What I'm Listening to today

As I've mentioned in comments on other blogs, I have grown tired of Contemporary Christian Music. I've not heard many people who are new, fresh, or even very interesting. Until Wednesday.

Every Tuesday, Apple releases 3 or 4 free songs on iTunes, and I make sure I grab the free music. I enjoy joking about creeping out Little Miss with If I Had A Heart, which was a free tune a couple of weeks ago. I freely admit to liking strange songs; they are something new and different. I've grown tired of hearing the same old formula from the same over-produced pop singers.

This week, I downloaded Come Save off of Sweet Sweet Sound and was amazed. Sarah Reeves knocked me off my feet. Her voice is good, the song is powerful, and it's the first Christian song to make me cry since Rich Mullins.

Go download Come Save now. Or even better, go buy all of Sweet Sweet Sound.


(Disclosure: I am a new iTunes affiliate, and clicking the links will throw a few cents my way. Go get the songs anyway. If the links don't work, please try again in an hour.)

Filing taxes

I hate tax day.

The little company would have made money if the county government wouldn't take their $100 off the top, and if the state wouldn't take their $175 off the top. Yes, it's sad for a business to only pull in less than $275 profit, but that was going to be $275 profit....

Looks like I need to put a little more elbow grease into it.

Welcome Coach Cal

OK, we now have the richest coach in college basketball. Nothing like how a little constructive desperation can make a "rough" choice sound good. I just hope that Sandy Bell keeps the NCAA on speed dial, and that Cal keeps a short leash on "World Wide Wes" (or even better, leaves him in Memphis).

Please stay clean, John. I'll sacrifice a title or two for a fun, clean set of seasons.

G's gone

Billy Gillespie was fired. Good job. One down, one Mitch Barnhart to go...

I think Billy would have gotten a third season if he'd just have signed the contract. Yes, the UK coach gets millions a year, but most of that money doesn't come directly from UK. UK pays around $600k - $800k (or so) of the salary directly from the Athletic Association. The rest comes from advertisements, endorsements, and speaking engagements. I think Billy G. wanted to keep getting his millions of dollars, but not do the advertisements, endorsements, and speaking engagements that paid for those millions. That just wasn't going to happen.

I'm disappointed that UK is paying some of the $6 million parachute, but I can understand why they did pay it off. First, they have to fire Gillespie to hire someone else. Second, the next coach has to know that UK will pay off their golden parachute if the deal doesn't work out. I don't think that the letter was a contract (they can argue that Gillespie failed to make a good faith effort to sign a deal), but it's cheaper to pay out that sue.

I personally like the idea of Travis Ford for UK coach. Donovan needs to really consider it, but his wife is probably already told him no way. (Tip to Mitch Barnhart: woo Mrs. Donovan more than you've ever romanced your own wife. It might just get you the #1 coach in the country.)

If John Calipari comes to UK, then we need to take pitchforks and torches to Maxwell Place. Calipari is a sleezeball who cuts corners and leaves storm clouds behind him. If we hire him, we'll have the death penalty within 10 years.

One final aside: I'm surprised that Billy G. can't outrun Alan Cutler.

Evaluating Dave Wilkerson

Dave Wilkerson has had a vision of New York City burning. He is advising the stockpiling of food and water. In general, I find most modern-day "prophets" unreliable. I used to watch Hal Lindsey's TV show, until I started totaling up his predictions and realizing how many hadn't come true. I also like Perry Stone, and think he can speak the truth more often than not. Even so, he has a tendency to go towards the deep end of "connecting the dots".

David Reagan is one end-times ministry leader I like. He doesn't make predictions or set dates. He just preaches God's word. However, on Lamb and Lion Ministry's blog, he is supporting Wilkerson a second time. Since I believe that David Reagan is a Spirit-filled man, I took a second look at Wilkerson's message and some of his others.

I'm not sure about his message. I do know it's easy to test: it will either happen in the next couple of years, or it won't. I do think his suggestions are wise: storing up supplies are essential, just given this economy. Any significant jolt could disrupt our current "just in time" supply chain (like the Atlanta-area gas shortages).

Fortunately, I'm not headed anywhere near the Megalopolis until next year at the earliest, so I don't have to put this theory to the test.

UK rant, based on a post for Vox Day

(The original post is here.)

Jamsco: 3/19/09 12:15 PM:

Nate: 3/19/09 12:10 PM:
10 losses a year at UK gets you fired.

Okay, I'm ignorant: Why is that?

A historical culture to win more? Better players? They pay the coach more?

