A Pilgrim's Journal

Employee:	It was theoretically impossible for me to work this week. Everything I needed to do required me to do something else first, until it all looped back on itself like a mobius strip.
Boss:	Maybe you should make a to-do list.
Employee:	As if I had a pencil.

I was reminded of this when reading Proverbs 15 earlier this week:

	The way of the slothful man is as an hedge of thorns:
	but the way of the righteous is made plain.
		Proverbs 15:19

I can attest to this. When I have a todo list of my own, and things don't get finished, they often become roadblocks later. And not just scheduling roadblocks, but mental roadblocks, where all my pending tasks become like a brain cloud that holds me back from starting. The todo list gets bigger, things pile up, and it gets overwhelming.

On the flip side, when I'm able to focus on just one thing, and finish it, and cross it off my todo list, it is like a breath of fresh air to my schedule. It gives me a boost, a near exhilaration of accomplishment (especially when the task involves some complex programming issue that got solved in an elegant way). It almost makes the other todo list items easier.

Very often the key is focus. I'm currently working on a feature for Barry that, due to interruptions from other more important projects, has taken over a month. The feature is not that complicated, but it is basic to the architecture, and requires careful thought and planning. When interrupted, the jungle path must be re-cut again later.

But focus is not the only key. Sometimes just plain old dogged diligence will get the job done when elegance and focus don't. That sometimes rubs me the wrong way, as a programmer, but it's true, and therefore something I need to accept. I've seen it in action in my friends, and it is an inspiration to behold.

	Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities;
	all is vanity.
	   Ecclesiastes 1:2
 
	Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought,
	and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold,
	all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit
	under the sun.
	   Ecclesiastes 2:11
 
	Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable,
	always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know
	that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.
	   1 Corinthians 15:58

We can't take it with us when we go, as they say. Everything is meaningless, as Ecclesiastes says. The riches we store up during our long lives, through painful toil and sweat and tears, will all disappear and will profit us nothing in the long run.

But the Lord's work is not in vain, and we may participate in it. Therefore the Lord's work is profitable in the long run. We benefit, as well as others, and we glorify God through it.

	"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts
	off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch
	that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more
	fruitful.  You are already clean because of the word I have
	spoken to you.  Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch
	can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither
	can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
 
	"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me
	and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do
	nothing.  If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch
	that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up,
	thrown into the fire and burned.  If you remain in me and my
	words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given
	you.  This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit,
	showing yourselves to be my disciples."
  
	   John 15:1-8 (NIV 1984)

One guy shared a story about how he had someone prune his trees a while back. After the pruning, there were so many branches cut off that he was rather disappointed with the results, but he was assured that more air could flow through the tree, and he would get more fruit.

Sure enough, the next year he got a terrific amount of fruit. He called up the pruner to tell him, and the next stage in pruning was to take off the smaller fruit. Otherwise the tree would be overloaded. To get large juicy fruit, the tree had to be pruned yet again, even of its beginning fruit, so it could focus on just the good ones.

Except for an odd illness. Strangely, the people of this town tended to get severe lung illnesses, which would kill them within 12 to 18 months. Nobody knew why the number of cases were higher there, or what caused the illness.

Then one day a doctor, about 50 years old, came to town and started to investigate. He studied the evidence. He compared it to known diseases. He figured out why tuberculosis treatments weren't working.

The answer? It was the land and the rock itself. There was a mineral in the rock that, when inhaled, became worse than asbestos. The only solution was to leave town.

At such news, the housing prices took a bit of a hit. Tourism started to decline a little as it became known as a 'cancer town'. Some people didn't believe him, and wanted him to go away. Why let him affect their livelihoods with his theories?

Thirty years passed by, and the rates of illness remained as high as they ever were. Some people wanted to leave, but they were poor, and believed that they were trapped by economic circumstances.

What if you were stuck in such a town? Would you leave everything and start fresh, without any money or home, in a new town, based on one doctor's evidence? Would you wait 30 years, and raise a family first, and hope that perhaps a government program would come along to help?

I don't know what I'd do, but in retrospect, it would seem like a tragedy if there were people who got sick needlessly just because they felt trapped.

As you might have guessed, this is a true story. I heard it on CBC radio on my way home from work. What a story: good and bad news all wrapped into one. Finally, the answer why people were dying, but that answer basically took away everything they had. And such consequences for disbelief.

You can read more about this town here.

The Bible is right when it tells us to "Prove all things" (1 Thes. 5:21). I'm sure the doctor would have been happy to show people the scientific evidence and prove that it really was the rock dust that was killing them. According to the CBC radio report, he's in his 80's now, and he's still trying to get people to move and leave the town deserted.

	20 And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he
	awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other
	times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the LORD
	was departed from him.
  
	21 But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and
	brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass;
	and he did grind in the prison house.
  
	22 Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again after he
	was shaven.
  
	   Judges 16:20-22

One of the saddest, and one of the happiest verses in the Bible, in my opinion, within two verses of each other.

I'm sure the story of Samson is well known. From his birth, he was set apart by God. God gave him life. God gave him the special Nazarite covenant, where he was not to shave his head. God gave him super-human strength. And God gave him the very hair that he was not supposed to cut.

