Horizons

Small Leaps

2012-02-20T10:58:00.000-06:00

This post is part of the CW.com blog chain. Please see the list of other writers' post on the right hand sidebar to read some other great entries.

This past week we went on a trip. This vacation was part car trip, part cruise, but all parts involved traveling to new parts of the country, and even to a country we've never visited before (Mexico).

In many ways, each portion of the trip involved small "leaps" of faith. Would the hotels we picked be clean, decent, and not located in bad neighborhoods? Would our car hold up on the long trip (1,900 miles each way) and more importantly, would it survive the mountain driving? Would we make it to the cruise ship in time, and would our car still be there in the parking garage once we returned? When word came that we could get caught in a snowstorm in the mountains, would we make it out of the area in time?

As it turns out, the trip went great. Every step of the way, however, we prayed. We prayed for little things (driving, safe travel in a foreign country) and big things (decent weather). Those prayers were answered, and we dodged an Appalachian snowstorm by day. Although we did end up in a rundown hotel in a bad neighborhood for a few hours (due to exhaustion from driving cross-country), the stay was uneventful in the end. Years ago, I would have never thought to pray about so many little things, but at the end of the week all those little things added up in a big way. We even tried some new foods: lamb, grouper, alligator fritters, and even calamari stir-fry.

As the old axiom goes, "look before you leap". Sometimes, however, looking is not enough. It's one thing to look at a travel brochure, or read about reviews of a hotel on a website. It's another to arrive there and find yourself in a dodgy part of town talking to a clerk who is sitting behind a window made of bulletproof glass.

In short, it's okay to look before you leap, but I'm finding it better to pray before you leap, no matter how small the leap may seem. Or, as Paul puts it in Phillipians 4:6-7 (NKJV): "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

The Lost Art of DXing

2012-02-03T12:44:00.000-06:00

When I was a kid, I got caught up in the hobby of DXing, or the art of listening for distant radio staions via AM, FM, or shortwave. This hobby also extended to television (VHF/UHF) to some extent, but with the advent of digital television channels, I don't know how viable that is anymore.

DXing involves going up and down the radio dial, in search of stations that are not in your metropolitan area (for those in rural areas it would involve receiving stations from pretty much anywhere). With FM frequencies, whose waves typically travel via line-of-sight, the best reception seemed to occur during daylight hours. Unfortunately, despite using multiple different radios, I was never able to pick up anything other than the surrounding states, and usually only stations that were close to our state border.

With television, the results were similar, except on certain strange days when the weather seemed a bit out of whack. For example, only a handful of times in recent memory the remnants of a hurricane reached this far inland. When it did happen, however, several typically "empty" channels on the tv would suddenly light up with stations all around the region. Sometimes the picture quality would be on par with the local stations.

One astonishing day, however, my father and I picked up a weak television signal on channel 3. Although the call sign lettering was difficult to read at the top of each hour, we deciphered the station as being "KENW" from a town called Kortales. After some further research, we discovered "Kortales" was actually "Portales", as in New Mexico.

The signal was coming in from over 1,000 miles away!

The two more reliable DXing bands were usually AM and shortwave, however. I won't go into much detail on shortwave, but suffice to say I was able to pick up South Africa, Germany, Ecuador, Japan, China, Bulgaria, and a wide range of other countries, including American stations. All from a tube-drive Halicrafters radio set in my father's basement.

For AM frequencies, distant stations would typically peak in the winter months, and there would be a surge in reception from about sunset until just after midnight. In fact, I even went so far as to graph the results and found that the amount of stations I could pick up surged from about twenty to well over 120 one night alone. Again, the stations would come in from all over the states, including New York, Chicago, Charlotte, San Antonio, Des Moines, Cincinnati, Denver, and more. With AM signals, there is a tendency for the signals to bounce on the ionosphere, which is sometimes referred to as "skip", thus increasing the distance the signal can travel dramatically.

On rare nights, however, especially when the local powerhouse AM station was off the air for maintenance, a station would come in from Los Angeles. On ever rarer nights, a station from Honolulu, Hawaii, came in...albeit weakly.

With the age of internet and the rise of cable television (or satellite), though, I wonder how many people still listen for distant stations. It used to be amazing to hear from distant cities and in some cases hear music that was never played locally. On AM radio, you can still pick up countless stations, whose reception still peaks at night and in winter, and depending on your location, you can still pick up stations from faraway places such as Mexico. It's a bit of an arcane hobby, but one that still exists today.

By the way, this weekend the Kindle version of Theft at the Speed of Light will be free for a couple days on Amazon.com. See here for details. Have a good weekend!

The Compost Pile

2012-01-31T16:54:00.001-06:00

This past year we decided to build a better garden. It was pretty successful since it gave us dozens of tomatoes, a couple dozen cucumbers, some green peppers, and a variety of other vegetables. We also decided to try something different with the fall and winter seasons by throwing all the dead leaves from the yard into the garden. Who knows how this will turn out in the spring, but I've read in multiple places that decaying, organic material is good for a garden. I already experimented earlier with putting coffee grounds around the tomato plants. The results were decent and I just may throw some more in the compost pile as the winter wears on.

Ideas, too, can sometimes be like a compost pile.

Over the past several months I had been reading a great deal of fiction, watching some old science fiction serials on DVD, and recently watched a few monster movies from the 50's, 60's and 70's. Some of the movies did not age particularly well, but the ideas were good. I've also spent the past four or five years reading tons of storm chaser logs (online), reading some storm books, and watching every storm documentary I could get my hands on at the local library.

Now, however, I think it's time for a vacation. Time to put aside the movies, books, and articles and not do a whole lot of anything.

Sort of like the garden.

Ideas sometimes need time to percolate, and sometimes I've learned (usually the hard way) that when writing, if the ideas start to run out, it's time to stop pressing and trying so hard. It's time to back up, take a break, and pick things up in a few weeks. I have plans this year to publish three books: one non-fiction, one collection of short stories, and one novel. The non-fiction book has been written and needs editing, and I've been writing several short stories over the past few weeks. The novel is also in the planning stages.

So if I need a vacation, why did I agree, along with many others, to a challenge that involves 60,000 words in 29 days? Especially since I'll be out on vacation for some of those days? That's a pace of over 2,000 words a day, and maybe more in my case. I agreed because I wanted to create a big pile of compost.

No, seriously.

Sometimes it is fun to just write stories with no preconceived plan, no outlines, no character histories or anything like that. I plan on writing as many short stories as I can over the next few weeks so that when I switch back to the non-fiction project, all those short stories can sit in the "compost pile". Then, a few weeks or months later I'll dig them up and begin to work with them. At this point, some amazing things can happen. Story lines that seemed incomplete suddenly get filled in. Plots that seemed aimless suddenly have life. Characters that lacked depth come alive. And on and on.

Like the compost pile in the garden, though, it just takes time. And patience. And a whole lot of ideas.

A Kind of Time Machine, Part IV

2012-01-20T09:46:00.000-06:00

This post is part of the CW blog chain (see sidebar at right). This month's topic is "quest". Please be sure to visit the other writers' posts and leave comments if possible. This is also part IV of a series I started in 2011. Parts I, II, and III can be found here, here, and here.

Everyone it seems at times looks for ways to turn back the clock in their lives. In a sense, they are on a quest for more time. Yet we can never build our own personal time machine to go back and change a conversation, to extend our goodbyes to a friend or a relative we'll never see again, to take back words that did too much damage in their time, or to fix our parenting mistakes. Fixing such issues would probably create a host of paradoxes anyway, and who knows, if you fixed the original situation, a new problem might crop up in its place.

Why aren't more people happy with their age or with the time they have been given? Why do some people turn to the bottle, or pills, or surgery as a way of keeping the past alive?

Our lives seemed to be filled with quests. Quests for more time, money, a better life, more friends, etc. Yet the time one seems to be the most puzzling one considering that in some respects, it's the one element we have the least control over. Once it is gone, you can't get it back, and unlike the sands in an hourglass, you can't just flip things over and start again.

Maybe some of this quest has to do with this verse from Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV - 1984) which reads:

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."

The first half of chapter three of Ecclesiastes deals with time, and yet there is this curious line about "setting eternity in our hearts". It's as if God has put a quest or in our hearts to seek out the immortal, the timeless, or to see things from an eternal perspective. At the same time, we do not have the capacity to see everything from beginning to end, much less comprehend it. In other words, it's a quest that never ends!

We know our lives are finite. We know there will come a day when our creations, dreams, hopes, and plans will be replaced by another generation. Yet God freely offers a free transit pass to eternity—or, to put it another way, a free ticket to the New Jerusalem. Maybe this is a big stretch, but perhaps the New Jerusalem is not only a city, but also some kind of creation capable of time travel...an ultimate time machine of sorts since it appears over the earth one day and descends from the clouds. Whatever the case, it will be 1,400 x 1,400 x 1,400 miles across, which means it's also likely either a giant cube or one very big pyramid (see Revelation 21).

Despite all this knowledge of the future, some still do not trust in its validity. Others do not want to part with the lives they've built or see any use for a ticket to eternity. Yet when the end of their individual timeline comes, then what? The quest is still there, unfufilled, and now maybe accompanied by a sense of remorse or perhaps bitterness. There is still time to change that, of course, if the person is willing.

Until then, however, as the inscription on many a clock reads...tempus fugit.

Random Movie Bits

2012-01-13T14:57:00.000-06:00

I've been listening to lots of older books lately. The last audiobook I just finished was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, and I'll probably listen to Treasure Island next by Robert Louis Stevenson. On the video front, I've also watched a bunch of old monster/mythology movies over the past few months. The short list has included Jason and the Argonauts, Mysterious Island, It Came From Beneath the Sea, Clash of the Titans (1981 version), and Godzilla vs. Megalon. More Godzilla movies are on their way in from the library, along with The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.

As you can probably tell, I like some of the old stop-motion model animation movies (Ray Harryhausen films, for example) and even some of the old Godzilla films with their odd characters, quirky plots, and weird overdubs. I miss some of these types of movies, and I haven't seen a whole lot of them being made over the past couple of decades in American cinema (unless you count made-for-tv movies or the Jurassic Park series). Some of these movies were a product of their times, and many of them played of the public's fear of war, weapons, and environmental concerns. Like 'em or hate 'em, they were imaginative.

That said, with all the advances in CGI these days, I wonder if any studios will revisit some of these old movies, like they did with Clash of the Titans in 2010 (a version of the film that I still have not seen). Oddly enough, I just noticed it looks like there will be a sequel to that particular movie, Wrath of the Titans.

Does anybody know of any current or newly released books with large-scale monsters in them? Or if there will be any more movies like this coming out this summer?

Gathering The Wind

2012-01-09T13:08:00.000-06:00

"Who has gone up to heaven and come down? Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands? Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and the name of his son? Tell me if you know!" - Proverbs 30:4 (NIV - 1984)

One of the major projects I have been working on over several months is a new non-fiction book about weather, climate change and the Bible. As I began to research material for this book, I noticed some peculiar articles appearing in the news. Usually it was related to strange weather events at different climate change summits (like the one in Cancun in late 2010). This past year was also strange in terms of weather extremes, whether it was nasty tornado outbreaks in the Southern U.S. or hurricane-like blizzards in Alaska.

Anyway, I have now finished the rough draft of the book, and barring major changes, it should remain a nine chapter book that covers topics such as future climate change, weather events that God has used to warn people, weather events that have been (and will be) outright acts of judgment, and even a chapter on how God has used the weather to turn the tide of war. In all, I looked at hundreds and hundreds of verses on the weather as well as specific weather-related incidents in the Bible such as Paul's shipwreck. The working title of this book is currently, "Gathering the Wind: What the Bible says about God, the Weather, and Climate Change". The title is drawn from Proverbs 30:4.

As it looks right now, this book should be available sometime in late March. I will likely hold a Goodreads giveaway related to this book and may hold some more giveaways on my previous book, Horizons, in the coming weeks. Stay tuned...

Free Horizons and Another New Book Update

2011-12-25T22:40:00.001-06:00

The Kindle version of my short story and poetry collection, Horizons, is currently available for free for the next day or so (until December 27th). Be sure to check it out over on Amazon. There is also a paperback giveaway ongoing over at Goodreads (see sidebar at right) until December 31st..

Also, as of tonight, I just crossed the halfway point on the rough draft of my next book, which will be my first non-fiction offering. At this point the work has no official title, but it is shaping up to be a nine chapter book which will explore the multitude of connections between Scripture and the weather. I'll be posting lots of interesting bits of information over the next few weeks on this topic, and things look to be on track for an early springtime release.

Define "Preachy Fiction"

2011-12-19T10:57:00.002-06:00

Today's post is part of the CW blog chain and the topic is "Gifts of the Heart". Please be sure to visit the posts by other writers (see sidebar at right).

Years ago, I used to just sit down with a notebook and just write. I did not look at what the books were on the bestsellers list or take a poll of my family and friends to see which topic would be the most popular with them.

Then, about a decade ago, I began to wonder what it would be like to incorporate more overtly Christian themes into story. I wanted to add these elements because they were organic to the story and not because it was the latest trend or because I wanted to see how much sermon material I could pack into a novel.

So I started looking around at various forums and reading some distinctly Christian novels. I also "reverse engineered" some novels (both Christian and secular) and read a lot of blogs. Over and over on forums and in articles I kept seeing a familar theme: don't write preachy fiction or worse, don't write agenda-driven fiction.

I thought to myself, "What's preachy fiction?"

In the meantime, I kept reading my Bible and saw God move in some dramatic ways.

Then I started seeing awkward but well-meaning conversations of how to stay true to Christianity but not write preachy fiction. Often times this was accompanied by comments about the current state of the CBA, the CBA's rules, how agents just don't understand, how readers are just misguided, or that current Christian fiction was not edgy enough and needed more gore, violence, or whatever. Then there were comments about how to work Christian "themes" into a story without any type of reference to a Bible, Jesus, or God in any recognizable way.

Throughout all these conversations I kept thinking, "Who are these people truly writing for? Are they writing for themselves or for an ever-shifting market?"

The reality is, in a profession filled with rejection, writing Christian fiction will probably garner you even more persecution, even if your writing is top-notch. Will this cut into sales? Who knows. Yet the Bible talks about being persecuted for being a Christian, whether you are a farmer, a trucker, a writer, a lawyer, or a football player. After all, numerous prophets in the Old Testament were persecuted for their message (and God even told some of them this would happen ahead of time) and Jesus makes it clear persecution will happen.

So again I ask, what's preachy fiction anyway?

If you have a Christian character in your story and your book is read by an atheist, does that make the book preachy?

If a character cites a Scripture verse and makes a stand based on their faith, does that make the book preachy?

If you create characters with authentic traits that also have a Christian worldview (complete with real-world struggles) yet the reader cannot relate to them because they never attended church does that make a book preachy?

Let me put it another way. A while back I watched the movie Tron Legacy in 3-D. Great special effects aside, I noticed the story seemed to have a Zen/Buddhist feel to it. I then read reviews about the movie and did not see any comments anywhere about it being "preachy".