Yes, to all three. We have a "tradition of excellence" and a record of good coaching. Rupp was in a league nearly all his own, and Patino was close (I still respect Patino as a coach). I still believe that Tubby Smith is one of the best active Division 1 coaches, but his last 2 UK years showed a deep level of burnout and lack of quality in his staff. He wasn't recruiting players that played well together, and he wasn't taking the kids he did recruit and make them into a cohesive team. I wish him well at Minnesota, because he needed to go when he did.

Now, if we can just get some minor-league professional basketball team to unload Billy Gillespie from UK, life would be perfect. He has a work ethic that can be admired, but its obvious that he's not that good of a coach.

First, you can't ask a team to do every-day full-speed practice sessions, even on game day, for 5 straight months and then expect them to have that extra step at the end of the season. You could tell in the SEC tournament that there just wasn't much left in the Cats. He needed to work them hard at the start of the season, and then back off (physically, at least) towards the end.

Also, our current team was a two-trick pony. Let Jodie Meeks drive. Post Patrick Patterson up. Run Man to Man. Lather, rinse, repeat. While Meeks and Patterson are two of the best players in college basketball today, they aren't God's gift to basketball. They set their early scoring levels because they played (and LOST!) to teams like Virginia Military Institute. When the SEC got to around the halfway mark, the opposition finally figured out how to shut down Meeks and Patterson (can we say zone and "double team"?). Gillespie showed no ability to change things up, or to vary UK's style to match what was happening. No other player could come out of the doghouse long enough to make an impact, letting an SEC full of other "two good player" teams compensate for Meeks and Patterson.

I'm also not a fan of "doghouse" coaches. UK would have a player shine for a game, but then said player will enter the doghouse and never come out again. OTOH, a non-doghouse player will quit or commit a rules violation, and the entire thing goes away. I don't care how great a coach is, that randomness messes with a team.

Finally, I have no respect for whining. Gillespie said our pre-conference schedule was too hard. No, says I. We lost at home to VMI and Miami! UK has the longest home winning streak record, and probably has the highest home win percentage, in Division 1. With the SEC in the toilet this year, UK was ranked 236th in schedule strength. You expect that from VMI or Miami, NOT from a team bringing VMI in to play at home. If Gillespie can't coach through that kind of schedule with two all-SEC players (one in contention for the Naismith Trophy), he needs to pack it in.

The players on this year's UK team should have taken the SEC championship and tournament, and at least made the elite 8. In my humble, and completely unexpert, opinion, they were overworked and miscoached. A better coach could, and would, have taken this team much farther than Billy G did. When a coach fails a team like he did, then he needs to go.

No, I don't feel the need to rant about this....

Fraud on the Scientific Method

Normally, I won't post on something Vox Day talks about, because I can rarely add to the discussion (and if I can, I post there). I just couldn't ignore this post.

To trail the links back to a root post, Scott Reuben did all of the foundational work in multimodal analgesia. Unfortunately for analgesia, Dr. Reuben partially or completely fabricated enough data to undo most of the foundational studies he did.

I find it most interesting that peer review had absolutely no part in discovering Reuben's fraud. Instead, he forgot to falsify patient consent and human test permission forms. A hospital administrator went to verify the patient consent forms, and didn't find them.

Essentially, an auditor found what a peer reviewer couldn't. How appropriate.

Feed update

I've got most of the feed stuff sorted out.

feed://feeds2.kypackrat.com/KentuckyPackrat will work correctly now. feed://feeds.kypackrat.com/KentuckyPackrat will start working sometime today or tomorrow.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

"Leopard Theology"

"The Bible is inspired in spots, and I'm inspired to spot the spots." -- Robert Jeffress paraphrasing W. A. Criswell on Christ in Prophesy.

I absolutely adore this quote.

Feed change

I thought that I had to create an all new blogger feed because FeedBurner wasn't going to recognize my old one. Then, I logged in and magically, it converted. Supposedly, all 4 of you will automatically get redirected to the new feed address.

If you don't, please manually change over to feed://feeds2.feedburner.com/KentuckyPackrat .

Sorry for the trouble.

EDIT: If you're trying to use feeds.kypackrat.com or feeds2.kypackrat.com, they may be broken. Sorry. Use the address above.

Save Me, Obama!

There's one minor bad word, but I think it's worth the risk. Just put your headphones on at work, since it's certainly not politically correct.

Save Me, Obama from The FuMP Project:



My favorite line from the lyrics:

Purge the graft from hell-holes like Zimbabwe
And Illinois!

Go download it now!

Secret White House Transcripts

Staffer: Sir, Mr. Brown brought some gifts. He brought your kids some expensive clothes, and you some nice books and a pen set.

O: That's nice. We have something to give him back, right.

Silence

O: [deleted expletive] Flunky #1, run over to the gift shop and purchase something for the kids. Flunky #2, there's a box of swag in the back of my closet in the bedroom. Find something nice looking with the wrapper still on it.

