Blog Jones

One frustration I have with BJU and with my local church is their attitude of constant paranoia about…, well pretty much everything outside of the church. For a great example of this, check out an old book called Saturday Morning Mind Control, which postulates the virtually all kids programing at the time had some sort of occult origin. Besides the entertainment industry, the primary focus of their paranoia is the government.

Normally, that’s a good place for paranoia. I’m a minarchist, so distrust and dislike of the government is second nature to me. But the typical fundamentalist position is not mere distrust, it’s fear.

Preachers are always insisting that the government is trying to take away the freedom of religion, based on the fact that the courts have been enforcing separation of church and state. You should have heard the unadulterated praise for Roy Moore and his “bold defense” of the ten commandments memorial. And don’t even get them started on prayer in public schools. I even heard one preacher invoke Godwin’s Law by accusing the gay and the feminist lobbies of planning to round up Christians in boxcars and ship them off to concentration camps.

You see why that might be frustrating?

But now I’ve heard a story that doesn’t bode well for religious freedom, but that I doubt I’ll ever about hear from the pulpit: Some idiot judge has forbidden a man and his ex-wife from teaching their child their religious beliefs.

Why won’t I hear about this in the pulpit? Because the parents are Wiccans.

This outrageous decision was a part of the couple’s divorce decree, but neither the father nor the mother–both of whom are Wiccans–asked for it. They are both forbidden to expose their child to “non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals.” The judge did not define the term.

What was the judge’s justification for making such a ruling? Apparently the boy attends a Catholic school. The judge received a report from the Domestic Relations Counseling Bureau, which contained the following quote:

There is a discrepancy between Ms. Jones and Mr. Jones’ lifestyle and the belief system adhered to by the parochial school. . . . Ms. Jones and Mr. Jones display little insight into the confusion these divergent belief systems will have upon (the boy) as he ages.

After reading this, the judge apparently decided that he had the right to decide what religion the boy should or should not be taught.

Fortunately, “Getting the judge’s religious restriction lifted should be a slam-dunk,” according to an Indiana University law professor. “That’s blatantly unconstitutional. Obviously, the judge can order them not to expose the child to drugs or other inappropriate conduct, but it sounds like this order was confusing or could be misconstrued.”

But the fact that a judge is so uneducated about the limits of his power that he’d pass such a measure does not bode well. There’s got to be some way to get him out of power; if not, I rest assured that the man will never rise above the position of a divorce court judge, because no legislator will ever be foolish enough to try to advance him to a higher court.

I hope.

(Via Dean’s World)

Lileks has a great column up about terrible summer jobs. I liked the whole thing, but this excerpt especially:

From Fred, a taciturn description:

Concrete block plant. Small. Owned by alcoholic. No stacking machinery, just me and three other low-end laborers, often alcoholic. too.

Learned: I could stack 70 tons of concrete blocks every day for minimum wage — and enjoy it. I might give up my current 52-year-old life, money, property for that health and strength again.

That’s the attitude. On one hand, there is no more mindless job: moving concrete blocks from one place to another. On the other hand, you strip your life down to the essence. Who am I? I am the man who moves the blocks. Someone has to. There’s more elemental satisfaction in moving 70 tons with your own sinews than moving $700,000 from one mutual fund to another; the latter is incorporeal, a financial fiction to which we all subscribe. The former is literally concrete: The blocks were there. Now they are here.

This is why I’m glad I was a waiter in college: I did something that was actually useful, as opposed to flapping my gums in a newspaper. There’s no column next Sunday? You’ll live. But the waiter disappears, and your Eggs Benedict cool on the counter, ignored, undelivered. The essence of the economy, of human labor, of our entire mortal existence, consists of moving stuff from here to there, and it’s good to learn this early on. If nothing else, it gives you respect for those who keep doing it after you’ve danced off to some soft-handed profession.

