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Journal May 2006

31 May 2006

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

30 May 2006

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

25 May 2006

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the past:

24 May 2006

Now that I've caught up a bit, I can talk a bit about the Da Vinci Code movie both Maureen and I saw last weekend.

We both thought it was well done, and Maureen hadn't read/heard the book yet. She thought there didn't seem to be much controversy, and I wonder if she would think there was more or less if she read the book. I don't remember if the book had the same words from Langdon near the end, but it does seem that whether you believe the theories in the story or not, real faith and its practical benefits to oneself and to society should remain intact, or even be stronger.

I won't go into differences between the book and the movie because I don't have a mechanism to prevent spoilers (without using Javascript or something), and also because I'm sure it's discussed elsewhere. There's definitely far less detail in the movie, and some of it is relatively superfluous to the overall plot, such as the nature of a poison used with respect to its victim and the explanation of a certain style of writing. There are a few major plot omissions, but the story in the movie is still a complete, self-contained one; it's just not as complete as the story in the book.

I'd recommend this movie to anyone, theist or not, because it's a good thriller and well-crafted story (whether you believe it or not), and it causes us to examine church (and Church) history more deeply.

-res

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

23 May 2006

I was sick on Wednesday and Thrusday, and that delayed all of my journal postings, including the ones already delayed. I finally got to edit them, so they're up now.

-res

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

22 May 2006

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

19 May 2006

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

Other news and opinion from the past:

16 May 2006

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

15 May 2006

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the past:

11 May 2006

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

Other news and opinion from the past:

10 May 2006

It goes without saying that British English and American English (henceforth referred to as "British" and "American," respectively) are quite different. Of course, for me, being born in the US, American sounds natural to me, particularly that spoken in California, and British sounds like an accent. In "My Fair Lady," or equivalently, Pygmalion, Prof. Higgins notes that dialects and accents can imply a speaker's geographic location, and vice versa. So just as it makes sense that technology available over the course of one's lifetime has varying degrees of "feeling natural", ears tuned to local accents and word choice will notice the differences with other ways of speaking. (Of course, I don't mean to insult the intelligence of any linguists reading, because this is very elementary to them.)

Where was I going with this? I noticed that Brits enunciate the letter "t" much more than Americans do, at least in California. Try saying out loud "printer" or "seventy." If that sounded like "prinner" or "sevendy," you're pronouncing it the California way. The British way is much clearer, especially for words like "winter," though that probably won't be confused with "winner" unless it was someone's name. However, Brits tend to pronounce "er" at the ends of words like "uh," so "winter" would sound like "wintuh." And yet, it sounds more refined or charming than the American way. I must confess I'm a big fan of British accents.

Besides pronounciation, a big differentiator is word choice. While Americans may say "hard" or "call," Brits would use the less ambiguous "difficult" or "phone," respectively. If the purpose of communication is presenting ideas with clarity, then I'd be wise to think twice about the words before saying them, as I've been trying to do recently. If you hear me speak and stumble, it's sometimes because I'm trying to find the best words. (The other times are just because of my old age.) On the other hand, I can muddle up my writing with over-parenthesizing, as you all probably well know. I'm trying. Really I am.

Spelling is another thing altogether, but I don't really have a problem with that. You can criticise me all you like, and I would gladly humour you. And that's not just me talking out of my arse.

Overall, I'm not trying to insult anyone's particular way of speaking, or writing. But as I'm finding out, at least for myself, practicing speaking and writing helps to strengthen both of those skills. That's one of the main reasons I write in this journal.

Now if I could just politely tell people presenting slides not to read the bullet points verbatim, just summarize them and distribute copies....

-res

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

09 May 2006

Brian McLaren, of the progressive Christian magazine Sojourners, has a good and fair insight into Dan Brown's popular novel The Da Vinci Code. I share many of these insights, but I couldn't put it as well as McLaren does. Free registration is required for the Sojo website, which I think is worth it, but just for today, I'm copying it here along with the web reference below:

Brian McLaren on The Da Vinci Code
An interview by Lisa Ann Cockrel

With The Da Vinci Code poised to go from bestseller list to the big screen on May 19, pastor and writer (and Sojourners board member) Brian McLaren talks about why he thinks there's truth in the controversial book's fiction.

What do you think the popularity of The Da Vinci Code reveals about pop culture attitudes toward Christianity and the church?

Brian McLaren: I think a lot of people have read the book, not just as a popular page-turner but also as an experience in shared frustration with status-quo, male-dominated, power-oriented, cover-up-prone organized Christian religion. We need to ask ourselves why the vision of Jesus hinted at in Dan Brown's book is more interesting, attractive, and intriguing to these people than the standard vision of Jesus they hear about in church. Why would so many people be disappointed to find that Brown's version of Jesus has been largely discredited as fanciful and inaccurate, leaving only the church's conventional version? Is it possible that, even though Brown's fictional version misleads in many ways, it at least serves to open up the possibility that the church's conventional version of Jesus may not do him justice?