All Samson had to do was not throw it away.

God honoured that covenant, even when Samson married a foreigner, even when he took revenge for wrongs done to him personally, and even when he visited a prostitute. Samson was chosen by God, and God used him to accomplish His plan.

Yet, in spite of all this favour, Samson let down his guard, and in a way, threw away the hair, the covenant, and the strength God had given him. And he did not know what he had lost until it was too late.

But God does not give up on him. Even though Samson suffers defeat due to his choices, God keeps giving. God gives him more hair. The enemy thought they had won. They thought the job was finished, and that the battle was over. I think Samson even started to believe those lies as well. All he wants at the end is to die with the Philistines. But even in the middle of defeat, God is laying the foundation for future victory. God makes his hair grow again, God renews the covenant, and God sends more strength even after Samson fell. And the victory at Samson's death was greater than all the victories through his life.

Praise God, who does not give up on His people! Who produces Victory even with our own defeat! Who turns death into life, and heals our brokenness!

• Post 1 and post 2 by ralsina on bias in journalism
• mdz talks about the effects of the reality distortion field that comes with leadership and power, and some thoughts on how to combat it

On a more technical note, some details on the 802.11 wireless spec:

• apenwarr's initial post
• Pizza's response

I stumbled across a recent post talking about American catholics and US politics. Normally this isn't very exciting to me, but one paragraph jumped out at me for completely unrelated reasons. I'll quote the paragraph here:

	There's going to be a landslide this fall.  The Dems, in
	their blind arrogance, have mismanaged the country for two
	years and then berated the people who are suffering from their
	mismanagement.  That's why there are Tea Parties.  People have
	had enough.  But, as James says, the anger of man does not bring
	about the righteousness of God.  The great failing of every
	revolutionary movement, says Chesterton, is that it knows what
	is wrong, but is very unclear about what is right.

The above political commentary I'm not qualified to comment on, but the last two sentences are key. I can confirm that it is all too easy to know what is wrong, and unclear about what is right.

Later he writes:

	The devil always sends lies into the world in pairs so that,
	fleeing one, we might embrace the other.

Good to remember when looking at politics of any stripe!

For complete reference, here's the verse he is talking about:

	18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth,
	that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
 
	19 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be
	swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
 
	20 For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. 

	   James 1

This struck a chord with me, considering my recent political posts. I try to be accurate in all my posts, but there needs to be a balance as well. I don't want to mindlessly stir up anger, and I hope I have not done that. What am I trying to achieve with my political ranting? An improvement of some sort. If we know the truth, perhaps we won't be so distracted by spin.

There are three hopes I have when writing about politics:

1. Voters will learn something that is not in the top headlines and become better informed.
2. The party I'm examining will somehow see it and change for the better.
3. Opposition parties will see and avoid similar mistakes.

Does that sound pompous? Probably. I don't mean it that way. Especially considering that my blog exists in a mostly unread corner of the internet.

I hope that my political rants may highlight things that people might not have seen before. While my posts may discourage voting for one party, please don't assume it is a blind endorsement of some other party. They all have their faults, just like all of us.

It is also good to remember that the Kingdom of God is more important than any earthly kingdom, and it deserves more of our mental focus and loyalty than any other king or political party. I should take that to heart in my blog writing. It is easy to get caught up in the anger, yet the Bible is always right: the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

May God have mercy on Canada and pour His wisdom and love upon our leaders.

While I dislike the negativity too, I believe that such a ban would be throwing the principled baby out with the corrupt bathwater.

The first argument out of the gate in defence of attack ads, I'm sure, will be freedom of speech. And it's a good argument.

The freedom of speech idea is that you don't fight bad speech with censorship. You fight bad speech with more speech, preferably good speech.

Yet I see two problems with attack ads, which, to my mind, are outside the realm of free speech:

• Attack ads focus on the target more than the speaker
• Ads in general cost a lot, and therefore favour the rich

From a freedom of speech perspective, each party should be able to say what they want in order to advance their views. The problem is that an attack ad works like a shield for the speaker. The speaker does not have to expose themselves nearly as much as they expose the target. This is not like other forms of speech, where, for example, you may stand in front of an audience and express your views with everyone staring at you. You can't hide in a situation like that.

If Stephen Harper wants to get on TV and speak directly into the camera while trash talking the opposition, he should be allowed to do so. But he should not be allowed to hide behind video clips of mistakes of others, or well-crafted audio-visual propaganda. Let him speak, and speak alone.

The same goes for the rest of the parties.

My gut feeling is that the first loophole in such a system would be that the party leader would send out his candidates to do the trash talking for him in their own ads. To counter that, each party member who wishes to run an ad should be limited to the audience he intends to represent. The candidate for a particular riding should be limited as much as possible to TV viewership of that riding. His ad should be a "vote for me" style message. Politically, his only business is talking to the people that can vote for him. It makes no sense for an Ontario candidate to feature in an attack ad in BC instead of the party leader. Only the party leader should be allowed to feature in nation-wide ads.

