My last post on this blog

I haven't been here much of late - much too much going on in work and home life.

After reading this story about how Google is muzzling anti-Obama bloggers, I am shutting this blog off and switching all of my default search engines to another search site. Google has gone too far.

Vote McCain:



and stop the Obamessiah:




I'll find another corner of the blogosphere to re-emerge...somewhere far, far from Google.

Vaya con dios, friends

An oldie but a goodie

This morning I opened my Bible with the conviction that I need to spend a lot of time looking at Romans. I turned to Romans 12. The profound meaning of this particular passage is nothing new, but it meant a lot to me personally today. I have been struggling a lot with the kind of person I should be and how I should present myself to others. I am about to embark on a three-year commitment as an elder in our church, and the responsibility is starting to sink in. Thus, the importance in being aware of how God desires me to live my life is even more prominent.

Romans 12:9-21 says

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. On the contrary:
"If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Wow. That sounds like a pretty stiff standard. God willing, his Spirit in me will help me strive to live more like Paul describes here.

Merry Tossmas!

For those who are irritated by the reluctance of retailers to recognize this as the Christmas season, this one's for you:



Now I need to go and "toss" all those catalogs that meet the criteria.

Merry CHRISTMAS to all of you!

And now for something completely different....

I live technology as my life in the work world, but I have not blogged on it often. Well, here's one of those occasions.

So I was reading this article in Computerworld, titled "One year later: Did Vista's focus on security pay off?" a while ago, and think I'd nominate it as the "DUH" of the day. The subtitle is "Consumers don't seem to care so much " I think the Einstein who wrote that headline must be different than the person who wrote the article, as you see this quote on the 2nd page:

"Still, Microsoft made a crucial mistake in pushing and marketing something that many feel should be an inherent part of an operating system, he said. By telling customers a feature of the OS was not right in a previous version and promoting that it's been improved in the new one, "you're abusing the trust of your customer if you expect them to buy an upgrade to fix your mistake," McAtee said.

Indeed, the idea that "security just should be there; that should just go without saying" was likely a factor in the lackluster response from customers over Vista's security improvements, said a San Francisco-based public relations professional who was a part of the enormously successful Windows 95 marketing and PR campaign.

Exactly. You don't market something that was supposed to be there all along. That's like me selling a car by saying: "Look, we have an engine that doesn't break down!" Of course customers "care" - but they assume that the vendor will provide basic functionality as part of the package. Security is an assumed feature, just like wheels and a windshield are assumed features of an automobile.

Oy. Microsoft couldn't market their way out of a paper bag.

A postscript: I have purchased or built at least four computers since Vista became available, and each one has had Windows XP, not Vista. There is, in my opinion, no compelling reason to use Vista (if one practices "safe computing," to be consistent with the topic of this blog entry). Now that XP appears to be nearing the end of the line (you can still buy the OEM version, but not for long), my next purchases will be Apple Macs, not Windows/Intel. I will do whatever I can to reduce the Microsoft dependency in my household and beyond.

Holy mackerel, it's been ages since I posted here

After the big surgery, I was pretty consistent on my postings, but I've totally neglected to add anything since late September.

• I've been traveling - a lot. I spent 2 straight weeks in the Poughkeepsie, NY area back around the beginning of October, and then home for a while, traveled to Dallas to teach a class, back a week, then back to Dallas for another week of presenting and training. Whew! Now I have some vacation coming...
• My wife has been quite busy, and I've been helping her, with a fundraiser auction at the Christian school where she works and my sons attend (http://www.lwcs.us). It was the 2nd annual auction, and was a big success. Praise GOD for that!
• I've been in training at church (http://www.gracepca.net) as an elder. First 2 weeks were a crash course in the WCF, and now we're on to the Book of Church Order. Our ordination will be some time in February or early March. I'm looking forward to serving the church in this new way! Also, we've been working on re-engineering our church web site (I'm the webmaster for the one for the school, mentioned above). We're doing a total redesign and replacing the infrastructure with Wordpress.
• I recently attended a seminar at Covenant Seminary on the Emerging Church. It was quite fascinating. The speaker was Darrin Patrick, lead pastor at "The Journey," an Acts 29 church here in the St. Louis area. Patrick is on the board of Acts 29. He was a great speaker - I tried hard to find something on which to disagree with him, but could find nothing. It seems his "stream" of the EC is of the conservative, more theologically sound ilk. He didn't seem thrilled with the direction that guys like Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt are going, but was gracious about how he voiced his concern.
• My 2nd son just got his driving permit...clear the roads. #1 son finally got a job, at a mail sorting business. It's only 2.5 hrs a day, but it gives him spending money and leaves him plenty of time for schoolwork.

Well, so much for my so-called life. I'll try to come up with something more compelling soon. The elder training is making me think a bit, and I'm reading some basic stuff on the Five Points of Calvinism, so I'm sure there will be something to write after that.