So you think The Da Vinci Code taps into dissatisfaction with Jesus as we know him?

McLaren: For all the flaws of Brown's book, I think what he's doing is suggesting that the dominant religious institutions have created their own caricature of Jesus. And I think people have a sense that that's true. It's my honest feeling that anyone trying to share their faith in America today has to realize that the Religious Right has polluted the air. The name "Jesus" and the word "Christianity" are associated with something judgmental, hostile, hypocritical, angry, negative, defensive, anti-homosexual, etc. Many of our churches, even though they feel they represent the truth, actually are upholding something that's distorted and false.

I also think that the whole issue of male domination is huge and that Brown's suggestion that the real Jesus was not as misogynist or anti-woman as the Christian religion often has been is very attractive. Brown's book is about exposing hypocrisy and cover-up in organized religion, and it is exposing organized religion's grasping for power. Again, there's something in that that people resonate with in the age of pedophilia scandals, televangelists, and religious political alliances. As a follower of Jesus I resonate with their concerns as well.

Do you think the book contains any significantly detrimental distortions of the Christian faith?

McLaren: The book is fiction and it's filled with a lot of fiction about a lot of things that a lot of people have already debunked. But frankly, I don't think it has more harmful ideas in it than the Left Behind novels. And in a certain way, what the Left Behind novels do, the way they twist scripture toward a certain theological and political end, I think Brown is twisting scripture, just to other political ends. But at the end of the day, the difference is I don't think Brown really cares that much about theology. He just wanted to write a page-turner and he was very successful at that.

Many Christians are also reading this book and it's rocking their preconceived notions - or lack of preconceived notions - about Christ's life and the early years of the church. So many people don't know how we got the canon, for example. Should this book be a clarion call to the church to say,"Hey, we need to have a body of believers who are much more literate in church history." Is that something the church needs to be thinking about more strategically?

McLaren: Yes! You're exactly right. One of the problems is that the average Christian in the average church who listens to the average Christian broadcasting has such an oversimplified understanding of both the Bible and of church history - it would be deeply disturbing for them to really learn about church history. I think the disturbing would do them good. But a lot of times education is disturbing for people. And so if The Da Vinci Code causes people to ask questions and Christians have to dig deeper, that's a great thing, a great opportunity for growth. And it does show a weakness in the church giving either no understanding of church history or a very stilted, one-sided, sugarcoated version.

On the other hand, it's important for me to say I don't think anyone can learn good church history from Brown. There's been a lot of debunking of what he calls facts. But again, the guy's writing fiction so nobody should be surprised about that. The sad thing is there's an awful lot of us who claim to be telling objective truth and we actually have our own propaganda and our own versions of history as well.

Let me mention one other thing about Brown's book that I think is appealing to people. The church goes through a pendulum swing at times from overemphasizing the deity of Christ to overemphasizing the humanity of Christ. So a book like Brown's that overemphasizes the humanity of Christ can be a mirror to us saying that we might be underemphasizing the humanity of Christ.

In light of The Da Vinci Code movie that is soon to be released, how do you hope churches will engage this story?

McLaren: I would like to see churches teach their people how to have intelligent dialogue that doesn't degenerate into argument. We have to teach people that the Holy Spirit works in the middle of conversation. We see it time and time again - Jesus enters into dialogue with people; Paul and Peter and the apostles enter into dialogue with people. We tend to think that the Holy Spirit can only work in the middle of a monologue where we are doing the speaking.

So if our churches can encourage people to, if you see someone reading the book or you know someone who's gone to the movie, say,"What do you think about Jesus and what do you think about this or that," and to ask questions instead of getting into arguments, that would be wonderful. The more we can keep conversations open and going the more chances we give the Holy Spirit to work. But too often people want to get into an argument right away. And, you know, Jesus has handled 2,000 years of questions, skepticism, and attacks, and he's gonna come through just fine. So we don't have to be worried.

Ultimately, The Da Vinci Code is telling us important things about the image of Jesus that is being portrayed by the dominant Christian voices. [Readers] don't find that satisfactory, genuine, or authentic, so they're looking for something that seems more real and authentic.

Lisa Ann Cockrel is associate editor at Today's Christian Woman.

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=sojomail.display&issue=060509

I hope this renews interest in Christian history (the novel did that for me) and brings social justice and progress (what Jesus would really do) back on par with (or more important than) the hot-button wedge issues of abortion and gay marriage.

-res

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

08 May 2006

I just heard again one of my favorite dialogs in "The Simpsons", Moe hooked up to a lie detector in "Who Shot Mr. Burns?":

Cop 1: Did you hold a grudge against Montgomery Burns?