Likewise, I'm sure someone could write a book or make a movie with characters that have completely relativistic worldviews that continually contradict one another. Would that make it preachy? Would anyone even notice?

What if someone makes a movie which is filled with non-stop gore, has heads being severed and blood pours forth in every other scene for the sake of being edgy and "realistic"? Would anyone call that movie preachy?

Not likely.

What about books like Animal Farm, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and others of that nature? Aren't there inherent messages in these books? Although they really don't deal with Christian themes they are generally not considered "preachy". What if you want to write a book similar to these and it contains a Christian character or two?

Congratulations! You just wrote a preachy novel!

Nowadays it seems if a writer feels led to write a story which contains Christian themes, characters, or gasp...a message...then it runs the risk of being categorized as "preachy" or "agenda-driven". After all, readers read solely to escape and don't want to think. Right?

Or so lots of articles tell us.

At what point, though, does a writer stop writing for themselves (or God) and write based on whatever way the critical wind blows? By the way, the critical wind always blows, regardless of whether you write with Christian or secular content. At what point does a writer lose interest in what they are doing because of this?

Whatever happened to working on your craft, putting out the best stories that you can, and writing from the heart? Either your writing ability is a gift or it isn't. Is it better to put that gift to use or bury it in your backyard?

Random Tech Bits

2011-12-16T12:20:00.002-06:00

This week's post brings a few interesting bits from around the 'net...

First up, here is an interesting use of the Kickstarter funding site: steampunk themed playing cards. If the artist ever decided to mass produce these, I could see them selling really well at a game store. The color version is very well done.

Continuing on with the steam theme, here's an article about the world's small steam engine.

Here's an ominous article about giant methane "fountains" that they recently found in the Arctic. One could only imagine what would happen to our atmosphere if they fully released their contents all at once.

And lastly, I noticed this animation video the other day. It's too bad Animusic hasn't released any new screenshots or given any updates on their Animusic 3 DVD yet...but in the meantime it looks like other people are beginning to take the basic idea and run with it.

Have a good weekend!

A Brief Update

2011-12-07T22:02:00.002-06:00

I'm going to reduce my posting time here during the month of December. There are lots of reasons for this, but the main one is the busyness of the holidays and the fact that I'm making significant headway on the next book simply by not blogging. I often do not have the greatest amount of free time to write and so I have to be judicious in my approach some days. I did some re-evalutating a few days ago, and when push came to shove, I realized the time I was spending here, although important and useful, is taking away from my writing books.

My short term goal is to have a rough draft of the next book (my first non-fiction offering) done by Christmas. That's kind of a crazy pace, but as of tonight, it is fully outlined and ready to be written. In case you haven't noticed, the subject of this book is going to be weather and the Bible. Before the month is over, I'll list the basic contents of the book, which, as of today, is still untitled.

Also...until December 14th, 2011, each paperback title of mine at Lulu.com can be ordered with a 25% discount. During checkout, use the the following coupon code: BUYMYBOOK305 for up to a maximum of $50 in savings. The books can be found here.

By the way, if anyone wants to offer up a guest post, I'm all for it. Just leave a comment or contact me via e-mail.

Time Out

2011-11-30T13:14:00.002-06:00

I think I'm going to take a brief time out from blogging. It will only be for a week or so, but right now I need a break. Although I've been steadily putting up content for months now, last night I realized I need to step back for a bit and reevaluate where things are heading with my book writing and my blogging. On a side note, I do have plans for three new books in the works (one non-fiction, two fiction) that I hope to release sometime next year if possible. More details on those projects in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, some nice reviews have come in from a recent Goodreads giveaway I did. They can be found here and here if you are interested. I also plan on having a Goodreads giveaway for Horizons soon, too...and probably within the next couple of weeks.

Be back soon.

Playing God, Part I

2011-11-28T15:55:00.000-06:00

Do you watch many movies? If so, I'm sure you can come up with a list of your favorite actors/actresses at a moments notice, or maybe even your favorite director. When it comes to historical movies, for example, I've watched many interviews where the actor or actress will describe their process for "getting into character" and sometimes they even talk about the hours they put in trying to prepare for a particular role. The pressures and standards they are held to seem to be higher when they try to represent a person out of history, especially a well-known figure.

Yet Christians do the same thing everyday, whether they know it or not. People who know little about Jesus (or maybe are turned off by the church) will likely consider any believer to be a representative whether they feel like being one or not. As a representative, however, it can sometimes be easy to fall into the trap of substituting ourselves in God's role instead of pointing people back to God himself. Unfortunately, there are usually a lot of drawbacks to "playing God" instead of pointing people to God. In a sense, instead of being a signpost we end up becoming a stop sign.

It seems like people are always looking for a physical representation of God in some form or another, even to the point of creating their own representation and turning the created item into an object of worship. Some preachers also like to substitute their own philosophies or even their own representations of the Word in place of what the Word actually says. It's difficult enough that we are imperfect representations of the real deal, but when a preacher puts their own spin on the Word to make themselves feel better or even in a sincere effort to make someone feel better, the results can be long lasting and in some cases devastating.

None of this is new, however. This type of thing happened in the Old Testament era, and can be found in the Corinthian church. Consider I Corinthians 1:12-13 (NKJV):

"Now I say this, that each of you says, “I am of Paul,” or “I am of Apollos,” or “I am of Cephas,” or “I am of Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?"

In verse 17 Paul adds (NKJV):

"For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect."

Here Paul can see several divisions within the early church already appearing, and instead of pointing people back to himself, he steps out of the way and points them back to Christ. This is a tough task because it's tempting to take credit for a great message. I've heard innumerable stories over the years, too, though, of where a person stopped going to church because of something a pastor said to them. Usually this was because the person was dealing with a stressful or tragic situation and needed answers. It's difficult, however, for a pastor to know where a person is coming from sometimes when approached with such questions. Even if they do know, it doesn't mean that's what God would say in that instance.

Next Monday, I'll cover more on this topic and look at some ways that we can get out of the way.

Horizons Now Available

2011-11-25T12:48:00.000-06:00

Just in time for Christmas...Horizons is now available in paperback here. A Kindle version will also be available within the next few days. Although this is a relatively small collection (under 100 pages), it covers a broad range of topics in the form of short stories and poetry.

Here is the back cover copy for the book:

If God does not play dice, does He ever play marbles? A gambling weatherman finds hope in the heart of a hurricane, amidst mounting losses. An ancient message arrives to a futuristic church...but is it too late?

Here are six short stories and twenty poems whose themes range from rollercoasters to fatherhood to the aftermath of a summer thunderstorm. From an underground library to a remarkable rescue in a Christmas Eve blizzard, each story is a venture to a new horizon.

In addition, three more books are in the works and will become available over the next 1-2 years. The next book to be released will be non-fiction, followed by another novel, Race the Sky, and a much larger short story collection, Corridors. Stay tuned!

Word Counts Are Overrated

2011-11-23T12:27:00.000-06:00

There. I said it.

I was reading this post about traits of successful writers, and his comments about daily word counts resonated with me. I often see an abundance of posts on forums and blogs that talk about the importance of writing daily but few that talk about writing in streaks or bursts. In fact, that almost appears to be shunned or frowned upon as if it were an act of laziness or unprofessionalism.

I disagree, and here's why.

For some writers, having a word count goal is a great motivational tool. For others (like me) I tend to work in bursts. I've tried to write on a daily basis and reach word count goals, but for whatever reason they do not work. My writing quickly turns into diatribes about my writing, which is kind of strange really. I find I am much more productive if I take breaks instead. It is NOT indicative of laziness, because if you actually saw how much work I put into an individual book or story, you'd quickly realize the amount of planning and editing I do is sometimes a little ridiculous. Suprisingly enough, for novels I do quite a bit of outlining.

For example, my novel, Theft at the Speed of Light, took fifteen years to write. There are four very different versions of it that all represent efforts to get the story right. Yet I did not work on it every single day during those fifteen years...sometimes I went for months or even years without working on it.

Another upcoming novel that I hope to start and finish next year is Race the Sky, which is about stormchasing. I already have one version of the novel written, but I was unhappy with certain parts of it. The new ideas that I intend to add to it will transform it into a completely different book, but I will also bring the vivid storm chase scenes from the old version with it. I have also sunk several years of research into this book already, mainly by reading chaser diaries online, going through books, and watching every single storm chasing video I could. That's hardly laziness, and I fully expect this book to be written in a big burst that will stretch across several weeks. Leading up to it, I may not write much of anything for days or weeks.

My main point here is that as writers, we all work a bit differently. Word count goals may be a great way to keep you motivated, but for some of us we need breaks because we work so intensely on any given project, and maybe even to the edge of burnout. Word counts on those "burst" days could easily reach into the thousands and when you average all the numbers out over a year, you'll find the same goals are reached: productive writing. In the end, isn't that what counts?

How about you? Do word count goals work for you? Or do you tend to work in streaks?

When to Leave a Church, Part II

2011-11-21T22:30:00.000-06:00

Last week, I addressed some issues that were occuring locally and some warning signs on when it might be time to move on and find a different congregration. Although this seems to becoming a more common thing nowadays (and I'm sure we can all come up with our own lists of legitimate reasons to leave a congregration), this week I wanted to point out a couple of issues that seem to be contributing to these issues.

First off, some context. In I Corinthians 3, Paul talks about divisions that were already coming into the church back then. In other words, as Solomon once wrote "there is nothing new under the sun," (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Even in the Corinthian church, there were many obstacles to overcome such as the numerous gods and goddesses that were previously worshipped in the region. Funny how some things are coming full circle now.

In this instance, however, I'm seeing a couple trends that preceeded some of the unusual issues I mentioned last week. The biggest one by far is biblical illiteracy. With the abundance of reading devices, access to the internet, endless Bible study availability, this is actually surprising. Yet time and again I find it amazing how few people "do their homework" when examining a new set of teachings...including the pastors/preachers themselves. Maybe it is due to the excessively busy lifestyles that Americans tend to lead nowadays.

Another piece to this puzzle also seems to be what I wrote about in this post. Why is it that so many people can power their way through 1,000 page novels or non-fiction books in a matter of days but can't even read a chapter a week out of their Bible? They'll even go so far as to read books about the Bible, but seriously struggle with day-to-day or even weekly reading of the Word on their own time. Again, with the abundance of resources and Bible translations out there, I find this amazing. While it is true that not all are called to teach out of the Word, basic reading seems to be an incredible struggle.

The other potential factor here is that we may be in the End Times. There is lots of commentary on either side of this issue, but some relevant verses here can be found in Matthew 24 and in II Thessalonians. Both speak of a falling away before Christ returns, which is in sharp contrast to some of the current teachings making their rounds that try to promote a theology that "God is powerless" unless we act (or get out of the way) and that we (the church) are the ones who will bring about Christ's second coming. Again...this goes back to basic knowledge of a handful of Bible verses.

Ultimately, whether an individual or a family decides to move on from a church due to heretical teachings is a personal decision. A case can be made to try to "hang in there" and stand on the Word in the hopes that others will listen. At some point, however, it may be time to walk away and move on to work with those who will listen.

Nine Things

2011-11-18T06:49:00.000-06:00

Today's post is part of the CW.com blog chain (see sidebar at right). This month's topic is "nine things". Please be sure to visit the others' posts, too.

One thing I continually try to work on in my fiction writing is character development. At times, though, I've found it difficult to come up with original characters. So over the years I started to develop a "system of lists" as a means of avoiding writer's block in this area. The lists are organized by categories: occupation, hobbies, traits, and psychological needs.

How this works is that I usually start with an occupation, and then match it with a hobby, then add some traits, and finally combine it with a psychological need. In other words, it's kind of like an assembly line for characters. You don't need to start with the occupation, though, and often times I'll freely draw connections between the lists or try out different combinations to see what is the most interesting.

So, here are eighteen words from each list to help you with your own writing (nine things times two = 18...it's the eighteenth...get it?):

Occupation

trucker, cook, inventor, musician, doctor, plumber, teacher, drifter, firefighter, librarian, jeweler, clockmaker, woodworker, banker, chemist, farmer, carpenter, resort owner

Hobbies/Activities

rockclimbing, music collector, gambles, teaches, plays golf, stargazer, weaves, plays chess, hunts, writes, does crosswords, marathon runner, paints, has no time for hobbies, sculpts, plays in a rock band, hikes, draws

Traits

shortsighted, free-spending, aggressive, passive, analytic, impulsive, picky, honest, punctual, carefree, manipulative, meticulous, opportunist, conceited, control freak, comical, hypochondriac, intuitive

Psychological Needs/Motivations

wants to fall in love, vengence, needs to be right, to discover truth about the past, wants to help everybody, running from past life, needs to win, to right a past wrong, to be in control, misses church, medical quest, lost parent or sibling, need for acceptance, to conquer things, poor as a child, needs lots of friends, wants to be alone, social justice

And, since I normally post tech-related links on Fridays (and since this was a low-tech post), here's a link to a video that shows the strange phenomenon of "bioluminescent waves". Not really tech-related, but colorful nonetheless. Oddly enough, this effect is a result of a red tide.

Lastly, here's an article describing the effort to build two ten-story Tesla coils in order to study lightning. It's one of the more intriguing uses of the Kickstarter funding program I've seen.

Have a good weekend.

When to Leave a Church, Part I

2011-11-14T17:27:00.001-06:00

Are we in the Last Days church? Some days it really looks like it.

The other week some "new" teachings being introduced at a local church were brought to my attention. I did some research which involved looking at both sides of the issue (pro and con) and also watched multiple sermons by this particular teacher. I then brought the research to the attention of one of our small group discussions and was met with some resistance. I prefaced my comments by saying that the information I was bringing forth was nothing personal and that I knew some people had spent years studying this particular preacher's works. Some eye-opening comments came forth and none of them were based on comparing things with Scripture.

The meeting ended with me choosing to leave early and seriously questioning what direction the church was moving. I soon realized that perhaps it was time to move on to a different congregation.

I then sat down and compiled a short list of the reasons why I, and others, would have grounds for leaving a particular congregation. They included:

When it becomes more interesting to find "gold dust" in a Bible than actually reading what's on the pages
When people become more focused on the "experience" rather than learning anything from the Word
When you point out substantial errors in the new teachings that directly conflict with the Word and no one seems too concerned about it
When there is talk of a lack of "unity" over the new teachings, not because they are unbiblical, but because they are "new"
Little to no comparison of the "miracles" with what Scripture teaches
There is widespread twisting and spinning of Scripture in the new materials being taught

As you can probably see, some of this has to do with an ongoing "signs and wonders" movement that is sweeping the churches around the world. Often times these "signs and wonders" are attributed to the Holy Spirit, but is that really what is happening? Or is it a confusion of true miracles with false signs mixed in? Why is every supernatural event being attributed to the Holy Spirit? These verses came to mind as I was doing research:

II Thessalonians 2:7-10 (NKJV) states:

"For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved."

Matthew 24:24 (NKJV) states:

"For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect."