On the other hand, we had a problem with refrigeration at the restaurant, and I cannot tell you how many people got the 24-hour Egg Flu after eating our Hollandaise sauce. So if you spent your summers reading books in med school, that’s good, too.

My computer was returned to me today. Fortunately, the Circuit City’s repair shop is much, much more competent than their telephone staff. My computer works properly now. Speedfan, the program I use to monitor the temperature of my computer’s innards, tells me that it runs below 70 degrees C at 100% CPU, whereas before it would go up to 100 degrees and shut down.

Yay! I can *do* stuff again!

Colleges’ e-reserves making big publishers worry: That was the first headline I saw in this morning’s paper. Here’s the deal:

Universities around the country have been setting up “e-reserves” at their libraries. Instead of having a number of books that the students have to go to the library and wait in line photocopy the section of whatever book they need (a practice that is clearly legal under the Fair Use clause), they just log into the university network, give a username and password, and read the section online.

Obviously, students love it. And just as obviously, publishing companies are against it:

And publishing companies are worried precisely because of that ease and convenience — it’s another way for publishers to lose sales.

The Association of American Publishers already has contacted one school, the University of California, San Diego, claiming “blatantly infringing use is being made of numerous books, journals and other copyrighted works.”

I’m really having trouble stirring up any sympathy for the publishing companies. Maybe if I wasn’t expected to pay upwards of $300 on textbooks every semester because of price gouging from the publishers, I’d be a little more sympathetic.

As it is, nein.

I just finished reading an excellent book today entitled “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.” It’s a fascinating look at how we come to snap decisions based on very little data.

As a matter of fact, it’s helped me understand the concept of information overload a little better. In management, medicine, and military strategy, the common wisdom is that more information is better. Companies are constructing huge databases about what their customers buy and want. Doctors will order dozens of tests in an attempt to make the right diagnosis. Generals want every detail of the military situation at their disposal.

This all sounds good, until you read chapter four of this book. Turns out that when time is limited, when you need to make snap decisions, too much information is bad. You can’t figure out which data are relevant, or worse, you get so arrogant that you think you’ve found every possible option. Before long your enemy/competitor/patient will surprise you with something totally unexpected.

When time is unlimited, on the other hand, the slow, methodical, logical approach works nicely. Examine every option and study to find out which data are relevant and which are not. That way, when time is short, you’ll know which data to pay attention to and which to discard.

The book is full of neat little insights into a wide variety of topics, from interpersonal relationships and “mind reading” to product testing to implicit racism. Furthermore, it’s well written: I finished it in a weekend.

My next book: Getting Things Done, by David Allen.

E3–more formally known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo–is in full swing. The fine folks over at Engadget have been doing a great job covering it. This year is exciting because the big three videogame manufacturers are introducing us to their new systems: The X-Box 360, the Nintendo Revolution, and the Playstation 3.

The Revolution has an interesting feature, although not well explained: “All-Access Gaming, which refers to backwards compatibility to 20 years of Nintendo games, NES, SNES, N64. We don’t know particulars of how it’ll be accessed or what, if any, the cost structure might be.”

Apparently it will be able to download old games off of their network and play them, in addition to being able to play GameCube games off of the discs. This is brilliant, I say.

The Revolution also has an Secure Digital memory card slot, just like a lot of cameras and PDA’s use, and two USB ports. And wireless controllers. The bad news: It’s not coming until 2006.

Also, the other Nintendo product I really want, coming out later this year: The Gameboy Micro:

It’s basically a Gameboy Advance in a smaller package with a backlight. The unit is about the size of an iPod mini–4 inches long by two inches wide by .7 inches thick. I don’t own a GBA yet, so I might go for this, if it’s cheap enough. (I’ve just discovered the joys of Advanced Wars on my brother’s GBA, but I need a backlight.)

All kinds of neat stuff coming.

Oh, speaking of cool gadgets: The PalmOne LifeDrive comes out tomorrow. It’s a PDA running the Palm operating system (which I love)–but it has a 4 GB hard drive built in. I predict this thing will make a killer personal video player, if *someone* makes decent video software for the Palm sometime.

