ThinkBlog

Hacking is, essentially, finding creative ways to do things that helpfully and/or enjoyably violate the status quo.

With all the old-technology-become-new posts lately, like the one on booting Windows XP on a 20MHz original Pentium from Back in the Day™, I was inspired to try something new with my old Aiwa sound system.

I’ve had this thing since ‘97, I think, or perhaps even before that. I realized the other day, when I was so frustrated with the two large, clunky speakers and the obnoxiously large amp base taking up so much space on my desk that I was looking into a sleek new Creative Labs 7.1 system, I would be better served by trying to get more out of my old system.

Bringing the center and surround channel speakers home from my mom’s house Monday, I hooked them up and tried tweaking the setup. Emboldened to try different configurations by not being afraid of breaking something (like I was when I got it, nearly nine years ago), I was able to amplify the surround channels and soften the center channel enough that I am now using a 5.0 speaker system that I would otherwise have trashed.

Sometimes I come across as arrogant when speaking to someone, because of the tempo of my speech. When I thought about it, I realized that I fly through my speech because I think that other people are thinking of me that I’m completely boring and, especially, if they’ve heard anything like what I’m saying before, they could practically complete the sentence for me.

Add to that the fact that undergrads (and grad students, perhaps even more so these latter) are altogether prone to interrupting you in order to insert their own highly important and college-educated opinions on the matter, and I end up speaking quickly so as to not be interrupted. If I find myself stringing together more than a few sentences at the time, I get exasperated with myself: I will begin to rush and be almost apologetic about the fact that I’m taking so long to talk about something that the other person is probably already more adept at anyway.

But wait—could it be that I’m just projecting? Could it be that I’m just assuming that people are so impatient with me because I am with them? Ooh, sweet humility! Of course, I can’t help the fact that people interrupt other people, though I make it a point not to do so, but I wonder if sometimes I become exasperated with people when they tell me something I already know, or somehow I think that I could complete their sentences for them. Interesting. Humbling, but interesting….

I have been guilty of taking on more than my fair share of external obligations for the past few, oh, years. I wonder if there are others of us out there who are willing to admit that we love the feeling of being helpful so much that we’ll break our backs to help others out. Part of peace, Pastor James McDonald has said, is knowing when to say when. (I paraphrase, but that’s the gist.) I know I’ve been guilty of thinking that business (busy-ness) is next to Godliness, sometimes—of playing Atlas. After swearing never to let that kind of thing happen again in a relationship with a significant other, I now realize the other areas where I’ve been guilty of trying to people-please by taking on projects.

Anyone else willing to own this one?

Another dichotomy in understanding and interpreting the Bible (more specifically, the authors of the canon and their styles of writing) came up in conversation the other day. I was talking with Sarah about something and she said something to the effect that she didn’t really care for the way Paul the apostle came across.

I began to jump to his defense (in my mind—always a wise thing not to be offended on the behalf of a man a couple of thousand years dead when talking with your girlfriend), but reconsidered. It struck me: I don’t like Paul sometimes either, but that has practically nothing to do with Paul and everything to do with my own issues. Most of you will not be shocked to find that I thought about Paul in terms of being a quintessential `T’ type on the Jungian typology scale—a thinker through and through, rational to the bone. Furthermore, I would say that John, the “disciple whom Jesus loved,” was a quintessentially `F’ type—a feeler to the core, however committed to right doctrine.

Both of these men were used to speak the truth of Christ by God, and it has been said of the book of Romans that the believer who understands it has a key to the interpretation of the rest of the whole canon. So what gives?

First, a bit of internal reaction. Sarah was saying that he came across as arrogant, as even pushy, perhaps. Well, no doubt, I’ve thought the same of him, to be honest. But this is because of a failure to recognize what he was doing—nothing that Paul or, for that matter, John, said was superfluous. When he was saying “I was a Hebrew among Hebrews,” for instance, his readers would have understood him to be making a powerful case for how Christ had taken over in his ambitions; it is especially pertinent, I think, in context of the rest of his letters, because of what he tells us Christ expects us to give up, as well.