In Acts 17:11, the Bereans were commended by Paul for searching the Scriptures to see if his teachings were true and worthy. I saw none of that occuring with these recent events. I even willingly offered to compare the new sermons and teachings with what the Word actually says. There did not seem to be much interest in that. Although there is hope in this situation, it brings to light a much bigger ongoing issue that shows little sign of improvement.

Next Monday, I'll cover what I think is leading to this phenomenon and where it may be leading next.

Have you ever left a church you've attended for a long time? What led you out the door?

Random Tech Bits

2011-11-11T16:39:00.000-06:00

To offset the heavy duty post I have planned for next Monday, today I thought I'd follow the usual Friday routine as of late and share some tech related links.

Here's a link to a video for a Microsoft Kinect-based instrument. Very creative and I'm curious to see what direction this project takes in the future.

Here's one from nanoarchitecture.net on "quantum levitation". I'm not sure how to describe the video, other than it looks like a smoking pancake levitating above and around a track.

This one has been around a while. It's a tornado vs. a train. You can probably guess who wins.

If you've never been to the Computer History Museum, there's always the opportunity to check out their videos here.

Have a good weekend!

Storms From Above

2011-11-09T16:13:00.001-06:00

A few weeks ago, I saw this video taken from the International Space Station as it orbited around the Earth. Around the 22-second mark in the video, there are bursts of lightning from storms occurring on the surface. It's a fascinating view, and yet it reminds me of the verse from Psalm 24:1-2 (NIV - 1984) which reads:

"The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for He founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters."

That's everything, including the sky, the clouds, and even the lightning bolts. To illustrate further, in Job 37:3 (NIV - 1984) it reads:

"He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven and sends it to the ends of the earth."

Or even Job 37:11 (NIV - 1984) it states:

"He loads the clouds with moisture; he scatters his lightning through them."

A little more ominously, in Job 38:35 (NIV - 1984) God tells Job:

"Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?"

The other week I mentioned how storms can be an act of God, and here I discuss how the phrase "global warming" will take on a whole new meaning in the future. A lot of times, though, I'll see reports that comment on the increasing severity of certain types of weather (the recent Alaska superstorm/hurricane/blizzard for example) but God (as usual) is almost always left out of the equation, despite the use of terms such as "disaster of Biblical proportions" or "epic" or "record-breaking".

Granted, an individual weather event does not necessarily mean that a certain city or region is getting punished for anything, but the potential does exist and there is a Biblical precedent for this. That said, from Scripture it's pretty clear who controls the weather, even down to the individual components such as a lightning bolt.

Next Wednesday, we'll take a look at how certain elements of heaven are often compared to the weather and what conclusions can be drawn from that.

Fact in Fiction

2011-11-07T21:54:00.000-06:00

How much of any given novel is truly "fiction"? The answer is...it depends.

One of the stories for my upcoming collection, Horizons, for example, has a bit of an autobiographical twist to it. The story involves a down-and-out bookstore owner whose car crashes into a snowbank in the midst of a snowstorm. On a seemingly lonesome highway, allies suddenly appear when he least expects it.

At the risk of giving the story away, what happens next really did occur to me on a lonely highway in the middle of a snowstorm. I wasn't working at a bookstore at the time, but I was returning home from the late shift at a nearby restaurant. For the story itself, I altered the looks of the people that came to help, but I did not change how they worked that night to pull me out of my situation. You'll have to read the actual short story to see what happened that snowy night, but this made me think of an age-old question when reading other authors' works of fiction: how much of the story really happened to them or somebody they knew?

Sometimes, such as in the case of Hemingway, you can see where he got his inspiration for a book such as The Old Man and the Sea. Then if you try to read interviews with the author, the line between fiction and reality seems purposely blurred. It's pretty much impossible to tell what events in that book happened for real and which ones did not.

This tension sometimes leads to peculiar conversations. I remember being asked by a couple of people if the events in An Echo Through the Trees really happened to me. My answer: it depends how you look at it. Have I ever had to go and rescue someone who we thought was lost in the woods at night? Yes (turns out they weren't lost, though, but late in coming back to camp). The main character in that story also freezes his feet. Have I ever experienced that? Yes. I pretty much froze my feet after a long game of snow football in knee deep snow. Not fun. Have I ever written letters for months or even years and not gotten replies? Yes.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Maybe a better way to describe this process is that an author will sometimes, but not always, draw from personal experience and then use those experiences as a sort of palette to paint with. The end result may not look anything like the original event, but in many cases, there might be a connection. Again, though, it really depends on the author as to how much "fact" they want to put into their fictional characters.

Still Going

2011-11-02T17:30:00.000-05:00

It's Wednesday, and that means it's time for another outdoors or weather related post. This week, however, I'd like to take a brief detour from the heavy duty posts I've been making as of late (see the 130 pound hailstone post here or the one about increasing twister sizes). Instead, I'd like to mention a strange trend in our garden: frost-defying Brussels sprouts.

When I read the package of seeds this past spring it mentioned about how the plants could tolerate a frost. Okay. What they didn't mention was that the things appear to be able to tolerate multiple frost events and keep growing. It's November according to the calendar, but these things are still sprouting.

I sense the potential for science fiction material here.

After reading this week that genetically modified mosquitoes are being developed and that some have already been released into the wild, part of me wonders if these things in the garden have been tinkered with, too. I mean, why not? Are there genetically modified bees pollinating the garden? Sometimes I think some scientists seriously underestimate the complexity of the natural world that they are manipulating.

With the first snow of the season just around the corner, I'm thinking by Thanksgiving I'll be harvesting sprouts in a snowbank.

Gosub Genesis

2011-10-31T12:16:00.000-05:00

In some versions of the BASIC programming language (especially those that support line numbers), there are a pair of commands named GOSUB and RETURN. GOSUB means to branch to a particular subroutine and at the end of that subroutine there should be a corresponding RETURN keyword. In code it looks something like this:

10 REM *** My program ***
20 PRINT "Hello there ";
30 GOSUB 100
40 END

100 REM *** Print a name ***
110 PRINT "Dear Reader"
120 RETURN

Output:

Hello there Dear Reader

...where the initial code jumps to the subroutine at line 100 and when that is finished, it sends control back to the command that follows the GOSUB call (in this case, line 40). The basic purpose of subroutines is to put pieces of repeatabl/reusable code in one central location so that they can be used later on by many different parts of the program.

Along these lines, a thought occured to me: is the Bible like a giant set of programming instructions complete with subroutines, loops, and variables? When you look at the Bible as a whole, there are thousands of places where the book as a whole refers back to itself, either in the form of a historical event, or by quoting statements God made in previous verses.

For an example of what I mean, let's take the Book of Genesis. Several books of the New Testament refer back to portions of Genesis:

Matthew 22:31-33 (NKJV):

"But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” And when the multitudes heard this, they were astonished at His teaching."

Luke 3:8 (NKJV):

"Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones."

Hebrews 11:17-19 (NKJV):

"By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, “In Isaac your seed shall be called,” concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense."

Other examples can be found in John 8:33, Romans 11:1, Galatians 3:8, Acts 7:2-26, and countless others.

I can't think of any other book in existence that refers back on itself so often. Although dictionaries are self-referencing, too, people don't usually attempt to read them straight through. With the Bible, this self-referencing takes place going forwards (prophecy) and backwards. Yet this does not take place within a self-contained environment...it takes place throughout the history of the world.

Is it then possible that the Bible is not only a love story and a explanation of salvation, but also an incredibly complicated piece of source code? I mentioned before in an earlier post how some have compared DNA to computer code. So then is it also possible God was in the business of programming thousands of years before the first transistor was even developed?

Random Tech Bits

2011-10-28T14:14:00.000-05:00

Here are some collected technology stories from around the web this week...

Here's a "holodesk" being developed at Microsoft. I'm not sure what the potential real world uses of this will be, but the video in the article shows the manipulation of 3-D virtual objects with a pair of hands.

Apparently the Japanese have developed a "spherical flying machine". I find it amazing no one has developed this before now. For some reason, I immediately thought of the flying camera drone in the movie, "They Live", with Rowdy Roddy Piper.

Here is a video (originally found via Nanoarchitecture.net) that uses carbon nanotubes as a cloaking device. Apparently it works by rapidly heating up a sheet of nanotubes that generate a sort of heat-related mirage. When they get it to work in air it could be very impressive...although there would be an obvious heat signature to any device using this.

In other news, I have a book update. I should be finished with my next book, Horizons, within the next few days. I'm hoping to publish it via Amazon by November 1st. It will be available in both paperback and Kindle format. More details on Horizons can be found in this post.

The next book beyond that, which will be non-fiction, is already well underway and will hopefully be finished early in 2012.

Are Storms an Act of God?

2011-10-26T12:33:00.000-05:00

Does God send storms? It depends who you ask.

According to the Bible, in some cases storms can be used to send a message.

Consider the following from Haggai 2:15-19 (NKJV):

"‘And now, carefully consider from this day forward: from before stone was laid upon stone in the temple of the LORD—since those days, when one came to a heap of twenty ephahs, there were but ten; when one came to the wine vat to draw out fifty baths from the press, there were but twenty. I struck you with blight and mildew and hail in all the labors of your hands; yet you did not turn to Me,’ says the LORD. ‘Consider now from this day forward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, from the day that the foundation of the LORD’s temple was laid—consider it: Is the seed still in the barn? As yet the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have not yielded fruit. But from this day I will bless you.’"

At first glance, these verses discuss an act of discipline by God towards the Israelites. Yet it is an act of discipline that comes to an end (verse 19). Although it illustrates a bit of judgment on one hand, right along with it is grace. The same idea can be found in Amos 4:7 (NKJV):

"I also withheld rain from you, when there were still three months to the harvest. I made it rain on one city, I withheld rain from another city. One part was rained upon, and where it did not rain the part withered."

Does this mean every storm or raindrop that falls from the sky is an act of God, though?

If you subscribe to the clockwork universe theory, the answer is no. Local weather events are merely part of larger system set in motion by God eons ago. From Wikipedia:

"The clockwork universe theory compares the universe to a mechanical clock wound up by God, or initiated by the Big Bang. It continues ticking along, as a perfect machine, with its gears governed by the laws of physics, making every single aspect of the machine completely predictable."

This theory implies that God kickstarted the process and has not intervened since. Yet the Scriptures I listed above indicate otherwise.

That may be all well and great, but the verses I used above were from the judgment-filled Old Testament. Right?

In Revelation 16:21 (NKJV), it talks about hail, too:

"And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent. Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great."

What is the "weight of a talent"? According to Wikipedia, it was probably around 130 pounds at the time Revelation was written.

Read that again slowly: 130 pound hailstones. The largest hailstone on record in the United States was about eight inches across and weighed 1.93 pounds. It fell in Vivian, South Dakota in July of 2010. To achieve a 130 pound hailstone, each stone would have to be greater than 14 inches across!

Then there's a curious incident that occured on April 26, 1877 in Minnesota. Governor John S. Pillsbury called for a day of prayer after a statewide infestation of grasshoppers. A massive sleet storm soon arrived and killed all the grasshoppers. In Cold Spring a chapel exists in memorial of this event.

On a side note, it's funny that in an age where American culture tries to evict God from their textbooks and legal documents that insurance companies still often use the phrase "acts of God" to refer to disasters brought on by floods, earthquakes, etc.

Are all storms an act of God? What do you think?

A Fallen Icon

2011-10-21T16:11:00.000-05:00

In a couple of days, a new biography of Steve Jobs will be available, written by Walter Isaacson.

As someone who has spent the majority of their life programming in one language or another (over a dozen at last count), I owe a lot of that to Mr. Jobs and the machines that he and Steve Wozniak created years ago. The first computer I ever owned was an Apple IIc, and I pushed it to its limits by learning BASIC, Pascal, 6502 assembly language and machine language. I developed my own 3-D house drawing program, wrote a full-blown word processor, and was working on my own programming language by the time I stopped working on the machine (in 1992). I even started working on my own operating system, which was essentially a stripped down version of DOS 3.3 with a rebuilt cataloging system.

I look back fondly on those days now, and all the people that made home computing possible. It opened up incredible doors for me, as well as thousands of software engineers elsewhere in the world. Yet with Steve's passing the other week, I wondered where he stood in terms of his faith, or if he even had one. According to this article over on Yahoo!, it sounds like we may get some more insight into his beliefs:

"A new biography portrays Steve Jobs as a skeptic all his life -- giving up religion because he was troubled by starving children..."

Somehow I think there is more to the picture than this statement, and according to this article he was a Buddhist...at least as recently as 2008. Maybe the biography will delve into those issues or maybe it won't. Whatever the case, I can understand his skepticism.

You see, it's hard for a software engineer (or many engineers really) to trust in the concept of God and take it exclusively on faith. Many of us are highly logical people, sometimes to the detriment of our social skills. Many of us also love to solve complex problems. Yet at the same time we can hung up on details that most people would just gloss over or not fret about. Perfectionism can make this issue even worse, which can be great in some respects (i.e. shipping a solid product) or make us difficult to get along with because things have to be "just right".

Yet I've also seen God connect with engineers in some funny ways that only an engineer could appreciate. I've seen God provide abundant evidence via the most surprising means that shows that faith can indeed be rewarded with action.

For example, when I was working on my book Theft at the Speed of Light, I went through moments of doubt and some days I just felt like giving up on the whole story. After all, I had been working on it for over a dozen years and I had rewritten the thing several times over. Yet for the third and fourth versions of the manuscript, I decided to incorporate the story of Jonah into the main storyline because the main character resembled him.

Something peculiar happened when I did that. Whenever I felt like giving up and started walking away from the manuscript, I'd get a gentle reminder from the most unexpected sources. What was the reminder? Jonah. I heard references to Jonah on television, on the radio, in sermons, saw it in books, etc. every time I felt like giving up. It got so ridiculous that I started writing them down. It pretty quickly became obvious where the reminders were coming from. In another post, I'll elaborate more on this subject, but I'll leave you with one more anecdote.

One cold January weekend, while I was ice fishing on Lake of the Woods in subzero weather, we flipped on a radio in the fish house to pass the time. The radio was only on for a half hour, and we picked up some obscure station from Chicago. During that half hour, I heard two references to Jonah. As you can probably guess, I was not working on the manuscript at the time because I didn't feel like it anymore. Yet here I was, up in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny ice house on a huge lake, and I hear that.

So did Steve know God? Only God really knows the answer the that, but hopefully the upcoming biography will shed some light on the subject. I still wish I could have met him while he was alive, and maybe someday I'll get the chance to meet (and thank) Woz.

A Harvest of Miracles

2011-10-19T07:28:00.000-05:00

Note: Today's post is part of the monthly CW.com blog chain. Please visit the other great posts by other writers on the sidebar at the right. This month's topic is "harvest".

This year, like many other years, we planted a garden.

We started everything from seed this year, which was a first. The spring weather, however, was not all that promising. It was cold and rainy for weeks on end. We went ahead anyway and put everything in the ground, and went on vacation. During that vacation, the temperature warmed up but the rain didn't stop. In fact, one day the temperature jumped to 100 degrees. We thought for sure the garden would go into shock or be fried when we returned.