It also has Bluetooth and WiFi and a 416 mHz processor, which is nearly twice as fast as my Clie TJ-37 is. I’m gonna have to wait for the price to come down a little though–it starts at $500. Not an unfair price–I paid $300 for my Clie, and you’d pay in the neighborhood of $200 for a 4gb iPod mini–but I can’t see myself spending the money on something I don’t need at the moment.

So… put some money in the tipjar so I can get this stuff. Thanks!

*sniff*

My laptop has been sent off for repairs. You may remember my computer woes from a while back. Short version: My laptop overheats and shuts down whenever you try to do anything really CPU intensive, like play a game, convert a video or sound file from one format to another, or run an virus scan.

That’s obviously not acceptable.

So, we brought the computer to Circuit City in hopes of getting it shipped off and repaired… wow, almost a year ago. Yech. I’ve been living with this for nearly a year. Anyways, the Circuit City employee told me to call a phone number and they’d ship me a box. Instead of taking care of the problem for me.

Well, OK. So, I went home and was given a run-around for the rest of the night. We had planned to take my computer in to be repaired later on that week, but for whatever reason we didn’t. Pretty soon, school started, and I need my laptop for school. Now that school’s out for a long enough period of time, we’re free to try again, and so we did.

“We” being my dad, who’s been handling this for me this time. My dad and I started off by trying to get it taken care of by taking it to the Circuit City store. Once again, we were rebuffed and sent to the telephone. Four hours and three telephone calls later, we finally get them to send us a box to ship the laptop in.

(One side note: At one point, the technical service person told us to run Disk Cleanup for some reason. This was taking an interminable amount of time, so she said she’d hang up and call us back in half an hour. A full hour later, we still had not received any calls.)

(Another: Before hanging up on us, this same technician, sent us to this link to download the latest version of my computer’s BIOS: http://csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/
su_sc_modItemList.jsp?moid=429789&ct=DL&BV_SessionID=
@@@@0725458437.1116371843@@@@&BV_EngineID=
cccdaddejgdleehcgfkceghdgngdgmm.0

This is roughly how she sent us there:

Tech Lady: OK, I need you to go to this web address. Do you have a pen handy?

Dad: Yes

TL: OK, write H-T-T-P-colon-slash-slash-w-w-w-dot-c as in candy-s as in sugar-d as in dog-dot-t as in turtle-o as in orange-s as in sugar-h as in hat-i as in iris-b as in boy-a as in apple-dot-c as in candy-o as in orangutan-m as in monkey-slash-c as in cable-g as in grief-i as in iris-dash or hyphen or whatever that thing is-b as in boy-i as in iris-n as in nonsense-slash-t as in turtle-a as in apple-i as in irish-s as in stupid-slash-s as in severe-u as in under-slash-s as in stupendous-u as in unbelievable-underscore-s as in south-c as in carolina-underscore-m as in monkey-o as in oliphant-d as in dog-capital I as in iris-t as in totem-e as in ear-m as in mole-Capital L as in list-i as in iris-s as in socks-t as in total-dot-j as in Jennifer-s as in sugar-p as in penguin-questionmark-m as in mole-o as in orange-i as in iris-d as in daniel-equals mark-the number 4-2-9-7-8-9-and sign-c as in cut–

Dad: I’m sorry, that was 7-8-9-ampersand-c, right?

TL: No, not the ampersand, the and sign. See the one over the the number 7?

Me: ::stifling laughter because we’re on the speaker phone::

Dad: OK.

TL: 8-9-and sign-c as in cat-t as in tabby-equals mark-capital D as in dog-capital L as in lover-and sign-capital B as in boy-capital V as in verily-underscore-capital S as in secret-e as in egret-s as in sucker-s as in sucker-i as in iris-o as in oval-n as in nougat-capital I as in iris-capital D as in dementia-equals mark-ampersand-ampersand-ampersand-ampersand

Dad: I’m sorry, which was that again?