Compare that to the way we are given to speak today. I once knew someone who used to say of herself that she was once extremely gifted in finding new and different ways to take a drug. She had since that point quit the practice, but when it came up in conversation, her face could have been said to fairly glow with pride in remembrance of her former self. Likewise, when I talk about my past, I have to watch my words and intentions very carefully so as not to put forth the impression that I am proud of having done the things that I’ve done. I think the secret here is that, well, we are. Put with brutal honesty, the flesh is proud of the things it’s done, and part of us bears the scars of past sin the way an old warrior might—that part of us everyone else sees is apparently humble and penitent, but I know that some of us, and perhaps all of us to some extent, struggle with pride that says, “Yes, I’ve done wrong, and no, I wouldn’t choose it again; but you haven’t the foggiest clue about the pain I’ve gone through to become the strong and Stoic person I am today.”

So if we read that little shadowy bit into Paul, it comes across as flagrant pride. We would never dream of knowingly phrasing something such that it gave away our pride at our past, or at anything else—but we recognize that in order for us to do so, we would have to be either ignorant of our own manner of speaking, or be so full of hubris that we didn’t care how we came across. If anything’s not up for debate, it’s the fact of Paul’s intelligence, whatever else might be called into question about his letters—therefore, we think, he must have just been so full of overweening pride that he couldn’t help but leak a little of it from his quill along with the gospel.

But this underestimates his experiences, his understanding, his sorrow, and his true drive for the gospel message; and it also gives us insight, if we are willing to bear it, into our own states of mind. You don’t get stoned and flogged to the point of death and back for pride; Spurgeon has said that the proud man is the one who enters the court of a king timidly because he would expect the same groveling from his own subjects, should they dare to approach him.

It should be noted in the interest of fairness that I have felt much the same for Paul, especially when feeling extraordinarily proud of myself, of course. But, due to the fact that he’s right, whether or not it comes across in a squishy, feel-good sort of way, I bow the knee to his wisdom. (It’s only when I really examine myself that I realize that I need bow the knee to Christ through Paul for the sake of wisdom, but not to the man himself, who was merely carrying out his mission unabashedly.)

On the other hand, I sometimes really have a problem reading John. What greater arrogance could one possibly have than to assign to oneself the position of “THE disciple whom Jesus loved” [emphasis mine]? I mean, my goodness, way to set yourself over and above everyone else there, Son of Thunder! And add to that the fact that he’s such a feeler—intelligent to the core, and clearly inspired, but bent on transmitting the message of love nontheless—and you get a little something in my own breast that wants to cross its arms and turn away. Read with pride in my heart, John comes across as I demonstrated to Sarah: eyes squinted, eyebrows slightly raised, holding up thumb and forefinger to my mouth, “God is”—take a deep drag on the imaginary blunt—”loooove, man.” Give me a freaking break, right? God is the master craftsman, God is the Almighty, God is the God who caught even Paul up to the “third heaven,” and He is even the Lover of one disciple in particular. Fine, fine. But don’t give me this touchy-feely stuff, eh?

Such is the effect of pride on our own reading of the Bible. When I am dealing with the personae of the individuals through whom the Holy Spirit penned Scripture, I am only frustrating my efforts at understanding: I’m reading the Bible like a novel and critiquing the style and structure of the sentences, and the whole point that God wants to communicate to me is lost beneath a torrent of my own emotional, self-imposed ignorance.

Has anyone else had this experience? Are there writers of Scripture whose personalities you, too, have been guilty of despising, and perhaps inadvertently the holy message they carry along with it?

Heavenly Father, help us appreciate the uniqueness of the gospel carriers’ personalities, just as you have crafted us to be more than carbon copies of our neighbors; let us not stumble in our flesh when truth is spoken in a way that may differ from what we would most have liked.

A recent post on social commentary gives a satirical account of the political events that have lately been happening in the U.S. Where did Common Sense go? It seems Mr. Sense is recently deceased; here is a pointed account of his decline and ultimate death. This post is filed under philosophy, but consider it politico-social commentary. Hey, satire counts. So, what do you think?

[Edited 01/31/2006]

Hollis Inman, an extremely talented amateur photographer hailing from Columbia, South Carolina, is the latest addition to the creative forces behind the ThinkBlog Gallery.  He captures well the more intimate moments of human and natural experience.  You can check him out under InsideTraitor, right here.

Contact him on AIM, if you’d like, via his screen name, InsideTraitor.

There is a certain irony in giving a practical guide to being creative, especially in an age when Romantic idealism still hangs around in the form of our own desires to have been born with an innate ability to do whatever we see is creative.

This article is a fairly long account of how to be creative that is both down-to-earth and witty, encouraging yet careful.

