I'm not addicted yet

Two weeks ago, at 27.83 years of age, I became a coffee-drinker. I had tried coffee a few times in the past, including one notable time in HS when I put in so much cream and sugar that I felt sick. I've probably had fewer than five (OK, maybe ten) cold iced-coffee-chocolate concoctions in the years since then.

My wife and I were at Borders to relax and read, and I had a lot of pages in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to get through. So I decided I would see how bad coffee could really be...you may not think it counts because I picked something that included chocolate and sugar and dairy, but from that beginning I've now drunk one latte and two normal cups of French Roast from the Tufts library in addition to several more drinks along the lines of Borders' "Peppermint Mocha Trio". The quality of my study time has improved, the burned feeling on the tip of my tongue is fading, the moon has been brighter, and my car's been getting better gas mileage. I have no intentions of going back.

On a totally unrelated note, yesterday was my one-year earring anniversary. Yay!

Clarifying Calvinistic Confusion

In Sunday School this week we discussed one form of what is commonly called "hyper-Calvinism", and I noticed for the first time how poorly named it is. The phenomenon being described is a doctrinal confusion, so I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that the description is confused as well. A much better name would be "semi-Calvinism".

In any case, semi-Calvinism happens when Christians believe that because God is omniscient and sovereign over everything, they don't need to evangelize the lost. "Hyper" is an inappropriate prefix because it implies that the doctrine has been overly embraced; "semi" is an appropriate prefix because anybody who embraces semi-Calvinism only partially understands the doctrines of God's omniscience and sovereignty.

First we'll clear up the confusion, and then we'll explain where it comes from.

I've been saying for years that a coherent Calvinist lives just like the most heretical semi-Pelagian*. However, this sounds like a terrible clashing of theory and practice, so I was very pleased on Sunday to come up with the following two points as a better explanation:

1. The doctrines of God's omniscience and sovereignty**, rightly understood, tell you nothing about how to make any practical decision.

This leaves us begging for an answer to the practical question, however: if the doctrines of God's omniscience and sovereignty utterly fail to inform our life choices, what else could possibly tell us how to live?

2. The Bible is sufficient for faith and practice; all practical decisions should be made in light of its teachings.

Now you see the connection to my previous explanation -- even Pelagius thought that Christ was a great moral teacher, so if coherent Calvinists and all stripes of Arminians and semi-Pelagians strive to live by biblical teachings, then it is clear that a coherent Calvinist lives just like the most heretical semi-Pelagian, as odd as that may sound.

But how can the above conclusion be correct? "If God is absolutely omniscient and sovereign," the semi-Calvinist says, "then He's already predestined some people to Heaven and the rest to Hell, and nothing I can do will change that...so I needn't bother to evangelize the lost." While our confused Christian has rightly concluded that God's omniscience and sovereignty imply final predestination, she has failed to recognize the implications of God's omniscience and sovereignty throughout all time, including the entire duration of His creation. So of course the semi-Calvinists are predestined to disregard the Great Commission, just as they are predestined to be doctrinally confused.

God is sovereign, but He works his will through his creation, so also through his saints. He commanded us to "go into all the world and preach the Gospel", and fulfilling this mandate clearly works his will on Earth. "Ah-ha!", the semi-Pelagian might now say. "But failing to fulfill this mandate also works God's will, because if God is sovereign then everything that happens must be his will!"

This sounds quite convincing, but it rests squarely on an equivocation of the concept of "God's will". In just the same way, a semi-Pelagian may argue, 2 Peter 3:9 clearly states that "...the Lord is...not willing that any should perish." As Sproul explains in Chosen By God*** there are three different senses of God's will discussed in the Bible.

1. sovereign efficacious will


2. preceptive will (commandments, etc.)


3. reference to God's disposition, or what pleases Him

God's sovereign efficacious will is by definition inviolate, so 2 Peter 3:9 clearly cannot be referring to this sense of God's will; it is in this sense alone that a semi-Calvinist "fulfills God's will" by refusing to evangelize the lost.