But it didn't. In fact, it turned out to be our best garden ever. We pulled in hundreds of cherry tomatoes, a dozen green peppers, a few dozen cucumbers, some snap peas, and some nice Beefsteak tomatoes. We even had sunflowers that grew over six feet tall. We canned salsa and spicy green tomatoes and gave produce to some relatives in need. What was amazing is that the warm weather continued past September and into the second week of October.

This past week I started to clear out the garden for winter, which meant uprooting both good plants and weeds, while adding some compost. For some odd reason, I thought of this verse in Matthew 13:30 (NKJV):

"Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.""

All of the plants in our garden got the same amount of water, attention, and Miracle-Gro. Yet, it took until September before the green peppers began to flourish and October before buds started appearing on the Brussels sprout plants. As I was clearing out some of the tomato plants, I found several that were growing more horizontal than vertical. Had I staked them properly, though, they would have been six feet tall!

As I looked over the plants and dropped them in the trash, I realized they all had responded to the Miracle-Gro in some way or another. Some were late to the party, while others created produce regardless of the weather. In short, they persisted in growing despite the circumstances.

Now if God does a miracle in your life, what do you do with it? Do you keep it to yourself, or worry about the response from people when you share what has happened? Do you think people will look at you like your some kind of nut if He healed you or changed your financial situation? Do you believe it when other people share what He has done in their lives or take a wait-and-see approach? Why do so many people hesitate to share a bona fide miracle in their lives?

I'm coming to realize more and more that much of this comes back to doubt...doubt whether God really is who He says He is, and whether He can back up His word with action. Or we don't think He can pull us through situations with difficult co-workers, family members, or even addiction. Or we've let the world reduce God and the Bible to nothing more than an intellectual argument. Or we've bought into the lie that spiritual gifts don't exist anymore and that all the prophecies in the Bible have been fufilled already. Or, maybe it's the whole persecution thing that hangs us up, despite every book in the New Testament having something to say about the subject.

I know what it is like to live in times of popularity (well, somewhat), as well as times of obscurity. I know what it is like to post an online comment and watch it soar like a rocket as well as posting comments that seem to make threads drop like a stone (lots of those!). I've taught Bible studies where lots of people routinely showed up, and grumbled during other ones where only a handful showed up because the topics were difficult. I've even read in multiple places about how blogging about either religion or politics is counterproductive, unless it is part of your "platform".

In the end, though, the obscurity won't matter. The number of times I've posted online won't matter. The count of individuals showing up for studies won't matter either, nor will it matter how many books I've written.

What will matter is if I watch my friends get tossed into the fire because I refused to speak up or share what God has done in my life with someone in need. In the end, when the gardener picks us all up by the roots and looks to see what we've done, I hope the "miracle grow" that was put into my life produces a bountiful harvest, imperfect as I am. I know I fail at this sometimes, but every day brings another chance to reach a little higher into the sky.

Hidden Parallels

2011-10-17T12:39:00.000-05:00

About a year ago I came across an unusual passage in the Old Testament that seemed to foreshadow Jesus' resurrection. It occurs in Genesis 29:1-10, where Jacob is watering some sheep as Rachel approaches him. The key verse is found in Genesis 29:3 (NKJV):

"Now all the flocks would be gathered there; and they would roll the stone from the well’s mouth, water the sheep, and put the stone back in its place on the well’s mouth."

I found interesting how this parallels the Resurrection account found in Matthew 28:1-2 (NKJV):

"Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it."

In both situations, a large stone covers an object (in the first case a well, in the second a tomb), both provide water (the well provides water for the sheep, Jesus provides living water), and in both situations the stone was "rolled away" to provide access to the water. I've tried to find out the name of this particular well, and if in fact it is Jacob's Well, but to no avail. The larger point is that I've seen many passages like these over the years (other than the obvious ones that always get written up in books) but wonder if there are more hiding in plain sight in the text.

Likewise, there's an eerie passage in Joshua 10:16-27 about the fate of five Amorite kings. It, too, deals with caves, stones, and people being "buried" in the caves. In this case, however, the kings are first trapped inside a cave, then brought before Joshua, only to be hung on trees, and returned dead back to the cave. For example, verse 27 (NKJV) reads:

"So it was at the time of the going down of the sun that Joshua commanded, and they took them down from the trees, cast them into the cave where they had been hidden, and laid large stones against the cave’s mouth, which remain until this very day."

I don't know how common of a practice this was during those times, but again there are some odd parallels to the Resurrection account, but in a contrasting way. In the future, I'll discuss some more of these parallels and cover more about caves in the Bible.

How often do you find connections between the Old and the New Testament?

Random Tech Bits

2011-10-13T17:07:00.002-05:00

Lots of interesting technology news this week, but unfortunately, some of it is sad.

For starters, Steve Jobs passed away along with Dennis Ritchie (the creator of the C programming language). I don't know where I would be today without either one's contributions to technology, especially since I first learned how to program on an Apple II computer and eventually learned C and C++ in order to build a substantial 3-D game engine project. I spent countless hours tinkering with BASIC, 6502 assembly language and even Pascal. On the Apple IIc alone I built a fully functional word processor, a basic painting program, worked on building my own operating system, built a 3-D drawing program (circa 1989), and even started building my own programming language. I even tried to launch my own software company with a friend in high school, but eventually gave that up. By the way, if you are into 6502 programming, here's a fun site.

In other news, this product looked particularly intriguing. It seems as if 3-D printers are taking some more substantial strides forward, and I think letting kids get their handle on them could result in some truly amazing creations. If done right and if the price is kept affordable ($800 is a little out of reach for most kids right now), this product could be as big as Lego bricks. The one drawback I'm seeing right now is the price of replacement plastic powder (used for printing models), but I'm wondering if it would be possible to use something like recycled plastic.

Additionally, the Origo article also mentions another website that might be used in conjunction with the printer. That can be seen here.

More 3-D news...this time in the form of the "Personal 3-D viewer" device from Sony. See the Ars Technica article for more details. For some reason, the video in the article makes me think of the old Maxell commercial with the guy in the chair. Maybe Sony should make a similar sort of retro/future ad.

In the world of writing, Amazon is making some significant inroads into Europe, as explained in some articles here, here, and here. This is great news for those interested in overseas markets, and especially if you are producing e-books and can access some translation help.

And, from the life-imitating-fiction department comes word that a mall in Australia is planning on installing technology that will track shoppers via their cell phones. I discussed a similar idea in my book, Theft at the Speed of Light, although in that case it involved using tracking bracelets that doubled as a credit payment device.

On a non-technical note, you might want to check out Victor Travison's ongoing series about the Wizard of Oz. Here are parts one and two, and more are on the way.

Have a good weekend!

Taking the Giveaway Plunge

2011-10-10T15:42:00.002-05:00

Well, here it goes. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to start giving away some books. Right now, I only have a handful of each novel on hand, but it's a start. The giveaway will occur over at Goodreads if you are interested.

Speaking of giveaways, there are a couple of short stories available for free on Smashwords (see sidebar to the right). Eventually, one or both of these will be rolled into a larger collection sometime next year. So far, about 110+ copies of the short stories have been downloaded...which is great considering they've only been available for a few weeks.

Also...a third book, Horizons, will be coming out in the next couple of weeks. In fact, here is the cover for it:

Horizons will contain the following short stories: "For Keeps", "Splinters", "A Letter to Laodicea", "Snowbound", "Voices Still Unheard", and "The Last Holdout". It will also contain twenty poems that I have written over the past couple of decades, along with some new material. The cover image is from a recent summer trip we took to Lake Superior. There was a lot of fog near the shoreline when this picture was taken, giving everything an eerie look.

By the way, as I've mentioned before, please be sure to check out the CW blog chain (see sidebar at right) for some great entries from various writers on the topic of "harvest". My entry will be coming next Wednesday.

Global Warming Overdrive

2011-10-05T12:11:00.001-05:00

Often times when the subject of climate change comes up, the topic of melting polar caps and rising seas comes with it. If the polar caps melt, where will people go to live? Will they race to the mountains, or build large boats if the seas start rising? Will whole island countries be inundated by the oceans, and will wars start as a result?

Perhaps it will never come to that point in the first place.

Consider Revelation 21:10-16 (NKJV), where it reads:

"And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. Her light was like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal. Also she had a great and high wall with twelve gates, and twelve angels at the gates, and names written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel: three gates on the east, three gates on the north, three gates on the south, and three gates on the west.

Now the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. And he who talked with me had a gold reed to measure the city, its gates, and its wall. The city is laid out as a square; its length is as great as its breadth. And he measured the city with the reed: twelve thousand furlongs. Its length, breadth, and height are equal."

Since 12,000 furlongs is roughly equivalent to 1,400-1,500 miles, this passage speaks of a gigantic cube or maybe even a pyramid. I began to wonder...where on Earth would you put such a massive structure? Putting the center of it on the site of modern day Jerusalem would mean that part of it would stretch out over the Mediterranean Sea, while the other end would be somewhere in far eastern Iraq. To the north it would cover parts of Turkey, and to the south it would go into the Sudan. Architecturally, that seemed a little unrealistic given the current topography of the land in that region of the world.

I then recalled another passage in II Peter 3:10 (NKJV) which states:

"But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up."

Now if this event occurs before the New Jerusalem is lowered from the clouds, does that mean many of the seas and oceans would have been boiled off? If so, that would make it easier to drop a giant cube onto the landscape, because it would solve the water problem. It may or may not take care of the canyons left behind when seas evaporated, however. Then again, a 1,400 mile cube coming down from above would probably crush anything in its path.

Going back to the sea level issue, though, even if the levels fluctuate a bit, they will never wipe out everything, as God told Noah in Genesis 9:11 (NKJV):

"Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

Will the ice caps melt enough to wipe out whole nations and destroy some (but not all) coastal cities? In Job 38:8-11 (NKJV) God tells Job:

“Or who shut in the sea with doors, When it burst forth and issued from the womb; When I made the clouds its garment, And thick darkness its swaddling band; When I fixed My limit for it, And set bars and doors; When I said, ‘This far you may come, but no farther, And here your proud waves must stop!’"

Maybe the issue of the entire planet being burnt up is a little more significant. This time, however, it won't have anything to do with carbon emissions.

Are There Bibles On Other Planets?

2011-10-03T15:30:00.000-05:00

Scripture does not really seem to specify one way or the other if there is life on other planets, let alone the Bible. That said, the Bible has a few things to say about the stars in general:

Genesis 15:5 (NKJV) - Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”

Translation: there are a lot of stars up there.

Psalm 147:4 (NKJV) - "He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name."

Translation: Considering what we currently know about the size of the universe (or at least the number of stars based on Hubble observations and other telescopes), that's a lot of names. To me, it would seem a bit strange to create so many suns and worlds without any life on them. Whether we can actually reach any of the habitable worlds or whether they can reach us is another matter altogether. It's quite possible God has placed each world far enough apart for some reason unknown to us.

Consider some more verses:

Psalm 8:3-4 (NKJV) - "When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?"

Job 38:4-7 (NKJV) - "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"

Job 38:31-32 (NKJV) - "Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion? Can you bring out Mazzaroth in its season? Or can you guide the Great Bear with its cubs?"

It is apparent from these verses that God has ultimate control over not only the Earth, but the stars themselves. To think that He could break apart constellations is nothing short of amazing, although it would make sense considering He made the stars in the first place.

Again, though, I ask the question: are there Bibles on other planets? My answer is: why not?

Although this is only speculation, perhaps those Bibles even fit together with our own. As long as they are logically and truthfully consistent with what we have, then it is possible.

In addtion, throughout the Bible, God has this interesting trend of revealing more and more of His plan to us...whether it is in the form of temples, salvation, etc. Notice, too, how in Scripture the temples seem to grow in size and complexity as time goes on. For instance, comparing the mobile Tabernacle in Exodus to the temple built by Solomon to Ezekiel's temple to the New Jerusalem. Perhaps, then, too, there will come a day when God will reveal those other worlds to us and maybe with it that the Word truly is consistent...on Earth and everywhere else.

Who Controls the Weather?

2011-09-28T15:28:00.000-05:00

It's not who you think.

A while back, I happened to finally get around to watching the movie, An Inconvenient Truth. I took a few notes, because although the data looked intriguing, there were a lot of tenuous connections being made in the film, and I wanted to research them later on my own.

The take home message, however, was this: it's our fault.

Is it really though? I've been collecting a few interesting nuggets over the past few months in regards to this issue, that seem to paint a much more complicated story.

In fact, the more I started to study the whole climate change/carbon emissions issue, the more unusual some of the material became (ClimateGate issues aside). For example, in one talk available online, I came to find out we've been reduced to an equation. Some interesting solutions were presented in that video, but the fact that people were being viewed as part of some grand algebraic problem to be "solved" is a little unnerving. Plus, such thinking also opens the door to all sorts of nefarious uses when it comes to legislation.

A more thorough analysis could theoretically be carried out, however, if we had spacecraft orbiting all of our Solar System's planets. More specifically, if those spacecraft could be in orbit for decades and continuously collect data on the solar wind, temperature, etc. from several different locations then we might have some more interesting data. Yet despite all those hypothetical efforts, would it really account for an often-neglected factor in climate change and the weather itself?

On Wednesdays over the following weeks, I'll illustrate in detail that other "factor" and bring the question "Who Controls the Weather?" to a completely different level.

So...who do you think controls the weather?

A Decade in Waiting

2011-09-23T15:32:00.000-05:00

It's been a long wait.

Approximately ten years ago, I read about something called a Rocket e-Book (which actually was released in 1998). I also heard about the SoftBook. The idea sounded intriguing, but as far as I could tell, the general marketplace just was not purchasing them in any meaningful volume. In some cases, the e-reader price was prohibitively expensive, thus slowing mass adoption.

I figured that eventually someone would get the technology/cost issues right and that the obvious benefits of an e-reader would catch on with the masses. To think that you could reduce a whole bookshelf full of information into a tablet sized device sounded amazing. So, I waited.

And waited. And waited some more.

Then, just about the time I had forgotten about the idea of e-books (unless you count pdf files), the Kindle and the Nook took off. I first noticed a disruption in the way agents were handling queries (not replying, or having submitted a manuscript and then getting no reply) and stories appearing all over the web about e-books. Little did I know at the time how disruptive such technology would be.

But throughout this whole time I kept writing. Whatever the medium, I knew that someday I would find a way to get it in front of a larger audience. I even handsold some paperbacks a few years back with some success, although the price was too high per unit to keep doing that. I offered them for sale at a deep discount (nearly 50% off the POD price) because that put them on a level with mass market paperback prices. Book sales went briskly, but when it came to being able to order them online or in a bookstore, inevitably there was some sticker-shock involved.

Nowadays an author can easily put works up online and the mass distribution system is in place (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, etc.). The old argument that now the market will be "flooded with junk" only works if that is all that is being put online. If the author, however, strives to make a better book each time out, then readership will be found in time. Quality books may not always find a home, but quality writing plus mass distribution/easy access is a game changer.