Fearless Leader has outdone himself. He received two priceless historical artifacts, one that relates to his own personal history and the second the paperwork that goes with the desk. His kids gets expensive clothes.

What does he do? Hands out two toys from the White House Gift Shop, and gives a nearly-blind man who doesn't like movies a collection of DVDs. It sounds exactly like what I would have done before marrying Milady.

Not very reassuring for the professionalism of the White House.

Selling Sqlite encryption patches, maybe

While I'm not fond of programming, I am capable of doing it. I tend towards filling needs I see in my own life. One of the needs I've seen is -- well, let's not go too deep into that since I'm still working on it before looking to sell it.

That said, I needed a product called Sqlite to do my database storage. Sqlite is an awesome embedded SQL database product that I've already used for stuff at work. Because of "Program1", I needed it to do encryption inside its code. Since I'm broke, I couldn't pay for the encryption that Hwaci sells for Sqlite. Rather than give up on encrypted Sqlite, I went ahead and rewrote the code myself.

Now I'm divided. Normally, I'd just put this kind of code up under a BSD or GPL license and let it be free. OTOH, Hwaci sells it, why not me too? rms would be terribly disappointed, but I've always been a BSD kind of guy anyway.

The fundamental problem is that the value of software is approaching zero. The work that has funded Hwaci and Sqlite cost me a couple of bus ride's worth of code; a pastime that would have otherwise been wasted elsewhere. I could price my labor at $100, and drive their $2000 down. If I license it with the new BSD license, then it drives their $2000 down to $0.

So, if you need Sqlite encryption and can't afford Hwaci, talk to me. Otherwise, wait and I might just pull an rms and release it for free.

Two comments over at John Kenneth Muir's blog

As I have posted before, I am a great fan of John Kenneth Muir's The House Between. On his blog, Mr. Muir reviews Religulous, a movie I've not seen yet. Even so, I had to react to a couple of Mr. Muir's assertions. Go over to his blog to see the post and his comments, but here's mine:

I haven't yet watched Religulous, although I have had it on my "round tuit" list. If you don't mind, I may post a second comment about Bill Maher.

I wanted to focus on your comments about the Bible itself. (I'll use italics to quote you John.) After all, the Bible was written, re-written, and translated into new languages... The last 100 to 125 years has been very kind to Biblical scholars, especially the collecting of manuscripts in electronic form. Scholars have not only found Greek New Testamet manuscripts that can be dated back to the 400s and 500s, but quotes of the New Testament from the early Christian church writers that can be dated into the first three centuries AD (or CE, if you insist).

The truth is opposite of how can I overlook a thousand years of interference in this supposedly sacred text from monks, popes and other avaricious schemers. The Bible has been protected because there have been so many copies held by so many different sources. The Dead Sea Scrolls are essentially identical to the Hebrew Codices (like the Leningrad Codex) that date to ~1000 AD. We have multiple sources for the Greek New Testament that come from multiple branches of the church, and translations that date from well before AD500.

One of the biggest argument in textual analysis right now is whether Luke added an extra line "the son of Cainan" into Jesus' genealogy, or if the Septuagint was modified, or if there's an error in the Hebrew manuscripts. (See http://www.errancy.org/cainan.html ). The concept that the intent of the book authors hasn't been conveyed down to us is IMHO over.

Now, as you also state, that's hardly the end of the religious discussion. We can't "prove" that 4 guys named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were in the vicinity of Jerusalem in AD30-AD90 writing these books. We have somewhere between 0.001% and 0.1% of the books that were written in that timeframe available to us (this shouldn't surprise a student of film, considering how much of the films of the early 20th century we've already lost), and all of the Jewish genealogy records that would have been stored at the Temple are gone.

I can't absolutely prove to you that the Jesus Seminar was blowing smoke when it tried to decide "what Jesus really said". (I can say that it was hardly original; read what Jefferson tried to do in that area.) I can say that they weren't true to the text. The authors intended to tell you about a Jewish man who was somehow also God; a man who died on the Cross, and as such could forgive your (and my) sins.

Now, the text isn't "in sync" like some might want. It was written by a bunch of men over 2000 years (counting the Hebrew Scriptures). The Gospels were written by 4 people talking to 4 different audiences, with 4 different forms of accuracy, and 4 different set of sources of information. Then you have the Letters, written by multiple men with differing ideas at differing times.

There are differences. I personally think most can be resolved by people reasoning things out. I don't pretend to know all of them, but I doubt any one person can.

Mr. Muir comments on my post, so I reply again:

...Okay, accepted. But that means The Bible is not the literal Word of God then (as some people take it to be), but the word of man; or of men, rather. Right?

