Hammocks at the office.

October 30, 2009 under tongueincheek

I want one.

Why not? I think the advent of wireless keyboards and mice make it practical and my cubicle is exactly the right size.

Let’s do a comparison:

Chair Hammock
Is expensive Cheap, Cheap, Cheap!
Has fiddly levers that break Lever free since 400BC!
Makes my back hurt Provides safety from disease, insect stings, and animal bites. Very comfortable, too!
Is made of awful manufactured plastic Made of all natural, sweet-smelling hemp.
Looks just like everyone else’s chair Can be personalized with beads and ribbons
Is a bulky pig of a thing that causes grief when the department has to move offices. Again. Roll it up and go!
Makes you cranky and less productive. Encourages regular cat naps, which increase alertness and overall productivity!

The only people you will hear arguing against hammocks at the office will use words like ‘professionalism’ and ‘inproprietous’. This means you have no obligation to listen to them.

It has to be, I tell you. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

And to make the final conclusive evidence, I ask you, dear reader…

Have you ever seen a bear this comfortable in an office chair?

Bear in a hammock

Bear in a hammock

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A Christian Country?

October 28, 2009 under theology

What does it mean for a country to be Christian? Can you even call a country, ‘Christian’?

Well, a country doesn’t exist. It’s not a real thing; it’s just a thought we made up. So I guess a country could be Christian if we believed it was (depending on who we are).

That being said, a church with a membership of 750,000 goes a long way towards changing one’s thinking.

Of course, part of the change in thought (for me) is the nagging doubt that it is built on the back of a prosperity gospel.

Prosperity gospels are popular because

a) People really, really want to believe in them. (Heck, I’d love to believe in a prosperity gospel!)

and

b) They can be very hard to distinguish from the real thing.

Point A is straightforward, but B is interesting. I think B is so tricky because the language we use for stuff (Christianese) is so darn ambiguous, and the truth is aligned not along easily observable principles, but along spiritual ones.

There’s not a very good mapping between language and truth.

From the article,

“Jesus will give us spiritual blessing, and prosperity, and physical health,” [the pastor] says.

But I asked him whether he really meant that members of the church have improved physical health as a result of their faith?

“Many people still have problems, but many people overcome problems with faith,” he told me.

There’s some good stuff here.

Does Jesus give spiritual blessing? Absolutely.

Does Jesus give prosperity? Of a sort.

Does Jesus give physical health? Certainly he does.

Now comes to splitting-hair time, because you simply can’t deny the Gospel. When Jesus came to earth, many, many people flocked to him because he (physically) healed them. Afterwards, people flocked to his disciples for the same reason.

If you deny physical healing in the church today, you cut out a part of the Holy Spirit’s work, to your detriment and to the church’s detriment.

But not everyone receives physical healing.

Huh. What’s a senior pastor to say?

A similar thing happens with prosperity.

“I tell you the truth,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life.” — Luke 18:29-30

Notice a few things here

  • Money is not mentioned
  • People are mentioned
  • The parallel passage in Mark talks about persecution
  • Jesus is talking about a reward for sacrifice

But also notice the fascinating words in this age. So much of contemporary Christianity preaches hanging on ’til you die and the good stuff happens. Not here. Concrete promises for life.

If someone asks, “Why did Jesus come?” and you say,

“Because he loves you so much that he’ll never do anything on the following list for you:

  • Stuff you can understand
  • Stuff you can feel
  • Stuff you can tell your friends about and have them believe you
  • Stuff that makes a difference in your day today
  • Stuff with tangible/permanent after-effects

“God is ineffable, so that should be the measuring stick of all your expectations.”

Hmm… Do I want that gospel?

So tell me, if a person is at peace, if they are productive, producing a thirty, sixty or hundred-fold return on investment… if they don’t have anxiety about anything, if they can afford to always be loving, caring, kind and gentle…

Are they prosperous?

Apologies

October 27, 2009 under metablogging

No new Gretel episode yesterday. There is another piece, though.

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The Year is 2012

October 23, 2009 under tongueincheek

And an alien spacecraft appears above the earth.

The earth prepares to welcome our galactic neighbors. Global leaders come together to prepare a landing site, complete with red carpet. They handpick a team of ambassadors from around the world.

The media has a field day. Headline writers work overtime.

BBC: A Bold New Era for Humanity

NYT: We Are Not Alone

CBC: Red Carpet Maker is Canadian!!!