For those of us who have steadily kept writing over the years, never giving up because they love the art of putting words to paper, this is a moment of opportunity. Likewise, for those of us who have been quietly stockpiling manuscripts, poems, and stories, the playing field suddenly looks a bit more level now.

My late uncle once told me I should "flood the market" with my writing. At the time, it sounded like an interesting idea, but I didn't see how that was even technologically possible. So I kept stockpiling material and kept pushing my stories along, stuffing them in boxes, storing them on disks, etc. Yet when I finally met someone with a Kindle reader, I realized it was time to stop stockpiling and start sharing.

Soon, yes, very soon, there will be a flood of books on the market, but understand this "flood" did not build up overnight. It has been a decade in waiting.

It's a new era indeed.

Coming Home

2011-09-19T09:14:00.000-05:00

Note: This post is part of the monthly ChristianWriters.com blog chain. Please visit the other members' posts (listed to the right).

When I was a kid, I remember going to a local school carnival with a relative. Like many carnivals, there was plenty see and do, and even winning the cheap, plastic trinkets seemed interesting (plastic frogs, anyone?). So when it came to the spin art machine, I was naturally intrigued. I was given a couple bottles of paint and told to draw something on a piece of white cardboard. I decided to draw a house, complete with walls, a roof, a window and a door.

Then the operator proceeded to turn the machine on. I watched in horror as the walls and roof flew out in all directions and the door exploded. I came home with my picture but I wasn't sure what to think of it. In minutes, it hit the trash.

Writing, I think, is like spin art sometimes. We put our creations to paper, only to watch the world take it for a "spin" and well...who knows what they think of it in the end. Or, we drop our ideas onto paper and keep tinkering with them until the end result is nothing like what we started with.

Around that same time in my life I also began writing stories. Lots of them. But they were all humor-based or science fiction in nature. In fact, I wrote three and a half "novels" and never seemed to miss an episode of Doctor Who.

Then I seemed to "grow up" (whatever that means) in my writing, but that was more a less a result of some peer pressure at the time. I started writing on different, more "serious" topics, wrote some poetry, but never really came back to science fiction or writing about outer space.

I kept reading science fiction stories, however. I also read Hemingway, Bradbury, some Mark Twain, and a bunch of James Thurber stories. I kept watching science fiction movies and have recently been catching up on a lot of old Doctor Who episodes that are now coming out on DVD, thanks to BBC.

Over the last couple of years, however, I've hit a wall in terms of the content of my stories. It took me a while to figure out why, but then it became obvious: I wasn't writing what I wanted to anymore.

Complicating matters was the fact that I read the Bible cover-to-cover (finally) and listened to a Bible study by Chuck Missler and Dr. Mark Eastman, titled "Alien Encounters". The study is quite good and the research they presented is eye-opening. It completely changed my perspective on a few topics and threw a massive wrench into my thoughts about writing science-fiction ever again.

As a result, I noticed I started viewing movies with aliens differently. I've also noticed an uptick in movies (or even some books) lately that are science fiction in nature, but somehow also seem to slip in some cheap shots at Christianity along the way. Why can't they leave the issue alone altogether, and tell a straightforward sci-fi story? At the very least, it would be nice to see more stories that somehow incorporate Biblical elements in a way that doesn't shred a person's faith in the process. Although the Bible does not talk of life on other planets, it does not exclude that possibility either.

All these issues aside, I've come to realize that I need to go back, at least in some measure, to what drew me to the process of writing stories in the first place: humor and science fiction. So, I've quietly started writing both types of stories again. I intend or writing some steampunk-themed stories, along with some tales set in outer space. Although my early attempts may look like that spin art house I made years ago, I think some type of happy compromise can be made between the world of science fiction and the truth of the Word.

Sci-fi, I'm coming home.

Over The Falls

2011-09-14T16:58:00.000-05:00

Ever heard about people going over Niagara Falls in a barrel? Good thing no one ever tried that on this particular river, however.

Here is a picture of Devil's Kettle Falls, which has to be one of the stranger waterfalls I've seen over the years. At the top, the river splits into two streams, with the right half falling down onto the rocks below, and the left half pouring into a rock cauldron of some sort. Apparently, the local DNR has been unable to figure out where the water goes once it enters the chamber. Logs and dye have been dropped into it but no one has been able to figure out where the water goes from there. Perhaps into an underground cavern or a lake?

One thing I learned on our past road trip is this: the number of rivers pouring into Lake Superior (including this one) is amazing. By looking at various websites, I've cobbled together a good two dozen rivers or more just on the Minnesota side alone, and many of them have waterfalls. Many of the falls are impressive, although this time of year the water levels looked quite low, but I'm sure in the spring with the runoff it would be more spectacular.

P.S. Sorry for the brevity of this post, but I've been busy with book cover design and working to release a short story by this weekend. Additionally, by October 1st, I'll release an entire short story collection.

Who Shows Up

2011-09-12T15:46:00.001-05:00

Ever run a Bible study? It's an interesting study in human psychology and at times it's unpredictable despite the best preparation beforehand. Sure you can spend a few hours gathering resources, reading articles, making handouts, studying the text ahead of time, etc. but it is difficult to sometimes judge how many people will actually show up.

Case in point: over the past few weeks about ten to fourteen people have shown up. This made it relatively easy to keep discussion going because with that many people you inevitably get a wide range of viewpoints. But when only three people showed up a couple weeks ago, I cringed. We are going through an eight-part DVD series, but those episodes only take up twenty-five to thirty minutes. The other hour and a half, well...

As usual, I prepared a substantial amount of discussion material to play off of the video segment. One of the ideas I had for that week, a brief trivia game, was meant for a group of about ten people. After some thought, I decided to go ahead with it anyway. I also went ahead with some articles I printed off. And do you know what happened? It still worked out.

Two of the guys also mentioned some reading material of their own (before I started the video). What they didn't know was that their discussion fit right in with the video segment even though they had no foreknowledge of what was in the segment. This isn't the first time this has happened, and it certainly won't be the last. Why? Because no matter how many people physically show up, if you're spending time in the Word, God always shows up.

Another example: I can't count the number of times we've sat around the room and when prayer time rolled around, we counted off into groups of three only to find the ones we were grouped with were the ideal people to pray with. It didn't matter how many people showed up, where they sat around they table, or whether we numbered off by threes, or fours.

So keep in mind if you ever lead a study, whether a crowd or a handful of people show up, God always shows up.

Whatever Happened to Spirograph?

2011-09-09T15:28:00.002-05:00

The other day I was in a creative drawing mood and for some reason, I thought of an old product I remember from childhood: Spirograph.

For the fun of it, I did some research on Amazon. I expected the product to have long ago been discontinued, but instead found a product that did not look much like its fabled predecessor. In fact, on Amazon, the reviews are less than glowing. I looked at the regular Spirograph and at the Deluxe version.

For the regular version, there are eight five-star reviews, and twelve one-star reviews. For the deluxe version, the results look even worse. There are seven five-star reviews, and nineteen one-star reviews.

What happened to Spirograph? Or, more accurately, what happened to the version I grew up with?

Apparently, several of the reviewers had the same response. Although I have not purchased either product, looking at the available images the products seem like stripped down versions of the original (even going so far as to make the gears thinner). The spirograph I remember had gears, pins, rings, and bar-shaped pieces of plastic that the gears could rotate around. That version now sells as a collectible, ironically enough.

For such a creative and yet fundamentally simple product, I wonder why they didn't expand on the good thing they had going and add more, if slightly different shapes to the mix. Perhaps different shaped gears, for example. I guess I'll never understand why some companies choose to tinker with a good thing.

Gone Waterfalling

2011-08-31T18:01:00.000-05:00

This weekend, I'm going on another waterfall tour. We did this last year, and with great success. Initially, our trip started out with a visit to Duluth, but on a whim, we decided to visit a nearby park that had a waterfall in it. What we found was astounding. By the end of the trip, we visited five waterfalls in all, and as you can see in the picture to the left (Caribou Falls), some of them were larger than I expected.

So this year we decided to go and visit more waterfalls along the North Shore of Lake Superior. We may not get to every fall that is available, and by my tally, there are a dozen or more to go. In all, there are probably nearly two dozen waterfalls along the North Shore or on the rivers that flow into Lake Superior, and so that is a lot of ground to cover. The journey is just as interesting, however, as getting to the various falls often involves half-mile to two-mile hikes through the wilderness.

In the process of gathering the information for this trip, I came across a great site which shows a lot of pictures and details about each set of falls. This site also includes more falls in the Great Lakes Region, and it would be interesting to visit those, too, someday. Until I get more pictures this weekend, here's a shot of High Falls on the Baptism River:

What Was In Your Wallet?

2011-08-26T12:14:00.003-05:00

Every once in a while a new piece of technology comes along that promises new opportunities. Case in point: a couple of weeks ago, a few articles came out about a new "epidermal electronics system". The system consisted of flexible circuits that could be placed on human skin in the form of a patch, and could have a wide range of uses from medical testing to gaming to monitoring.

Along with this technology announcement came some commentary on whether it was the "mark of the beast" or not. Truth is, there have been (and probably always will be) numerous candidates for this distinction already, such as implantable RFID chips. What's interesting, though, is the repeating pattern that these technology releases seem to take.

First, the application often starts off with something really beneficial, such as medical uses. Then, there is often a shift to tracking the elderly (for Alzheimer's or dementia patients for example) and then maybe the suggestion that the technology could be used to track children (to prevent abductions). Throw in some suggestions for inventory control uses (i.e. tracking of warehouse products) and then the idea of "let's use this for our monetary system!" appears like clockwork.

Although this sounds like a technically advanced way of solving multiple problems at once, let's look at some ongoing isseus first.

Identity theft and data breaches are still on the rise.

If you look at some recent news articles (here, here, here, and here) you can see the numbers involved in recent data breaches are incredible. The variety of targets also is increasing along with the numbers involved in each incident. In any given week, you can probably find articles that point to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of individual accounts getting hit or information being stolen. Has every one of those potential victims been notified by the institutions involved? It's doubtful.

Quantity over quality.

For all the emphasis placed on "security" and privacy notices being sent to all their customers, some institutions are still a little more concerned about processing transactions in volume rather than getting the information right. Ever check your credit report? It doesn't take much to find unusual things appearing on it, and unfortunately, the only advocate for getting that changed is you. And, as if to make it worse, the burden of proof rests on you, the consumer, to prove that a particular transaction is not yours.

Encryption buys time.

With the every increasing prevalence of powerful computers in the hands of consumers, coupled with the widespread increase in online purchasing, the risks for seeing commerce websites getting hit increase dramatically. Although encryption is great, not every retailer uses it, and many don't realize that an algorithm that works today could potentially be cracked tomorrow. It's an ongoing race for researchers, and all that encryption is going to do is to ultimately buy the retailer time.

The bottom line is this: just because a new technology surfaces, it does not automatically mean that the underlying problems that exist in society are going to be solved overnight. No, in fact, all it pretty much does is push the issues into new realms where anything goes and it's anybody's guess how it will all play out in time. Identity theft is not going away, and giving everybody a chip on their hand (or forehead) is not going to change that.

Besides, there is more involved in the whole "mark of the beast" issue anyway, and that can be found in Revelation 14:9-10 which reads:

"Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, "If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation.""

(There are actually multiple verses that deal with this issue...Revelation 13:17, 14:9-11, 15:2, 16:2, 19:20, and 20:4 for starters).

Although the oft-quoted Revelation 13:7 implies a financially based "mark", there is an implication of worship along with it. In short, a lot of other things have to come together before pronouncing an individual technology as "the mark". That said, there are plenty of other factors already in play that should give those implementing such technologies and those accepting them pause for thought.

Book Update: Horizons

2011-08-24T16:04:00.000-05:00

Just a brief update today on the latest book I'm working on. It is a collection of poems and short stories that span a broad range of topics, and it is tenatively titled, "Horizons". There are six short stories and twenty poems in all, and it will be available in both Kindle and paperback formats. I haven't finished the back cover copy yet, but I'll be releasing that soon. I expect this book to be available by the end of September or at the latest, early October.

The short story names are as follows: For Keeps, Splinters, A Letter to Laodicea, Snowbound, Voices Still Unheard, and The Last Holdout. Some of the topics of the poems include bicycling, rollercoasters, dreams, and even storms.

Some of these stories and poems have appeared elsewhere, but this is the first time they will be gathered together in one place. Many thanks to Paul Chernoch, and other readers/writers that have helped me along the way with this project, especially when it came to critiques, commentary, and suggestions.

In addition, I'm also working on another, larger non-fiction project which will then be followed by a novel that contains similar themes. More details on that soon, too.

Between Persecution and Prosperity

2011-08-22T15:31:00.000-05:00

I've been noticing a growing trend over the past couple of years in sermons and books. For many years (in some sectors at least) the prosperity Gospel was being preached. Although there were scattered complaints about it, I wasn't seeing much in terms of books or full-blown sermons on the topic.

Now it appears a bigger backlash has arrived, but unfortunately, it is morphing into a whole new Gospel of its own. For lack of a better name, let's call it the "persecution Gospel".

Often, this type of Gospel begins with commentary about America, or wealthy Americans who have too much "stuff". "Stuff" can mean electronic devices, SUVs, boats, furniture, big houses, etc. In other words, excessive materialism. The commentary then typically shifts to the individual, and ways the individual should reduce the amount of "stuff" in their life and how that "stuff" interferes in their walk with God.

Good points, but here is where things start to veer off course.

This is then often followed by examples from other countries where persecution is rampant, or where spreading the Gospel is a crime. This is sometimes followed by graphic visual examples of beatings, prisons, or churches going up in flames. Follow that with some Scripture, and the net effect is supposed to make a person question their lifestyle, give away most or all of their possessions and ultimately feel guilty about the way they've lived their lives over the past decade or so. In some cases, people have walked away from their jobs altogether.

So what is a believer supposed to do? Should they buy into the "name it and claim it" theology with all its trappings (i.e. "you just didn't have enough faith, that's why your kid wasn't healed!") or should they throw it all away and live as poor as possible?

Unfortunately the Biblical truth is actually somewhere in the middle.

Scripture does talk about persecution. Yet it also talks about being blessed, and in some cases, that blessing may come via financial means. I've seen this numerous times. It really depends upon a person's heart and how they handle money.

What both "Gospels" seem to do is put the focus on man. In the "name it/claim it" version, the act of prayer is turned into an act of the will (i.e. having enough faith) and God is giant vending machine at your service. In the persecution Gospel, everything in your life needs to be junked...even if God gave it to you at some point, because, after all, possessions get equated with idols. Yet I'm sure one could find examples of people without many possessions who still have an idol problem.

So where is the line between self-indulgence and being blessed by God? It runs through the Bible.

Steampunk Laptop

2011-08-19T16:22:00.000-05:00

Ok, this is too interesting to pass up. Check out this link.

The artist at this particular site is now beginning to take orders for "steamkpunk laptops". The technical specs look pretty impressive and current, and the lid customization options look like a lot of fun (functioning clockwork gears, maps, etc.).

On a side note, I've also been looking into making some attempts at writing some short fiction that would incorporate steampunk technology. I'm not sure what direction that will take. Lots to research!

