it all before. Now you are guilty of suppressing the truth. (I kid, I kid.) It is fact though. It is a performance we are all familiar with and many of us are guilty of.

We go to small group to impress people with our knowledge. Guess what. The people in your small group aren't struck dumb by your brilliance. They're wondering how to shut you up without looking like jerks, because our society frowns upon insisting that fools be silent, and frowns even more upon contradicting a person or even appearing to, thus permitting the tyranny of any idea stated bluntly and early enough.

Small group is not a place for you to pontificate and insist that God gave you a word. God probably wants you to hear what his word already says, he doesn't need you to editorialize or extend it. Study the word, offer opinions on the passage presented, argue semantics, argue metaphors, provide cultural context. GO FOR IT! But don't tyrannize your group with a long-winded presentation about why alcohol is bad because it's the modern day apple of Eden. And if you do and someone that cares a bit less about societal opinion than average is in your group, you've got no right to be angry when they politely ask you to shut up, or contradict what you just said.

An argument against subjective reality:

2010-09-06T13:28:00.003-04:00

Summarized from a portion of a lecture by Dr. David Suits at RIT:

We know what it means to correct ourselves, this shows a distinction between belief and truth because to correct is to assert that our belief did not coincide with truth.

The American Envoy to the Hiroshima Memorial

2010-08-06T08:19:00.002-04:00

There's quite a hubbub in some circles about the Obama administration being the first American administration to send an envoy to Japan's annual Hiroshima memorial. I just have a quick thought:

It's perfectly alright for Obama to send an envoy, so long as it's done appropriately. The envoy can and should express regret as to the necessity of the attack, and regret for the innocent lives lost. This is not an apology. What the envoy should not do is somehow apologize or claim that America was wrong in this action, having been forced by the Japanese conduct of the war to choose between that or the loss of millions of civilian and military lives in an invasion of Japan, short of which the Japanese, as they had stated, would not have stopped fighting. So let's see what happens, and criticize after.

A Preliminary on Pacifism

2010-04-29T23:04:00.003-04:00

I've ordered Meic Pearse's book "The God's Of War" (InterVarsity Press), and I cannot wait to read it. In the mean time, I've been thinking about and studying the topic of the relationship of violent force and conflict to the Christian life. My own thinking had led me to a very caustic argument which thankfully was tempered by a discussion with my roommate Ryan.

So I'm not going to actually detail anything here, this is just a teaser, but the basic thought is that hardline pacifism, as well as (perhaps more obviously) hardline aggression are irreconcilable with the Bible, as well as with more generally accepted moral norms. It's late tonight, but I hope to expound on this soon.

Why I'm Not Participating in the Day of Silence.

2010-04-15T20:18:00.002-04:00

The GLBT National Day of Silence is tomorrow. Its stated purpose is commendable. Lifestyle choices are no excuse for bullying or hatred.

However, what many people miss is that these are, in fact, choices. These people have chosen their lifestyle. They are not being persecuted for their color, for their gender, for their physical makeup, or for their country of birth. The challenges of respect for this community are too often equated with the challenges of respect for people who are persecuted for birth, not choice. I do not support their choice, and while I do not wish bullying or hatred on anyone, neither do I respect choices which are abhorrent to the very purpose of mankind, especially when they demand respect for those choices.

Thus, I will not participate, not to condone the hateful actions taken against this community, but to demonstrate how to properly and respectfully oppose their agenda.

In Case You Weren't Aware: Our Patent System is Broken

2010-03-03T10:07:00.002-05:00

Article at The Register

Apple is suing HTC, the maker of several phones running Google's Android phone OS, over about 20 patent violations. Apple apparently holds patents on things like event-driven software. If you've ever taken a CS class, this is the first thing you learn when you start writing GUIs. It's been around for a long time, and yet Apple has a patent on it. If the patent stands, almost every non-apple piece of software that uses a graphical user interface (if you aren't a computer programmer, this is likely every piece of software you use) will be in violation. That's not to say they'll all go away, some companies have their own portfolios of ridiculous patents big enough that they could counter-sue, and Apple knows it.

The Wisdom of Pursuing Wisdom

2010-02-06T08:47:00.007-05:00

Happy is the man who finds wisdom, And the man who gains understanding; For her proceeds are better than the profits of silver, And her gain than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies, And all the things you may desire cannot compare with her

Proverbs 3:13-15 (NKJV)

phi⋅los⋅o⋅phy n. 1. Love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you will become happy, if you get a bad one, you will become a philosopher.

Socrates

phi⋅los⋅o⋅phy n. 1. Meaningless abstract discussions carried on by academics, clergy, and overzealous laymen with a penchant for arguing and/or nothing better to do with their time.

Joe Christian

Ask someone at your church, or in your youth group, or small group, or Christian fellowship, or anywhere else you find a large gathering of Christians, about philosophy, and you will almost certainly get a number of cynical comments about its uselessness and divisiveness. Certainly philosophy involves disagreement, and certainly it often requires abstract discussion of concepts that you could not immediately put to work to put food on the table or tell the guy sitting next to you in the cubicle or classroom about Christ.

Yet philosophy is an exercise in equipping ourselves for situations which everyone encounters. Many of us have had the experience of being caught in a situation where we are genuinely unsure of the right thing to do. Others know people with thoughtful objections to Christianity which we do not know how to answer. Philosophy provides us a framework for pursuing solutions to these and other issues.

It is for good reason that the Bible spends at least one entire book extolling the virtue of wisdom. It is also pointed out in this book that wisdom must be pursued. It is not something that is handed to us, (perhaps excepting Solomon), it is not something which any of us are born with. It must be developed. Philosophy is the practice of developing wisdom by spending time carefully weighing various ideas on their merit.