Global Warming Primer

This is a great document:

http://eteam.ncpa.org/files/GlobalWarmingPrimer_low.pdf

Read it. Give it to your friends. It's a great collection of graphs and charts that will set your tree-hugging friends straight.

Prayer request

I've been asked by my church's elder board to prayerfully consider being added to a list of potential elders. I'm not that familiar with the process, but I believe there's some sort of ballot that takes place.

I consider this a very solemn commitment, and one that I'm not even sure I'm right for! But obviously the elders think so, since there were apparently several who thought it worth submitting my name.

So, please pray for me to make the right decision. I need to meet with the pastor next week to discuss it further.

Thanks!

Dangerous ideas

(I am editing and reposting a blog entry I wrote on http://www.redstate.com)

Is any idea sacrosanct? Is there anything that should be off-limits in public discourse? The old saying goes something like "when at a party, don't discuss politics or religion." Should such a policy be in place in our world as a whole? Of course there are plenty of discussions about politics and religion. However, there are plenty of other items of discussion that seem to be off-limits outside the darker corners of the Internet. We've seen numerous cases of legitimate questions about valid issues where the questioner(s) is/are vilified and marginalized for their attempts to generate honest dialog about "dangerous ideas." One doesn't have to go far to find examples - the book "The Bell Curve" was denounced and the authors beaten to a pulp (figuratively) over the mere mention of the thought that race and intelligence might be connected. "Global warming" is fast becoming another example - Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) has become an entrenched fact (a KnownFact™, if you will), and the mere suggestion that it might not be true brings down fire and brimstone on one's head. Or intelligent design and evolution - ask Guillermo Gonzalez if he thinks that "intelligent design" is a dangerous idea at Iowa State.

This past week, an op-ed column by Steven Pinker titled "In defense of dangerous ideas" appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. In this rather lengthy article, Pinker asks if there are certain ideas that are simply too taboo to ask and he attempts to explain why this is not the case. However, in his column he (perhaps not so) inadvertently violates his own theories. For example, he refers to the whole discussion about intelligent design as a "travesty." And later in the article, he states

Let's exclude outright lies, deceptive propaganda, incendiary conspiracy theories from malevolent crackpots and technological recipes for wanton destruction. Consider only ideas about the truth of empirical claims or the effectiveness of policies that, if they turned out to be true, would require a significant rethinking of our moral sensibilities.

By stating this, he imposes his own standard of truth and propaganda upon the discussion. Why must these ideas be limited to "truth of empirical claims"? Are there not dangerous ideas that cannot necessarily be backed by empirical means? Does that disqualify us from having intellectual discourse on those topics?

I agree with the jist of Pinker's assertion - there should be no ideas that are too "dangerous" to discuss. Unfortunately, today's politically-correct climate prevents free exchange of ideas at numerous levels - educational institutions with "speech codes", businesses that preach "diversity" that imposes speech standards, political campaigns that limit true discourse by the enforcement of politically-correct thinking, etc. Americans have become too thin-skinned to deal with questions that might disturb their mainstream-media- and liberal-education-influenced ideas about truth. Christians like myself are accustomed to dealing with "dangerous ideas," as our beliefs are challenged on a regular basis by those who wish to tear down the Biblically-established standards of truth and morality (in fact, I found it quite hilarious that one of Pinker's examples of a "dangerous idea" was Were the events in the Bible fictitious -- not just the miracles, but those involving kings and empires?... we've been dealing with people questioning this for centuries).

One reason these topics tend to be considered "dangerous" is due to the level of hyperbole, general nastiness and lack of concrete evidence to back the positions asserted in the discussion. My prior quote from Pinker mentioned "empirical claims," and I suspect his reason for qualifying like this is to avoid discussions that include unfounded claims.

So, the question remains - are there ideas that are too dangerous to approach? If so, why. I believe the answer is "no, as long as those who participate in the debate leave their emotions at the door." And that is a very difficult thing to ask.

"I hope God grades on a curve"

So I'm sitting at the table, reading the Saturday morning paper, and I turn to the comics and find today's "Mother Goose & Grimm" staring me in the face:

As you can see, Grimmy (the dog) is sitting in the corner, obviously the victim of some sort of punishment from his master, "Mother Goose." I'm not sure whether Mike Peters, the author of the strip, is a Christian or not, but with this strip, he planted Grimmy right smack in the middle of the basics of Christian theology.

"Grading on a curve" means that one gets evaluated in a manner that is relative to others in the "grade pool." So if you are in a class of students that all do poorly and you also do poorly, but slightly better than everyone else, you get a good grade. This was demonstrated to me in college - I went to Calculus class one morning and the professor stomped into the lecture hall, obviously VERY angry. He slammed down a pile of papers on the desk and asked his TA to distribute them. I received mine and looked at the score - 17/100. YIKES! However - this professor graded on a curve. I received an A! AN A! For a score that was obviously terrible.

