Thursday, July 2, 2009

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

Well, due to popular demand, I have gone ahead and joined MySpace. So, I have decided to shuffle my blogs around. From now on, when I blog on life in general, it's going to be on MySpace. I'll also be moving all my space opera-related blogging to a new site that some friends of mine and I are working on. So, I'll be moving from one blog to three. (Well, okay, strictly speaking, I was already running two blogs, but since my blog on ROWLF is all BIFFnews, I would argue that it doesn't really count as a blog.)*

I have also decided to take my profile here private, so I can talk about some "hotter" topics without having my name associated with those subjects on Google searches. I don't want to put the people I work with at risk, so I'm just going to have to give up my aspirations of being a rich and famous blogger, and stick to telling the truth as I see it. 

So there will be some changes around here over the next little while.

* (And, yeah, okay, I also spout off on Yelp, but those are reviews, not blogs. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)

  Thursday, June 11, 2009

Sometimes you CAN judge a book by its cover

  Wednesday, June 10, 2009

1989: The Year of the Ballot Box

Last week, the world observed the 20^th anniversary of Tienanmen Square. There have been a lot of changes in the world since then, but looking back at this piece I wrote then, I think it still holds true.

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, "Your God reigns!" (Isaiah 52:7 NIV)

"There is no peace," says the LORD, "for the wicked." (Isaiah 48:22 NIV)

What will they think of us in the future? What can we think of the present? You've probably heard the ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." We certainly do live in interesting times. Yet not all the news is bad. Certainly, the earthquakes in China and San Francisco have added interest to our lives in much the same horrifying way as the shootings in Tienanmen Square. Yet all around us, the world is changing – apparently permanently – in ways few would have dared imagine last year.

I read – and write – science fiction. I love tales of outlandish technological, social, and political variety and innovation. Yet if anyone had written a story in which hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers and students marched in the streets for democracy – while the army stood by and smiled, or in which the government of South Africa would release the leaders of the African National Congress, and then do nothing while they held a political rally, or where Poland held free elections and voted the Communist Party out of power, or where the leading Soviet dissident would win a seat in the Soviet parliament and use his position to criticise the Chairman of the Party – to his face, or where the Hungarian Communist Party voted itself out of existence, or East Germany lifted all travel restrictions to the West, or even that Soviet hockey players would suit up for the Canucks – with their government's blessing – I would have laughed the story off as ludicrously out of touch with reality. Any one of these ideas would have been unthinkable five years ago. Even last year, the idea of any of them actually coming to pass would be ridiculous. Any reasonable editor would have rejected such a story as completely unbelievable. Yet all of this has happened.

What does it all mean? A few years ago we were all staring World War III in the face. In fact, ten years ago this month, a War Games tape was accidentally run through a NORAD computer which was not isolated from the network, and for eight minutes the Americans thought they were under attack.

We thought we could see the end of the world coming in a mushroom cloud, and now it seems everything is going to turn out all right. And yet, there's that niggling idea that the Beast is supposed to come initially as a peacemaker. So is the current outbreak of Peace blessed or cursed? Are we on the verge of a bright new world of peace and understanding, or is this the beginning of the end? In the end, it doesn't really matter. Whether we see today's world leaders as men who have finally realised that brinkmanship in a nuclear world means playing a game with no winners – and six billion losers – or as tools of the Beast, giving us "peace" with one hand, while preparing to wipe out religious liberty with the other, our responsibility is the same: to be faithful, until He comes.

  Monday, May 25, 2009

My, how things have changed

Every once in a while, you run into somebody who is so brilliant that just listening to them is a privilege. For me, one of the people who have brightened up my life in this way is Dr. Ralph D. Winter, who is probably best known for founding the U.S. Center for World Mission. He came to First Baptist Church in Vancouver to speak at Missionfest in 1981, although church historians and seminary students may know him as the man who updated Kenneth Scott Latourette's A History of Christianity, adding material to cover the period from 1950 to 1975. I vividly remember the thrill of watching Dr. Winter and Dr. Andrew MacRae, who was teaching at Acadia Divinity College, bounce ideas off one another during a reception for the speakers. (So, yeah, I got two brilliant people for the price of one. For a change, I actually had the sense to keep my mouth shut and my ears open that night. What a privilege to hear these two great minds debate one another!)