If this doesn't sound like the philosophy you've studied in school or heard about, that's because the word philosophy has been taken to mean anything which deals with the nature of thought, decision, or morality. A great deal of what is practiced under the banner of philosophy is in fact sophism. The distinction is this: The word philosophy describes the action undertaken by those who called themselves philosophers, or "lovers of wisdom." The word sophism describes the thought and attitudes of the sophists, or self-described "wise men." These men had no interest in pursuing wisdom because they thought themselves already wise. You will notice that this is a great deal of what happens when people discuss "philosophy" today.

But it need not be so. There are individuals for whom philosophy is still an important pursuit, and this should include every Christian on the planet, heeding the command to pursue wisdom. There are many avenues to this, but I have formal study of philosophy extremely useful in clarifying my own thoughts as well as showing distinctions which I had long conflated. It would be most helpful if many more people learned these methods of thought and the practice of carefully distinguishing ideas from each other.

The long awaited controversial post

2009-08-14T02:29:00.004-04:00

OK, so a lot of posts on this blog happen to be controversial. This is the post referred to in the "teaser" a while ago though. Sorry it's taken so long, but I didn't think it was ready. Tonight, it all crystallized.

Tonight, I finally got to watch a movie I've wanted to see for a long, long time. Air Force One starring Harrison Ford is amazing. So many moral dilemnas, and so many people actually putting thought into them because they want to do what is right. Unfortunately, that also makes this movie completely unrealistic.

Why? Why can't we at least have some hope that people would make the right choices? Because our culture doesn't have a single clue about right and wrong. Our culture is one which eschews everything that might interfere with personal feelings or personal gain, and even manages to moralize much of it in the bargain.

If you are looking for evidence of this, look at our politics. Very few people look for a politician who will do what is right. Thus, the politicians who do run on what is right get nowhere. Instead, we have politicians willing to:

Permit and encourage the murder of unborn children.
- For the convenience of people insistent on their right to be sexually promiscuous without consequence.
- For people who insist only raising children they wanted to have.
- For the utterly sick purpose of extracting their lives for healing other lives.
Encourage a demotivated and jealous segment of society to use the government to rob anyone trying to make an honest living.
Withdraw from honest men the means to protect themselves, their families, and their liberty.
Spit in the face of people we began to liberate.

But as I said, the politicians are a symptom, not a cause. The people of our culture are willing to:

Murder unborn children.
- For the convenience of people insistent on their right to be sexually promiscuous without consequence.
- For people who insist only raising children they wanted to have.
- For the utterly sick purpose of extracting their lives for healing other lives.
Use the government to rob anyone trying to make an honest living.
Withdraw from honest men the means to protect themselves, their families, and their liberty.
Spit in the face of people we began to liberate.

Why?

Because, as failing humans, we turned from God, our benevolent creator and the only true source of any moral standing. We didn't even turn towards wealth. (Some did.) We didn't look for power (Some did.) We looked for convenience. Yes, my friends, our selfishness was in laziness. We not willing to sacrifice our comfort in any measure for any good.

We are willing to kill a child rather than raise it. We are willing to sit on our hands and rob those who are successful rather than work for a living. We are willing to deprive men the ability to defend themselves, ostensibly that we might be more secure, but in reality, that we might not face the truth that violence is in this world and that justice and peace often demand the execution of violence.

There is no peace without justice. In this world, there is no justice without violence. This is paradoxical unless one gives up the cowardly assertion that all violence is intrinsically evil. This is cowardly because it is untrue, and because it is convenient of thought. No moral reasoning is required beyond violent→evil. This is not an endorsement of all violence. This is a challenge to wrestle with whether it might be necessary for us to turn to it to restore justice.

If we are willing to accept God's word on the matter (many are not, but there are a few), I would invite you to examine Genesis, Chapter 9. This is only one of many passages (it is perhaps the most blatant) which demonstrate that God demands that we have the moral courage to physically stand up to violent injustice.

Many will dispute with me that there is a God. Some of them have honest intellectual reasons for doing so. Most are just so set on themselves or so hateful towards anything which might mean they are accountable that they might not be reasoned with.

Some will dispute the character of God with me. If they are willing to wrestle honestly I am open to discuss, argue, scream, shout, discuss over tea and biscuits, anything.

Some Christians might even dispute his character with me. I invite them to debate on our common ground, the Bible.

But let us not have this cowardice anymore. Come forward and let us honestly, passionately, and tenaciously strive for the truth. Let us bring our bitterness, our preconceived notions, our reasoning, and put it all under the light. Let us, by the grace of God, be a beginning to stopping this madness.

What are we scared of?

2009-07-31T23:00:00.003-04:00

I love my workplace. I love the freedom to do my work in an inventive, efficient, and educational way. I love working with a light-hearted, but motivated, group of individuals. I love the banter, the dueling wits, and the questions.

The questions are my favorite. I get questions every day about the life that I lead and the God that I serve. Interestingly, people have a conception that I might be offended by these questions though. Why?

One of my co-workers has another question almost every morning. This is encouraging, but after several weeks, he's still beginning every question with "I'm not trying to be a d**k, but..." Why is this? Why does he think that I'll consider it offensive that he asks me questions? Having watched many Christians respond to questions (hostile or otherwise) from non-believers, skeptics, and those we misleadingly term "seekers," I think I have an idea.

