A New Kind of Problem

Well, the new pope has been in office for two days (well, unofficially, I guess — I know his installation into “office” has not occurred yet) and he already has a 21st century kind of problem to deal with. Cybersquatting, namely.

It seems that a creative Floridian decided, just before Pope John Paul II died, to buy up the names he thought a new pope might go by. As it turns out, he hit the “jackpot” with BenedictXVI dot com (personally, I do not recommend visiting the site, as I understand he has ads on it, and I have no desire to support cybersquatting). He wants a papal hat and a free stay at the Vatican in exchange for the name.

I wonder where that puts him in Dante's Inferno?

Unsatisfactory Simplicity

It would seem that the philosophical system that focuses on eliminating unsatisfactory beliefs, is, in fact, unsatisfactory. Why would this be? Perhaps one can argue that we should return to the idea that humans have some kind of innate desire for the supernatural. We could follow Freud’s line of thought and suggest that this originates from some kind of primeval neurosis or we could follow the ideas of C.S. Lewis and argue that God has placed natural law within us that causes us turn and look for the One beyond the Many. At any rate, we do seem to have a hardwired need to have someone save us.

As I wrote in a past consideration of savior figures (not presently available online, although I should remedy that), “people need the hope of a solution to the problems that plague everyday life, those problems that have no clear answer.” While the Buddha offers what appears to be help for the realization of life’s “unsatisfactoriness,” it is an introspective solution that still leaves the actual saving to the individual. The Buddha is what I would term a “philosophical savior” – he may provide “right thinking,” but the individual receives no substitionary assistance against the sea of troubles that rushes toward him or her. As an American monk, in the classic video series the Long Search with Ronald Eyre, explained, it is all about looking in one’s self. This is comforting to some extent, for we do like the idea of accomplishing our own salvation, but at the same time we seem to sense that we cannot do what needs to be done. If everything depends on me, it seems that I may be in trouble, especially if it is a mental process on which my fate hinges.

Therefore, it seems reasonable that those shown a system like Buddhism may find the simplicity of its system worth trying to adopt, but cannot face dukka, if we wish to call it that, or “the fall,” in Christian terminology, without a life preserver thrown our way. If we acknowledge that there is a cohesive order of some sort in the universe, be it God or the Void, it just seems logical to acknowledge that there must be some help outside ourselves unless the universe is just a cruel joke. We should not ignore the possibility that the universe is a cruel joke, or simply completely gratuitous, but if one has reached the point of acknowledging that a religion offers the key to understanding life, the universe and everything, it seems that we have already moved past the idea that there is no hope at all.

The question I would ask is this: can anyone truly eliminate the belief in a savior completely? As an atheist, C.S. Lewis was angry with God for not existing; that is, even when he did not believe, he believed enough to place the blame on God. I suspect most people who do not acknowledge a belief in a savior, still have someone or something in mind that serves a scapegoat; however they do not acknowledge it to others, or perhaps even themselves. While I am not a Buddhist monk, and cannot know what goes on in a monk’s mind, I wonder if it isn’t something like the mindset of the Deists. As Deists believed that their good works would, in the end, tip the cosmic scale of justice in their favor despite acknowledging failing to be perfectly good, I suspect that many Buddhists may realize they cannot eliminate desire, for even the desire to eliminate desire is a desire, but hope that they will be “desire-less enough” to accomplish their goal. In either case, there is an unmentioned component to the hope. Despite acknowledging an absolute standard, we start to figure that in our cases, the rules will surely be bent just a little. Once we reach this point, there is an assumed savior, for anything that bends the rules for us would be, by definition, someone saving us – a savior.

In the end, no matter how we try to work it out, we come back to this need to be saved. I would submit that the unsatisfactoriness of our own efforts is precisely why Theravada Buddhism does not generally exist “in the wild” without being combined with other spiritual beliefs that help with this need.

Pray Believing!

This thread at SCF was exactly what I needed to read tonight, especially Kevin's post. He said his new motto is “Pray Believing!” and that reminded me how often I fail to do just that.

When praying, I often find myself saying “Lord, if this is possible…” But wait a second, if I have faith, why am I saying if this is possible? So I correct myself, it is possible, after all, all things are possible for God.

Yet the problem is not over just yet. Then I resort to what Kevin called a “timid 'well, I guess if you want to do it, God, it would be okay, but I understand if you don't' prayer.” I have tried in the past to remind myself of Matthew 17:20, but all too often I find that I don't keep this verse's lesson in mind.

“For most assuredly I tell you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”

Kevin quoted the similar verse Mark 11:22-23 and that too is worth marking in my brain. There are things I have been praying about that I am convinced are things God has led me to pursue. If I am convinced of this, why do I always prefix my requests with if's? If I am not even confident in asking, I certainly do not have the mustard seed faith to move a mountain; Jesus' example is one of confidently asking for that which one believes to be God's will. While I could certainly be wrong about where God is leading me, I should trust that God will show me that, if need be, and instead focus on praying with the confidence that He has led me to seek this path.