God's preceptive will is clearly violated continually (just look around), but if this is the meaning of "God's will" as it is discussed in 2 Peter 3:9, this passage would then be commanding everyone not to perish. So those who violate this understanding of 2 Peter 3:9 and perish anyway would need to stand under God's judgment and be punished by...more perishing. This is clearly not what 2 Peter 3:9 could mean. A semi-Calvinist violates this sense of God's will when she refuses to evangelize the lost.

We know that God is not pleased when people perish (He is also not pleased when semi-Calvinists refuse to evangelize the lost). The third sense of "God's will" seems to be the appropriate sense in which to understand 2 Peter 3:9****, and we find that along the way to this discovery we've rooted out the semi-Calvinist's equivocation as well.

The semi-Calvinist also misunderstands the relationship between sovereignty and omniscience. The semi-Calvinist is not omniscient; she is inescapably part of creation, living within its time and standing under God's sovereignty. Knowing that the future is predestined cannot possibly impact her decision-making given that our semi-Calvinist doesn't know how the future is predestined to be. Because we are ignorant of the future and part of the system of God's sovereignty, we can do nothing other than make the best decisions we can based on what we know of the past and present and in the light of scripture. Only a confused understanding of God's omniscience and sovereignty could lead us to believe otherwise.

* Protestants who aren't Calvinists frequently identify themselves as "Arminians", but given the way they talk about prayer and free will they are much more in line with the fifth-century heretic Pelagius (see also). Taking my cue from R.C. Sproul's Chosen By God, I will refer to non-Calvinists as "semi-Pelagians".
** The way I understand God's sovereignty is called "theistic determinism". This entire discussion actually holds for all forms of determinism, theistic, agnostic, and atheistic.
*** Chosen By God. R.C. Sproul, 1986. Thomas Nelson, Inc. p 195-197.
**** Sproul goes on to mention that the antecedent of "any" in 2 Peter 3:9 is likely the Lord's Elect, in which case (by definition) none of them will perish, "God's will" in the passage refers to His sovereign efficacious will, and the verse is a strong affirmation of Calvinism.

TSA: Totally Secure Air-travel

Due to the recent discovery of efforts by terrorists to enmesh undetectable nuclear weapons in completely normal fabrics, the Transportation Security Administration, in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security, has issued an order that from this point forward all clothing must be shed and left at airport security checkpoints. Persons caught with clothing inside secured areas will be arrested and incarcerated indefinitely at undisclosed locations where they will be charged with violation of secret laws and tried by secret tribunals (and anyone who mentions these secrets again will be similarly treated; we shall speak of them no more).

All carry-on luggage must henceforth be shipped separately. Most cities with airports already have shipping companies such as UPS and FedEx available, and USPS has agreed to offer a discount rate for those shipping standard-size carry-on bags.

Checked luggage must be properly labeled and left at home, and must not be transported by any means. Those caught transporting checked luggage for themselves or others should see the above discussion of unmentionable topics.

In an unexpected move intended to please privacy advocates, the TSA has agreed to supply taxpayer-funded, secure (bomb-free) blinders at security checkpoints. These blinders will prevent passengers from being able to see other's privates. In order to guarantee this right to privacy, the TSA mandates that all passengers must wear the blinders until they exit the secured areas of their destination airports, at which point they may don the clothing they shipped in their carry-on luggage, providing that the luggage has passed screening.

Heinlein Quotes

"Hi there! I was just waiting for you and thought I would pass the time by trying on your pants."
-- Robert A. Heinlein, "Job: A Comedy of Justice", p. 19

"He has muscles where other men don't even have places."
-- Robert A. Heinlein, "Job: A Comedy of Justice", p. 25

Google 1, AP & Yahoo 0

My local newspaper, the Nashua Telegraph, recently had an "AP Video" item on the front page of their website. To the credit of the newspaper, there was a very obvious note right there explaining that this wouldn't work without the proper version of Internet Explorer, which (as I write this) is still unavailable for Ubuntu, which is my operating system of choice. To the paper's greater credit, when I emailed to complain about this shortsightedness in the requirements, I received a prompt reply stating that the Telegraph is also very concerned about this limitation, and has gone a few rounds with the AP over the issue. The Telegraph is refusing to do more with "AP Video" than display it on the front page with a warning until "AP Video" supports other browsers (and presumeably other operating systems). +1 for the paper, -1 for the AP.