Christians have taken the idea of "absolute truth" and confused it with "unquestionable truth." Of course we know the Bible to be God's word, so why do we get defensive when questioned? Why do we not put the effort into studying, thinking, and praying about this so that we are "ready to give an answer?" Instead, we turn on people with questions and act as though they are attacking us. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but in any case, we do not help our cause by getting offended by questions. I'm glad this guy isn't scared enough of offending me to ask.

Teaser...

2009-07-07T01:01:00.005-04:00

Just tonight I've got a lot of thought material for a post on an incredibly controversial topic. Some of you will guess what it is as soon as you see this, and the rest will just have to wait and find out. I am planning on posting tomorrow evening.

EDIT: Tomorrow being college time. (Tomorrow is the time after the next period of sleep.)
EDIT: Post delayed due to massive headache.

EDIT: Post still further delayed due to unscheduled internet downtime at my domocile. Not setting a further date, just watch this space.

A different perspective

2009-07-01T22:02:00.002-04:00

I work with some very interesting people at my internship. One of them in particular, the backup operator who shows up maybe once a week and sits at the desk next to mine, is quite interesting to talk to. As today wound down we got into a discussion on the similarities and differences in our beliefs. He is Islamic, and had some interesting perspectives on God and our relationship to Him.

One comment he made really stuck out to me though. Having discussed the Muslim belief that Jesus was a prophet, and the Christian belief that he was the only Son of God, he made this comment: "It is beyond absurd to a Muslim that a prophet, much less God, would go through hell-fire for the sins of man."

This got me thinking. We as Christians take that sacrifice so for granted, so lightly. We've heard so much about it, generalized it so much, and talked about it so much that it just seems a given. But in reality, we are so blessed that God did indeed sacrifice his Son for us.

Obama, "By the people", and the social contract

2009-06-29T22:59:00.004-04:00

President Obama recently declared that the military removal of Manuel Zelaya, the president of Honduras, was illegal. This despite the fact that Zelaya violated the Honduran constitution, ignored a court order to stand down, led a mob to break into the place where ballots were held for a referendum, began distributing them, and was arrested by the military, whose leader was acting under a court order and in accordance with the law and constitution of Honduras. The congress of Honduras has also asserted as much.

Fox News: Obama: Ouster of Honduras President Was an Illegal Coup
WSJ: Honduras Defends Its Democracy

What does this tell us about President Obama's view of the law? In this case, it would appear that he considers a government official to be above the social contract. The governments of the United States, Honduras, and many other countries exist under contract with their people. These contracts are the Constitutions of these lands. If President Obama respected this basic principle of governing free peoples, he would not support Zelaya after he acted clearly outside his authority and in direct opposition to the document which grants him that authority.

In Honduras, the people have the guts to stand up and resist the president's actions. Fortunately, the military leader acted in accordance with the law and submitted himself to its jurisdiction. This was not a coup, it was the proper and legal removal of a criminal official.

Here in the United States, we are not nearly as gutsy. Go read the Tenth Amendment, then tell me what we should be doing.

Wait what?

2009-06-22T21:53:00.002-04:00

I just started reading a book on assembly language. It's free under the GFDL. This will confuse most of my RIT friends (outside of IV) and most of my Sidney friends. The book, on one of the more arcane topics in computing, included a Veggie Tales reference. I did a double take, but it's there.

Soft Music By Hard Bands

2009-06-15T21:56:00.002-04:00

Some of the best slow, heart-wrenching songs are done by bands best known for hard, heavy rock and metal. I put together this play list for some examples. Bookmark this page, I'll be updating this playlist.

Interesting Perspective On Homosexuality

2009-06-11T21:52:00.004-04:00

I have a co-worker at FXCM who is Islamic. He was not raised this way, but converted into this religion. We had an interesting conversation after he happened upon an article about homosexuality in animals.

"Oh my," quoth he, "LGBT will be all over this." (mocking tone) "It's natural!"

Yes, we can all be assured that yet again, the militant LGBT lobby will attempt to persuade all of us that we have no reason nor right to consider any of their activities as perversions, since this behavior is evident in the animal world. My friends take on that perspective came out in an eloquent and explosive statement:

Non-P.C. content follows, be advised.

"Dogs lick their balls, does that mean I should too?"

His point is well taken. The behaviors of the animal world are not models nor justifications for any human behavior. Animals are promiscuous, they eat many foul things, they fight brutally over food, they indulge in social behaviors which are perfectly natural to them but vulgar to us. Animal homosexuality can easily be classed in this category. Please, argue on something more substantive.

Adobe Flash 10?

2009-06-11T21:44:00.002-04:00

I can't be the only one wondering about this, but after Adobe did a pre-release of their 64 bit flash plugin for Linux in February, they seemed to have dropped 64 bit support in the release. This is annoying, because now that Flash 10 is actually released, some sites (looking at you Facebook) won't let me play videos without it. However, I'm not about to hassle with getting the 32 bit version working under nspluginwrapper.

So the subway is good for something...

2009-06-08T21:04:00.003-04:00

Seen on the J train as part of Columbia's "Train of Thought" series:

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the need for thought.

I'm sure there is an originator, but I'm a bit too lazy to look up who it is right now.

Lecrae

2009-06-01T23:17:00.003-04:00

Every once in a while, there are songs that send a little thrill down my spine when I listen to them. Usually I've heard the songs before, but their full impact strikes me and I get an urge to listen to them. This happened to me with two songs involving the Christian rapper Lecrae.

I hate rap. I can't stand it. It's not just that most secular rap delves into the deep, dark hellholes of human depravity, I don't like the style. My feelings for message sometimes transcending my feelings for music, however, I happen to like some Christian rap. Two songs in particular:

These songs go to the heart of what it means to be a committed Christian.

