Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Explaining a Quiet Week

    I got to my office this Monday morning following my week in Niagara Falls for my mom’s 90th birthday, and discovered that my hosting provider, had finally moved my main and oldest site, Energion.com to its new server.

    I understand quite well why it took them some time to move. The site is complicated and large, in no small degree because I have been adding pages to it since the mid 90s, and if there is any bad coding practice I have ever used, it’s going to be somewhere in there.

    Unfortunately, though they did a good job overall, they broke one key point, the access to SOAP. They did so by simply starting to use the PEAR SOAP extension rather than the built-in ones from PHP. The result was that a good portion of the site, specifically anything that used the Amazon Associate Web Services died immediately. So besides trying to catch up on the inevitable stuff that gathers in one’s office while one is gone for a week, I had to translate that code. In the end, while it should have been simple to change the built-in SOAP stuff to PEAR, I chose to change the whole thing to use REST, which I have wanted to do, but never got around to.

    That, in turn, led me to work on a number of other annoying things, and one thing led to another. The site is not only my oldest, but it often gets the least maintenance. When I’m about nose deep in PHP code, I rarely think about things concerning which I might blog, and thus, well, I didn’t blog. I know this was a severe disappointment to my large[ly imaginary] audience, but I had to do it–I just had to!

    So here I am, beginning to pretend there’s a universe out there again. Hello World!

  • McCain Supports Warrantless Wiretaps

    . . . according to a letter on NRO reported in this MSNBC story. He gets worse as he runs. Too bad. In 2000 I supported him.

  • Starting User Input Update on MyBibleVersion.com

    For the eager multitudes (even if they are only “eager” and indeed “multitudes” in my imagination!) who have been awaiting the changes to MyBibleVersion.com to allow personalized lists of versions, I have an announcement . . . [cue trumpet fanfare, imaginary like the multitudes]

    The site has finally been moved to the new server, thus removing my excuses for putting it off. It’s up near the top of my list for the coming week. I’ll get to it. Really.

  • Dave Faulkner on Lakeland

    Dave Faulkner has commented here on posts about the Lakeland Revival, and he has a new article looking at some of the healing and even resurrection claims. He hasn’t come to sweeping conclusions, but is certainly asking the right questions. It’s worth a read, if you’re interested in the topic.

  • Politicians, Adultery, and Integrity

    Despite the broad and pretentious title, this is going to be short and simple. James Poulos wrote today about politicians who commit adultery (HT: evangelical outpost), and said:

    …What I’m angling for here is simple: a basic public consensus that if you sleep around on your spouse you are a bad person, and to hell with your future in politics, because we still have enough talent in America to replace you with someone who isn’t a bad person and is nonetheless capable of being a ‘gifted’ and ‘dedicated’ public servant.

    That’s good within certain limits, and I’ve argued the same myself for folks like David Vitter, Larry Craig, and Eliot Spitzer. But that’s not because of my view of marriage, which some might say borders on the puritanical, but rather because I believe your actions should reflect what you say. For example, I vowed to be faithful to my wife “till death do us part” and others are welcome to hold me to that.

    Why is this not a personal matter, to be dealt with by the family alone? In the case of someone in public office, I would suggest that it gives a strong indication of whether that person will do what he says. He took marriage vows, he took an oath of office. If he violates the one, why should I regard him as a person of integrity who will uphold the other? It is unfortunate, of course, that there are those who are faithful to their marriage vows, but quite unfaithful to their oath of office, but that is another topic.

    In my view this is not primarily about sex. We get excessively excited about such scandals because they involve sex. We are too ready to excuse because they involve sex. The question is whether we, the voters, have enough integrity to demand similar integrity of our public officials. Can we do so when the politician is on our side of the aisle in the same way that we do when he or she is on the other side?

    I would add that by integrity I mean one’s intention and reasonable success at remaining inside one’s own moral boundaries, and also that one’s own moral boundaries are what one proclaims. If one’s actions do not violate one’s own standards, then I would not question that person’s integrity. I might, however, question his or her standards.

  • Small Group Error Correction

    Last Saturday I attended church with my mother, who is a Seventh-day Adventist.  I was visiting for her 90th birthday.  During Sabbath School (the SDA version of Sunday School), there were a number of questionable “facts” brought out by various members of the class.  Amongst these was “Spare the rod and spoil the child” as a Proverb (it’s not, though there are a couple quite close to it), and whether Jesus used the term “vipers” of his opponents, or was it only John the Baptist (Jesus used it too).

