On the Eighth Day of Christmas...

I spent time on the phone with HP tech support, helping a friend get his MediaSmart home server back up and running. Working with it, I am struck that it seems to run far more quietly than the Netgear ReadyNAS I returned last summer (because of the ReadyNAS's malfunctioning fans producing noise). The unit is also a lot more hardware for the buck.

Yet, while Windows Home Server is a relatively interesting product, it feels somewhat rough around the edges. I cannot help but wonder if the fact that the system needed to be factory reset speaks of the unreliability of Windows being carried over into something on the verge of being a consumer electronics-type device. I really wish Apple would offer a full fledged NAS-like product done right.

Happy New Year!

Sorry to be scarce this week. Since Christmas things have been a little different than I expected or would have hoped. But, on this seventh day of Christmas, let me wish everyone a Happy New Year filled with joy and the best sorts of excitement.

I'll try to resume regular blogging, so stay tuned.

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone has had a blessed and Merry Christmas! It has been a beautiful, white Christmas here with a nice snowfall yesterday and continued flurries today and into the night. Picture perfect and peaceful.

Remember this is just day one of the twelve days of Christmas — my goal is to get people to observe the whole 12 days of Christmas with lights, music and general “Christmasyness.” Will you join me in celebrating the next 11?

C.S. Lewis and the Influence of Books

In the Wall Street Journal, Michael Flaherty critiques Joy Behar's ignorant understanding of C.S. Lewis. Beside defending Jack against the unfortunate suggestion that he is only an author of children's books, the piece is worth reading for some excellent observations on books and stories in general.

Lewis would likely have appreciated making Mrs. Palin's reading list. But he probably would have appreciated the questions about it even more. For Lewis, one of the best ways to know a person was to know what they read. He was convinced that books defined us and shaped our character. He realized that books did more than prepare people for interesting conversations with journalists—they prepare us to respond to the crises we encounter in our own lives.

I keep thinking of John Henry Cardinal Newman right now.

Returning, Finishing

Well, I think I may have been away from my blog longer just now than at any other time in its almost nine year history. With all the projects swirling around finishing at seminary and trying to line up my next steps, I found I just did not have the inspiration to write anything here. Now, with my time at seminary wrapped up (assuming all the exams went OK, of course), I hope to return to regular blogging.

I have missed posting on here. The interesting thing about blogging is that it provides a creative outlet that is neither as long or involved as writing a column nor as short and quickly forgotten as a Facebook status update. I have a number of ideas of things I want to get to posting here again, so watch out… I am back.

15 Authors

An interesting little meme is floating around Facebook:

The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included, of course) who've influenced you and whose work has stayed with you. List the first fifteen (or so) you can recall, though we all want to list twice that. Tag a few literate friends, including me. Take it as an opportunity for self knowledge and self sharing. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your fifteen picks, and tag people in the note.) Or simply reply to this note.

Let's give this a go, in no particular order:

1. William Shakespeare
2. T.S. Eliot
3. Thomas Aquinas
4. Karl Barth
5. John Donne
6. Henry Hazlitt
7. Michael Williams
8. Michael Pollan
9. David Hume
10. John Hick
11. Geoffrey Chaucer
12. Dante
13. C.S. Lewis
14. N.T. Wright
15. Henri Nouwen
16. Christopher Marlowe
17. Boethius

There's a nice little grouping of significant authors in my life.

Doubt and Faith

Paul Tillich once said,

Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.

Generally, I think our modern conception of faith suggests it is either something built on entirely warranted belief or is entirely unwarranted. Tillich here offers a middle way that is more in accord with Scripture. Being human involves uncertainties and doubts arising whenever we deal with something of great import. If we take the Bible seriously, then, inevitably, some doubts will exist.

That is why we pursue theology. As St. Anselm said, theology is “faith seeking understanding.”

Flash-free Video on the Mac

Gruber does a good job of noting how you can continue to see a lot of the video placed on the web even after ditching Flash entirely. Many sites have already implemented HTML5 video to support the iPad, etc. — might as well make use of it.

Christians and Creation Care

Reading for class, I ran across a blog post from Dr. Vinoth Ramachandra arguing for more concern about “global warming” amongst Christians. He writes,

Interestingly, many atheists seem to care more about global warming than many so-called “Biblical Christians”. I suggest that the latter need to re-read their Bibles and the former need to re-think their worldview. If Nature is all that is, and human beings are as significant as slime moulds where nature is concerned, why care about what happens to future human beings? If Homo Sapiens ends up destroying itself, the earth will simply throw up new life forms that will survive at higher temperatures. In other words, the question I am posing is whether either “deep ecology” or the militant atheism that insists on telling us that humans are nothing more than accidental products of an evolutionary process – can these worldviews coherently sustain our fundamental moral intuitions in the face of global warming and climate change?

He seems to presume that those who disagree with the IPCC don't care about the environment and climate change. He is arguing against a straw man. Many of us who disagree with the IPCC-related materials do care very much about the environment, we just tend to think scientific data and Biblical commands led us to other conclusions than pushing for the adoption of policies such as the Kyoto Protocol that would likely hurt millions of people around the globe.

(I'm not saying there aren't a lot of Christians, especially those with a “the World is Not My Home” dispensational framework, who think it is perfectly fine to pollute the earth with mindless abandon. But, the range of disagreement is far more nuanced than that.)

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