A Terrible Tragedy

2009-06-01T00:54:00.003-04:00

A terrible thing happened today. A man with the blood of untold numbers of innocent, helpless children on his hands was killed.

"Such insensitive sarcasm!" I hear the voices of my friends, Christian and non-Christian alike. Surely we should all mourn the tragedy of this senseless violence?

My title was not, indeed, sarcastic, though my first explication of it may have been. There was a tragic situation that ended Sunday, May 30, 2009. This man was serving in a church. Not just attending, he was serving as an usher.

No wonder the Christian church is no longer effective. We preach love for all men, while allowing a man who slaughters children for a living to serve in a respected position in our midst. We refuse to take an absolute stand and denounce this man for what he is, a murderer deserving of death. Over the next few days, you will hear almost everyone denouncing this "senseless act of violence."

The senseless violence goes on every day as babies are murdered in the name of liberty. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal (except the unborn), that they are endowed by their Creator with certain and inalienable rights, and that among these are life (unless they are unborn), liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Think about it. The worst mass murder in history is happening here in the United States. "Do you possess the constitution, the depth of faith, to go as far as is needed?"

"Dependent On Others"

2009-04-11T17:03:00.004-04:00

I was talking with a friend at breakfast, and the subject of politics came up. (Hey, it's me!) She made the interesting comment that she has some more liberal views because she thought people should be more dependent on each other.

While I'm not entirely sure that I agree with that sentiment on a social level, I can say for certain that liberalism, if that is indeed its aim, is going about it entirely the wrong way.

Liberalism creates dependence on one entity, and one entity only. That entity is the government. People look to the government to pay for their healthcare, their retirement, their food, and their housing. People look to the government to educate their children, to protect them from "'hate crimes," and to assist with "emotional distress."

Liberals embrace socialism because it creates government dependence. (Socialism is, for good reason, a dirty word in America, so many liberals will never admit to this.) It does this in two closely related and interdependent ways. First, by heavily taxing those who achieve lifestyles which allow them to live without reliance on the government for their needs, it creates a disincentive to do so. Second, by utilizing the revenues to increase the governments power and provide many "rights" to the "less fortunate," it incentivizes a lifestyle dependent on the government.

The economic system advocated by conservatives moves this dependence from the government to other individuals. Capitalism, or "the free market" is by definition the interdependence of individuals of what is often termed "enlightened self-interest." Rather than trying to unnaturally force the naturally selfish creature we call humanity to give up all of its interests, this concept merely requires a level of cooperation for mutual benefit. Since I obviously cannot build my own computer myself from raw sand, copper ore, and petroleum, nor do I have the resources to obtain even these raw materials, I must seek ways to obtain them through mutual co-operation with other individuals. Since I do not want to grow my own wheat, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and cows to have my roast beef sub sandwich, I must co-operate with other individuals. By extension, many individuals seeking a common goal can form a corporation, which I as an individual or a corporation can interact with. This system creates a web of interdependencies allowing each person to do what he does best.

But, cry the liberals, some are not as fortunate, some are not well-served by this system.

Two responses are in order. First, the less fortunate are often those who used hard times as an excuse to seek handouts from others. Many a wealthy entrepreneur spent several years of his life trying and failing, living in poverty, but never giving up, to finally break through and achieve his goal. It should also be noted that charity is never a bad thing, but taxing the rich and providing welfare to the poor is not charity. In fact, it removes the opportunity for those who have the means to be charitable. Second, the system of socialism, historically, reduces far more to poverty than it ever brings up, while the system of capitalism has given many the means to remove themselves from poverty.

Capitalism is far more organic, efficient means of cooperation than liberal socialism could ever hope to be. It is also far more difficult to corrupt, and far less likely to be manipulated by any one person for their own gain at the expense of the rest of a society. Yes, everyone tries to "game the system" (gain a competitive edge), but, this competition breeds healthy growth, rather than singular greed and arrogance.

On Epicurus

2009-02-13T07:56:00.006-05:00

The following argument was quoted to me by a classmate, attributed to Epicurus the philosopher:

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

"Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

"Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

"Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

It is, on the surface, a formidable argument, as it appears to make a powerful case by contradiction. However, I contend that his case was weakened by several implicit assumptions.

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent." Granted

"Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent." This is where Epicurus makes his first implicit assumption. If God is able to prevent evil, does that necessarily mean that the entire responsibility for evil lies with him? Consider also, that the only way God could prevent evil would be by the removal of the free will of human kind. We are not free unless we are free to choose wrongly. Perhaps God is not malevolent, but values freedom above the complete absence of evil.

"Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?" Here again, the point must be made that mere capability does not of necessity produce responsibility. Also, missing throughout this argument is a definition of "evil." If evil merely means what is harmful to humanity, then by Epicurus's own reductionism it must mean what is good for individual humans. (Never mind that reductionism makes it nearly impossible to define good or evil at all.) Since what is beneficial to one may be harmful to another, evil by definition could not be prevented, even by omnipotence. If we define evil as being that which is against God, then he did not produce it. Evil stems from the free will of mankind, and to remove evil as a choice would be to remove that free will. Good would then no longer be good, no longer normative, but merely descriptive. The entire power of the concept of good and evil lies in the choice. Evil exists because the choice exists, and because some have chosen evil. The responsibility lies with those who have made that choice. (All of us have, at some point.)

"Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" The singular point as it stated is granted, but since we have broken the argument on two of the other possible predicates, there is no longer much to consider here.