So it was with some sadness that I heard the news that Dr. Winter died last Wednesday evening. He was so instrumental in bringing attention to the need to focus on "unreached people groups." Now that his ideas have been so widely accepted and adopted, it's sometimes hard to remember how radical they sounded back in the 1970s. My, how things have changed.

  Friday, May 22, 2009

...loud, demanding, rude, make huge messes...

I'd like to say something thoughtful, insightful, inspiring, witty, and entertaining today.

I'd like to.

But instead, I feel compelled simply to point to another blog I tripped over this morning. The post is entitled, "National wait staff day. Why does the church have a bad reputation and how can we change this view?"

It's not comfortable reading. In fact, it made me squirm. But it's true, and we need to face up to it. Kudos to Samuel Connelly for telling it like it is.

  Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Rebel Yell

What is it about rock music that moves me the way no other music can? It's not just the beat, since Reggae and other beat-laden forms (while I appreciate them) don't have quite the same effect. Nor is it just the volume. Marching bands and symphonies can compete with a rock band for sheer volume, and besides, I usually keep my ghetto blaster well down on the Richter scale. It's not just the words, either, since folk music is more "content" oriented, and while I find that enjoyable, too, it's just not the same.

I think the real answer is attitude. Rock music, while it didn't exactly start out as an expression of rebellion, rapidly became one. Rock became the hymnbook of a generation determined to change the evils of this world. While some of the things they thought were repressive (like sexual morality) turn out to be means of personal health and freedom, other evils which they rightly decried, like materialism, war, pollution, exploitation of the poor, were (and remain) truly evil by-products of our society's values.

The tales of Robin Hood and his merry men glorify an outlaw, yet parents and teachers gladly let their children read them. Why? Because those stories illustrate the truth that just because something is permitted (or even required) by law, doesn't make it right. Robin Hood rebelled against one authority, in loyalty to a greater. In flouting Prince John, he showed his great loyalty to Richard, the true King.

I see Christian rock music in somewhat the same way. In rebelling against the order of this world, by crying out against abortion, poverty, war, drugs, fornication, the occult, false religions, and a host of other advantages of civilisation, Christian rock musicians show their loyalty to a greater Kingdom. As Christians, we should not be satisfied with the way this world is going. Whether or not we actually like the style of music, we should be able to see that Christian rock, in rebelling against this world, is deeply, truly Christian music. Until the day when every knee shall bow, Christian rock is one of the weapons we can use against every pretension that sets itself against the knowledge of God – even respectability. At least, that's the way it looks, from where I stand.

  Monday, May 4, 2009

I'm waiting for

It's dangerous walking into a department store, if you have a functioning nose. Salesgirls who follow the Tammy Faye school of makeup application are just waiting to blast you with samples of chemical warfare agents with appealing names like "toilet water." I understand that the goal is to take control of your mind, and convince you that the best way to show your undying affection for your wife/fiancée/girlfriend is to buy said chemical warfare agents and give them as gifts.

Now, putting aside (for the moment) the question of the ethics of gassing somebody of whom you're at least allegedly somewhat fond, I have to wonder about the thought process stores who pull this find of stunt. ("If you gas the poor, unsuspecting schmucks the minute they walk into the store, how are are they supposed to survive the choking clouds of toxic temptation long enough to reach the cash register alive?" ) It doesn't seem to occur to them that there's a reason that most guys would rather walk all the way around a department store than into it.

You do see the occasional brave soul making a dash for the escalator, desperate to reach the book department, or photos, or home entertainment, or just about anything other than perfume. Some of them even make it. But for most guys, walking into a department store is about as hazardous as being one of the security guys on an away team in Star Trek: most of the time, the writers don't even bother to give them a name, because everybody knows they're going to die before the first commercial.

Fortunately, now there's a company which understands the hazards that guys go through in this situation, and they have recognised the courage of such guys by designing a cologne called Redshirt.

Uh.... wait a minute. There's something wrong with this picture....

Thanks to PC World for letting me know about this.