No, not at all. I find it fascinating that 30-40 men, in different times in different situations, are essentially consistent in describing a single story. The fact that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell similar but not identical stories is realistic: 4 people telling the exact same story are just copying.

There has been a lot of debate about the exact nature of how God's "inspiration". Some want to say that the Holy Spirit wrote every word. I am more inclined towards an alternative theory: humans wrote the texts, but the Holy Spirit ensured that they were accurate. I think that they can be shown logically equivalent, and I'm working on that post on my blog, but that's going to be a while....

I think that the Bible (outside of minor scribal errors) is historically accurate, accurately describes Jesus' actions and statements (including those implying or stating that he was divine), and accurately documents that multiple persons saw Jesus after his crucifixion. To misuse Fermet, the proof is too small for this margin. ;)

I could argue this stuff for hours and hours, so I'd better stop here. :)

Dealing with eye strain

About 10 years ago, my allergies got so bad I needed a very light pair of reading glasses to use the computers. When the allergies cleared, so did my need for glasses. I've had to occasionally break the glasses out when my eyes get really tired or when working with small wiring.

Last week, the pain started. By the end of a day, it hurt to read or to work on the computer too long.

I am going to the eye doctor tomorrow. I'm hoping it's something simple and treatable, since the reading glasses are still too strong (and they're the weakest made) but the pain is only easing a little.

I'll try to report the results tomorrow.

Dirt in the soul

We don't get to non-kids movies much, so I'm just now getting around to watching The Dark Knight. In one way, I'm very glad they made the movie. Keith Ledger's Joker is actually someone who could exist; someone who makes sense beyond the comic book buffoon of the TV series.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I ever want to see it again. As I grow older, I don't find it difficult to see the evil in men's souls. It seems that I become more aware of it every day in myself, as I see where I eat a little too much, snap too much at the kids, etc. I don't need a TV show reminding me how base people are (like the new Battlestar Galactica), or a movie to know how depraved and close to the animals man can fall.

We are the only creatures who desire to fall. Our new dog loves us, and loves to be around us. The two cats have traded "the wild" for lots of food and throwing up on our bed. In so far as they can "know" anything, they like where they're at and wouldn't change much. (Well, our alley cat would get rid of the puppy, but he may eventually get over that.)

It's only us humans that want to call ourselves animals, and to say we can't control our impulses. Throw a bone for my pup, and she chases it. Show a man a bit of flesh, and he can control what he does. Seeing what happens when men decides not to control himself just doesn't sit well with my soul any more.

Perhaps that's why I like Iron Man. Tony Stark had an empty soul, and was starting to know it. Bruce Wayne has a dark soul, and thinks that everyone else does too, and that's the natural state.

We Christians know that it may be the "natural" state, but it's not our created state nor the one God wants. God wants us all to be cleansed. God wants to see us clean, and he sent His son to do it.

A comment I posted over at Hoyazo's Blog

Hoyazo, aka the Hammer Player, is a Poker blogger who also does his share of economic commentary. In this post, he rants about Obama and Geither's new TARP 2 plan. I won't quote the post, but here's my comment I left at his site:

Dub was a "center-right" Keynesian, and Obama is a center-left Keynesian. They have the same people in their economic teams, and they're reacting in exactly the same way. Who is insane enough to expect real change out of a Chicago politician?

IMHO, neo-Keynesian thought breaks down in a depression. You can't cure alcoholics by giving them more hooch, and you can't cure an abundance of debt by pushing more debt.

As painful as it will be, we need to let the big banks fail, the derivative markets evaporate, and the survivors make a mint off of picking up the broken pieces of the shattered companies and rebuild.

The alternative is Argentina.

My reason for keeping the good stuff off computers leading a perfectly boring life:

(Comic from xkcd : link here. Linked under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

Not watching commercials this year

Unlike years past, we've missed most of the Super Bowl. My grandmother has power back, but had an empty fridge. Rather than run back to home, we took her to Wal-Mart for groceries.

I may comment on the commercials after watching them on a summary site.

Night Glow

Central Kentucky has been pounded by a bad winter storm, and much of the city is without power. The Packrat household has been staying warm; our biggest problem is that we are addicted to the kerosene heater now, and we're going to have to stop using it lest we run out of kerosene before the storms.

Even so, we have the best part of city living occuring at night: night glow. I grew up in the country, so I hadn't ever seen the city light in a big snow. The first big snow we had in Lexington was when I was living in an apartment in college. When the clouds come in completely and the snow is iced over, not a single photon of light is absorbed before its time. I've seen it brighter than most days out in town. It's one of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen.

We've got it back with the clouds and ice. It's quiet and bright out at night, and every time I go out I just want to go walking on campus like I did in college.