C.S. Lewis once made the point that evil cannot exist in and of itself, but only as a perversion, contention to, or dark reflection of good. Evil is not a creation of God, but a perversion of his creation by creatures of free will. Evil is a problem with humanity, not with God. God does not allow evil to exist because he does not care or because it pleases him. Rather, we have created evil of our own devices, and ensnared ourselves in it. God is our only hope of escape, not our ultimate scapegoat. The point should also be observed that if evil is dependent on good, it can never ultimately defeat good. With this consideration, it seems perfectly reasonable that evil may be permitted to exist for a time, that its final defeat may be the greater.

TwitterFault

2009-01-31T11:09:00.004-05:00

I just sent this to Dan in retribution for the TwitterFault. (Dan did an entire issue of Segfault, our CSH funny paper, using twitter feeds.) For those of you missing the joke, see http://xkcd.com/491/.

On Segfault seen
A sore regression
Twitter feeds
Find ill expression
Burma Shave

Music and My Life

2009-01-25T16:31:00.003-05:00

It's amazing how descriptive of my life music can be:

Who I was: Demon Hunter - Ribcage

Who I'm becoming: Demon Hunter - I Am You

What I miss most in life right now: Anberlin - Paperthin Hymn

What I love most in life right now: Andy Hunter - The Wonders Of You

What I live for:: Demon Hunter - Storm The Gates Of Hell

Why I'm so picky about music: Anberlin - A Whisper And A Clamor

My life prayer: Red - Breathe Into Me

My faith: Red - Lost

My hope: Demon Hunter - Undying

My politics: Disciple - Game On

My enjoyment of life: Family Force 5 - Get Your Back Off The Wall

A Wonderful Book

2009-01-21T13:35:00.002-05:00

I'm currently reading Michael W. Perry's collection of G.K. Chesterton: "Chesterton on War and Peace." I'll review it and philosophize a little when I finish it. It's wonderful philosophy and humor. Huge thanks to Grammy and Grandpa for the book.

2 Line PHP Function To Convert CIDR Postfix to Netmask

2009-01-20T23:10:00.004-05:00

This is a problem with lots of really ugly solutions. Here's one that works, producing the correct output when called as a parameter to long2ip:

function cidr2longnetmask($cidr) {
  if($cidr > 32 || $cidr < 0) {
    return false;
  }
  $netmask = pow(2,$cidr) - 1;
  $netmask = $netmask << (32 - $cidr);
  return $netmask;
}

That's it. Tested with all integers from 0-32 (others return false.)

Music, A Gift

2009-01-08T23:46:00.002-05:00

I love music. Ever since I was young I have learned to appreciate it as an art, as a tool, and as a practice for the mind. It's something that always make situations glaringly clear in my life, and expresses things that I never could.

Music Is Power

Many people I talk to listen to music purely for enjoyment. (This seems to me to be a motivation for a lot of things for some people, and it seems to me a hollow one, but that is another post.) I listen to music for meaning. God crafted our souls in such a way that we respond to music, and that it carries meanings far different than words can express. Music communicates the dancing, deceptive, often abstract, irrational feelings in our soul. Combining this communication and resonance with the power of skillful language and you have a powerful communication tool. More importantly, people are often incredibly impervious to mere language. As hard as it is for me to accept, not everyone applies rationality to thought. Music bypasses this, and convinces by some innate persuasion, difficult if not impossible to understand, and all the more effective for it.

Music Is Emotion

I'm not a very emotional person. I tend not to have emotional displays, except of frustration, and even then it takes a long time to build. Music is a way for me to let out my emotions. Listening to music that reflects my mood allows me to grasp what I'm feeling and deal with it, if need be. I also use music to communicate how I'm feeling with others. Some people pick up on this, others don't, but the music I'm listening to is generally a very good indicator of how I'm feeling.

Music Is Belief

Music, especially good music with well-written lyrics, communicates a belief. It communicates the writer's entire outlook on life. In my case, it often reflects the listener's viewpoint. I find that I can often see a point of view much more readily when it is musically expressed. At the same time, music has the power not only to present a point of view, but persuade in favor of it, or to strengthen it.

Music Is Frankness

Music is my outlet of choice for things that I want to talk about, but don't want to say anything about. The music I listen to is more blunt than I am (suprisingly), and it often puts my thoughts exactly into words and sound on a particular feeling.

God created music for all of these purposes. It is beyond me how anyone could think that a material and random world would bring in something so functional, elegant, but yet so materially pointless as music. Music trancends the ability of the material.

The Trigger

There were a few songs that spurred me to write this. Here's one:
As I Lay Dying - I Never Wanted

I never wanted
and I never cared before
Now take it back
This is a new day

How I long to regress
To the days before I took upon myself
The obsession of this world
A day of innocence equating beauty
For tomorrow may fall
And today is already gone

Now take it back
This is a new day

I've grown tired of chasing
Convinced I was in need
And now the years I've spent
Only a slave to this
Tomorrow may fall
And today is already gone
I will no longer adore
These things that will never satisfy me

I've seen my world change
And then go back to where it came
In this vicious circle
We are all brought back to life
Only to die again
But without these barren obsessions
I am simply free

Christian Dating, Why Does It Matter?

2008-12-26T21:39:00.001-05:00

Most of my non-Christian friends should just ignore this, except possibly the last paragraph or two, since this post assumes a Christian perspective and does not defend assumptions inherent in the Christian worldview. The possible exception is those who are dating Christians, if only to understand that I'm not trying to direct any ire in your direction.

Why Does This Even Matter?

So why does this issue even matter? Why do I make a fuss about it at all?

Simply:

God cares, and he told us he cares.
The issue of what love is is at stake.
It addresses a common misconception about dating and our approach to it.

Part of being a Christian is following the standards and concepts in the Bible. The Bible is a record of communication from God to humankind in general. One of the first things we find in the Bible is a definition of the purpose of marriage.