With such items as “You are responsible for your own experience,” “Keep your day job,” “If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you,” and “Dying young is overrated,” I think you’ll find it an amusing mix of post-Sartrean existentialism, American pragmatism, Stoicism, and winking sarcasm.

Experiencing writer’s block? Frustration with a paper? If you have a moment, glance at the list, chuckle, go boil yourself some Turkish coffee, and come back to it.

read more | digg story

Lately I’ve started my running regimen again, and for the first time am going to try to train up to a reasonable 10K time along with the rest of the weightlifting that I’ve been doing. It’s slow going, but even as I crumpled up my brow in distress and lower-body lactic acid buildup, I smiled knowing that I was going to do it, and it would be well. God doesn’t bless the sluggard; but He does bless the diligent with training. I realized as I ran down the track that when it comes to different things in my spiritual walk, I consult different masters (under the One Master, of course). For instance, when it comes to intellect and wisdom, I read carefully not only what Jesus had to say, but also the writings of Solomon and Paul. I mean, whose nostrils don’t flare at the beautiful truth in Ecclesiastes, for instance?

But when it comes to physical training, I think of David, that warrior for God, after His own heart. He trained up and down, and would have none of the excuses we make for ourselves these days. Everything from the nebulous “I don’t feel good” to “But the OC [or insert some television show here] is on!” I firmly believe that, after the dust of routine settles, we make time for things that we really believe matter, and we will make excuses for the things that [we think] don’t, at least not enough to go over and above the level of the other things.

Perhaps this requires an example, yes? Take, then, for instance, A Day in the Life Of. If I get up just in time for class, spend more money than is wise on coffee, energy drinks, and food, spend more time with my dearheart and on the computer than allows me to have a quiet time by the time I fall into bed, then I’m too tired to have any quiet time with God—then I have just thereby proven that reading my Bible and spending time in the Word is not as important as sleeping, eating, talking with my sister in Christ, blogging, and sleeping some more. I’ve also proven that homework, even though it is the full-time job/responsibility of the ones in college (or high school, technically ), is not as important as those things either. So if those things are more important, I have just said that sloth, gluttony, idolatry, and more sloth are more important than the living God. This sounds a bit extreme, but I think if we’re honest with ourselves we know that we can be guilty of this. It’s not an open, outright sin—but when it becomes a pattern of behavior and the ruts grow deep, it becomes just that pronounced.

So I think, “What would David think of my doing X?” Would he say that I was glorifying the Messiah by my actions, that I was honoring the body that God gave me? There is a time for rest, and for laughter, of course! Even for dancing! But when I sit reading some nonsense on the web, or some easy reading when I should be doing something to help my very soul, I can’t help but think, you know, if I were under command of David, even in the twenty-first century, even if it were matters as mild as simply not making excuses for not getting up, not going to bed, not running, not lifting, not enjoying the embodiment of my spirit which God has declared good–he’d be pretty disappointed in me.

I find this useful particularly in grey areas, where it is not a matter of clear moral discourse. Whereas there’s a lot of sticky theology when thinking something as, well, cliché as “What would Jesus do?” in something not clearly involving a moral, ethical, &c. decision–this disappears when you look to someone like David, the great warrior. Is it sin to drink that carbonated beverage containing 120+ calories from high fructose corn syrup per serving? Is it a sin to veg out in front of the boob tube for hours at a time? No, of course not, but it may not be very wise if one has an agenda to really take hold of responsibility for his own body. I believe Psalm 8 also applies to our flesh in this instance–not our flesh nature, necessarily, but our own flesh–that it is our responsibilities individually and together with our friends and loved ones to master our own bodies and care for them, just as it is our responsibility to care for the Earth at large and “have dominion over it.”  It’s like the old Seinfeld episode taken to a broader level than the hilariously impolite: “Are you master of your domain?”

I’d invite you to try it.  Go for a day thinking about how warrior-king David would admonish you if you were in his ranks.  You have the freedom under his command to eat that Twinkie, but that’s really going to make you sluggish, tired, and essentially miserable when you’re ready to do something as simple as climb that flight of stairs.

Because I’m a stickler for details and would pitch a fit if anyone left my immediately prior post simply as it is (for techical reasons), I’d like to clarify.  Epicurus was not technically an atheist, he simply allowed for the gods to be off at Olympus–which is not a physical place, for E.–enjoying their own goodness, virtue, &c.  His ethics are much more complex than calling him a blatant atheist would account for; it’s simply that insofar as they involve the gods of ancient Greece, they are practically irrelevant.