So, does God grade on a curve? No. To extend the illustration, God actually grades on a pass/fail basis. And there is only ONE way to pass - to believe in Jesus Christ and be saved. There's no other way. Simply acting "better" than the other people around us doesn't do it. The fact that I'm not a murderer may make me a little bit less of a sinner than someone like Charles Manson, but it does not change the fact that I AM a sinner who is just as in need of salvation as Adolf Hitler. Doing good things cannot earn our salvation. It is only through faith in Jesus that we are saved. And that's how we "pass."

So, here's hoping that Mr. Peters understands this...

UPDATE: After I wrote this, I got to thinking that this has probably been discussed before. I found this nice message that uses the "grading on a curve" analogy. It focuses on Paul's message to the Romans and covers the subject quite well.

Recovery begins

(If you're like me and you gross out at medical stuff, you might not want to read all of this...)

Well, my prostatectomy surgery happened a week ago today, and I'm in FAR better shape than I was last Monday night. The plans were for me to have the DaVinci surgery, recover overnight, and return home the next day. Well, as they say - "the best laid plans..." As a result of several surgical and post-surgical complications, I was in the hospital for four nights, and returned home last Friday around mid-day.

The surgery itself was relatively uneventful, except for two things: 1) my prostate was larger than expected and the surgeon had to do more to repair the bladder than normal, and 2) my blood apparently doesn't coagulate quite as well as some folks, so clotting was a problem. This second problem was really the basis for the subsequent problems. I encountered a LOT of post-op pain, and no one seems to really know quite what caused it. I suspect it was the CO2 that they use to fill the abdomen. By late on Monday, and into Monday night, a huge problem emerged: I was not processing urine - the bag wasn't filling. That's bad. The doctor called in several times overnight for status, and I wasn't getting any better, and I was in terrible pain. Finally, at 4AM on Tues morning, the surgeon called for a CAT scan to see what was wrong. What he found (and what he expected) was a very large hematoma that had formed in my abdomen. This blood clot, about the size of a "bocce ball", was pushing against the tubes that route urine from the kidneys into the bladder. My blood numbers for kidney chemicals were not looking good. As a result of this, the surgeon told me he wanted to go back in and drain the hematoma/clot. Oh boy.

So around 7AM on Tues, they rolled me into pre-op for the 2nd surgery. But a funny thing happened in the interim. The surgeon had told me to start moving around, lying on my stomach, side, and walking a little, to try to move the hematoma. And right around the time they moved me to pre-op, urine started flowing, slowly but surely. The surgeon appeared in pre-op and said "you know, I've talked to several colleagues and mentors, and they told me that these things often fix themselves. Let's look at your blood numbers and see what's going on". They took a blood test, and lo and behold, the kidney numbers were looking up - the urine was being passed out of the kidneys! After lying in pre-op for several hours, with my wife and pastor with me, the surgeon reappeared and said "I think we're going to wait a day or so and see if things get better" PRAISE GOD! I (literally) cried - it's weird, but the prayers from my pastor were so strong and I felt them so clearly that I KNEW that prayers had been heard and answered.

So thru another couple of days, I started recovery. However, another issue cropped up - it became apparent that my blood counts had dropped pretty significantly due to bleeding in my abdomen during surgery. This is normal during prostatectomy, but during the DaVinci procedure, bleeding is normally much less - I apparently bled more than most. The surgeons who perform this procedure try to avoid cauterizing blood vessels due to risk of damaging nerves that affect continence and potency. So he basically let me seep blood, figuring it would eventually clot over and heal. Well, mine took longer, and my blood count dropped. I had (and still have) a drain in my side to allow this blood to escape. There was a lot of fluid coming out of this drain, and on Wed/Thurs, we were very concerned that there was a lot of bleeding still occuring. But the doc assured me that it was normal bleeding/seepage, and by Wed, my blood count had leveled and was starting to creep back up (slowly). And by Thursday, my intestines started to function again (I'll spare you the details...), and that was good news.

By Friday, my blood counts continued to improve, but were still marginal. Most of the severe pain had passed, and they told me I could go home, but I had to get another blood test on Monday (today). I haven't rec'd the results yet, but I feel pretty good.

How am I now? Well, I continue to run a very low-grade fever on and off, but that's supposedly normal. It still hurts a bit to get up and down, but it's not terrible. Through the entire thing, I really haven't had much pain in any of the six (!) incisions, so that's very good news. And the drain continues to gradually slow down. On Thursday I go for a "cytoscope" or something like that - they put dye into my catheter, x-ray me, and see if the sutures inside that link the bladder with the urethra are solid (because of the previous issues with the hematoma, they wanted to make sure the pressure didn't damage the sutures). If that test is OK, then they remove the catheter (YES!) and I go back home for the long-term recovery.

Thanks for your prayers and support. Once this is behind me, I should be back in normal mode. One thing I will be doing more of is promoting the work of the Prostate Cancer Foundation. I was very happy to find that Major League Baseball is also promoting their work and donating money to prostate cancer research for each home run hit (I think this stopped as of Fathers' Day). Check out the Foundation at http://www.prostatecancerfoundation.org/