TL: The ampersand–see the one over the two?

Me: ::stifling a chuckle::

Dad: Ah.

TL: ampersand-ampersand-ampersand-ampersand-0-7-2-5-4-5-8-4-3-7-dot-1-1-1-6-3-7-1-8-4-3-ampersand-ampersand-ampersand-ampersand-and sign-capital B as in boy-capital V as in valium-underscore–you know, this is really too long to read out loud.

Me: ::nodding in agreement, because I just went to the Toshiba site and found the download link through the menus in a couple of minutes ago.::

TL: ::finishes in much the same fashion.::)

Before we shipped the laptop, we returned to Circuit City and voiced our dissatisfaction with their “No Hassle” plan to the manager, who promised to call Corporate and let them know of our problems. He also promised to help us if anything should go wrong.

Then we called the DHL shipping company, which is currently transporting my laptop to the shop in Atlanta, GA which will finally repair the thing. Hopefully it will return working and without any more problems than it started with. ::fingers cross::

The moral of the story: Go with Best Buy–the “Geek Squad” will handle your problem in the store.

By now I’m sure you’re aware of the story: Newsweek magazine reports that U.S. officials at Guantanamo Bay were flushing copies of the Koran down the toilet as a form of “torture.” Some Muslims take to the streets in violent protest, resulting in the 16 deaths and more than 100 injuries.

Then Newsweek issues an apology–oops, sorry, that wasn’t true.

Eek… I’m glad I don’t work at Newsweek right now.

Obviously, the blogosphere and the other media are ripping into Newsweek for their irresponsible reporting, and rightly so. But I think the better response is the one offered by Ralph Bristol, a local radio host whose “Daily Dispatch” shows up in my mail box on a daily basis:

Newsweek Magazine was irresponsible and its editors have now apologized, but let’s face it. These rioters are nuts. They are extremist maniacal fanatics and it’s crazy to try to appease them. The Arab League needs to stand down its protest against Newsweek and train its sights on the maniacs within its ranks. Until these people learn to address their grievances in a fashion a little more suited to the human species, they are not going to make any progress in an otherwise fairly civilized world.

There is a lesson to be learned by Newsweek, other media, and people in general, but it’s not the one that is blanketing the media today. The lesson is this. It takes very little to irritate a mad dog. That doesn’t mean that you go out of your way to be nice to it. It means that you avoid it if possible and be ready to kill it if necessary.

Newsweek is right to apologize for lousy reporting, but let’s not lose sight of the real problem here. Sloppy reporting is cause for concern and criticism. It is not cause for death and destruction.

The reason we are in a war with Muslim terrorists is because there is a faction in the Muslim world whose automatic reaction to any form of offense is murder and mayhem. They are the real problem. Newsweek is but a minor nuisance.

Two days ago, LifeHacker led me to a site called TiddlyWiki.com. TiddlyWiki has to be one of the most efficient ways to communicate information that I’ve ever seen. And it’s easy to use (both reading and writing). And it looks really cool.

I can’t really tell you about it without showing it to you, so I’ve written a TiddlyWikiTutorial. Check it out!

Exams are over, thank goodness. I did pretty well. Final grades came out last night: 4 A’s, 2 B’s. And one of those B’s really should have been an A. But, no matter. I’m pleased anyway.

Yesterday and today we’ve been having all of the “Commencement Week” activities. I arrived late to the Sermon Contest yesterday morning, because somehow I managed to misplace an hour in getting ready. I woke up at what I thought was my normal time, took a shower, came out, and *gasp* it’s 6:50 instead of 6! I usually leave at 7 to get there in time for my 8 o’clock class. Fortunately, the contest started at 8:30, so I was able to get ready in what should have been enough time.