In studying Epicureanism, it becomes clear from Epicurus’ own writings that he constructed his philosophy specifically in order to keep people from the fear of the gods.  Now, this is a wonderful gift of empiricism–for he certainly was an empiricist, if labels clarify anything–that the trembling of a superstitious people before mysterious gods subject to the same whims and faults as man should be quelled in light of a philosophy that is much more down-to-earth, as it were.  And his philosophy itself is, in places, compelling precisely because it rests on such things as a more nuanced Democritean atomism (and we love to see in the old thinkers how nearly spot-on they were!).  It seems, however, that his premise is lacking.

What’s this, a philosophy constructed just so that people won’t fear judgment after death?  The only reason it sounds so ridiculous is that it’s very honest.  That was clearly Epicurus’ purpose from the beginning, other than the fact that he really did believe in it himself; he was attempting to put people’s minds at ease.

Isn’t that honest, though?  When we stretch beyond the humor of the situation, we see this kind of absolute, materialistic empiricism in scientists and thinkers today.  The notion of a man claiming an entire epistemology founded on the premise that it will make you feel good because it’s sufficiently convincing that it will allow you to omit the gods from your psyche is preposterous–isn’t it?  Yet we hear it all the time, it seems.  Scientists come up with new and different ways to dazzle us and to reassure us that, insofar as there is an order to the universe, it means nothing; and insofar as we are conscious, consciousness is an appendage of prior evolutionary processes as surely as our appendices and cocciges.  The underlying message is not less preposterous, only more subtle: now it is simply understood that if there is no God then there is no judgment, and besides, even if there is a God or gods, surely He is not a He after all, but an androgynous Force, and all the world is a fatal process inside of which our petty actions cannot be–shall not be–accounted for.

If Epicurus had some startlingly clear empirical truths along with his outrageous ontology, he was also much more honest in his “it feels better for there not to be judgment, therefore gods don’t exist” than most scientists today, who claim to work from empirical data outward toward the “lack” of God.

“What is mind?  Where is it located?  How can we understand mind in a physical universe?”  These are the questions my PHIL 520 class purports to address.  So far we’ve covered dualism and are beginning this week into behaviorism.  Now, I’ve battled dualism, and behaviorism is a necessary evil, a stepping stone in the history of psychology; but I’m looking forward to plugging away at these so as to get to the good stuff.  More later, but suffice to say I can’t wait to work with this a little more as the semester progresses.

Meanwhile, do you have answers to any of the above questions?  What leads you to your answers?  What questions do these bring up?  I’m thinking: what if the presupposition of a physical universe (qua materialistic) is fallacious to begin with?  But do I have reason to even raise that question apart from my own assumptions about Christian ontology?

Actually, I do, and it rests on the constitution of the physical.  But that’s certainly for another time.

As I tossed back fifteen milliliters of NyQuil the other night, I realized that it wasn’t because I was deathly ill; no, I had actually beaten the sinus infection from a few weeks prior, so there wasn’t really any “sniffling, sneezing,” and all the rest of that nonsense they spout on the commercials for it. No, I was taking a little dose of NyQuil because each 15mL dose contains 6.25mg doxylamine succinate, which is approximately just over a fifth of a generic Unisom pill. Add to that somewhere between 325 and 550 milligrams per dose of acetaminophen (Tylenol) and a decongestant, and you’re in wonderland before you know it, even if you’ve had a lot on your mind during the day. (Not that I know what that’s like, really. )

What do video games from the early ’80s tell us? Eat a shroom or two, get large and gain an extra life. Eat your vitamins, and you can devour ghosts. In fact, I specifically remember as a kid thinking that the old vampire-slaying game, Castlevania, was very odd because the powerups were all actual objects–a leg of mutton, for instance, or an entire plate of meat. The message? Look, frankly, I don’t believe there is a message to the old games. It’s convenient to use a few dots on a screen instead of trying to do something amazing and concrete in four bits with whatever the heck this yellow circle is on the screen. It makes perfect sense that, in a screen filled with grids in which are sprites (animated characters) taking up one square each, adding one square’s worth of magic mushroom to one square of Mario equals one double-stacked, Super Mario. It’s logical.