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Gretel – Part V

October 19, 2009 under Uncategorized

I’m trying out a little game I thought up. The game is to retell a fairy tale or children’s story while omitting one of the major characters.

This is Hansel and Gretel, and we’ve lost Hansel… just not in the woods. This is Part V; Part VI arrives next Monday. Part I. Part II. Part III. Part IV.

“Come away with me.” said the knight.

He blurted it. This was a new world he was in, and in the strangeness and the awkwardness, raw honesty took over. He tried to bring the words back as he heard himself speak them, but it was too late. They were out.

“Come away with me.”

They were fantasy words, from a fantasy tale. Gretel stood in shock; the knight was asking her to go with him. She had never even dreamed such a thing, in the tiny world of the cottage, and the clearing, and the witch. A knight, from no-where, stepping from the forest, whisking her away.

But now… she knew things in a way she never had before. She knew she could not go back. She thought of the cottage behind her, and the witch inside, mixing potions… and she was filled with horror. It was… monstrous.

The knight was before her, holding out his hand. His eyes were hopeful, pleading. Gretel suddenly realized that she wanted to go with him, wanted more than anything for him to bear her away, to take her from this dreadful place. She wanted to give in to the fantasy, and she reached out her hand to place it in his.

But something pulled her back, pulled her hand back, mid-stretch. She remembered those awful desperate hours in the woods, seeking for her home, but every time being drawn back to the cottage.

“I can’t.” she said. “I can’t leave these woods.”

The misery of it tore at her and she began sobbing. In an instant her joy and wonder turned to bitterness, for she was trapped. Her was her knight, come to set her free, but… she could not go. It wasn’t fair!

The knight came up beside her and took her hand. He knelt down so he could look up into her downcast eyes.

“I don’t understand.” he said. “Surely it’s not the witch.”

He knew it was a risk to say the word ‘witch’. The last time he had seen the girl and the witch together, the girl had given the hag a kiss and called her “grandmother”. Perhaps in calling the woman a witch he would lose the maiden forever. But Gretel took no offense at the word; she was too devastated.

“I’ve tried.” sobbed Gretel. “I’ve tried and tried to go away, but every time I always find myself back at the cottage. I hate the witch, and I hate the cottage, and I love you so much, but I can’t get away from here.”

It was the knight’s turn to be stunned by unreserved honesty. He had not expected this. But then the words took hold, and registered properly in his mind. He bounced up in pure exuberance.

“But there’s nothing to it!” he cried. “If that’s all, then we must leave at once. There’s nothing special about these woods, I’ve come and gone unhindered once already. If you have been lost in the woods before, it shall not happen again; I know the way. My horse is not far from here.”

Gretel was torn. She wanted to believe, so much it hurt. But could she? Could she really ride to freedom with the knight? Was the promise real? She was afraid.

It was a choice; in all her life she never had the kind of choice she now faced. And Gretel knew she could not choose with only half her heart. She stood on th e threshold of two worlds; if she tried to cling to both she would be torn in two.

The strangest thing happened when Gretel chose. It was not what she expected, but she felt the weight of all her fear and trepidation melt away. As she cast one world away from her, she felt a lightness, a freedom that she had never before felt. And joy!

Gretel flung herself upon the knight, threw her arms around him. “Take me away!” she cried. And then she laughed it, “Take me away!”

The knight was, if nothing else, a man of action, and this was the sort of invitation he did not need to hear repeated. It was with light feet and hearts that the two of them rushed to where the knight had tethered his horse. Alongside the horse lay the knight’s good hound, and perched upon the sadle’s pommel was his hawk.

The knight hoisted Gretel up into the saddle, and was about to mount up himself, when he paused.

“My name is Wilhelm.” he said. “You never told me yours.”

Gretel smiled. “You never asked.” she said. “It’s Gretel.”

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The story is sad

October 15, 2009 under thehumancondition

but it’s the comments that break my heart.

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Linear modelling

October 14, 2009 under technical

Is nice because it’s simple. But when it fails, it can fail big.

Yesterday I took the train at a different time than I usually take it. It just so happened that this was the rush hour train and so we were all tightly packed – squish, squish, squish.

Given the abnormally high level of solidarity on display, I took it upon myself to remark (aloud) about a peculiar non-linear phenomenon at work.