Invisible Evidence

2011-08-18T11:21:00.000-05:00

(This post is part of the ChristianWriters.com blog chain. The topic this month is "august"...as in majestic, grandeur, etc. Please check out the other writers' links to the right of this post as there are some great entries to read.)

Today, I've decided to post a picture of a mountain. It is a colorful mountain--full of life, strength, and grandeur. It is a mountain many have climbed, yet no one has conquered in its entirety. It is a mountain that stands above all other mountains, and although many pictures have been taken of it, none of them ever captures its full character. It is indeed majestic (or, "august") and breathtaking all at the same time. It even offers refuge from a storm.

What? Don't you see it?

The evidence for its existence is abundant. Thousands of books have been written about it. The effect it has on a person is also readily apparent if you know where to look. Much like a magnetic field or the wind blowing across a prairie, the impact can even be measured and documented. One look at the mountain and a person's life could be altered forever for the better.

But what is the name of this mountain? The mountain is the Word. And that Word has the power to change a person's life. It is a rock that one can build their life upon and be sure of its foundation, even in the worst of storms.

Perhaps at this point, though, I should mention that to see and navigate this mountain, it takes one extra piece of equipment: faith. Now this "faith" is not just wishful thinking, or even the power of positive thinking. It is genuine and true, and no matter how weak or wavering it is, God responds to it.

Ironically enough, belief in this mountain also produces a mountain of evidence. It's not hard to find examples of deliverances from addiction, restored marriages, physical healings, restored hope, and cases where lives have been completely turned around. I even stopped drinking coffee because of it (and no, I'm not a Mormon).

Yet, as I've said above, this is a mountain that no one person has ever mastered. Even if you think you know every square inch of it and have heard or seen it all before, God has a funny, gentle way of pointing out all that you've missed. I'm reminded of the game of Othello, where on the box it used to have the slogan, "A minute to learn, a lifetime to master."

How about you? Do you think you'll ever get to the bottom of the Word? What evidence has God produced in your life?

Fibonacci In a Shell

2011-08-17T16:06:00.000-05:00

In our yard this year we planted a couple of mammoth sunflowers. We love roasted sunflower seeds, but the only kind I have ever eaten are the ones out of the store. So this time, we decided to try and grown them on our own. I didn't know how many to plant, but the seed package insisted that each plant could produce hundreds of seeds.

The plants are about six feet tall right now, and just this past week the flowers opened up. Considering that it is now August, they are a bit behind in terms of the growing season here.

Still, "hundreds of seeds" seemed like a stretch. The first thing I noticed about the giant plants was the spiral pattern inside the flowers themselves and how tightly wound it was. I then went and did some research on Wikipedia, and discovered that :

"The florets within the sunflower's cluster are arranged in a spiral pattern. Generally, each floret is oriented toward the next by approximately the golden angle, 137.5°, producing a pattern of interconnecting spirals, where the number of left spirals and the number of right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers. Typically, there are 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other; on a very large sunflower there could be 89 in one direction and 144 in the other. This pattern produces the most efficient packing of seeds within the flower head."

That's what I like to read: "This pattern produces the most efficient packing of seeds within the flower head." Translation: more seeds!

Then, there is this random tibdit: sunflowers can be used to extract toxic metals from the soil. I have no idea how that works. Maybe I don't want to know, either.

Still, the fact that a six to ten foot plant emerges with tons of seeds that are efficiently packed is pretty amazing.

One Author, Many Books

2011-08-15T15:34:00.000-05:00

The other day I got into a discussion about the Book of Isaiah. The question came up about who actually wrote the book, and whether there was one author, two authors, or several. I did not have an immediate answer, although I had heard of the "two authors" theory before.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that is not the real issue. If two people wrote the Book of Isaiah, does it change the message? Does it alter the accuracy of the information? We read encyclopedias, which we trust are filled with facts, yet they are compiled by several authors.

In the case of Scripture, however, this verse out of II Timothy 3:16 (NKJV) is pretty instructive:

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness..."

Likewise, in Hebrews 12:1-2 (NKJV) it says this:

"Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

Then, there is John 1:1 (NKJV) which says "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Now I will concede, for example, that there are parts of Deuteronomy that could not have been written by Moses. Case in point...Deuteronomy 34:5-6 (NKJV):

"So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD. And He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth Peor; but no one knows his grave to this day."

Moses could not have written that as he would have been dead. Again I ask: does that change the validity of the information? Does that change the accuracy of the account?

Okay, but let's say the multiple author issues really bothers you. Fine, disregard the book (perhaops at your own peril). Here's the unusual part, though. As I've mentioned before, if a particular book of the Bible is thrown out, the message still comes through. If you throw out Isaiah, the passages about the Millennial Kingdom can still be found elsewhere (Ezekiel, Zechariah, Revelation, etc.). Passages about Christ's first coming can still be found all over the other Old Testament books. The list goes on and on.

Yet, oddly enough, in one of my Bibles, it even goes so far as to suggest the Book of Isaiah is like a "mini-Bible" in that the first 39 books deal with Old Testament style judgments, and the last 27 books describe a message of hope like the New Testament.

What do you think? Does it matter how many people wrote the Books of Isaiah, Deuteronomy or other books of the Bible?

We've Been Reduced to an Equation

2011-08-10T12:51:00.002-05:00

Back in February 2010, Bill Gates gave a Ted talk (found here) that explored the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions on a global scale. Included in the talk was a formula that looked like this:

CO₂ = P x S x E x C

...where P = Population, S = Services, E = Efficiency/energy for each service and C = The amount of CO₂ put out for each unit of energy

He made two mysterious comments in the speech, however. The first one was that in order to stop global warming, we would need to get the carbon dioxide levels to zero. That means the left side of the equation would be equal to zero. He then went on to explain each factor on the right side of the equation, starting with the letter P. He mentioned how the world's population will soon climb to nine billion people. Then came this curious statement:

"Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, and reproductive health services we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent."

Wait...what? How does improving on vaccines reduce the population? What did he mean by "reproductive health services"?

The rest of his speech was spent discussing the other factors in the equation and how we will be unable to get the last factor reduced to zero (especially by using fossil fuels). He also mentioned the need to create a new system on a "global scale" and the need for "energy miracles".

Now I'm all for using various creative sources of energy (wind, solar, etc.) but this equation is unsettling. First of all, the left side assumes quite a bit. What were the levels of carbon dioxide like in the atmosphere prior to the Industrial Revolution? Have they risen and fallen naturally over the centuries? Scientists do not have a thousands of years worth of data to look at in this regard and there is another factor in warming that was not addressed in this talk at all: the effects of the sun itself.

Implicit in the equation (and the talk itself) is that we are the ones in control of the planet's temperature and that at some point, things will be pushed into "crisis mode". Will that crisis involve reducing various factors in the equation (including population) in order to turn down the temperature of the planet to...get this...save people?

I think we are giving ourselves way too much credit (or blame, depending on your perspective).

What do you think?

The Implications of Creation

2011-08-08T19:42:00.000-05:00

I've usually found it interesting when engineers make an effort to emulate what they find in the natural world for one reason or another. For instance, consider the recent efforts to make robotic insects, birds, and dogs. Applications range, of course, from new spying devices to improving our means of flight to making toys. Yet months and months of planning, design, experimentation, and testing go into each one of these robots.

Now if you held one of these devices in your hand and studied its features, it would not take long to realize that these devices were "created". Their design was not an accident, nor did they evolve from a pile of plastic parts and electronic components. In short, each device has a designer or a creator.

Why can't we apply the same logic to living things in the environment?

A Kind of Time Machine, Part III

2011-08-05T08:29:00.000-05:00

Note: This is the last post in a series. Part I can be found here, and part II can be found here.

Last week I discussed about how the Bible could be considered a type of "time machine" and pointed out an example of a set of verses where history, prophecy, and current events converged. This type of moment occurs often in the Bible. In addtion, the message of salvation occurs so frequently in the Word that it is as if a clear effort was made to prevent attempts at "jamming" the message.

But wait...don't we live in an age when e-reading devices are becoming popular, where we have so many choices in terms of media, and people are reading more than ever? Yes, we do, and although we now have more Bible translations than ever, there is another phenomenon that is occuring: fragmentation. I discussed that topic at length in this post.

In terms of electronic reading devices, however, fragmentation has a peculiar effect. I've noticed when reading Bible verses online or on a reading device, it tends to split the book into pieces, which is a bit more disorientating when compared to being able to flip the pages of a paper version. Some context is inevitably lost, but somehow the overall message still gets through.

Why is that? If you split apart a typical non-fiction book into small pieces and try to read those pieces at various times throughout the week, it's pretty easy to lose the meaning of the book. Not so with the Bible. In fact, if you tore every physical Bible into pieces and scattered the pages to the four winds or burned them all in a fire, the message would still get through.

An example of this fragmentation and destruction can be found in Jeremiah 36:22-23. In this passage, a scroll containing words from Jeremiah (transcribed by Baruch) was read in front of Jehoiakim, king of Judah:

"Now the king was sitting in the winter house in the ninth month, with a fire burning on the hearth before him. And it happened, when Jehudi had read three or four columns, that the king cut it with the scribe’s knife and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the scroll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth."

Despite the king's efforts to destroy the scroll, it was followed by this in Jeremiah 36:27-28:

"Now after the king d burned the scroll with the words which Baruch had written at the instruction of Jeremiah, the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, saying: “Take yet another scroll, and write on it all the former words that were in the first scroll which Jehoiakim the king of Judah has burned."

Although this is an Old Testament example it is reinforced in the New Testament. In Matthew 24:35, Jesus states, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away."

Hmmm. Sounds like this particular time machine is indestructable, too.

Fishing in the Dead Sea, Part II

2011-08-02T17:25:00.000-05:00

Note: This is the second and final post in a series. The first part can be found here.

Last Monday, I mentioned about how the Dead Sea's unusually high salt content currently makes it unsuitable for fish and marine life. I also talked about how there is a restoration plan for the Dead Sea.

Iin Ezekiel 47:1-12, it talks of this restoration. When a new temple is established in Jerusalem (see Ezekiel chapters 38-46), there will be a river that flows out from under the threshold of the temple. In Ezekiel 47:8-12 it speaks of this new river:

"Then he said to me: “This water flows toward the eastern region, goes down into the valley, and enters the sea. When it reaches the sea, its waters are healed. And it shall be that every living thing that moves, wherever the rivers go, will live. There will be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters go there; for they will be healed, and everything will live wherever the river goes. It shall be that fishermen will stand by it from En Gedi to En Eglaim; there will be places for spreading their nets. Their fish will be of the same kinds as the fish of the Great Sea, exceedingly many. But its swamps and marshes will not be healed; they will be given over to salt. Along the bank of the river, on this side and that, will grow all kinds of trees used for food; their leaves will not wither, and their fruit will not fail. They will bear fruit every month, because their water flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for medicine.”

One half of this river flows into the Dead Sea, while the other half flows towards the Mediteranean (see Zechariah 14:8). These verses also talk about the marshes not being healed, of trees that will not fail along the river, and even of fishermen returning to En Gedi.

In other words, God will heal this particular region and flood the sea with fish. How, exactly, the salt will be removed from the sea is a mystery, but this follows an interesting pattern found elsewhere in the Bible. That pattern is one of the giving of law, followed by lawbreaking, then judgment, and finally restoration. This same pattern occured with the nation of Israel (the giving of the Law through Moses, their gradual drifting away from God, followed by the exile and their restoration to the land).

Much like the Dead Sea's future restoration, anyone can experience the kind of restoration God can offer. This can be found in II Peter 3:9 where it states:

"The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance."

Like the Samaritan woman in John 4, the offer of "living water" stands for anyone who is willing to receive it. And discussed above, the living water will flow again, too, someday on a grand scale in what some might consider the most lifeless region on earth.

What about you? Do you think God can restore anyone no matter what condition they are in?

A Kind of Time Machine, Part II

2011-07-29T16:15:00.001-05:00

Note: This is the second post in a series. Part I can be found here, and the final part of this particular series will appear next Friday.

Last week I mentioned the vast array of books that can be found inside of a library. I also mentioned how stepping inside of a library is much like stepping inside a time machine. You can pull many books off the shelf and virtually travel anywhere. Those destinations can include historical locations, modern-day locations, outer space, and even imaginary worlds.

Each book has its limitations, however. For example, history books look backwards in time while works of fiction might speculate on how the future might turn out. Likewise, a modern day picture book of Israel will only tell you what it looks like right now, as opposed to what it may look like in one hundred years.

So is there a book out there that is a kind of "time machine" that will let you go back and forth through time? Is there a book that will give you a glimpse of what a city looked like in the past and what it will look like in the future?

It turns out there is such a book.

This book contains historical narratives, fufilled and unfufilled prophecies, and can speak to a reader right where they are at in life. A reader can do side-by-side comparisions of how a city looked in the past and how it will look in the future (for example, Jerusalem). A reader can then go and look up archaelogical evidence to substantiate what is written in the book.

As Chuck Missler often famously says, this book is a message written to us from "outside our time domain." It's a book that goes both forward and backward in time at the mere flip of a page, and in many places, in a matter of few lines.

Here's the curious part, though. In several places, it's as if the Author relishes those moments when history, prophecy, and current events are converge in a handful of verses. For example, take a look at this set of verses from Luke 17:26-32 (NKJV):

[Jesus speaking] "And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.

In that day, he who is on the housetop, and his goods are in the house, let him not come down to take them away. And likewise the one who is in the field, let him not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife."

Noah's ark? Lot's wife? Verse 32 is, of course, a reference to Genesis 19:26 when Lot's wife looked back at the destruction and became a pillar of salt. In a couple of paragraphs we go back in time (twice) and then look forward to the second coming...and all the while he is talking to a particular audience. Yet it all still applies to where we are at today.

Incredible.

But wait...there's more. The book is filled with these kinds of moments, and sometimes these types of verses appear in the most unusual places. It's as if the Author anticipated that the book would someday run the risk of being fragmented. What's remarkable is that the message still comes trough, despite potential attempts at "jamming" it.

Next Friday, we'll conclude our brief tour of "time machines" with some thoughts about how electronic reading devices may be affecting this message and this type of "time travel".

Photo courtesy of Gadgets N Gear.

Fishing Rod or Lightning Rod?

2011-07-27T15:52:00.000-05:00

Ever had one of those moments in a boat that made you wonder if you should get off of the water in a hurry?

A couple months ago when I was out fishing with some friends on a lake in the early morning. Several rainshowers had passed through the area, but towards mid-morning the rain stopped and the lake became relatively still. The fishing was decent, and we were only about 50-100 feet out from shore.

Then, the fishing line on one of the fishing rods began to arc towards the sky. Normally, when a line is cast into the water initially it tends to sink into a U-shaped pattern from rod tip to the lake surface. This line began to rise vertically in the air to the point that it curved into an upside-down U shape.