C.S. Lewis had a rather low opinion of the kind of "love" most people consider important. There are a few reasons for this. It's not the kind of love generally discussed or considered important in the Bible. It doesn't last, or at best it cycles between extremes. And we can't consciously control it, so no moral principles can be applied to it.

The issue of dating has a lot of assumptions associated with it which I find extremely misleading. The idea of dating is to try various people for "compatibility" until you find a "compatible" person. Notice the implication that "love" follows from and is an indicator of "compatibility."

The Biblical Approach

Most biblical arguments for marriage between Christians center around 2 Corinthians 6:14 "Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?"

I'm not going to argue from this verse, though I might reference it. I think I can do better from a different passage: Genesis 2:19-24:

"Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

The man said, 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called "woman, " for she was taken out of man.'

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh."

Here we find the Biblical definition of marriage. Marriage is a partnership, a union, to accomplish a specific goal.

So what is this goal?

There's a couple, actually...

The first can also be found in Genesis, in chapter 1. Genesis 1 is an overview of creation, followed by a more specific account of human creation in Genesis 2. Genesis 1:28:

"God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

First off, an onery side point: I need to do a Christian refutation of basic conservationist philosophy off this verse.

OK, so, we actually found 2 purposes here: Be fruitful and multiply, (reproduce) and fill the earth.

Subdue the earth.

Man is God's "Long arm" to rule the earth. But this is not the whole reason we are to "fill" it. This is a commanded purpose in and of itself, and also contributes to the purpose alluded to next

The second main purpose of man can be found in Ecclesiastes (the Bible's treatise on philosophy), chapter 12, verse 13:

"Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."

Not much to argue there. We exist to fear (or worship) God and to keep his commandments (part of worship).

So we may say that "love" is a "necessary but not sufficient" condition for marriage. (I am using "love" as opposed to love to distinguish the English confusion in terms from from the original English meaning and the Greek 'agape'). Marriage has a purpose, as a partnership for life goals. The life goal for followers of the Bible is to fear God and keep his commandments. So it logically follows that one with this life goal should fine another with this life goal.

(The dangers inherent to the Christian won't be discussed here, they are real, but not a sufficient or relevant argument in this case.)

The role of dating, and the role of "love" and love

I'm going to take my second and third points together, since the misconceptions about both are deeply intertwined. Maybe I can disentangle this mess for someone. I hope so.

Many people, Christian and non-Christian, have a misconception about the Biblical concept of love. The popular idea of "love" is a feeling, a set of warm fuzzies you get when you are in physical, mental, or emotional proximity to another person. The problem here is inherent. It's a feeling, we can't do anything about it. It doesn't have to make us do anything. The statement "I can't control how I feel" is true, though it doesn't excuse or justify the things it's generally used to. However, the biblical idea of love is not a feeling, not warm and fuzzy, but a decision, a conscious choice to respect a person and act a certain way toward them. A decision to put their welfare ahead of your own.

So how does this apply to dating? The usual idea of dating is to experiment until you find the person who gives you most warm fuzzies, (sexual involvement often included), and they must be right.

If we look at dating as the pursuit of an eventual marriage partner (the alternative is selfish, the pursuit of "warm fuzzies"), we should at least be looking for people who meet certain basic criteria. We should at least be looking for people who share our purpose for this partnership. Also, approaching it with "well I know the first or second usually doesn't work out" is just idiotic. Why set yourself up for failure?

I'm done ranting. My point is made. One more needs mentioning. God isn't trying to keep you from a "loving" relationship with a bunch of rules. God has a purpose for your life. God has a purpose for marriage. They are interrelated. God puts rules in place to help us better live our lives and accomplish our purposes.

I hope this helps someone understand why it is so important to find a Christian as a life partner.

Clockfort.org!

2008-09-30T01:54:00.001-04:00

http://clockfort.org
Self explanatory.

Oops. There's A Reason They Can Use That Info For ID!

2008-09-19T12:49:00.002-04:00

So here is my situation. I'm a conservative voter attending college in a state guaranteed to go blue this election (as far as political guarantees go.) My home residence is in a big swing state. So, naturally, I'm going to vote via absentee ballot so my vote actually means something. Since I'm supporting McCain this time around, I filled out the ballot request request form on their website. (Yes, you have to request a postcard that is a request for a ballot. Oh well.) This postcard comes with no envelope, and is rather large. To legally identify myself, I have to write my driver's license number, the last 4 digits of my social security number, or include a copy of a photo ID or government document with my name and address. There is no way I am sending any of these things through the mail without an envelope. There is a reason they can be used to legally identify me. I'm supposed to be the only one outside the government who knows these things. Oh well. The McCain campaign is printing and sending these things, and I'll be writing them to complain. I'll post the email address here when I'm less lazy and you all can email them too.

Faith, Fact, and Logic: Do They Really Conflict?

2008-09-07T18:46:00.005-04:00

Most people understand that religion is based on faith. In fact, this is a frequent criticism of religion and Christianity. Many people dismiss religion on the basis that faith cannot be grounded in fact and logic. By the same token, many Christians dismiss logic and science as incompatible with their faith. Both positions are false, flawed, and stem from a flawed understanding of the nature of faith.

Blind or Far-Seeing?