It is simple enough to say that. Now I must try to live it. I need to “Pray Believing!”

Ratzinger's It

In case you've been in a cave all day, German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (78), has been chosen as the new pope under the name Benedict XVI. He is the first German to serve the office since the sixteenth century. It is a bit of irony, I suppose, that the last German pope, Andrian VI, presided just after the beginning of the Reformation schism and I believe the last German pope before that, Victor II, was the first pope elected after the Great Schism of 1054; take that for what you will. The new pontiff does not look to be too much a of friend of ecumenism, having previously criticized the Protestant churches that have established dialog with Rome. On the other hand, his orthodoxy is a good thing in many ways as opposed to electing someone who might have been inclined to lead the church in too liberal of direction.

Ratzinger has previously served as prefect of the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” better known by its old name: the Inquisition.

On a Lighter Note
And, timely enough, a theologian friend of mine passed on a little humor concerning the Cardinal turned newly elected Pontiff. The story goes that Cardinal Ratzinger dies and goes to Heaven. When he arrives there he waits with two other theologians to talk to God. The first one goes to see God, and comes back weeping. “How could I have been so wrong for so long,” he sobs. The second theologian is nervous but goes in and comes back out weeping and exclaiming “How could I have been so wrong for so long?” Then the Cardinal goes in to see God. Soon after God comes out weeping and says “How could I have been wrong for so long?”

Hard Disk Problems

Well, after spending some time last month helping my pastor with his dying hard disk, it seems I caught the same bug, so to speak. Early last week, my PowerMac G5 started to emit an odd sound — I ignored it at first. Then on Friday, I noticed that my hard disk was a lot noisier during drive access than before. Shortly thereafter, Mac OS X crashed — one of the only times it has ever done so. Taking note of this, I called AppleCare on Saturday, went through a bunch of tests, but came up with no problems on the drive.

Given that it was continuing to emit noises, I decided to go with my gut and buy another drive to back the whole thing up to. I purchased the newer variant of the same drive (both the new and old drives are Seagate 160 GB 7200 RPM SATA disks, but the newer one supports “NCQ”), installed it quickly, thanks to the effortless and tool-less hard disk install procedure that Apple engineered, and then used CarbonCopy Cloner to make a perfect copy of my old drive. Less than two hours after I opened the box for the new drive, I was running OS X and all of my applications on the new disc, with the old one relegated to backup status. The majority of that time was waiting for files to copy; it took 89 minutes to clone 70 GB of data from the old drive to the new one.

Still, I need to figure out a way to prove to AppleCare that something is fishy with the old drive. Today, the system froze twice, each time when I tried to do something fairly intensive with the old hard disk. This is unusual for OS X, which is as stable as you'd expect a BSD Unix to be, that is, rock solid. Since the drive is under warranty for another year and a half, perhaps I just need to wait for it to die completely or do something that will allow diagnostics to detect the problem, but I'd really rather have them send me a new drive now so that I can trust what has become my backup drive. If I can convince them to do so, I'd have two reliable hard disks, allowing for redundancy.

Sunday Brunch: A Brunch on Brunch

1) Do you eat breakfast on a regular basis and why or why not?
No. I love breakfast, but I love sleep even more. If I skip breakfast, I only have to get up one hour before I need to be almost any place I might need to go. If I eat a microwave breakfast, as I do sometimes, that ups the time by ten or fifteen minutes. A good, freshly prepared breakfast would do substantially more damage to my sleep time.

While I don't have to rise as early as some, breakfast just does not come out important enough to make it worth the extra time. As a side note, I would point out that most breakfast foods (short of a “full” breakfast as described below) do not seem to be overly filling, and therefore I just end up eating more on a day that I eat breakfast. If I just eat lunch, I end up consuming the same amount of lunch and feel just as satisfied, despite having a net of less food during the day.

2) What is your typical everyday breakfast?
A glass of milk or chocolate milk is my average “breakfast.”

3) How do you eat your eggs?
I prefer omelets, strongly, but I do like fried eggs on occasion. My favorite omelet is a western style with cheese and without mushrooms (i.e. green pepper, ham, onion and cheese, and, optionally, jalapeno peppers). Although I have not figured out how to create my ideal omelet, I know a cafe down in the Ozarks that does know how — they manage to make the egg very thin, thus allowing the omelet to be wrapped up like a burrito rather than the typical clam-shell style folding. The best omelet should have its ingredients that go inside the egg sautéed prior to making the actual omelet, rather than dumping the ingredients “raw” inside the egg. Cheese is best on top, not inside the omelet. Serve with ample hash browns and some good toast or biscuits with fresh jam.

If an omelet is out of the question, I will generally opt for two fried eggs, over medium, sausage links and hash browns. If available, though, I like Captain's Hash as well (that's where the sausage, and hashbrowns are tossed together with green pepper and onion — the egg remains on the side).

4) What is your favorite restaurant to eat breakfast out at?
McDonald's, Hardees or Jack-in-the-Box are all good for a quick breakfast, although I vastly prefer going some place that will serve the aforementioned, properly prepared omelet. At most fast food restaurants I will opt for a sausage, egg and cheese sandwich with a hashbrown. I do like McDonald's breakfast burritos and McGriddle sandwiches too.

