Happy Thanksgiving!
Just thought I’d say that today, since I’m not sure if I feel like spending any more time here right now. Time off is good! I’m thankful for lots of stuff, but I don’t really feel like listing it on a public site this year. If you want to “see what others are thankful for”:http://www.worldmagblog.com/blog/archives/010848.html, it may be a bit more entertaining…
Wired magazine put up an article Friday called “Internet Porn: Worse than Crack?”:http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65772,00.html that talks about the addictiveness of pornography. Since it “…causes release of the naturally occurring opioids. It does what heroin can’t do, in effect.”, and because unlike a drug it doesn’t go away over time (“Pornography addicts have a more difficult time recovering from their addiction than cocaine addicts, since coke users can get the drug out of their system, but pornographic images stay in the brain forever”).
The article also talks about the dangers of the newfound purvasiveness of this era of internet accessability (note that this is in no way an argument by me for less Internet…the Internet is awesome and just like I won’t stop reading “World Magazine”:http://www.worldmag.com/ because Playboy is also a magazine, I won’t stop visiting the good websites even though bad ones exist). Here’s that part of the article:
Mary Anne Layden, co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Cognitive Therapy, called porn the “most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today.”
“The internet is a perfect drug delivery system because you are anonymous, aroused and have role models for these behaviors,” Layden said. “To have drug pumped into your house 24/7, free, and children know how to use it better than grown-ups know how to use it — it’s a perfect delivery system if we want to have a whole generation of young addicts who will never have the drug out of their mind.”
Of course they go on to quote from a morally relativistic person who complains that porn isn’t always bad, it just has bad effects sometimes. I shouldn’t really have to answer this, if you’re a Christian and you don’t know why porn is bad for the whole culture (not to mention sinful), you might want to start “researching”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidsworldva-20&path=tg%2Fdetail%2F-%2F1581344589%2Fqid%3D1100916383%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fref%3Dsr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14%3Fv%3Dglance%26s%3Dbooks%26n%3D507846 your “worldview”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidsworldva-20&path=ASIN%2F0842318089%2Fqid%3D1100919008%2Fsr%3D2-1%2Fref%3Dpd_ka_b_2_1 a bit more, because arguments are rather useless if they come from a worldview other than your own.
Over at the BoingBoing.net blog, there’s a nice entry about Neal Stephenson’s “Baroque Cycle Trilogy”:http://www.boingboing.net/2004/11/21/neal_stephensons_sys.html of books that it looks like I might have to check out now. I really enjoyed his “Cryptonomicon”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060512806/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2. Looks like these three are REALLY long though! Wonder how long it will take me to have the time to read them? Let’s just say I’ll probably check only one at a time out of the library! The books are “Quicksilver”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060593083/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2, followed by “The Confusion”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060733357/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2 and “The System of the World”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060523875/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2.
Still working on a name for my blog. Not sure if I like the riddle/enigma name. Maybe. But I found a “cool blog”:http://ries.typepad.com/ries_blog/ by Laura Ries, apparently a pretty big PR-type person who has been on the national news channels and stuff. Interesting stuff on marketing, and there’s a certain post on “naming products”:http://ries.typepad.com/ries_blog/2004/09/what_makes_a_go.html, too. Maybe it’ll have some ideas I can use for my blog (I haven’t read it yet…this entry serves as a good bookmark though :-)
Found a good post about what software people are installing on their parents/relatives computers when they go home for thanksgiving. One benefit to me of living at home still: I can keep the family computers set up and in tip-top shape so they never get to the “spend five hours fixing everything that’s wrong” phase (and five hours is sometimes an understatement!).
Anyway, the “post is over at Slashdot”:http://slashdot.org/articles/04/11/19/2331210.shtml?tid=126 and it’s interesting when some of the comments are about why some people won’t fix family/friends computers any more. They have some pretty darned good reasons, too. I can sympathize, although I am blessed to have an immediate family who has really learned a lot about what to do and not to do on the computer. Friends run the gamut though, as far as tech-savvy goes. But, I don’t mind helping most people out if it doesn’t take a huge amount of my already limited time, and I especially don’t mind if they are willing to learn how not to cause problems in the first place, instead of me cleaning up and them re-trashing. I especially like those that I’ve convinced to switch to “Firefox”:http://firefox.scriptek.com/ but I do have a couple of utilities that will lock down IE a bit more to prevent some spyware/adware. I’ll have to put together a little “install this stuff to help fix your computer” post here sometime; now’s not the time.
I do like that some people have started supporting Linux only (at least when they do free support), as it’s really more secure in my opinion, or at least easier to get that way from a default install. It can be just as bad, true, but I won’t get into that argument here. For now, Windows runs too much stuff that Linux either won’t run or would take a lot of time to get running, for most of my uses (however Linux rocks as a server!).