That's usually sign that lightning is about to strike nearby and it's time to hightail it off the water. I've read stories of fishing rods that started to buzz right before a lightning strike (or if the boat has electrical problems) but none of that appeared to be happening. In fact, it was simply overcast and a quick look at the radar loop on a mobile phone showed we were not in any imminent danger.

After five minutes, the line sank back down. I have yet to find an explanation for this.

Anybody else ever had this happen?

Fishing in the Dead Sea, Part I

2011-07-25T16:46:00.003-05:00

Nice lake, isn't it?

Well, it does have a few problems. No marine life, blobs of asphalt that bubble up from the bottom, and enough salt in the water to cause virtually anybody to float on top of the waves with no effort.

In other words, forget about bringing your fishing rod.

This "lake", of course, is better known as the Dead Sea, or, alternately, the Salt Sea. It is approximately 42 miles long, up to eleven miles wide, and 1,237 feet deep at the deepest location. The water has a salt concentration around 31.5%, which means it is over eight times saltier than the world's oceans.

There's more to this region, however, than just the basin full of hypersaline water. On the north end, the Jordan River flows in. On the southeastern shore, it is believed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah once stood, which were destroyed by fire and brimstone (see Genesis 18 and 19) in an act of judgment.On the eastern shore, there is also the remains of a fortified city (Bab edh-Dhra) that has a seven-foot layer of ash...which may later prove to be the ruins of one of these cities.

David also fled from King Saul to the nearby "wilderness of En-Gedi", which is on the western shore (see I Samuel 24:1-2). Additionally, we also have the caves of Qumram nearby where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.

Nowadays, however, there is also another problem: the Dead Sea is shrinking in size. It may also look as if this place is in need of a massive toxic cleanup considering all the minerals in the water. If you're a resort, wouldn't it be nice to say that not only can you visit, but you can also go boating, swimming, and even take a charter service out into the deep to catch some nice fish for sport or dinner? Wouldn't it be great if several resorts got together to clean the place up?

Ok, maybe that would be prohibitively expensive, but it would be nice for those of us who like to go fishing. Yet despite humankind's limitations, God does have a solution for this place. And believe it or not, it involves restoration on a grand scale.

What do you think? Do you know of places that have fallen into disrepair and could stand to be restored? Have you have moments in your life when you've felt depleted, depression, or burned out, and are in need of restoration yourself?

Next Monday, in the final part of this series, I'll discuss what God's future restoration plan is for the "Dead Sea" and what that means for the rest of us.

Note: Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

A Kind of Time Machine, Part I

2011-07-22T23:54:00.000-05:00

With the current technological revolution in e-books and e-reading devices, it's easy to wonder: will libraries someday disappear?

Not likely.

Some libraries have kept up with technology quite well so far. In our local area, for example, numerous public libraries have computer workstations, offer several downloadable books, and even allow you to access other library system catalogs across the state. You can easily go online at home, request books from a university library hundreds of miles away, and pick up your book a week later without any human interaction at all.

Yet despite the growing shift towards more and more e-books, there is still something special about holding a paper book in your hands. There is something unique about the experience that forces you to slow down, take in the patterns of words on the pages, and pause in anticipation as you come to the end of the chapter...waiting to see how the author carries the momentum forward.

Inside a library there is also the experience of being surrounded by an immense amount of collected knowledge. No one walking through the doors of the library will ever be able to read everything on all the shelves, but at least they know it is there. It is knowledge in a physical form...lined up on shelf after shelf that sometimes stretches as far as the eye can see.

Something is lost when an entire building full of books is condensed into a handheld device. Yes, the devices are amazing feats of engineeering, but the physical sense of interacting with books and libraries is lost as a result.

Inside a library, too, you can pull out several books at once, set them before you on a desk, and switch between them with ease. In many ways, stepping inside a library is like stepping inside of a time machine. You can shift with ease between the centuries, set foot in different lands and cultures, and even travel to distant planets. Each book you pull off the shelf is like pulling a lever, and in some cases, like Doctor Who, who knows where you'll end up.

What do you think? Do you think libraries will be going away anytime soon? How would you compare your reading experiences onscreen vs. spending time inside an library with a stack of books?

Are Tornadoes Getting Bigger?

2011-07-20T12:06:00.001-05:00

A couple months ago, I watched several clips of tornadoes from the huge April outbreak that occurred down South this year. I've seen several storm documentaries over the years, but two images always stayed with me: the giant Moore, Oklahoma, tornado in 1999 and a less destructive, yet impressive 1.25 mile wide tornado that came through Comfrey, Minnesota during March of 1998. The width of each tornado was significant and in the case of the Moore, Oklahoma, tornado I remember seeing footage of what looked like tiny objects flying around in the air around the main funnel. Those tiny objects, however, were cars and trucks. At the time, the Moore tornado was one of the largest and strongest on record.

After watching the footage of the storms that ravaged the South, I was surprised at how wide some of the storms were. Several of the twisters appeared to be around a mile wide. Was something fundamentally changing in our weather patterns to start generating bigger and bigger storms?

Climate change debates aside, I decided to do some basic research into tornado widths. Here is an incomplete list of what I found:

Tornado	Date of Event	Width (Miles)	Rating
Waco, Texas	5/11/1953	0.33	F5
Blackwell, Oklahoma	5/25/1955	0.28	F5
Udall, Kansas	5/25/1955	0.74	F5
Topeka, Kansas	6/8/1966	0.5	F5
Tracy, Minnesota	6/13/1968	0.09	F5
Lubbock, Texas	5/11/1970	1.2	F5
Super Outbreak - Xenia, Ohio	4/3/1974	0.5	F5
Super Outbreak - DePauw, Indiana	4/3/1974	1	F5
Barneveld, Wisconsin	6/7/1984	0.25	F5
Andover, Kansas	4/26/1991	0.34	F5
Chandler, Minnesota	6/16/1992	0.75	F5
Jarrell, Texas	5/27/1997	0.75	F5
Comfrey, Minnesota	3/29/1998	1.25	F4
Bridge Creek-Moore, Oklahoma	5/3/1999	1	F5
Hallam, Nebraska	5/22/2004	2.5	F4
Greensburg, Kansas	5/4/2007	1.7	EF5
Elie, Manitoba	6/22/2007	1.1	F5
Parkersburg, Iowa	6/25/2008	0.7	EF5
Greeley, Colorado	5/22/2008	1	EF3
April 25-28, 2011 outbreak - Smithville, Mississippi	4/27/2011	1	EF5
April 25-28, 2011 outbreak - Tuscaloosa, Alabama	4/27/2011	1.5	EF5
Joplin, Missouri	5/22/2011	1	EF5

Then I graphed the results:

This, of course, is not an exhaustive analysis of all F3-F5 (or EF3-EF5) tornadoes, but it gives you a basic idea of where this may be headed. Granted this is not scientific by any means, but it does make one wonder: are even bigger ones on the way? More twisters seem to be approaching and surpassing the one-mile wide mark. A one-mile wide tornado can do an immense amount of damage in a hurry...just look at what happened to Greensburg, Kansas in 2007 and Joplin, Missouri in 2011. For a small town, one of these storms could easily wipe it off the map.

I've also noticed, too, that the size of the hailstones seems to be growing. In this area, it used to be rare to hear about golf-ball size hail. Now, I'm hearing of more and more incidents where the hail is tennis ball, baseball, or even softball size. As a result, the property damage reports have increased quite a bit.

How about your area? Is the weather getting worse or more violent? What do you think is causing these changes?

The Limits of Science, Part III

2011-07-18T08:40:00.000-05:00

This is the last post in an ongoing series of Monday posts...Parts I and Part II can be found here and here. Also, today's post is part of the Christian Writer's blog chain for July, with the topic of "Freedom". (Next Monday I'll start a new apologetic series of posts).

In the last post I talked about science potentially finding chemical or genetic answers to mankind's problems...maybe even the moral ones. It's almost as if we are trying to come up with a scientific answer for what the Bible in some cases simply calls "sin".

Underneath it all, however, is this fact: in many fields of science, there is often a quest for truth. Many of these searches for truth rely on testing and discovery as a means of finding repeatable results that can be developed into laws.

When it comes to God, however, there is this growing perception nowadays that such tests are not possible, and to believe means you have to abandon your intellect or "check your brains at the door". Is that accurate, though? Can't we "test" God to see if He is real, and to see if the results are repeatable?

Yes and no.

In Luke 4:12 (NKJV), when Jesus is being tempted, He responds: "And Jesus answered and said to him, “It has been said, ‘You shall not tempt the LORD your God.’”" In some translations, however, it states, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test." Additionally, in Luke 20:23 (NKJV) it says, "But He perceived their craftiness, and said to them, “Why do you test Me?"". In this particular situation, the Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus on the issue of whether it was lawful or not to pay taxes.

But in Malachi 3:10 (NKJV) God tells the Israelites: "Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and try Me now in this,” Says the LORD of hosts, "If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it."

Hmmmm. In some cases it sounds like we are not supposed to test anything, and in others...we can? If you look closer at the passages you'll notice one crucial difference: the motive of the person who is asking the question. In the cases listed above, was the person asking the question in a sincere quest for truth, or just trying to trap Jesus?

The Bible is full of promises...too many to list in a blog post, of course. But there are some basic ones found in the New Testament, for example. Romans 10:13 (NKJV) states: "For whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved."

Sounds like something with a repeatable result, doesn't it?

Galatians 5:22-23 (NKJV) states: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." I Corinthians 12 lists spiritual gifts that a believer may receive. Phillipians 4:6-7 (NKJV) reads: "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."

Reading these passages, it sounds like there are some results that will consistently occur if you seek out God in a "quest for truth".

Yet there is something a bit different about this quest. Keep in mind that this is a relationship. Believe it or not, with this relationship comes an intellectual freedom unparalleled. In Isaiah 1:18 it is written: ""Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the LORD, “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

When we open the Bible or enter a church, no where in Scripture does it tell us to abandon your intellect. In fact, in Acts 17:10-11 (NKJV) it states: "Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so." In other words, the Bereans checked the Scriptures to see if what Paul was saying was legitimate or not.

Some of science's greatest heroes did not abandon their faith or their intellect in their quest for truth. Why should you? If you read through the Word and ask God for help, you will have abundant evidence of who God is, what His purposes are, and you will see how real His promises are. You will see God at work in various fellowships, Bible studies, and through answered prayer.

Yes, some faith is required. Yet in return for that faith, you are given evidence of God's existence and that His laws are the real deal. More importantly, you will find a new level of intellectual freedom. Remember, however, that in this quest for truth that we already have an instruction manual and it isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

How about you? Have you ever seen God's truths and promises lived out in your life or the lives of others?

PODBox

2011-07-15T12:52:00.000-05:00

Everywhere these days you are seeing Redbox kiosks appearing in grocery stores and fast food restaurants that allow you to rent and return DVD movies. So far, this has been an innovative way to pick out your movies, sort of like a combination of Amazon book browsing and a physical store combined into one...sans the clerks of course. Along with this has also been the demise of more than a few area chain movie stores, which is causing a shift in how movies are rented and returned.

What if such an idea was transferred over to an industry such as bookselling?

For example, let's create a hypothetical device. Let's call it the Print-On-Demand Box or PODBox for short. Inside this kiosk, there would contain several ink tanks, a great deal of paper stock and a few different kinds of cover material. The machine would be approximately the same size as a Redbox kiosk, and could be placed in many places, although putting it in a restaurant may not be most ideal situation.

The machine would be able to create books on demand, after the user browses titles with the touch screen interface, much like a Redbox kiosk operates today. Theoretically, the user could be allowed to choose books from some type of website (Amazon?) and the machine would generate a perfect-bound paperback in a matter of a few minutes. Yes, I know, e-books and Kindles are all the rage right now, but many people do still like to hold paperbacks in their hands.

The only drawback to this setup that I can see, though, is that if demand is heavy, the ink tanks would have to be quite large and refilled periodically. Paper stock would also have to be refilled along with glue for the book binding. Redbox machines tend to be more or less self-maintaining, appearing to depend on users returning movies to the same or even a different location (although I'm sure when new movies come out, somebody has to load them into the machine).

Once the machines are built, they could be put in many locations. Grocery stories, tourist locations, rest stops, and even bookstores themselves could get into the act. For example, you could have books related to a particular tourist location available in a kiosk. After all, if you can get a penny smashed and stamped with a logo from your tourist destination, why not get a book there, too? Why not go a step further and allow for some customizable elements of the book?

What do you think? Would such a machine be a feasible device? Would you purchase a paperback book out of a PODbox if it offered a decent selection of titles?

The Limits of Science, Part II

2011-07-11T19:10:00.000-05:00

(This is an ongoing series of Monday posts...Part I can be found here and Part III will be coming next week).

Last week I briefly discussed a series of amazing inventions that mankind has created over the past century or so. The list is truly incredible and far from complete.

At the same time, however, there also seems to be this growing belief that science can solve almost any problem...given enough time. Along with that belief is a growing effort to marginalize religion, and maybe more specifically, Biblical Christianity. After all, to a casual passerby, Christians pray to some invisible being who does not seem to answer back, gather in churches to hear bits and pieces out of a book that is chock full of contradictions, and follow all sorts of rituals because...well...people like rituals!

Or so it seems.

Let's back up. There are several well known scientists in history who were Christians. In many cases, their faith was a foundational part of their scientific pursuits...sort of like a starting point, in essence. Some of these figures included Max Planck, James Clark Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, Michael Faraday, Blaise Pascal, Johannes Kepler and Charles Babbage, just to name a few.

So are we to believe that this list of scientists were merely deluded into believing there was some invisible being at the "other end of the prayer line" yet actively pursued truth in a wide range of fields? There is a well known modern day computer scientist, Donald Knuth, who is also a Christian. In computer science circles, he is widely known for his classic, yet challenging book series, "The Art of Computer Programming". Volume I of the series now contains this quote from Bill Gates "If you think you're a really good programmer...read (Knuth's) Art of Computer Programming...You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing."

Maybe the real issue is that science has not gone far enough yet. Perhaps when it reaches the point that it can reduce such human emotions as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and self control to a series of chemical reactions, equations, and laws we will then have the capability to solve mankind's greatest dilemmas.

Then, of course, some new, thorny issues would emerge: would science be the vehicle to deliver such a wonderful set of qualities? Would it be science's job to identify which human embryos are "on the right track" in terms of these qualities and which ones are not? After all, one could theoretically argue, we have pills that cure all sorts of diseases nowadays, such as ear infections, skin infections, etc. Perhaps there will come a day when scientists will find a "joy" gene or a "patience" gene or can medicate these qualities in people.

Or could it be that there really is something such as a concept of sin and grace, and a God who really does answer back? In Galatians 5:22 (NKJV) it states: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." Now, which sounds easier...taking a pile of pills or merely asking God for help?

The other question that also needs to asked is if emotions can be reduced to equations, what about something so complicated as a relationship? Could you imagine the love between a husband and wife or the love between a father and his son being summed up by pages and pages of mathematical proofs?

In John 4:24 (NKJV), Jesus states: "God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." That sounds like a set of basic requirements. Is it possible that the scientists I mentioned above did this very thing? To say these scientists just did not know any better about their religious beliefs sounds like an insult to their intellect.

