1398 Entries. Showing page 2 of 94...

10/10/2011

Buying a Used Car

So, a few weeks ago, Ann was struck by a guy running a red light. She's fine, but the car was totaled. And so now I've been used car shopping. Man, what a weird process. I've learned a lot:

1. American cars have the funniest names. Chevrolet makes a car called the "Caprice." I think the least desirable trait in a car would be capriciousness.

2. There are a lot of kids who mess up their Honda Civics. I think probably 4 out of 10 ads for Honda Civics go into excruciating detail about all the expensive ways that young males have devalued their Civics.

3. There are some mean people out there. I wrote to one gentleman, legitimately asking how he managed to arrived at the advertised value for his car and he wrote back with terribly abusive insults. I felt like I'd been pushed down in the schoolyard.

4. If a listing has a price way too good to be true, and the ad is filled with a line that says "keywords: kia, toyota, honda, volvo, etc." then it is probably just a scam. What a broken world we live in.

5. No one likes their VW after 5 years. The upshot of Craigslist combined with google/edmunds is this: don't ever buy a Volkswagen.

6. Toyotas keep their value unnaturally long. You can have a Toyota with 200,000 miles on it from the mid-nineties, and it will still be way expensive.

7. For a long stretch in the nineties and early 2000's, many Toyotas had non-interference engines. This means that if the timing belt breaks, you just replace it; the engine will be fine.

8. Google the VIN number before doing a carfax. I found one car I really liked, then I googled the VIN, and found (for free) a large photo of the car with a smashed in front-end on a salvage lot in Texas. So, even though the guy with the Russian accent said "Eees good car, my bruth-air ees mechanick" you can't really trust that.

9. If you find a car that is almost too good to be true, and you find out the car is real, jump on it. Because if you don't buy this pearl of great price, the next guy will. I found a 1996 Camry with only 81k miles. The guy posted the ad at 1:30 PM, I arrived at his house at 2:00 PM and the first guy to see it was shaking the owner's hand. It was so old, that the low mileage didn't make it too expensive. The best combination. And that year of Camry had a non-interference engine. So, man. I was pretty bummed.

So, after a weekend of hitting reload on Craigslist every few minutes, I'm still without a car. That new hooptie is out there somewhere...

08/01/2011

Funny Wal-Mart Commercials

If you thought that you saw a funny Wal-Mart commercial, you were completely right. Here's an article that contains embeds of all the commercials that a firm has helped WalMart create.

07/24/2011

Collins on Pre-Adamic Hominids

There is a little bit of hubbub about Dr. Jack Collins and his recent writings about the historicity of Adam and Eve. See Collins's article here (pdf). Dr. Collins was one of the best professors I've ever had and I thought I would try to give a more sympathetic evaluation of what he seems to be saying. After all, probably one of the most important things I learned from Dr. Collins was how to try and read sympathetically and reason with clean intellectual tools.

The way I read the article, it seems like Collins is not saying "I believe X" but it sounds like he's saying "here's what the Bible requires us to believe, and here's what the Bible does not require us to believe concerning X" and he sketches a kind of minimalist position so that, if one wanted to go along with science, one would still know how to maintain the beliefs necessary for Christian orthodoxy. I looked hard for any kind of expression of what he personally believes about pre-Adamic hominids, and all I found was his discussion of how there are better and worse ways to hold to that position. In other words, I didn't learn, from the article, whether Collins believes in pre-Adamic hominids, only that he sees room in the Christian church for those who believe in them so long as their view puts Adam and Eve as the first miraculously created image-bearers who fell. Perhaps I'm missing something, or perhaps his book-length treatment expresses a personal opinion on the subject. If anyone wants to buy the book for me, I promise to read it.

I think there is an important place for this kind of discussion. If my scientifically minded friends have a problem with non-evolutionary timelines and such, I can tell them "well, I don't really believe you're right, and Christians can disagree about this, but I think that there are some fundamental things you're going to have to affirm, and they are x, y, and z." Surely I'd want to avoid putting a millstone around anyone's neck if there were no reason to hammer things down so tightly about an issue. It is always hard to engage in a discussion where a minimal statement of faith is constructed, but at the same time we have to be honest about what the "fundamentals" are. So imagine some concentric circles with the innermost ring's containing the non-negotiables. I see Collins's putting, into the center ring: the fall, Adamic representation of all humanity, a miraculous intervention into Adam's creation, and Adam's being at the beginning of the race of image-bearers. Out from that would be other aspects of the narrative that may or may not be "the main thing" when it comes to interpreting and applying the creation narratives.