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I am a mind writer. A verbal mindwriter. No, not the kind that can tell others what to think (if only!). It’s the way I think. I dictate thoughts in my mind, and they are always well-orgainzed (okay, usually), and edited and “sound” great. Then I sit in front of a computer, or turn on an audio-recording device, and wham, it’s gone. Just like that. Usually the general idea is there, but I often don’t get past the first sentence or two, if that, before the eloquent stream of consciousness I had carefully crafted vanishes into oblivion.
Thought-processes, figuring out how we think about the world and how we logically (or not) come to the conclusious we all reach as individuals about certain topics, based on our past experiences, personalities, and other assorted mental pathways, have always interested me. Personality profiles, political views…worldviews, when you get down to it.
Part of that is how we communicate. It’s interesting to read about others views on how they write, for example. What their initial process is, how they correct misspellings when they type (do they immediately catch, backspace and fix the error, or do they keep going and edit later). Do they let go of their first draft of something, or review and edit. Do they pre-edit in their mind, manipulating words into phrases or sentences before laying them down on “paper,” or do they just lay down words as fast as they can type (or write, for those odd, old-fashioned folks) and make sense of it all later?
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I’m trying out a new title for my blog, “riddle wrapped up in an enigma.” It was originally “david’s worldview & tech,” which does describe the purpose of the site but isn’t exactly a unique, catchy name. I’m not sure about this one yet. I’ll leave it up for a while. Let me know if you like it, or have a better (or heck, even worse) suggestion.
The reason I chose it, other than the fact that I think it’s cool, is that it kind’ve implies layers of concealment, which is more relavant when you know that I love codes and ciphers. I used to check out every book on them I could find at the library (there are a lot!), read them in a couple of weeks, and go back for more. Of course I did this with a lot of books, but this was one of my favorite topics. I love cryptograms, ciphers, encoding schemes…not so much working them myself, but reading about how they work and the cleverness involved. The secrecy was always attractive too, not so much for preventing others from knowing something, but secrecy for secrecy itself, just the power of being able to reveal or not reveal selectively.
Of course there were a lot of codes and ciphers making their way around the world back when Churchill (see below) coined this phrase. Many books from the library, which I may review someday, about them. But perhaps most important is that it contains the word Enigma, which was of course the famous “crypto-machine”:http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/enigma/ of the Germans that was broken by the Allies back in the 1920s and 30s. Of course I’m paternally Polish (my paternal grandmother came to the US from Poland), so the fact that “Polish mathmaticians”:http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/virtualbp/poles/poles.htm were able to decipher the Enigma machines for a while in the late 1930s may have something to do with my interest there :-)
If you’re interested in European codebreaking efforts during World War II, there’s some good info at “Bletchley Park and its Museum”:http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/bletchleypark/index.htm.
By the way, the author of the quote that bit of verbiage comes from is Winston Churchill, according to “GuruNet.com”:http://www.gurunet.com/t1-deid-847632942-dsid-1974-curtab-1974_1-method-5, apparently he said, “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” back in 1939. I did use the modified version, without the “mystery.” It seemed to make the title too long. In fact I’m considering making the title even shorter. Maybe “riddle in an enigma,” or even just, “riddle enigma.”
Worst part about my new title so far: it’s hard to pronounce! You try to say “wrapped up in an enigma” five times fast! Or, is this the best part? You have to really mean to say it if you want to!
I just found a link to “Google Scholar”:http://scholar.google.com/ over at “TechInDepth”:http://www.techindepth.com/. It looks like anyone needing to do research on scholarly plublications will be able to find them a heck of a lot easier online now. I’m guessing there’s quite a few students (not to mention professors and other assorted staff) at colleges around the country that will find this tremendously useful, once they know about it.
Of course, that’s just a guess. And a rather uneducated one at that, coming from plain old uneducated me (of course I “blame” homeschooling for making me smart even though I haven’t been to college yet. Well, “blame” would ultimately have to rest with God, but I’m pretty sure he used the homeschooling (and the awesome parents) in some good ways!).
A good book was mentioned over in “The Salt and Light Column”:http://www.mrdawntreader.com/the_dawn_treader/2004/11/salt_and_light_.html at The Dawn Treader. The book is called “Total Truth”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidsworldva-20&path=tg%2Fdetail%2F-%2F1581344589%2Fqid%3D1100916383%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fref%3Dsr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14%3Fv%3Dglance%26s%3Dbooks%26n%3D507846 by Nancy Pearcy, the person who co-wrote “How Now Shall We Live”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidsworldva-20&path=ASIN%2F0842318089%2Fqid%3D1100919008%2Fsr%3D2-1%2Fref%3Dpd_ka_b_2_1 with Chuck Colson (also an excellent book near the top of my recommendation list). But my local library only has three public copies (and one at the local Christian school library), and all of them are checked out. And there are two holds ahead of me. Guess I’ll have to wait a while to read it, since I don’t feel like shelling the $14 out at Amazon.com right now. (And by, “don’t feel like” I mean, “don’t have the money for”.)
Glad to hear that “Dawn Treader”:http://www.mrdawntreader.com/ is back up and running at his new address. I was starting to miss his posts when he dissappeared. I’m posting this from my Treo 600 so I may have to wait ’till later to fix the rest of my links.