“Isn’t it interesting,” says I. “When the train is especially busy, the driver must stay longer at each stop for the loading and unloading of people. “[This is not a trivial difference; when the people are packed, the missus in the middle of the car has a lot of squeezing to do in order to get from her seat to the door, and finally out the train - Ed]

“What this means,” says I to my captive audience, ” is that the train arrives *later* at every subsequent stop. Giving those unfortunate souls who would have otherwise missed this particular train a chance to queue up on the platform. Meaning that early busyiness makes later busyiness busyier than it has business to be.”

Nobody said anything.

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A little Luther

October 13, 2009 under theology

From Luther’s Commentary on the Galatians:

Train your conscience to believe that God approves of you. Fight it out with doubt. Gain assurance through the Word of God. Say: “I am all right with God. I have the Holy Ghost. Christ, in whom I do believe, makes me worthy. I gladly hear, read, sing, and write of Him. I would like nothing better than that Christ’s Gospel be known throughout the world and that many, many be brought to faith in Him.”

It’s the application of discipline, but in a way completely foreign to any disciplinarian.

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Gretel – Part IV

October 13, 2009 under Uncategorized

I’m trying out a little game I thought up. The game is to retell a fairy tale or children’s story while omitting one of the major characters.

This is Hansel and Gretel, and we’ve lost Hansel… just not in the woods. This is Part IV; Part V arrives next Monday. Part I. Part II. Part III.

If you had asked the knight what sort of knight he was, he would have said, “Ordinary.” He was young (there are not too many old knights), and comparable to his peers in stature and in deed.  He’d been to war and to the court, and he thought that he had a pretty good handle on life. He’d seen, he supposed, the things that there were to see.

But on that day, in the forest by the cottage, he had seen something so entirely unlike anything he had ever seen before, that he felt he knew nothing. There was, he felt, a different world – a new world – that he had walked into, and he was at a loss for what he should do next.

But he knew what he could not do; and that was abandon this new thing. No, he was in – caught by the surreal, haunting beauty of unwary Gretel.

So he returned to the cottage. As much as he was drawn, a part of him was not yet willing to plunge himself completely in to this fantasy place, and so the knight returned, but only watched the cottage from the fringes of the forest. He tethered his horse some distance away and approached the clearing on foot.

The knight was wary of the witch. He could feel threat in the air, palpable and real. He had smelled fear before, in battle, and the air around the cottage was the same. He could not describe it, but he did not need to. He knew it was there. It was a dangerous world, this.

But then Gretel appeared and all thoughts of danger vanished… for here was beauty.

It was as if he had been shackled and now released. As he saw her emerge from the cottage, everything else faded. There was now no cottage; no witch. There was nothing but the girl, and in such a world the knight’s reaction was unconscious, automatic.

Gretel heard a rustle and looked up from the garden to see what was coming out of the forest. In the first instant she did not know what she was seeing. The shape and figure was there, the motion and the light…

But the last man she had seen was her father, and of him she had only fleeting memories. She was looking for a deer, or perhaps a badger, and when a man came… her eyes could not tell her what she was seeing.

Gretel shrieked. The sound did not wait for Gretel to command it, and Gretel heard it ring in her own ears before she knew that she had cried it.

The man darted back into the woods, vanishing as quickly as he had appeared.

There was a clattering, and then a banging behind Gretel. She turned and saw the witch emerging quickly from cottage, with her wand in hand. “What is it?” she cried in a shrill voice. “Who is here?”.

Gretel fumbled for words. None were coming; she could see the witch, and the grass, and the cottage, and the forest beyond, but she felt very far from any of them. It was as if she was trapped in a dream, unable to move or speak.

She was sure her lips were moving, but no sound came. What had she seen? Was the man real? She looked at the grandmother and the wand, and she instantly knew that that the man was about to die. It was a terrible knowledge, beyond conscious thought – she could not speak or think, but she knew that the man, real or not, was about to be killed. She knew with equal force that she did not want the man to die, she wanted him to live, she wanted him to show himself again.

She had to keep the witch’s gaze; Gretel screamed again, and then began to wail. Anything to keep the witch from looking to the forest. As she kept crying out, words finally arrived.

“Oh grandmother, so horrible! Such an awful, ugly boar! I thought for sure that he would charge upon me! He had such dark and beady eyes, such terrible gnashing tusks and jaws. He was terrible, grandmother!”

The witch looked at the trembling young woman with disgust. “Have I taught you nothing, girl?” she demanded. “Frightened by a boar! Had you kept your wits about you we’d both be eating him tonight. Not that he’d have come near you, in any case. The racket you’re making would frighten the devil himself.”