What interested me most about his article was a larger epistemological issue he raises about the importance of staying "within the bounds of sound thinking." He uses that expression a few times and so I believe he is signaling a commitment to some kind of intellectual value there. I take that to be a way of trying to express a commitment to not being outside of the most certain deliverances of science, even as we strive to be biblical in our thinking. Collins wants to avoid opposing the deliverances of our best scientific conclusions (avoiding obscurantism, perhaps) if the Bible does not require us to be opposed. This was a big impetus for his earlier rethinking of just what the creation narratives require us to believe about the age of the earth in light of what he sees to be strong scientific consensus about the earth's being very old. The genetics community is apparently pretty sure about its reasoning back to a larger community of first humans than back to the traditional alternative, two people, Adam and Eve. Collins expresses a tentative embrace of that reasoning, but he is clearly not as sure about the maturity of genetics as he has seemed in other articles and lectures about the maturity of dating methods for the earth. And so he is doing prolegomena of sorts--asking the question of what the Bible really requires us to believe about Adam and Eve, in light of the possibility that science is going to say that current human genetics cannot go back to two individuals.

Imagine an analogy. Suppose you believe the bible committed you to believe that all crows are black. And then some Smithsonian funded scientist walks out of the Brazilian rainforest with a white crow in a jar. Would you say "that crow can't exist" or would you go back to make sure that you were right about your assessment of what the bible required you to believe concerning the existence of white crows? For Collins and others, sometimes the deliverances of science are just this overwhelming. I admire that--Collins and some of my friends have a very healthy confidence in induction and in rationality. It is a lot easier for me to accept traditional readings of the scriptures, though. I don't really feel a lot of pressure to accept what science thinks it knows on any given topic. I am comfortable living life a bit outside of "the bounds of sound thinking" when it comes to these matters.

In short, despite the fears of some noisy people in the PCA, Collins is not seeking approbation from "enemies of the faith" and so changing his views to suit them. He's trying to do justice to the truths that he, as a member of the soundly reasoning community, is forced to reconcile. He has a handful of white crows, an ancient book, and a love for both, and he's trying to be sure that he can, as much as possible, become aware of the biases he brings to the text--the biases that created the apparent disjunction between science and faith in the first place.

Follow-ups:

Dialogue between Kevin DeYoung and Jack Collins - Interesting dialogue that pretty much supports what I concluded above--that Collins attempts to sketch the bounds of biblically acceptable positions on Adam, not his personal view.

07/17/2011

Working on a Web App

This is a geeky, techy post. Sorry, dear readers.

I've been working on a multi-instance web app lately at work, and this time I think I'm doing it "the right way." Essentially every instance has its own database and config file, but they all share the code base, the same help files, etc. This means system improvements are rolled out instantly to all instances, yet we take advantage of the inherently multi-user properties of MySQL and Unix so that user data and files are separated. I also have a src / dest directory set up for javascript and css. The CSS files in the src directory are .css.php and contain variable-dependent sizing for easy changing. A script interprets them offline whenever there is an update and strips them of comments and places them in the "dest" directory that users' browsers will download. Same for .js files which, while they have no php code in them, are human-readable in the src directory but packed and minified in the dest directory. Nginx delivers all the static files with amazing speed and minimal resources, and Apache delivers all the interpreted code (PHP) with a object cacher in place to speed up that coding. Most of the user interactions take place in a client-side layer with asynchronous calls back to the server for updates, writes, reads, etc. There are always drawbacks, and in this setup, the only inconvenience is when system changes require database structure changes. These have to be rolled out to each database instance. But I think separating the users into different databases is more secure and more future-flexible, so that's the drawback I've decided to accept. I will probably even write a script to handle those updates easily too. Otherwise, this is one of the most convenient setups for development and code maintenance I've ever had. I think eventually here that I'll even be able to automate the rollout of new code as the server checks out code from the same SVN a developer would. My next steps for improvement would be to transition the more ad-hoc interface between model and view into an API.

This project started as an internal idea but it became clear that other people will really like it, so look for more information soon about how you can subscribe. Right now, the details are hush hush, but it relates to project and resource management and it will be a real head turner because it was designed by a very good interface/graphic designer and implemented by a programmer who completely bought into the designer's vision. Programmers need designers so that things end up being done the best way, not the most expedient way. Good, custom interface design is very very hard. Implementing that design as a programmer is extremely hard. The results, however, can be amazing, and they usually make things look easy. There are some parts of this program where simply dragging a little box from one place to another ends up spawning a lot of complicated backend operations. It has that "it just works" feeling that I think you get from apple products, and it makes me proud to work on something so good

06/28/2011

Built to Spill: Liar

How on earth did I miss this band?