This flawed understanding holds that faith is a blind belief, a belief made purely arbitrarily with no logical grounds. To justify this position, both sides point to John 20:29: “Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’”

Jesus here is praising Thomas for his belief, while admonishing him that it would have been better for him not to doubt until he had seen. However, Christ was not asking Thomas to make an arbitrary, unsupported decision to believe. Christ had already proven that he could be trusted. He had already made prophecies that had proven to be true, performed miracles, and fulfilled prophecies that his Father had made through the Hebrew prophets thousands of years earlier. Christ had plenty of basis for his credibility. Further, he had told his disciples what would happen several years before the crucifixion and resurrection took place. Christ's admonishment to Thomas was a result of Thomas' refusal to trust Christ after he had already proven his credibility. Thomas was not admonished for refusal to believe blindly, but for refusal to accept extremely well-based credentials.

Faith as a Reasonable Attitude

We operate on faith every day. When we walk down a flight of stairs, we have faith that the stairs will hold us. We do not come to this belief blindly, rather, it is our experience that solid staircases will hold us. We have seen stairs to be trustworthy over a period of time, thus we assume that they will be trustworthy. Our daily life requires innumerable such assumptions. It is this type of faith that Christians are called to have. We are asked to examine the logic of God's existence, influence on history, and purpose to save mankind for a relationship with Himself. God has provided many proofs of his existence and purpose (explored in other posts).He now asks us, on this basis, to trust him to fulfill everything else he has promised. This is the basis of the Christian faith.

A Basis for Argument

"You can't argue someone into the faith..."

I hear this time and again. It is essentially true, but also misleading. Many Christians assume that the point of debating Christianity is to force nonbelievers by the weight of argument into accepting Christ. This is obviously pointless and impossible, but debate serves an important function. As I have explained, faith should be based on reason. It allows us to extend reason and make it useful. Thus, debate allows us to provide people with a reasonable basis for faith. Once that basis is established, we can begin to show them the way to Christ. It is pointless to try to show a moral relativist or atheist his need for Christ based on original sin, until you destroy the atheism or relativism and establish the problem of original sin.

My Hero

OK, now go read through Paul's letters, especially Corinthians. These are not original thoughts. I take no credit for them.

Can Anyone Remain Uncorrupted?

2008-08-25T22:45:00.002-04:00

I had an interesting discussion with my roommate today. We discussed the existence of God, and whether God does indeed have absolute power. I would like to thoroughly dismantle an argument that he presented, which I did not have time to answer satisfactorily.

Absolute Power!

The argument went something like this:
God does not have absolute power because absolute power corrupts. Therefore, God would become corrupted if he held absolute power.

Oops, 2 + 2 != 5.235

First: This is an appeal to consequences. Why the corruption of God prevent God from holding power? No dictator has been removed from power simply by his own corruption. Truly absolute power, corrupt or not, would be self-perpetuating, not self-defeating.

Standards, Standards, STANDARDS!

Second: What is corruption? Something is corrupt because it does not line up with some standard of what is should do and what its limits should be. If God exists and is truly omnipotent, then he is the standard. For reasons to be explored in a later post, we cannot measure God by our standard. God is the standard, and, to put it mathematically: x_standard=x_standard. Therefore, if God is the moral standard, he cannot be corrupt.

A Brilliant Exposition Of The Basis Of Moral Arguments

2008-06-26T11:33:00.004-04:00

The following was posted by gillbates on Slashdot. I have edited it only to make it a list of general questions and statements instead of a reply. See the link for the original comment.

If you don't believe your own beliefs are the one absolute true way, why would anyone else believe your beliefs?
How could you convince anyone to believe as you do when even you are unsure of their truth?
If you are even somewhat comfortable with not knowing the truth regarding morality, it is rather unlikely that you would ever stumble upon the one true way. Even if you did, how would you recognize it?
It is not arrogant to suggest that you know the one true way, if indeed that is the case. In fact, if you are an intellectual, and can discover the truths of the Universe regarding all things, morality included, it is false humility to suggest otherwise. Unlike science, where additional data may disprove a hypothesis, morality is absolute, and provable. Merely lacking the intellectual framework and experience necessary to objectively discover moral truth does not mean that such truth does not exist, or is unknowable.

This is the basis of any argument for a certain moral standard, which forms the basis of much of Christian apologetics, and even religious apologetics in general.

Family Force 5!

2008-06-20T10:45:00.003-04:00

We got to interview Crouton and Chapstique from Family Force 5! They were hilarious in the interview, and drew a huge crowd. I got a picture with them.

Alive Fest!

2008-06-19T13:30:00.003-04:00

I'm blogging from Alive Fest in Canton today. Red and David Crowder Band were awesome last night, in completely different ways.

Red puts on the highest energy show I have ever seen! The music was loud and incredible. The singer and guitarists were amazingly athletic and put all of their energy into the songs. They're going to have a new CD out soon.

David Crowder Band just won a new fan. Any band that does praise and worship, electronica, and bluegrass in the same concert (even the same song) has serious skill.

Both bands were even more incredible because they claimed none of the credit for their talent or music. They were up on stage praising God for their musical talent and pointing people to him.

Wish I could stay for Friday and Saturday. Oh well, seeing Red was worth the whole trip, including the lack of sleep.

VoIP For Broadcast Radio Remotes

2008-06-17T22:59:00.002-04:00

Yes, I work for a radio station. In fact, I just set up a new system for remote broadcasting using VoIP. Like all of our call-ins, we still use a DJ in the live studio, but we can now put our DJs that are out at events on the air crystal clear (think ISDN, it's the same codec). We use X-Lite on the internet computer in the live studio (this is not our automation computer), Ekiga on the Ubuntu laptop for remotes, and ekiga.net for SIP service. We have done several on air tests and they all have worked out great. Our first live event for this service is tomorrow. The Alltel wireless card I talked about in the previous post will be used for Internet connectivity at the event. Can you say "cool?" 8-)

Alltel UTStarcom PC5750 in Ubuntu

2008-06-17T22:38:00.006-04:00

Again, this is a pain. A big pain. If you are stubborn (I am).
It actually doesn't have to be a pain at all.

