I owe my sister a reply to her Myspace message.

Well, this past week has been eventful. Lots of stuff going to the new backup network. I discovered a new live365 station, Aramis, radio by night -- it plays American, French, Greek and a smattering of Italian/German/Dutch oldies. Pretty cool, actually. Will hang out with Eugene tomorrow night -- just need to decide what movie to see. I'll head up to Rockville since last time he came from Silver Spring down to Springfield.

Today on Fark there were a couple of thoughtful threads -- one regarding the "Quiverfull" theology and the other regarding the Church of England considering a nuanced position on allowing severely deformed infants to die.

I think to repost my posts. At 8:55am:

Most reasonable ideas become repulsive if carried to their extreme conclusion. The slippery slope arguments are made because we HAVE fallen down that slope in the past, and humanity HAS repeated its mistakes in the past.

Over the course of the past 100 years we have advanced in our ability to care for infants.

Deformities that in 1906 would have meant a short, brutal lifespan or nearly instant death allow either a fairly productive life or even a nearly complete life.

My wife was born three months early. She was given to the care of her parents because, frankly, they expected her to die. Today, her survival would be expected. In 1978, it was considered a miracle. In 1906, well, there would be a gravestone that says, "born and died on November 4, 1906."

She is a college graduate with a job as an engineer today.

Some babies are born with deformities that might be resolved in 2500. Today, all that can be done is say a prayer for those involved -- nurse, doctor, parent and child.

Hopefully even in the death of a child with a borderline deformity there is knowledge gained that can save this child 10-15 years down the line.

On a secondary front, I'd like to add that life has never been unicorns and flowers. As recently as 100 years ago, most people lived and died on the weather. A drought that lasted more than a couple years meant people -- often in the housands -- DID die from starvation.

--end post

One thing I just learned is what is Harlequin fetus syndrome -- and I've heard there's other, worse disabilities. The wonderful thing is that we slowly become better able to handle these and other disorders -- so what caused death 100 years ago allows a life of 20-30 years today and in 100 years, disorders such as cystic fibrosis will be no more impediments than being deaf or blind are today. The sad part is that perhaps the research that allows future babies to live fulfilling lives forces some babies to lead a "life" of but a few weeks in neonatal ICU.

-- from last night's thread about Quiverfull theology

The love of Christ demonstrated by that love appearing in our thoughts, words and actions. To show that love in the face of hatred, whether the hatred carries the banner of "God" or of the "World," is the greatest challenge.

Too often I allow the cold water of hatred to put out the all-consuming fire of God's love that yearns to build within me.

Is having kids an expression of the love our Father holds for us, or is it to achieve some worldly goal? There is so much talk of electing Republicans, as if a Republican President and Congress would guarantee a more moral nation! Does my the bond of marriage I hold with my wife strengthen based on the occupants of power in Washington?

We are each given many gifts. Some unfortunate ones -- their only gift is the strength to overcome their innumerable demons. Others are blessed with many children. Still others are blessed with the ability to teach. Yet none of the parts of the body of Christ are somehow better than the other.

I will pray for serenity of the sort Paul writes about: I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

--

God and His Son, Christ, tell us to love much more than they tell us to go forth and fark like bunnies, burn the heretics, hate the gheys, etc.

It is interesting how many people want to create a Heavenly Kingdom in this world.

Well, as you might have noticed, my spam counting project has ended prematurely. It was simply taking too much time out of my day, really -- who wants to devote 20 minutes a day to reading spam when there's Scholastic Bowl questions to be written and work to be done at my work?

This weekend was pretty chock full of my regular work -- I ended up spending 13 hours working on servers on Saturday into Sunday (6pm to 7am) and then another 6 tracking down a pesky problem with a private database network. The former ended up with me restoring a 20gb file system in about an hour (I love the new backup system) and the latter ended up with me tracking down the issue to a faulty GBIC fibre-to-copper adapter on the private network's switch. I got a lot of help on this one from the weekend shift lead. I imagine the non-technical among my eight readers are now bored to tears on this one. And, for good reason.

The elections are all through. Right now, the Democrats are the party of destiny. Every 20-40 years, the time is simply right for one or another party. In the 1930s, it was time for the Democrats, in the 1970s, it was time for the Republicans. I just hope that I don't become so dogmatic that I lose sight of when to become a Republican again.

A thread on Fark that I didn't get a chance to reply to was very interesting. Apparently, the camp that was featured in the movie Jesus Camp was closed down and will be used for some other purpose. A few of the repliers decided to challenge not only the divinity of Jesus, but the very existence of a Rabbi named Jesus that flourished around 30 AD.

I'd like to think that the existence of Jesus is fairly well-documented. While the Josephus references are attributed as forgeries, we are assured of the existence of a missionary named Paul that in the 50s and 60s wrote several epistles to Christian churches around the Roman Empire. In these letters, he quotes Christ extensively.

By 64 AD, the Christian church had become important enough to warrant the first of several persecutions (although it didn't really get serious until 250 AD, when Decius decided the church was an existential threat to the Roman Empire.)

64 AD is fairly soon after Christ's probable crucifixion (which was between 30 and 35 AD). So soon, in fact, that the Apostles and Christ could easily be remembered by many Christians at that time; in fact, the Apostle John is said to have lived well past 90 AD. Mythical-historical figures (think of Jimmu Tenno) usually become mythical-historical with several centuries of intervening time between their actual existence and their emergence at the beginning of that culture's story.

We must also consider the relatively early existence of the Gospels. Most scholars argue that they were completed by 70-75 AD; again, Christ's ministry was within the memory of a few of the oldest Christians at that time. The Gospels were probably based on earlier oral tradition -- again, this tradtion probably began circulating at some point during the 50s, when the Christian church stopped being of a size where "everyone knew eveyone else" and such storytelling became a necessity.

Then, of course, the obvious question is this -- if not Jesus, who was the founder of the Christian Church? Paul of Tarsus? It seems odd that Paul would not have sanitized his early life, or have otherwise seen to it that his unsavory actions in Acts were not cleaned up. Likewise, Paul bases his own authority on the earlier authority of Jesus.

Now, with this said, why didn't anyone mention Jesus while he was alive? Simply put, he was not important enough to care about in 35 AD. Cults came and went in large numbers -- this is references in the passage in Acts where the Sanhedrin initially agreed to leave the Christians alone. By the time anyone really cared about Christianity, the only witnesses of Christ's life and time were other Christians.

I haven't even gotten into the Dominionist debate. Are they are fringe group or are they a serious aspect of the Christian Right? I'm inclined to think they are the former, although International ANSWER is disproportionately strong within the anti-war left.

Of course, the final question is why am I blogging at 5am?

There was a planned power outage this afternoon. I came in at about 6:15pm yesterday and was hoping to be back at a reasonable hour. We had two servers that just wouldn't come up and a crucial database server that had a disk go bad. We had a bad clock board on another server, a tape drive go bad on our VAX and there was an error of some sort on an external disk array but we couldn't trace what it was. Right now I'm hoping to get a restore kicked off.