Just now, I happened to browse my way to yahoo.com (which I don't do very often) and there was a video advertised on their front page that caught my eye. I clicked on it to watch it and it started to play but OOPS! "Flash 8 is requird to view this video." Well, that's too bad, because I just checked and Flash 8 isn't available for Linux at all, let alone Ubuntu.

The beautiful thing about each of these pathetic failures is that I can rub Google right in their faces, instead of resorting to the tired old "but you should support Linux because...I want you to" sort of argument. Instead: "You see, I'm running a GNU/Linux operating system, so I don't have Internet Explorer at all, and I don't have Flash 8. But look! video.google.com works just fine for me; in fact, I've never had a problem with Google's site at all. Well, I guess you'll just have to let me know when you catch up to Google."

And they have no excuse for the poor set of assumptions they're making about operating systems, because Google has set the standard and the "AP Video" and video.yahoo.com are failing to reach that standard.

Depressing Cheerfulness

I generally like Tim Burton's work just fine; even when it's not great it's still interesting. Even so, I haven't seen Corpse Bride yet. But since I also very much like Danny Elfman, I find myself listening to the soundtrack. Highly reminiscent of that other stop-motion animated film, the music is funky and enjoyable. I remember James Berardinelli criticizing the music of Nightmare for failing to have you humming as you left the theater, and this music has that same character, whether or not you think that's a fault. (I think not.) But the lyrics are full of interesting (IMO) ideas about what it might be like to be a dead person competing with a living person for another's affections, if such a situation were possible. There's even a fun Peter Lorre imitation, completely obvious from the moment his voice enters the track "Tears to Shed".

"Remains of the Day" is perhaps analogous (in lounge-style and light-hearted grotesquerie) to Nightmare's "Oogie Boogie's Song". The oft-repeated mantra in "Remains" is the following thought:

Die! Die! We all pass away,
but don't wear a frown
'cuz it's really OK.

You might try to hide,
and you might try to pray,
but we all end up
the remains of the day.

I think Burton's creative and I appreciate his genius, and even his fascination with darkness and twistedness; he's rather like a mildly pessimistic Dr. Seuss. But the main idea of the chorus of "Remains of the Day" is surprisingly heavy, and disturbingly nihilistic. I'm not convinced (or claiming) that Burton intends the words to be taken as discounting religious belief, though they do certainly imply that prayer is ineffective as a means of avoiding death -- that assertion can be taken a number of ways.

One way to take it is to realize that people who recognize impending death often pray in desperation (around the same time they might be hiding the truth from themselves), and that sort of thing certainly is ineffective. That's a fair interpretation, and probably (I suspect) the primarily intended one.

Aliens v. Predator

BEWARE: SPOILERS (for Alien, Aliens, Predator, The Exorcist, and The Sound of Music)

The marines in the jungle are just starting to get the sense that something about their mission doesn't add up, and that, in fact, there appears to be something out there that will get them, probably sooner than they'd like. And lo, it turns out that there is a Special Effect running around in the jungle. It is inexplicably mobile and dextrous, and able to move without a sound except when it lets its guard down and stomps its Foley Boots from here to there. (And except for the tick-clicking Predator sound, which works well, IMO.)

I'm glad I've seen Predator, but Aliens is the better film, hands-down. I compare the two since they came out in 1986 (Aliens) and 1987 (Predator), and since they both feature aliens pitted against marines (calling for suitably militant scores) in unfamiliar territory who are killed, mostly one at a time, until only the protagonist whose name gets top billing is left to fight.

It is also the only film I've seen in which I know two future governors act (Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura).

I was compelled to note that near the 28-minute mark of Predator, vastly more story has been told (or vastly more plot exhausted, one could say) than The Exorcist manages to tell within the first 30 minutes. (The Exorcist spends this entire time in Iraq, with a story that I still cannot clearly connect with the rest of the film.) This is the case despite the fact that both are well-done Horror films (The Exorcist falls much more exclusively into this genre), and as my friend pointed out, Predator does manage, to its credit, to let 40 mintes elapse before we see the predator for the first time. That's well-done, since what you can't see at all is almost always scarier than what you can see. Unlike in Alien, we do get a very, very good look at the Predator before the end of the film; it's actually quite similar to Aliens, since the mode of battle at that point is mano y mano. But I'd rather watch Aliens again, I'm pretty sure.