I tried time and again to make it work with the airprime kernel module. I was sure that usbserial couldn't give me the bandwidth I needed for my application. (I'll talk about that application in my next post. It's VoIP.) I used wvdial with the script that is posted at Linux Screw for this card, changing the modem to /dev/ttyUSB0 because that's what I had. After tearing my hair out several times, I finally gave up and blacklisted the airprime module. (Add the line "blacklist airprime" without quotes to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.) I rebooted and voila! Using wvdial with the /dev/ttyACM0 device (which wasn't available before blacklisting airprime) now worked. (Make sure to run wvdial as root so that it can write your pap-secrets and resolv.conf). Adding wvdial to rc.local allows me to connect on boot. Bandwidth? Very close to the advertised bandwidth of the card actually. None of this nonsense about usbserial only giving 60k each way, A bandwidth test at www.dslreports.com showed 1.8M down and 120k up. (The card advertises 2.0M down and 144k up.) A test call with the VoIP using the PCMU codec both ways was crystal clear, though with approximately 150ms latency. For our application latency is of little issue.

The moral of the story? Don't use the airprime driver! Blacklist it and use usbserial. It autodetects, wvdial works, and the speeds are just fine.

My Laptop's New Look, Part 2

2008-06-15T17:48:00.005-04:00

I said yesterday that I would post the background for my laptop. This is an abstract, non-distracting background that goes wonderfully with a dark theme. I created it using the FG to Transparent gradient in GIMP, along with some filtering.

My Laptop's New Look

2008-06-15T17:21:00.004-04:00

I have been busy all day modifying the Tenebrific GTK theme to work better with web pages, web forms, and HTML email. The result is Tenebluegreen, which I will post to Freshmeat later. Just to whet your appetite, here is a screenshot of the blogger page I am writing this post in:

And here is Rhythmbox and a terminal window:

Installing Ubuntu Linux on a Toshiba Satellite L355D-S7809

2008-06-14T22:27:00.005-04:00

In short, this was not a fun experience, but it was well worth it. After hours of fighting with it, two things made it work.
Disable the LAN card in the BIOS, while you are using the live CD, and until you install kernel 2.6.24-19 from hardy-proposed.
Make sure your CD is error free. Otherwise you will get squashfs errors.

Also, the latest MadWifi drivers support the AR5007EG wifi card in the laptop, including under 64-bit kernels. Download the tarball from MadWifi and install it.

I'm currently customizing Compiz and Avant Window Manager. I will post screenshots and my custom background tomorrow.

A Sick April Fools Joke?

2008-04-01T19:29:00.004-04:00

It'd better be, Intellectual Property Watch has an article about Microsoft's OpenOffice XML standards proposal being approved by the ISO. Considering the date, we all hope it's a joke.

TCP "Traffic Control"

2008-03-24T20:45:00.003-04:00

A solution (ZDNet) has been proposed for taking care of the P2P bandwidth "problem." The solution has several problems, and operates on the assumption that P2P users are being "unfair" to other users. It blames P2P for the problems of applications like video streaming, gaming, and Skype. Skype and other VoIP applications, as well as most network games, rely on UDP, not TCP, for traffic, thus making P2P irrelevant as a way of "stealing" bandwidth from them. P2P filesharing uses the system the way it was designed for a specific purpose. The fact, at least in the United States, is that we are amazingly behind in broadband internet. Many other countries have tens or even hundreds of Mbps per home available. In the U.S. we have between one and five, generally delivered over media designed for analog signals such as telephone or cable TV. The United States needs fiber optic internet distributed to every home, not TCP bandwidth controls.

Help Me With My Colors

2008-02-27T22:43:00.004-05:00

I love web and graphics design, but color is not one of my strong points. I'd like to know what you think, so I'm giving you a feedback opportunity. Leave a comment on this post with suggestions for colors for the following items (please use HTML #RRGGBB format):

Page Background
Text
Links
Visited Links
Blog Title
Blog Description
Post Titles
Borders
Sidebar Title
Sidebar Text

I'll format the blog with each of the four best suggestions and screenshot them, then put the screenshots into a poll for everyone to vote on what looks best.

What the GIMP needs

2008-02-27T17:52:00.004-05:00

I use both Adobe Photoshop and the GIMP, and I can think of two or three things that, if added to the GIMP, would permit the GIMP to become much more widely used for graphic design. As far as the UI goes, they're about the same. I prefer the GIMP for the simple reason that it's what I'm used to. But anyway, those three things:

Clipping Masks

Clipping masks are great for creating logos in Photoshop. Combined with layer effects (see bonus) they permit the creation of great text logos from relevant images. They also are great for keeping adjustment layers (see below) where they should be.

Adjustment Layers

Combined with clipping and layer masks, adjustment layers allow for many image effects. One of the more common is to have a picture of, say, a person, and desaturate everything except their head. While this can be done with selections, adjustment layers and masks provide a huge boost to both ease and flexibility.

Noise Removal Filters

These filters allow Photoshop to transform a mediocre low-light photo into something workable for a composite or logo, if not presentable by itself. Especially useful are the JPEG artifact removal and the color noise removal. I take photographs at concerts for a local band, and the lighting is cool, but horrible for photographs. Every camera I have used introduces a huge amount of color noise, and Photoshop's noise removal filter is wonderful for removing it.

(Bonus) Layer Effects

Being able to emboss or bevel a layer onto another layer is a wonderful effect, especially for text. When combined with clipping masks, it makes for even better text effects.