  Friday, May 1, 2009

Tom Swift saves the world

There have been any number of ideas for alternative sources of energy (especially for cars) in the wake of the spike in the price of oil over the past few years. One of the more intelligent ideas I've heard of involves creating biofuels from organic waste, rather than crops diverted from the food supply. That at least offers the promise of providing fuel without raising the price of food out of the reach of the world's poor (not to mention providing an alternative to filling up landfills), but it doesn't really do anything to address the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, one of the loonier ideas for dealing with carbon emissions which has been suggested is carbon capture and storage. (See my earlier blog on that subject.) Basically, the idea is to capture the carbon dioxide emissions from, say, a coal-fired power plant, pump it underground at high pressure, and hope it doesn't leak back out. A recent Reuters story reveals a much more intelligent solution: use the carbon dioxide to make fuel. Apparently, scientists at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore have discovered that carbon dioxide reacts with hydrosilane (a compound of hydrogen and silicon) to produce ethanol when N-heterocyclic carbenes are used as a catalyst. (No, I don't propose to explain the chemistry involved. I never went past Chemistry 10. But I will admit that it all sounds very impressive.)

So, basically, the plan is to use the waste product from burning carbon-based fuel to create, well, still more fuel. Presumably, there are still come things to work out, like how to scale up the process, how to create the hydrosilane, and what to do with the other byproducts of the reaction. (That silicon has to go somewhere.) But even so, this idea strikes me as having much more promise than carbon capture and storage, with the added benefit of providing fuel as... well... a waste product.

  Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Bringing new meaning to the term "cover band"

You think your computer gear makes weird noises? You ain't heard nothin! Listen to this YouTube video of odd sounds coming out of an HP ScanJet 3C, a TI-99/4a, an Atari 800XL, an 8" floppy drive (I'm impressed that he even found one of those!), and a 3½" hard drive.

(Okay, so yeah, it wasn't written to flog a geeky product with a potential customer base of 37 people, but you can't deny that it's supremely geekey. Thanks to The Register for bringing it to my attention.)

  Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Obviously, I went to the wrong school

I am a total space geek. (Do I wish I were going along for the ride on the Hubble Servicing Mission? You know I do!) If I can't be there in person, then photos are the next best thing.

Now, generally, getting even a camera even to the edge of space is a very expensive proposition. We're talking millions of dollars per launch, here. Not the kind of money you can collect by scrounging cans and bottles and returning them for the deposit. Unless, of course, you happen to be a student at the IES La Bisbal school in Spain. In which case, all you need is a balloon, a digital camera, and a little ingenuity. Here's just one of the amazing shots to be found in the project's photostream.

Somehow, my memories of dissecting a fetal pig in Biology 12 can't quite compare. (Although Mrs. Ho, our teacher, thought it was hilarious that my lab partner and I named our pig "Gertrude." )

For more details, see the story as reported in The Telegraph. (Thanks to Dale for bringing this to my attention.)

  Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Please don't hurt him, Martin

Okay, so it's not exactly geeky, but it is funny. Besides which, just how many rap videos on church history have you watched recently? I'm not sure that I'm happy with the whole aggressive rap attitude displayed in the video, but given that the Reformation led to open warfare, I suppose you can't argue that it's out of place.

(Once again, thanks to John for bringing this one to my attention.)

  Friday, March 20, 2009

The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys

According to the Wall Street Journal, scientists in Bellevue, Washington are using technology originally developed for Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative to combat a different kind of airborne menace: not, not UFOs, nor vampires, nor even flying monkeys. No, these high-tech warriors are girding up to do airborne battle with... mosquitoes.

Now, okay, what they're actually looking for are ways to combat malaria, which kills a million people a year around the world, but the kind of applications they're talking about seem, well, just a little misguided. Imagine a computer controlled drone aircraft, circling over a village at night, using infrared and sonic sensors to track and identify anything in the air down to the size of a mosquito, discriminating between different kinds of insects (by the rate of wingbeats, for example), and then frying the blood-sucking miscreants with lasers. It all sounds very cool, until you remember that said village is somewhere in the developing world, and can't even afford mosquito netting, let alone flying robotic bug zappers. (I'm reminded of a quote from Miles Vorkosigan: "Just like swatting flies with a laser cannon. The aim's a bit tricky, but it sure takes care of the flies." )

But even though I'm pretty sure the whole idea is misguided, that doesn't mean that I don't want one of these laser zappers to put on the patio...

(Thanks to The Register for the heads-up on this story.)