Lately I've been reading Alvin Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief, and I think he's made me inclined to take the Kant course being offered next fall at Tufts (where I am a student). Thus Kant is coming in slightly ahead (at this point) of a Natural Kinds seminar or Philosophy of Biology, which I still think could be very interesting.

I'm also reading Dumas' The Three Musketeers for the first time. A friend has compared it to 19th century Tom Clancy, and while I've never read a Tom Clancy book I expect my friend is right. I haven't decided yet whether I like The Three Musketeers better than The Count of Monte Cristo or not.

Speaking of the Count, V for Vendetta is finally being released on DVD on August first, and I'll be watching it again soon after. I realize it's not a great movie, and yet I'm curiously compelled by it and am looking forward to seeing it again.

Lastly, I'm also reading "The Truth in Relativism" by Bernard Williams, published in his Moral Luck. (I need to turn this effort into a paper in the near future, but I'm still working on understanding what Williams is saying.)

Note: In The Sound of Music, they get away at the end.

The Turing Cat Who Walks Through The Stand

I just finished Stephen King's The Stand last week, and while I was engrossed along the way, I was disappointed by the end. I'll explain more, but first I must highlight the several explicit references to Polk County, Nebraska, where I was born and lived the first 18 years of my life. Indeed, one of the main characters has lived her whole life there, and almost everybody else spends the second third of the book traveling from wherever they are in the U.S. to Polk County. King even explicitly mentions "the banks of the Platte, 12 miles north of Osceola" (quoted from memory...), and unless I'm mistaken, Swede Home. That's amazing, because Swede Home is a "town" with...maybe two or three houses and a church. (It's conspicuously absent from the exact center of the Google map I linked above.) I lived in a house 1/2 mile away from Swede Home until I was 12, and then moved to another house ~3 miles away from Swede Home. Who'd a-thunk that location would ever be mentioned in a well-known work of fiction? Not me.

But then the end of the book comes along, and ruins it all. You'd think the book would have some respect for the sacrifices of its heroes, but no. The end is not entirely unreasonable, but I can't help but feel like it's arbitrary. It doesn't follow necessarily from who the characters are and what they do. It feels almost like King noticed the book was getting long, and he was bored, so he just ended it. Of course that didn't happen, but that doesn't change my feelings.

So I've just started Harry Harrison's and Marvin Minsky's The Turing Option, and here's what I said in IRC to the guy who loaned it to me:
----------------------------------
02:21 [moquist] It's an entertaining read (1/3 done now?), but I gotta say that it's tremendously heavy-handed and expository.
02:22 [moquist] [long paragraph about AI and brains and minds]
02:22 [moquist] Interlocutor: I've been the CEO of this company for 20 years, and I don't know a darn thing! Can you please tell me more about this "AI" stuff?
02:22 [moquist] [long paragraph about AI and brains and minds]
02:23 [moquist] [concise assertion of philosophical point about society, morality, or religion]
02:23 [moquist] [long paragraph about AI and brains and minds]
02:23 [moquist] Back to the interlocutor...and so on.
02:23 [moquist] It reminds me of the later Plato, really. Same dialogue formula.
02:23 [moquist] [long bit of philosophy]
02:23 [moquist] Interlocutor: You are so wise, Socrates!
02:24 [moquist] [long bit of philosophy]
02:24 [moquist] etc.
----------------------------------

I've been putting off Cornelia Funke's Inkspell, because I've enjoyed her other books so thoroughly and it's so fun to know this one is waiting for me.

Ah - almost forgot. I finished Robert Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls the other day, and I later found most of my own observations already nicely articulated in Heinlein's Wikipedia page, in the paragraph beginning "The tendency toward authorial self-referentialism..." under "Later work, 1980-1987".

But I should be working now (on this), so I'll stop blathering.

iDismantle

On Monday, my wife's iBook abruptly died. One second she was browsing with Firefox, the next she was watching inexplicable patterns morphing on her LCD. We took it to the Mac store and they diagnosed it: "99% sure it's the logic board". (I think that when Mac people say "logic board", they're trying to say "motherboard" but it comes out wrong, every time.) $400 for another new logic board - it was just replaced two years
ago. This is a G3 800, and not worth $400 more, we decided.