06/18/2011

Raiders of the the Lost Ark TV Spinoffs

When I was a kid, after Raiders completely blew our minds, the television networks had a few shows with similar themes - early twentieth century, airplanes, leather jackets, fedoras, etc. The two I remember are "Bring 'Em Back Alive" and "Tales of the Golden Monkey." Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that neither was a figment of my imagination! I remember the Golden Monkey more distinctly because of the dog that would bark once for 'no' and twice for 'yes.' Do any of you remember these shows?

Update On Gulf Oil Spill Aftermath

One of my favorite investigative journalists has returned to the Gulf to report on the oil spill:

05/12/2011

My Doings

Dear readers, sorry I have been rather absent from the blog. My wife has been posting consistently every day for a long time, so you should read her blog. My son also has a blog and you may enjoy his stuff too. I also tweet sometimes. I'll be back to blogging regularly someday, but it has been a very busy and trying several months.

04/24/2011

Thought this poem was an interesting and provocative anti-modern poem from a writer I don't usually associate with this kind of meditation.

Seven Stanzas at Easter
By John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

04/23/2011

Seminary Bubble Masks a Mentorship Need

Everyone (in my admittedly small circle of friends most of whom are or were divinity students) is talking about this article in Forbes, The Seminary Bubble. I think the article raises some good concerns, but I also think that there are many reasons people attend (and finish) seminary. This means that treating seminary students like architects and trying to limit how many graduates we have each year is the wrong way to go. To quote someone else, "we are not professionals" we are theologically educated servants who could work in any number of roles.

I went to seminary with a lot of different kinds of people. Some people were outgoing and were extremely good with people but did poorly in writing and studying. Some were amazing with the academic side of pastoral preparation, but found it hard to speak well or hold people's attention. Some people were amazing orators, but when you talked to them, it was a bit like trying to talk to Ronald Reagan - you get the idea that no one really knows this person and never will. Some guys would make great preachers in the Northeast but would founder miserably in the South. Some guys were blunt and gruff and might be perfect for ministry in a certain context (maybe a chaplain on an oil rig?) I saw friends who seemed really well suited for the pastorate not finish and friends about whom I worried go on to have very fruitful ministries in some odd places. In all of these cases, these were good guys who had my full confidence - that they were knowledgeable enough to teach well, that they were upright and not wolves in disguise, and that they were capable of being ministers somewhere. But that "somewhere" is the question, and it needs to be confronted much earlier in the process.

And so seminary students who risk financial security and put their families in a very tough situation need mentoring. Perhaps that mentoring will, in fact, be an up-front "You'll never be a pastor, young man." But perhaps it will be, "You'll never be a head pastor, young man, but you have a bright future as a hospital chaplain." It takes active mentoring, not just the passive kind where a professor happens to take the time to talk to a minister-in-training. And even giftedness and personality testing is not the whole answer, though those can be helpful tools.

This mentorship needs to start right away so that a man can bail before finishing seems like a duty just so he has something to show for his sacrifice. How about a class, first semester, where the students sit down with the professor, open up a web browser and look around at all the job opportunities that are available? Do most seminary students know that the job listings are full to the brim for opportunities in health-care ministry? That hospitals all over the country are clamoring for chaplains? There are classes in many seminaries where students are oriented to the process, given personality tests, etc, and those are helpful classes. But that is not the same thing as a personal mentorship where mentors are involved in the lives of students to the extent that they view the student's fortunes as linked to their own. It is easy to ignore an impersonal testing instrument that tells you that you are terrible with people. It is much harder to ignore a flesh and blood 50 year old telling you that you stink with people and who offers to help.

I would encourage any seminary students who are reading this to start looking at the jobs that are available right now, whether you've just completed your first course or your first year of seminary. Is there a high demand for youth ministry? Pursue that. Do you notice a lot of camps that need people to work there, manage the camp and run summer ministries? Pursue that. Become the kind of minister well suited for the positions that are available, don't wait until you've graduated and are faced with trying to find a job that fits your natural areas of ability. Try to find a mentor (ideally it's not your responsibility, but if you don't, you probably won't get one), and if you can't, at least try to ask a lot of people in ministry for advice. You're not becoming a minister to fulfill your career dreams, you're signing up to serve people. Where are they asking you to serve? Hint - their requests come in the form of advertisements for job openings.