But the message nevertheless comes through. What’s that? I thought you just said there was no message! Yes, that’s true. It’s not that Miyamoto was a drug pusher when he designed Mario to use shroom powerups, any more than he was a closet cannibal to use hearts to enhance Link’s strength in the Legend of Zelda series. But that’s perhaps the lesson that kids learn from that stuff. Take something, you’ll feel better.

A few years ago, I used to know and be able to quote to you the generic names, standard doses, and likely side effects of various drugs, both OTC and prescription. Did you know that Advil and Motrin are both just ibuprofen, standard dose 200 to 400 mg? Sure, anyone with a budget knows to look for the generic brand ibuprofen.  But there’s no reason that I should know that zolpidem tartrate is a sedative hypnotic sold in 10, 5, and 2mg graduations commonly marketed as Ambien; or that a 1000mg cocktail of hydrocodone and acetaminophen is commonly called a Lortab-10, and is classified as a narcotic analgesic.  Why do I know this?  Because I spent my younger years memorizing that a brownish-red mushroom makes you bigger, and a green mushroom gives you an extra life, and that sort of thing.

Now, of course, I have neither of those pharmaceuticals on-hand, because I’ve no need.  My insomnia is caused by irregular circadian rhythms, symptomatic of a mild disease known as college.  But even now I know that two cups of coffee is a nice little tincture, a power-up that gives me a temporary alertness boost which can be catalyzed by a glass of water every hour after its ingestion.  I know that a few milligrams of doxylamine succinate equal an antihistamine power-up that can cure motion sickness, mild allergic reactions, and mild bouts of insomnia.

But drugs carry consequences, and it takes us a long time to realize it.  I’m not talking the illegals, or even the controlled substances.  I mean the OTC stuff.  You know that pounding behind your eyes when you don’t get the morning joe?  That sluggish feeling like half your sensory neurons are out to lunch after you take a couple of Benadryl (diphenhydramine hydrochloride 25mg)?  It all adds up, and it takes a toll on us; and the solution is not more drugs.

Your thoughts?

As I sat eating my salad with balsamic vinaigrette, talking with a friend of mine online, I noted slack-jawed that the back of the bottle contained the following:

The Great Salad Dressing Balloon Race. An armada of balloons loaded with Light Balsamic. The starters gun - Bazoombah! They all rise majestically in the air. Newman’s Own Balloon, with fewer calories, more taste, and secretly propelled by charity, flies faster than Kraft® and further than Wishbone®. First across. First on the ground. El Piloto quaffs mucho quaffs of Newman’s Own Light Balsamic in victory. A medium light Italian starlet, daughter of Butch Cassidini, named Bitch Cassidini, leaps into the balloon basket, kisses Piloto, her lips smeared with Newman’s Own Light Balsamic, she murmurs, “You taste of Sicily, of Vesuvius, of Naples, baby,” and patting his fanny she whispers, “and no fat.”

Wait, what?

Come again?

How is it possible that this was on the back of a Newman’s Own bottle of salad dressing? I was expecting the usual fare with the likes of such advertising rhetoric as, “A fresh taste of Sicily with half the fat and calories of the leading brand! Newman’s Own salad dressings are [blah blah blah, yackety schmackety].” Instead, this! How can anyone in their right mind get away with a play on Butch Cassidy’s name in a metaphorical balloon race, with someone with an obviously Spanishized “name”, quaffing salad dressing?

On the other hand, it worked. I enjoyed myself thoroughly and applaud the Newman’s Own brand name for this kind of back-of-the-bottle advertising. It rewards those who, like myself, always read the fine print (and are obviously bored).

A buddy of mine is running Firefox 1.5/WinXP on a very, very nice machine.  Flash Player is installed for Firefox.  I suspect he has more spy/adware than I have been able to clean off and keep off; every time I go over there it’s something new.  But I don’t know if that has anything to do with the problem that’s been perplexing me about his machine.

It’s throwing errors when Flash is used, almost at all.  It’s annoying him, and even after having removed Firefox and Flash, and reinstalled both, I can’t figure out why this is happening.

Anyone else have this problem and know how to solve it?

Read this victory note over at Spam Kings Blog at O’Reilly about how people are winning the war on spam with brute-force, personal measures. Listen to the thirteen-minute phone call in which one spammer, Alex Polyakov, begs for mercy.

For more information, click here.