So we just picked up another G3 800 for $300 today, in better shape, from a friend. But since we needed the old data, I set about removing the hard drive from the old iBook so I could use my handy-dandy 2.5-3.5 IDE converter to read the data. Thankfully, I found a very precise and helpful guide (PDF) before I set about dismantling the old iBook. So, after removing the keyboard, the airport card, 32 screws of various sizes and types, the bottom of the case, some shielding, some tape, and some little greasy springs that help out the battery contacts, I managed to remove the hard drive. Now, the iBook looks like this.

I plugged in the adapter, set the drive gently in a test box on my network, ran 'mount -t hfsplus', and rsynced everything very nicely to my fileserver.

Then, I realized I could replace the 12GB drive in my own laptop - a PIII Compaq M300 running Ubuntu - with this neat-o 30GB drive from the iBook. Unable to find good instructions on taking the M300 apart, I dreaded the perils...but I took out three screws, popped off a small side panel, and extracted the hard drive. Now why couldn't the iBook have been that easy? Granted, it's awfully slick how the iBook has so few visible screws -- are there any at all? But seriously, folks, we sent it in last time and it came back with little gouges around the edge where they pried the case apart. It seems like they could save themselves some time and preserve the aesthetic beyond the first repair by designing in some well-placed screws.

My operating system has just finished rsyncing to my new 30GB drive, so I'd best go try the laptop out.

Pullman: Better than I thought?

I just finished The Amber Spyglass and I have more good things to say about Pullman than I did last time. Coincidentally, I've also started reading The Broken Bridge, which I like just fine so far and may have more to say about later since the main character is named Ginny, just like a very respectable Rowling character we all know. Is my Rowling-Pullman character-naming theory shot through with this new revelation?!? I'm inclined to guess not, but I need to finish The Broken Bridge before I comment further.

Unfortunately for this post and for my progress in reading delightful fiction, I also have a paper due Tuesday and so must spend my time expositing about what Pierre Duhem might say about the type of theory that a "softer science" than physics, namely psysiology, ought to pursue. If you think that sounds interesting, that's because it is interesting. If you don't, then be glad I'm done writing here for now.

Open Letter about Open Source

One of my greatest passions in life is Free Software. I like it a lot, and I don't think it makes any sense for educational institutions not to be using it. So I wrote up this Open Letter to Educational Institutions over on the Software Freedom Day wiki. Feel free to customize it and send it to your school.

Subtle Obviousness in Harry Potter

Once every three or four months I think of something that might be worth blogging about, but I generally don't like editing text without using Vim and I didn't even want to think about different blogging toolsets and markup and so on and so forth. But now I've given in and here we go.

So lately I've been reading Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy for the second time since 2002, and some points that John Granger made in The Hidden Key To Harry Potter are presenting themselves more forcefully. Pullman has a whole series about Sally Lockhart. He's got a character in The Golden Compass named somebody-or-other Trelawney, and one of the witch queens in The Subtle Knife is named, of all things, Ruta Skadi. My wife is skeptical, but I'm totally convinced that Granger was right, and Rowling is expressing an opinion of Pullman and/or his work by her characters Gilderoy Lockhart, Sybill Trelawney, and Rita Skeeter.

Just think about what those characters have in common.

Even better, let's think about Pullman's work, and we'll even limit ourselves to His Dark Materials. Pullman's a very vocal atheist, and he quotes Paradise Lost in the front of The Golden Compass just to get us into the right frame of mind. Pullman aims to correct Milton's mistake: paradise wasn't there to be lost, and if we stop looking for the mythical and instead glory in the dust that we are and shall be, then we can get over our preoccupation with sin and our slavery to the church and get on with the important things in life, like having sex to achieve our own paradise in the end. Or something like that; it's been a while since I finished The Amber Spyglass the first time. And along the way the horrors perpetrated by the church and its agents are fought at every point, we learn how materialism is a blessed succor to minds weary of the deceit of spirtualism, and God himself, the Authority, the false "Creator", is fortunate enough to be relieved of the burden of his sad, tired, and worthless existence.