But naturally, because I was running late, the passage from I-85 to I-385 became horrendously slow for no apparent reason, even coming to a full stop on a couple of occasions.

Needless to say, my attention was less than well-focused on the sermon contest. That, and both of the speakers I heard were talking about the Great Commission, IIRC, and how we should witness to people, and all that. Nothing we hadn’t all heard a million times already.

So, my mind started to wander off into what I would preach about, were I ever to be compelled to preach. I think I’ll eventually make the topic into its own post later, so I won’t spoil it here.

Then there was an hour break for some reason, probably to allow time for the stage crew to set up for the next of the day’s festivities: the Fine Arts Awards Ceremony/Recital. Apparently there are contests going on throughout the semester in music, art, and speech, and the winners get to perform in front of the entire student body. To me, that would be a punishment rather than a reward–I hate getting up in front of people to do anything–but I guess that’s why I’m not a fine arts major. Yeah, I’m a business major, so that means I’ll be doing presentations from time to time, but the bar is set a lot lower than for fine arts folks. All I have to do is get the information across to my audience clearly without putting them to sleep. Fine arts guys aren’t allowed to make mistakes, period.

The recital went well; as seems to be typical for Bob Jones recitals, the music was good, but too long. The speech parts were excellent, especially the “duet acting” presentation. A guy and a girl did a scene from The Taming of the Shrew, which was hilarous.

After the recital, there was a break for lunch–yay for Jack-in-the-Box–followed by the Scholastic Bowl championship. For those of you who don’t know, the Scholastic Bowl is a trivia contest that runs throughout the second semester of every year. The societies each send teams of three representatives who have to answer various obscure questions ranging from music history to science to business to BJU-related trivia. Each correct answer is worth 10 points; if you answer incorrectly, you lose 5 points and the opposing team can answer for a chance at 5 points.

This year was apparently the closest champtionship ever in the 21 years the games have been played: The winning team only scored 5 points more than the losing team. The contest was at least mildly entertaining.

That was it for yesterday: I came home, changed, and bought a DVD burner. It’s very pretty:

I like it.

Today was more of the same; an awards ceremony, which recognized a bunch of students who performed well academically throughout the year, as well as teachers who had reached various milestones in their teaching careers. I was amazed to learn that there are a few teachers who have taught at BJU for 50 years. I can’t imagine staying in one place that long, no matter where.

I also saw a production of Hamlet, which was very good. I’d never seen Hamlet before. My favorite part: Hamlet has just killed Polonius, the long-winded and annoying, yet decent, nobleman who is the father of Hamlet’s one-time love interest Ophelia. (In fairness to Hamlet, Polonius did take him by surprise, hiding behind a curtain in the Queen’s bedroom.) Soon after enters Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle who has killed the rightful king, Hamlet’s father, and who has taken his kingdom and his queen, and who (combined with the ghostly apparation of Hamlet’s father) driven Hamlet to madness.

KING CLAUDIUS: Where is Polonius?

HAMLET: In heaven; send hither to see: if your messenger find him not there, seek him i’ the other place yourself.

At this point much of the audience made a noise like “OOoooooo!” as if to say “Touché!”

There’s also some concert thing tonight, but I don’t have to go. Why? I’m a town student living 30 miles away. BJU has graciously relaxed the rules for people in my situation: I only have to attend two artist series performances and two vespers in per semester, while the dorm students have to attend all of them. (Of course, dorm students also have a 45-minute shorter commute than I do, so it all evens out.)

The last of the commencement week activities is commencement proper, which I’ll be attending tomorrow. I normally wouldn’t attend, but I think that I ought to come to at least one commencement before actually participating in one. I expect it to be at least a little interesting: Dr. Bob is handing over the reins of BJU to his son, Dr. Steven Jones tomorrow.

And now you know why I try to avoid the “here’s what I did today!” kind of posts–they’re long and boring. I’ll have to say something of substance in the near future. Until then, good night.

Sorry… finals week… last two finals tomorrow.