Moe: No!

Lie detector: (buzzer)

Moe: All right, maybe I did, but I didn't shoot him!

Lie detector: (ding)

Cop 1: Checks out.

Cop 2: Okay, sir, you're free to go.

Moe: Good, 'cause I got a hot date tonight...

Lie detector: (buzzer)

Moe: ...a date...

Lie detector: (buzzer)

Moe: ...dinner with friends...

Lie detector: (buzzer)

Moe: ...dinner alone...

Lie detector: (buzzer)

Moe: ...watching TV alone....

Lie detector: (buzzer)

Moe: All right...I'm gonna sit at home and ogle the ladies in the Victoria's Secret catalog

Lie detector: (buzzer)

Moe: ...Sears catalog.

Lie detector: (ding)

Moe: Now would you unhook this already please? I don't deserve this kind of shabby treatment!

Lie detector: (buzzer)

What makes this last line especially funny is that not only is it not the truth, but not something even Moe believes, as is the theory behind lie detectors. I think George Costanza ("Seinfeld") put it best (on fooling lie detectors): "it's not a lie if you believe it."

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

Other news and opinion from the past:

05 May 2006

Well, Moussaoui avoided the death penalty, and actually, that's probably a good thing. I think Judge Brinkema put it best when she said, "As for you, Mr. Moussaoui, you came here to be a martyr and to die in a great big bang of glory, but to paraphrase the poet T. S. Eliot, instead you will die with a whimper." Unlike the jury, I do believe it is a harsher punishment than a quick death that he and other extermists would see as matryrdom.

There's probably not a chance his conviction would be overturned, but at least if someone wanted to study what makes an extremist, they can study him in his "super-maximum security" cell.

The sad part of all of this is that the families may not get closure, nor would they have if he had been executed, because of his limited role in 9/11, that is, possibly allowing it to happen by withholding information, but not actually making plans or carrying them out because he didn't make it.

Bottom line: Moussaoui is a terrorist wannabe, and he blew his chance to do anything about it. Nelson (from "The Simpsons"): hah hah!

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

04 May 2006

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

03 May 2006

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

02 May 2006

Ha ha ha, it looks like you may not need to run a script as root each time you want to connect to a wireless network after booting FC5. There's a graphical network configuration tool in FC5 that recognizes ndiswrapper as a wireless device, so I used it to add a new connection, but it still doesn't work just to activate the connection. When I use the script, the tool shows it being activated, but I can't do the activation from the tool. It looks like the profile for my wireless network is specified correctly and completely (from the previous configuration steps I did on the command line, not from anything I did from the tool) except for the key being in hex or "open" instead of "restricted." I corrected the key (by adding the prefix 0x to indicate hex), but I'm not sure how to specify "open." I first used "restricted" in the script, per the instructions from ndiswrapper, but it didn't work while "open" does. Maybe that's it, maybe not, but I ran the graphical tool as root, so I don't think it's a permissions problem. I'll figure this out eventually. And I'll see about getting "hibernate" (called "suspend" in GNOME) working on the laptop.

-res

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

01 May 2006

I'm working on testing FC5 on my notebook. Unlike my experience with Mandrake 9, doing an "upgrade" using the FC5 DVD works, at least when upgrading an FC4 installation. I had to reinstall the ATI drivers (see my revised tech page (notebook section) for the new, FC5-compatible drivers), and after a bit of tweaking, I got wireless enabled! It's not really that hard to set it up, but it takes some steps, including downloading ndiswrapper and copying the Windows drivers for my (built-in) wireless adapter (ndiswrapper is a bridge that allows the use of Windows network device drivers in Linux). Everything else is available on the FC5 source disc(s), namely the kernel source and wireless tools packages. Don't worry; you don't have to recompile the kernel, but you do create modules for the kernel to load, even without rebooting.

Here is the driver/ndiswrapper installation in detail, which I also put in more instructional form on the tech page, using as a reference ndiswrapper's installation Wiki:

After downloading and (as root) installing the above packages, I compiled and (as root) installed ndiswrapper 1.15, then (as root) ran (making sure /sbin is in the path) "ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf" from the folder where I copied my Broadcom wireless drivers, then "ndiswrapper -l" to actually install the drivers. Then I did "depmod -a" and "modprobe ndiswrapper" to get the module to load.

Actually using the wireless interface means running the following commands (it helps to put these in a script, like the one on my tech page, since I've had to do this (as root) with every boot):

See? It's not so bad. It's not as easy as with Windows, but after all this, I just have to run the script (as root) to get the network running. I'll keep a different script for each network I use (at different houses). And since my wireless on/off switch is a soft switch, it now turns on automatically when booting. Sooner or later the folks who develop Linux will make a graphical interface for it all.

What's the first thing I did after getting wireless working? Sudoku. D'oh!

-res

Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

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