The second title in His Dark Materials ("HDM") carries tremendous irony. If we're willing to grant that Pullman started with a "subtle knife" in book one, by book two he's brandishing a broadsword requiring both hands, and by book three he's wildly swinging a club and pausing every now and then to pound his chest with his fists. He's not subtle to start with, and it just gets worse.

I was talking with a fantasy-loving frind of mine the other day, and I said that I think HDM starts out very imaginatively and well-written, but that it degenerates to the point that his characters are thinly-veiled (thin-lipped?) mouthpieces for the author. My friend disagreed and said he thought HDM was an enjoyable read but neither imaginative or well-written -- even to start with. I disagree, but like I said, my friend reads a lot more fantasy than I do, so he may know better. (We're both at a loss as to the number of awards Pullman's won for HDM. Who can explain these things?)

In any case, Pullman's work is anything but subtle. And yet we have a contemporary of his, the much-celebrated J.K. Rowling, writing a fantasy series of her own and enjoying what everyone must admit is runaway success. How does her subtlety compare to Pullman's? The Googlefight has Pullman ahead 522k to 334k, but maybe by winning this one Pullman loses. "C'est moi! C'est moi!" Pullman's forced to admit, thus book two is "The Subtle Knife". If you're vying for "Most Subtle", you probably don't want to put "subtle" in the name of your book... If you agree with me about the significance of the character name pairs I mentioned above, you can see how thoroughly Rowling mocks Pullman without resorting to an ex-nun in her books saying right out loud that "Pullman's self-important and professionally incompetent."

And just tonight, about three hours ago, I finished watching The Goblet of Fire with that same friend. Since he hasn't read the books I was filling in some details about house elves and their much greater role in the book, and it hit me right over the head: house elves are like housewives. Let's see what Rowling's done here:
1. House elves perform household duties.
2. House elves must obey their masters.
3. House elves are not paid for their work.
4. Hermione is a very intelligent, independently-minded young woman.
5. Hermione knows what's best for house elves -- for them to be released from their slavery.
6. With the exception of Dobby, house elves don't want to be "freed".

Surely this is some sort of commentary on the social liberation of women. Hermione is painted as affectionately pathetic in her misunderstanding sympathy for house elves. Dobby is clearly a hero, doing what he knows is ultimately right even when it requires him to punish himself for lesser wrongs. And yet every other house elf we've met is by nature, we are told, impelled to serve and content, even thrilled, to do so. Based only on books 1-6, it appears to me that Rowling (a very intelligent and successful woman herself) is sympathetic to women who want to liberate other women and perfectly accepting of women who seek success outside the home. But -- and this is the controversial part -- she also seems to recognize that lots and lots of women might just be very happy staying at home. It does feel rather weird when the other elves are so ashamed of Dobby's freedom, but it feels equally and oppositely weird when Hermione is unable to accept the joy that elves find in service.

I've been wondering for a while if HP7 will end with the destruction of the magical world and the end of magic*, though I'm not sure what that would mean for all the magical creatures. In such a situation, it seems possible that a liberation of sorts may be coming in which the nature of house elves will change and a more direct opinion on the social status of women may emerge. But I doubt it, and I hope not. The marvelous complexity and, yes, subtlety of the house elves' situation is superior to anything that could be wrapped up as a pro- or anti- statement.

Maybe you don't think Rowing is subtle, and you think I've just said the obvious out loud. Maybe everybody has been reading "house elf" as "housewife" all along, and S.P.E.W. as "Society for the Protection of English Women". Maybe I just caught up with the rest of you. Well, if so, then I apologize for failing to Google very well, because I wasn't able to easily find anybody writing about this issue in Harry Potter, and yet now that it's occurred to me it seems blindingly obvious.

Maybe sometimes it's best to make your point directly and clearly, yet surely a master artist can do better by making a point profound through subtle artistry. If Pullman's wrong and God exists, and if God is the master artist, then it's obvious that we, his characters, nun and ex-nun alike, serve our creator as something more profound than thinly-veiled mouthpieces.

I doubt that if Lancelot had been made the partner of Eve we'd be in Eden still, just as I doubt that cheering on Sir Lancelot, as Pullman seems to want to do, is the right response to our banishment.

* I still wonder, but I rather doubt that we're headed in that direction.