Also, this post got messed up by my Treo and I had to fix it later…I’ll have to see what I can do about that, since this blog works great on my Treo except for the actual posting.
Yet another survey-type thingy. But I liked the “Geek Code”:http://www.geekcode.com/ (don’t remember mine, but I calcuated it at one point) and someone took the time to make a matching Blogger Code since a “friend did”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/librarygal/123819.html?nc=1. So here’s mine:
“B1 d++ t+ k s u– f i+ o x- e- l c+”:http://travis.kroh.net/blogger_decoder/?code=B1%20d%2B%2B%20t%2B%20k%20s%20u–%20f%20i%2B%20o%20x-%20e-%20l%20c%2B (the link is to a decoder)
Of course I would be remiss if I didn’t let you “make your own”:http://www.leatheregg.com/bloggercode/!
Over at WorldMagBlog.com they were “having a discussion”:http://www.worldmagblog.com/blog/archives/010584.html the other day about Christian bookstores being open on Sunday. Below is a copy of a post I made in the thread of that discussion, edited slightly to fit outside the context of that conversation, and expanded a bit with some links near the end. The following paragraph is informational in relation to that discussion, the rest lays out my true question.
My Mom and brother work at a Chik-Fil-A and it’s great that they’re closed on Sundays. However…at my church (A/G) we have a Resource Center where we sell CDs of that morning’s sermon, and some books and older sermons and sermon series. I don’t see a problem with it…there are a lot of people “working” behind the scenes at church on Sunday (some volunteer some not), not just the pastor. There’s security guards, Sunday school teachers, shuttle bus drivers, parking lot attendant’s, ushers, nursery check-in workers, and of course the person running the Resource Center (sometimes paid sometimes a volunteer). The funds go to the church anyway, it’s not like we’re a retail operation.
Anyway, my true point, and I’m not sure exactly where I stand on this personally, but has anyone ever counted from Friday to Sunday and gotten three days? Because I have a friend who is a Messianic Jew who believes that Christ died on Wednesday, was buried before sundown because the next day was Passover (also called a sabbath), and they didn’t have time to go properly bury him until Saturday evening (“early on the first day of the week” which started in the evening Saturday…keep in mind translations that say “Sunday morning” may be introducing something in the translation that’s not in the original) since on Friday they would have been too busy preparing for the weekly (Saturday) Sabbath right after the holiday Sabbath. Thus, three actual days and nights between death and resurrection, and no change of Sabbath day, which was supposedly introduced later by cultures trying to compromise between Christians and pagens who had their sun-god worship on Sunday.
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I don’t usually bother, but I was kind of curious when a friend had it on her “blog”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/librarygal/126835.html and was Palm OS (my fav PDA OS), so I tried it out: (more…)
Found a cool site made by “Ken Ristau”:http://anduril.ca/aboutme.html over at “anduril.ca”:http://www.anduril.ca tonight. Good blog with some especially interesting entries on recent politics, I really like the insights on “Kofi Annon’s opinion on how to maintain security in Iraq”:http://anduril.ca/blog/2004/11/kofi-letter-to-allawi.html, along with a great section with “Bible software reviews”:http://anduril.ca/christian/bible-software.html” that is actually how I found the site.
He’s also written some “good”:http://www.christianweek.org/stories/vol15/no18/ristau.html “articles”:http://www.faithtoday.ca/article_viewer.asp?Article_ID=122 on selecting Bible Software and how it can be an improvement to traditional study methods. For those who want something for free (more than free software like “e-Sword”:http://www.e-sword.net and “The SWORD Project”:http://www.crosswire.org/sword/), I suggest checking out the resources he’s linked at his “Bible Study Tools”:http://anduril.ca/christian/bible-tools.html page, it does a good job of finding good online resources without having to wade through even a relatively small Google search.
He also has another blog entry with more links than I have time to read with information about what’s really going on in Iraq, the UN’s Oil-for-Food program, and lots of other “good world news/political info”:http://anduril.ca/blog/2004/10/necessary-links.html. If you’re looking for good sites, I haven’t checked his links out but based on the rest of his site I would probably enjoy them at least.
One last mention…”his link to the Aleppo Codex Online”:http://anduril.ca/blog/2004/10/aleppo-codex-online.html sends you to an awesome site (even more so if you happen to read Hebrew) with an original Hebrew Bible text for you to take a look at and read about. I haven’t had time to get to this one yet either, but consider this link in my post here a bookmark for return…
Overall I’m impressed with his site and the resources he’s found and compiled for others. Sure, Google will get you to all of them eventually, but when a human does the looking and gives you some picks with some original info to boot, jump on it!
Thanks to Neil’s Weblog Templates for the awesome template I’ve switched to! No more default WordPress template for me!
He’s got a good Mozilla Category going at his site as well…pretty cool! He’s got some good comments about the 1 million downloads mark being reached for Firefox 1.0 in 24 hours after launch! Look, ma, another exclamation point!
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