5) Describe your perfect breakfast in detail.
I think I already did that in the course of explaining proper egg preparation. Like Christopher, I would express my dislike of breakfast served at times other than breakfast. The one exception would be a brunch type setting where you might have breakfast and lunch foods mixed in a late morning/noonish type setting, but I very much dislike breakfast for dinner.

Challenge Set #9

House Cleaning
Let's answer the unfinished questions of the past:

7.4.) Who was the one clergyman to sign the U.S. Constitution? What was his affiliation? (5 pts.) Whoops, I should have asked for a signer of the Declaration of Independence instead. The answer then would be John Witherspoon, who was president of what is now Princeton University for a time.

7.5.) What are the two parts of AT&T, other than Baby Bells, that will be reunited if the SBC-AT&T merger is approved by regulatory agencies? What makes this merger such an interesting contrast to AT&T's 1998 acquisition of Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI)? (10 5 pts.) If you check the numbers, AT&T paid sizably more for the upstart TCI than SBC is paying for the telephone company, Ma Bell, just a few years later.

8.1.) Who wrote/spoke the following and, if applicable, what is it? What other thing — I'm being intentionally vague here — derives its name from a phrase within here? (10 pts.)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

The answer here is William Butler Yeats (notice the connection to my name) and it is a poem entitled The Second Coming. Kevin guessed Achebe's Things Fall Apart for the latter part of the question, which is exactly what I was shooting for.

8.3.) Name the ties of the apostate UCC denomination to the Puritans and eighteenth century Methodists. (10 pts.) BONUS: Link it to the German Pietists as well for 5 pts. The Congregational Christian church resulted from the merger of a part of the eighteen century Christian movement (which in turn came from Methodist/Revival influence) and the Congregational Church, the church of the Pilgrims. This new church merged with the Evangelical and Reformed church, which traces part of its roots back to the German Pietists that settled in Missouri and elsewhere.

Generally, I Don't Say "Coke," do Y'all?

That's right; contrary to what the title of this post might imply, I speak general American English with a tinge of Yankeeisms and with relatively little Dixie or Upper Midwestern influence. Oddly, having grown up in the Midwest, I speak 0% Midwestern, according to this test. I'm not sure how scientific it is, although I do know I purposely do avoid some regional slang, so maybe that's the reason it comes out this way.

Your Linguistic Profile:

75% General American English

15% Yankee

5% Dixie

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

How about y'all (and, in case you are wondering, I cannot remember the last time I said “y'all”)?

Hat tip goes to Christopher.

Late Night Haiku V

XI.
Softly night falls here,
The sound of the computer
Mourns the passing day.

XII.
The wind blows to, fro,
My mind too goes for the ride,
Where does it lead me?

XIII.
Quiet, the cars drone on,
The soft sounds of a city night,
Someone heads t'ward home.

Rant: Social Contracts and the Web

If you use this tool, be aware of a sensitive issue. Although you may feel that your enjoyment of some Web sites is marred by the presence of ads, these ads represent a revenue stream for the Web site. If you block ads, there are those who would assert you are not holding up your end of a “social contract” between yourself and the Web site that you are browsing.

—Chris Lynch, NewsForge

I saw this on Slashdot today. Here is someone that gets the web advertising situation perfectly. While many people are oblivious to it, much as they are other ethical situations, there is an unspoken “social contract” to viewing web sites. If you view my site and it has ads on it, it does not require a serious ethical consideration to understand that a barter situation is going on under the honor system, and the honorable thing to do is to download the ads.

As I have said before, in most cases, the person viewing a site has unmetered access and the person providing the site does not. Therefore, when you download an ad, it costs you time, but when you view my site, it costs me money. And it still costs me money when you do not view my ads. If we were dealing with any situation other than web site viewing, I really doubt someone would feel it was ethical to not uphold their part of the bargain despite the fact that they were materially costing the other party. And TiVo analogies do not hold water: NBC is not materially impacted in any way when I watch a show like Revelations. While it still may be right to view the ads, they do not have to amplify their signal more because I am tuning in; therefore, the web developer's situation is much more like that of a shopkeeper selling goods than the television network broadcasting a show.

I continue to insist that the moral thing to do if you do not like the ads on a site is to quit viewing that site. It is simple and ethical. If I don't like how much the grocery store charges for an apple, I do not steal the apple, I go somewhere else to buy apples. Likewise, web surfers should examine the cost of a given site and then choose whether to “shop” there or elsewhere, not give themselves a five finger discount because it is easier than “driving to the other store.” Remember: if everyone did that…

A frequent argument is that the web was fine without commercialized sites. Perhaps it was. Those who feel that way should simply refuse to use commercialized sites rather than trying to force commercialized sites to become non-commercial by raiding and pillaging them. Nothing is stopping users from ignoring the boom of sites that have appeared thanks to advertising revenue.

And that, my friends, ends my rant of the night.