It should never be the responsibility of young people to find a mentor. Older people should be actively trying to do this. Paul tells ministers to treat older men like their fathers and to think of women who aren't their wives as their sisters. Maybe we could extend that - if you're a professor or someone in a position of authority you should be seeking out ways to help those who are just getting started. The St. Louis Cardinals doesn't just run a professional team and wait to see who shows up out of high school every year. They have an entire farm system in which guys are being molded and vetted for service in the big leagues. If only Christian seminaries were set up that way.

Postscript

One last lament. "Seminary professor" is another role in which a man or woman may serve who had a seminary degree at some point. And there, we have completely abdicated any kind of mentoring and farm team approach. We educate someone in a seminary and send him/her off to graduate school. And then we hope the student comes back in 4 to 10 years fit for teaching at a seminary, with convictions intact, and with eyes on the gospel and not just on academic pride. If mentoring future pastors is important, how much more is it important to mentor the people who will pick up the mentoring process when they are seminary professors? Ask yourself how one becomes a theologian. Exactly. There is no set career path for becoming a theologian, and yet we really need them.

04/20/2011

Advice to a Young Person Who Wants to be a Video Game Programmer

In the midst of interviewing kids for admission at the school where I serve on the board, a kid expressed interest in writing video games and had a lot of ideas for games, a lot of eagerness, and a need for some pointers on where to get started. My first question was whether he is good at art. "No" he said. And so I said we should follow up later through email. Anyway, thought that it might be useful for other kids who are reading this and think that they might be interested in programming video games some day. Remember, I'm a programmer, but not a video game programmer, so your mileage may vary on this advice:


Hi XXXX,

So glad that you wrote back; it's good to hear from you.

The first thing I would say is that making a good, modern console or PC game requires a big team of people. At the end of movies when the credits roll, there is a long list of names - a modern video game is very similar. It takes the efforts of artists, programmers, writers, etc. to get all the stuff together.

Since you want to be a programmer and a writer, I would focus on those two skills. I think writing up your game ideas in the right format, and then editing them, making them better, and getting feedback on them, would be an important first step. Here's an article on writing for the game industry:

http://www.writing-world.com/freelance/games.shtml

On the programming side of things, in a team of game programmers there are going to be people of varying skills. You'll have some guys that are complete geniuses who are tinkering with the game engine. You'll have other, more workaday programmers, who are using the game engine to fill in the levels, set up the game play, etc.

Most modern commercial video games are built on only a handful of game engines. These engines provide the skeleton for the game - level management, collision detection (so you can tell when one things hits another thing), 3-d movement, etc.

If I were starting out in game programming, I would find a game engine that is available on the computer I own and try to create a simple game with it. You can later, when you have more money, purchase a system for programming console games. But all the stuff you learn now will apply to later. I would also make friends with some artists. Find other kids who are good at art. A video game is a collaboration between artists and programmers, as is a website, an iphone app, an animated movie, etc. You can't make a video game by yourself and expect it to look good without help from artists.

Wikipedia has a list of game engines:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines

I would find one that is open source and free to use and will run on your computer (I don't know if you have windows or mac).

Let me know if you find a good one that you like and maybe I can download it and learn along side of you.

I think learning a programming language is important, and C++ is a good one. So just improving your general programming skills could be really good.

One easy way to start tinkering would be to write a game in javascript that you can run in any web browser.

There is one javascript engine that costs 99 dollars:

http://impactjs.com/

That would be an excellent way to get started since you could probably very quickly get an audience for your idea.

Basically, the way God works with us in the world, people who are faithful in smaller things are asked to do bigger and bigger things. I would show yourself a good programmer in a small, interesting 2d game, and then branch out. Find an artist friend who is eager to learn about photoshop and work together with him or her. You've gotta start somewhere, and you might even pick up a little money along the way if you write a good 2d game.

-Jonathan Barlow

04/13/2011

Amazing Song

Just heard this on 'This American Life':

04/11/2011

Unbelievable Lack of Civility

04/09/2011

Beautiful

04/03/2011

Eccentricity

As someone who is probably more eccentric than some but not as eccentric as others, I thought this quote was pretty convicting. Eccentricity is too often treated as a virtue these days:

"Eccentricity is far more often a mark of weakness than a mark of strength. Weakness wishes, as a rule, to attract attention by trifling distinctions, and strength wishes to avoid it." -James Fitzjames Stephen