The old woman stormed back into the house, leaving Gretel to pull herself together in the garden.

She was a total wreck. She brought up her hand to cover her mouth in amazement and realized that she was crying – really crying. Every part of her was shaking, and all the thoughts that had previously refused to come were now flooding in at once.

A man? Here! What was he doing? Why had he come? Would he come again? Seeing him had brought back thoughts of long, long ago. She could see her father again – so tall and broad; as knotted and gnarled as the trees he chopped, with a scratchy beard and matted hair. She could almost smell again the smell of sap and earth he always carried with him.

But… this man was not her father. She closed her eyes and she could see the knight’s face, lean and well defined. In her mind. she watched him come from the forest again. There was the rustle; she turned again to see the shaking and the parting of the leaves, and then he came out.

She saw every detail perfectly, savouring each one. Yellow hair that bristled messily like thatch, his nose and cheekbones burned dark, standing out from a fair complexion. He wore a dark green shirt with a dark brown leather jerkin. She could see the sword at his side; he was holding it against him so it wouldn’t catch or clatter.

She could see the buckles and the straps of his gear, his pouches and his dagger.

He was moving slowly, deliberately. She saw his head turn, look suddenly away. His manner changed. It was as if he had been asleep and in an instant came alive. Every part of him was tense, alert, poised and balanced. She saw power in his shoulders and arms. No longer loose or hanging, they sprang up, ready before him.

He was quick, and so agile! Gretel saw him turn. The motion was fluid, but fast, as he sprang back into the woods, gone once again.

Gretel opened her eyes again. There was the place where he had come out. Quiet, peaceful. She turned back to the garden. Her hands worked automatically, and her thoughts turned to the grandmother. She felt again the awful knowledge that the woman wanted to kill the knight.

“She hates him.” said the thought. “She wants to kill him.”

“No,” she cried. “She cannot kill my knight!”

“She will.” said the thought again. “You know she will. He’s from outside. She wants to destroy him.”

Gretel knew the thought was right. If, in all her years in the witch’s house, she had ever grasped the true nature of the witch, then she had told herself something else. If she was to live with a witch, the witch could not be a witch. No one can live with a witch, and so she had lived with an old woman, a grandmother with strange ways. She had been a child, she had to live with someone, and so she had told herself the woman was not a witch, was not as evil as she knew she was.

But now she knew. She knew. The knight had shown her the truth. She could feel, even now, the hatred that dwelt within the cottage. She had tasted something from another world and it had changed hers.

Gretel remembered the sight of the witch, rushing from the cottage with wand in hand. She felt ashamed; ashamed of having lived in that place, with that witch.

Gretel was distracted by a rustle. This one was soft; barely audible. She looked back to the forest, but could see nothing.

But she heard it again. She could see no leaves stirring, but she heard the sound. Gretel glanced back to the cottage. “The witch is mixing potions today” thought Gretel to herself. Making potions was a tricky, painstaking task, and whenever the witch took it upon herself to prepare batches she was always fully engaged.

So Gretel got up from the garden, very quietly, and went towards the rustling sound.

She had not gone very far into the trees when she stopped. The rustling had ceased. Gretel trembled with excitement; she did not know what was going to happen, but she anticipated a great deal.

“If I come out, will you scream?” a voice said softly, nervously.
“No.” said Gretel. She blushed. “I’m sorry I screamed before. I didn’t mean to, but… I’d like to see you, if… if you’ll let me.”

“If I’ll let you?” the voice laughed. A very relieved knight stepped out from behind a tree.

It was the oddest meeting of two worlds, a bashful girl and a nervous knight. It was as if each had appeared by magic, walking from a fairy tale, drawn from a realm of pure fantasy. The forest carpet crinkled beneath their feet of the knight and the beauty, as each dared to walk into a new, unwritten, story.

I love this man

October 9, 2009 under technical

It’s too bad he’s evil. This hack is marvelous!

Explanation of the hack for the non-technical:

Have you ever noticed that after you visit a link, your web-browser displays it as a different colour? (The default colors are blue for unvisited and purple for visited.)

Well, the hack is to write a web page that programatically inserts a bunch of links, and then looks at the colours of the links to see if they’ve been visited.

Because the web-browser automatically sets the link colours for you according to your browser history, this hack essentially gives the webpage access to your browser history. Well, not quite. It can check a predefined list of sites against your browser history to see if you’ve been there.

Brilliant.

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