    Now this post isn’t about the greater numbers of errors committed by SDAs than folks of other denominations.  SDAs do quite well studying their Bible.  I disagree with many of their theological suppositions, but regarding basic facts they are quite good.  <em>All</em> small groups are subject to this problem.  What do you do about it?  I suggest three things.

    1. Check your Biblical texts in your Bible, not from memory, and check them with a variety of Bible translations.  A small group can agree to bring different versions.  Read the footnotes as well.  Sometimes you may declare that a certain verse doesn’t exist, only to find out later that it was quoted from a different Bible version.
    2. When there is a question of fact, look it up in a good reference source, such as a current Bible dictionary (HarperCollins, New International Bible Dictionary, Anchor Bible Dictionary [used carefully]).  Bible handbooks or Bibles with study notes often include such information, but they also tend to have more opinion as well.
    3. Distinguish fact from theological perspectives and other opinions, even in reference sources.  You’ll find differences of opinion between various sources, but you’ll also find a core that is quite generally agreed upon.  Using multiple sources written from different perspectives will help you on this.

    Finally, don’t be afraid to study because you’re not an expert.  Dig in and work at it.  The world won’t come to an end because you made a mistake.  It has much bigger problems than your misunderstanding of a text.  So relax and enjoy, but take the time to check as well.

  • Periodic Diatribe on Moderation

    It would be nice to have a different word for this that carried less baggage, but if you make up a word, who will understand? Besides I think moderation in general has gotten a bad name.

    I’ve encountered this recently with regard to the Lakeland Revival. In general I have taken little flack online, but in personal conversations, I have been urged to “take a stand, one way or the other.” It reminds me of the saying I heard a great deal when I was young, and more rarely in recent years–“there’s nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead skunks.”

    Well, I have taken a stand, and it is simply that this is not a simple binary issue. There isn’t a stand to take “one way or the other.” There are positive things and negative things in what I’ve heard so far. Should I come to the realization at some point that there really are only two options in this case, then I will surely choose one of them, but not before.

    Sometimes you have to take a stand against the “take a stand” people. For some reason they think there is a moral benefit in binary thinking. I disagree.

  • Bentley and Lakeland on MSNBC

    There’s an article here. Looks pretty neutral.

  • An Argument for Disestablishing the Major Parties

    Watching the debate about the Michigan and Florida primaries has been instructive in many ways. I’ve previously noted that I come at it from two different angles. First, the states broke the rules and thus deserve to be penalized, though why this penalty should be complete elimination of the delegation I don’t know. Second, the primaries are to some extent about bringing people into the process, and on that basis there is good reason to try to find some way to include the missing delegates.

    But there is a complicating argument, that the state legislature, Republican dominated as in Florida, voted this, yet the Democratic party and its leaders in Florida is being penalized. When I go under my first approach (they broke the rules) I can suggest that the Democratic party in Florida could have started work immediately to allocate delegates on a different basis. They preferred not to. But if one is arguing fairness, the state involvement is problematic.

    I find the fact that the legislature was controlled by a different party less compelling as an argument. In Michigan, the Democrats controlled the legislature and did the same thing. It’s the state involvement, irrespective of the controlling party, that troubles me. To be blunt I don’t see a good way to make rules clear, fair, and reasonably enforceable when there are so many authorities with their fingers in the pie.

    What would I prefer? Let the political parties–any party at all, large or small–set up and administer their own means of choosing candidates. If they want a statewide primary, let them pay for it. If all the parties want to do one together, let them agree on how to finance it. Make the parties 100% responsible for the selection process. Then whether they want a completely democratic process, some mix, or a top-down selection, it is a matter for a private, voluntary organization.

    I think that state entanglement with the candidate selection process is a formula for ever increasing legal issues. People are already arguing this issue as though people had a constitutional right to a certain level of influence in their party.

    At the same time, let’s eliminate party registration. What business does the state have keeping records of political affiliation? Of what public value is it? Let the parties track their own members. They could then repudiate such claimed members as David Duke for the Republican parties and be held responsible for anyone they didn’t repudiate.

    Crossposted to RedBlueChristian.com.

  • In Niagara Falls, NY

    I’m up in these parts, far from the sunny beaches, to be with my mother for her 90th birthday which is today. She is an amazing woman who is still lively, uses a cane but walks too quickly for many younger people, continues to volunteer in projects at church, helps tutor people who are willing to come to her house to do so, and generally keeps up with the world around here.

    Though I hate traveling in general, I’m glad to be with her today. I have posted less this week and will likely continue to do so. I’m returning to Florida on Saturday. In the meantime, there’s sure plenty of exciting stuff going on in the blogosphere.