The idea behind this is to make the speaker accountable for his words. If he wants to look like Mr. Negativity, then his own face should be registered in voters' minds along with that message -- nobody else's face.

The cost of these ads is also an important factor. If one party is richer in donations than others, this gives them an imbalanced advantage in creating propaganda. When this money is spent on attack ads, it is squandered, and it ends up hurting Canada in reducing voter turnout, as Elizabeth May points out.

Taking money out of the messaging of politics is probably a worthy aim, in my view. How to do it is the tricky part. If equal time is given to all political parties, then any upstart party could use (or abuse) the system to get their message out. This is good for freedom of speech, but bad if 500 new upstart parties crowd out the speech of the parties that people actually vote for. On the other hand, if you distribute airtime proportionally to the parties according to how the country voted in the last election, you give a possible unfair advantage to incumbent parties.

I think the balance is to set a minimum support percentage, above which all parties get equal airtime. If you set this to something like 5% of the national vote, this would include all the main 5 parties of Canada: Conservative (35.65%), Liberal (26.26%), NDP (18.18%), Bloc (9.98%), and Green (6.78%). (data from Wikipedia)

It would be interesting if every party paid into a joint fund to Elections Canada, which would then distribute those funds and the resulting available TV air time to all parties equally. In fact, I think it would be a good idea to rework the party funding scheme (The $2 per vote scheme brought in by the Liberals) and use that money for TV air time, but distributed equally among all qualifying parties. Imagine if $0.50 of that $2 were set aside as a global fund for equal party airtime. Now that would be fixing two issues with one policy change.

From a monetary standpoint, this may sound unfair. But the goal is not a free market of propaganda. The goal is to be fair to the Canadian voter, and make sure that all party platforms have equal airtime, so that all Canadian voters can make informed choices.

Freedom of speech. Equal airtime. Personally accountable messages. I think that's a better idea than a total ban.

Did I help because the Bible told me to, or because I really wanted to?

This is a quote from the book The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs (2007). The book chronicles the life of Jacobs in his attempt, and exploration, of living according to the Bible as literally as possible. For a year. The results are amusing and thought-provoking.

Don't read this book for answers. This is more like a diary filled with questions and internal puzzlings, and while it is very honest (which I enjoyed greatly), there are not a lot of solid answers in the book. If you take some of the text too seriously, you could make some serious mistakes, in my opinion.

That said, you probably shouldn't read this blog for answers either, since this is just as much a diary filled with questions and puzzlings, although maybe not quite as honest as the book.

Anyway, enough with the disclaimers.

The above line comes near the end of the book, where Jacobs is remembering an earlier question from his next door neighbour Nancy, when she was asking for a favour. She wanted to be sure that he was helping her because he really wanted to, and not just because it was part of his year-long project to live according to the Bible.

This line is probably the hardest hitting line in the book, for me. It's a hard question, because, when in the right state of mind, it is easy to get caught up doing things for God, and enjoying the process thoroughly. In that state of mind, you want to do good, but for God.

But from the human point of view, there is something different about having someone do something for you because they really want to. It is a totally different dynamic than someone just doing you a favour because they are in a good mood, or rich, or feeling pious that day. It is personal. It feels more like being in love than being a charity case.

There's a warm comforting feeling when someone does something for you just because they have a burning in their heart for you. It sort of takes you off guard. It makes you feel like you're not alone.

Is it possible to treat more than one or two people this way? It takes commitment and energy and some intimacy, I think.

What do you see in a person when you truly want to do something for them and not just for other external reasons? I think it is a personal value you place on the person. Someone that you don't fear at all. Someone that you don't mind getting close to. Someone that you want to hang out with. Someone that you want to talk with. Someone that you want to trust, and that you would not betray.

Does this happen with someone you meet for the first time? I don't think so. We fear strangers. We guard ourselves. We wonder what they are up to if they ask too many questions. We don't want to have our personal space invaded. We don't want to catch their cold, or whatever other bugs they might have. We don't want to spend our whole day with them, since we have things to do, people to see, and places to be. And we don't reveal our deep secrets to someone we just met.

How can we truly love with guarded attitudes like this? This is why I wonder if we can really love more than just a few people this way. This seems beyond what one person can manage to sustain.

Think of the closest person you know. Can you treat a homeless person with the same energy? I wonder. Is it possible? I know I can't do it now. Yet I know how badly I need to feel that warmth of real love, and if I feel it, then I know the homeless are also bitten with the cruel teeth of loneliness. It's probably why they are so happy when services like Out of the Cold open again for the winter. The warmth of love that the volunteers are able to share with the guests is so fleeting, so small, so short. Serving a meal, or playing a game, or smiling. But it seems like it is one of the warmest places that the homeless have in their lives.

Loneliness is a hard, cold monster to deal with, and the battles usually happen at our most solitary moments. At times like that, people would give almost anything to get a bit of warmth. Second hand warmth is ok. It's better than nothing. But there's a purer warmth that really comforts. And it's the kind that comes from an honest, pure desire. Because they really want to.

In the end, Nancy died of heart failure and asthma, caused by her closest friend that was with her every day: her dog. It's a sad story, and perhaps motivation to love our neighbour as ourselves.