What do you think? Why is there this growing disconnect between believing in the Bible, conducting science, and having a relationship with God?

Next Monday: Can God be tested?

Pac-Man Demystified

2011-07-08T17:35:00.000-05:00

The other day I was playing Pac-Man on our Namco TV Classics system (found here) and besides bringing back lots of old school gaming memories, I was reminded of web page I found years ago that deconstructed Pac-Man on all sorts of levels. It's a fun and in-depth read on both a historical level and a gaming level.

Check it out here.

Warnings - A Review

2011-07-06T18:32:00.001-05:00

This book is the fascinating tale of how our modern weather warning system came into being. Part biography and part history, it details the quest to save countless lives in the face of poor communication systems, limited technology, bureaucracy, and of course, big storms.

The author, Mike Smith, is the founder of WeatherData, and he has a unique and pioneer-like perspective on the history of storm forecasting over the past several decades. Throughout the book, the reader is given great insights into how the technology was developed and what obstacles needed to be overcome along the way. Odd fact: in the late 1940's, weather forecasters were not even allowed to issue tornado warnings.

There is also a chapter on Theodore Fujita, developer of our modern tornado ranking system, that discusses his contributions to our modern understanding of tornadoes, downbursts, and microbursts. The contributions came at a price, however, as there was quite a struggle to get his work recognized and accepted by other scientists at the time.

Throughout the book, there are eye-opening accounts of several major storms of the past and their aftermath...not only from the standpoint of a weather forecaster, but from that of the survivors left to pick up after the destruction. There are several chapters on Hurricane Katrina, as well as a chapter on Hurricane Andrew. It was interesting to see how bureaucratic issues complicated warning as well as recovery efforts almost every step of the way. Some insight is given on how data is actually collected for use in hurricane modelling, and guess what...it's not all science. Some of it is part intuition and part art.

Some great comparisons were made near the end of the book, when Smith found similarities between the destructive Udall, Kansas, tornado of 1955 and the one that pummelled Greensburg, Kansas, in 2007. Most striking was the structure of both storms, but also, the progress that has been made over the years in forecasting, along with the tools that took too long to implement (widespread usage of Doppler radar, etc.). Perhaps the most significant detail is that many lives were saved during the Greensburg storm.

Overall, this book was an engaging and informative read. Highly recommended.

Question: Do you think science has truly "tamed the weather" as the subtitle of this book suggests?

The Limits of Science, Part I

2011-07-04T18:26:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, I put together a list of inventions for a Bible study I was teaching (Ravi Zacharias' "Deliver Us From Evil" video series). The topic that week had to do with relativism and philosophy, and so one of the things I decided to tie in was how much advancement had been made in the name of science.

The list went something like this:

1885: Automobile patent granted (internal combustion engine)
1893: Radio (Nikola Tesla)

1923: Television (Electronic)
1928: Antibiotics: Alexander Fleming (initial discovery of penicillin)

1935: Nylon
1937: Jet engine

1942: Nuclear reactor
1945: Nuclear weapons - Manhattan Project
1946: Microwave oven
1947: Transistor

1950: Credit card
1958: Communications satellite
1958: Implantable pacemaker

1960: Laser
1961: Human spaceflight
1967: Automatic Teller Machine

1973: Personal computer - Xerox PARC
1973: Genetically modified organism - e Coli (Stanley Norman Cohen and Herbert Boyer)
1975: DNA sequencing (bacteria), Allan Maxam and Walter Gilbert; Frederick Sanger

1982: Artificial heart
1983: Internet

1990: World Wide Web, computer networks in the 60's
1993: Global Positioning System
1999: GloFish

2000: The Human Genome Project (HGP)

I read off the list of inventions to the group, and then I posited the following question: "Is there anything man can't do now?" My main point was that frequently the argument is made that it is only a matter of time before science figures everything out. Along with this point of view often comes the implication that religion (usually Christianity) is no longer needed.

But is that really the case?

I was reminded of that question last night as I walked through a department store and looked at fish tanks in the pet section. There, in one of the fish tanks were some GloFish...which are genetically modified fish that were created by taking green fluorescent protein from a jellyfish and putting them into a zebrafish embryo. Nowadays they are being sold as pets. (I wonder if somebody is working on fluorescent minnows somewhere...and what game fish would think of them!)

So, with all the advancements being made in genetically modified crops, animals, bacteria, etc., does this mean that the world is truly being unlocked to us, as if we are just playing with a bunch of building blocks? Does this mean that our world truly is nothing more than a bunch of interacting molecules, atoms, physics forces, and that, given enough time, scientists will be able to solve any given problem and create any species they want?

I find it interesting that many inventions (especially flight related ones) were actually inspired by animals...for instance the airplane, helicopters, etc. This is a process that continues today, with scientists looking to the interaction of ants as a means of solving some very difficult math problems. In fact, with the Oriental Hornet, they recently discovered that such a creature may actually have a some type of "solar cell" mechanism in its body as a means of acquiring energy.

What do you think? Has science advanced to the point that we are on the fringes of solving almost any problem? Do you believe it is a matter of time before we can genetically modify anything?

Next Monday, I'll describe an alternate view of this subject and together we'll look at what the Bible actually says about this.

Take a Cue From a Hummingbird

2011-07-01T15:30:00.000-05:00

A few weeks back, my wife and I went on a vacation to Canada for a week. The fishing was amazing, the weather decent, and even towards the end we were treated to a display of northern lights. There was plenty of wildlife to be seen also...including moose, foxes, black bears, eagles, and of course, plenty of fish. Up there, however, we were about an hour away from the nearest town, which meant no cell phone service, no internet, and no telephone. The bathroom consisted of an outhouse and what lights we did have in the cabin were powered by a generator that only ran a few hours of the day.

Hanging out in front of the cabin's living room window, however, was a hummingbird feeder. Several times a day a pair of hummingbirds would stop by and visit. If you've never watched one of these little creatures, they are truly amazing to see as their wings beat up to 80 times per second. Their wings often look like a blur, and they can change their direction on a dime, even turning 90 degress with minimal effort. But for all the work these birds seemed to do, I would see them fly back to their nest in a nearby tree to rest.

When I came back home, I returned back to a world filled with technology. I sat down in front of my computer to check my e-mail. The odd part was, part of me really didn't care. Part of me did not miss going online at all. It took a full day for me get back into my usual routine of checking the news, writing blog posts, checking e-mail, etc. and throughout that time I was wondering if I was even doing the right thing anymore.

The lesson I began to learn was that it had been a long time since I had taken a break like that and I was long overdue. The other lesson was that I needed to start scheduling smaller breaks on a regular basis or I would run the risk of "technology burnout". It was almost as if I had forgotten how to take a rest.

I think nowadays it is very easy to fall into a "busy" trap, by constantly running around, researching things on the internet, checking web stats, etc. Don't get me wrong...I love technology and especially programming. But I do know when I have reached my saturation point and my brain starts to go into overload mode. It doesn't help that numerous times I've found myself saying "can I have my five minutes back?" after clicking on a news article which really did not contain much substance but had a catchy title.

I'm relearning now that sometimes it's good to "unplug" ourselves from technology once in a while. Humans were never meant to spend all their waking hours inundating myself with all forms of media, most of which does not improve our lifestyle in any tangible way. It's been proven, too, that when a person gets too tired, their productivity will often drop by half. In other words, periods of rest are essential to your longevity. Computers are great at multi-tasking and even doing multiple tasks in parallel, but for humans it can quickly become counterproductive and even destructive.

Do you ever sense the need to unplug from technology for a while? In Mark 2:27 it states, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." (NKJV) What are some areas of life that you feel you might need a rest from? Why is that animals seem to know when to take a rest but humans are prone to overwork?

Storm Books

2011-06-29T16:45:00.002-05:00

Over the years I've read a few books that dealt with storms...books where a storm becomes as much of a factor as the characters themselves. Below is a short list of non-fiction "storm books" that are notable, and it's a list I hope to expand on in the future.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Although technically not a book about a storm, it is a detailed account of a fateful expedition up Mount Everest that begins to unravel once the mountain climbers begin their descent. Without giving too much away, it is at that point in the narrative that the weather suddenly changes everything.

The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger

An account of an incredible storm that formed off the Eastern seaboard in the fall of 1991, and how the ship, the Andrea Gail fared in it. The book attempts to reconstruct the events of that storm, the rescuers efforts, and life for those who were left behind. Interestingly enough, at the same time a giant blizzard was ongoing in the Upper Midwest.

Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson

This is the story of a hurricane that devastated and engulfed Galveston, Texas in September of 1900. It is as much a detailed chronicle of the event as it is a character study of Isaac Cline, a scientist who worked at the time with the U.S. Weather Bureau. Vivid descriptions and memorable characters.

If these books are not enough, there's always storm chasing websites such as these with footage/chase accounts:

http://www.tornadovideos.net
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/storm-chasers
http://www.stormchaser.com

Also, here is an interesting link I found a while back. It's severe weather coverage (via radio) of some notable storms in the past. Especially interesting is the coverage of the tornado outbreak from May 6th, 1965. There were four F4 tornadoes that night, 13 fatalities, and 683 injuries. Most notable in the 1965 broadcasts is how the on-air personalities' perspectives change as the night goes on and damage reports start rolling in.

Can you think of any books to add to this list? If so, please leave your ideas in the comment section below. In about a week or so, I'll review the non-fiction book "Warnings" by Michael Smith. Part autobiography and part historical narrative, it details the development of the warning system currently in use for the nation's weather.

P.S. I've decided to get onto more of a schedule with this blog. Going forward, the plan is to feature Apologetics on Mondays, Weather/Outdoors on Wednesdays, and Technology on Fridays. Along with that, there will be some random posts on writing, music, and other things.

Signature in the Cell - A Review

2011-06-27T18:46:00.001-05:00

Confession: I'm not a biologist. Nor do I ever see myself working in any field related to biology, although I did do well in biology in school (and other sciences).

So why did I pick up this book in the first place?

Well, for one, I like to read things outside of my normal fields of interest once in a while and two, I had the opportunity to see the author give a talk at a conference last fall. I had heard of the book before and had heard some of intelligent design arguments that are out there (pro and con), so I was aware of who the speaker was. He was well-spoken in his talk, and what intrigued me even more was his mention of a Wired magazine article he did some time back that only used a fraction of the material that discussed in the interview. He mentioned about how he discussed the topic of intelligent design for three hours, and covered all sorts of subtopics such as nanotechnology, the DNA code within cells, etc. More details of that issue can be found here and here.

At this point, I wanted to read the book just to see where it went in terms of apologetics and because he made reference to fields I was very familiar with: information science and computer science. Admittedly, I had some basic knowledge of DNA, proteins, and basic cellular structure before I started reading the book, which helped.

Anyway, I finally got around to reading the book this summer, and just finished it the other week. The basic premise of the book is this: there is a great deal of sophisticated machinery within a cell. What's more, the DNA found in those cells looks a lot like computer code. On top of that, the process of replicating that information is also quite sophisticated.

In addition, a perplexing question is brought up throughout: given all the information in a human cell, how in the world did the information get there? This is not just a jumble of data either...it is written like code and serves a greater purpose. Even the so called idea of "junk DNA" is falling apart (as the author points out) because science is finding that there really is a use for it...even if we haven't completely figured that out just yet.

Structurally, the book follows Meyer's own journey as he considered and/or discarded the various theories of the origin of life, and how the information got into the cell in the first place. In chapters nine and ten ("Ends and Odds" and "Beyond the Reach of Chance"), for example, he mathematically explains just how astronomical the odds are that life more or less came together out of the primordial soup and pieced itself together by chance.

Towards the latter third of the book, Meyer uses this compelling comparision: when one looks at Mount Rushmore, you can't help but think that such carvings were created by intelligence. In other words, the rocks didn't just crumble or erode over several thousand years to create the four faces on the monument. He also makes mention of the SETI project, which is an ongoing search for extraterrestrial life. Now if they find a pattern in the signals coming from space, or more dramatically, some kind of message, then it would most likely be attributed to intelligence.

To make a comparision to my own field, from a software development standpoint, I can tell you that anybody can throw together a program in a matter of minutes using a list of a particular programming language's keywords. Getting the program to actually run is another thing. Getting that same program to perform something useful is another hurdle.

Getting that program to then be used by your company or even the world as a whole takes a completely different level of skill and maybe even a team of programmers working together. And what would the end user see after using the product? Hopefully, they would see realize some amount of intelligence designed the product and that the program didn't just "assemble itself" one day on a cluster of networked computers.

Several times throughout the book the author made parallels to the field of information science and computer science, which helped me through the more difficult passages. Even if I didn't completely grasp the concept of folding, I could follow his comments such as comparing the code inside of DNA to that of an operating system. He also frequently references visual examples he has used with his students in the past to illustrate larger concepts.

The book's chapters also seemed to echo the type of apologetic you would find in the Biblical book of Romans...even though it focused on the specific issue of the origin of life and was heavy with science. It should be noted, however, that Meyer makes it clear in his book that the issue of intelligent design is separate from that of theological issues...and it is.

Regardless of your worldview, Signature in the Cell is a deep, thought-provoking, and sometimes challenging read. Whether the author intended it or not, it also strikes me a sort of indirect apologetic...and one well worth spending your time considering.

Of Cyanide and Silicon

2011-06-23T15:35:00.000-05:00

This video is stunning.

A couple of years ago, there was a Saudi inventor who tried to patent a microchip in Germany that could be used to track criminals via GPS. That, in of itself, is not necessarily a new concept. This device, however, would also contain a dose of cyanide that could be triggered remotely.

Several questions spring to mind.

If patented and produced somewhere else (which just might happen), who would define who gets such a chip? Secondly, would a chip actually stop that person from committing a crime? Third, who makes the call on when it's time to press the button and terminate the person?

In a way, you could call this a sort of "kill switch" for criminal behavior, although usually a kill switch is meant to save someone's life from death or injury, not take it away.

Another question that comes to mind is what if an innocent person is incarcerated, given such a chip, then set free? What if there is some administrative mistake and they get taken out? Sure, those types of issues may represent a minority of the problems that could arise, but nonetheless they would exist...and that is not something I'm seeing being addressed anywhere.

Ultimately, though, it is alarming that someone came up with the idea in the first place. Also, in the patent application, the list of possible uses was rather broad (criminals, fugitives, political opponents, etc.). That is one very slippery slope of possible recipients.

And as I've stated before, there are usually two sides to every new piece of technology. This one, however, seems quite dark on both sides of the equation.

Fresh Air

2011-06-18T00:16:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is Father's Day here in the States, and this one is going to be an unusual one for me, in that it will be the first one without my father, since he passed away several months ago.

In his case, the last days of his life were a struggle to get "fresh air", as he suffered from pneumonia. This wasn't his first bout with it, and in fact, a year earlier he was hospitalized with it. The first time, however, he looked to be in very rough shape and I didn't think he was going to make it through.

He did, of course, but I used that time in the hospital and subsequent weeks to witness to him about the many things God has done for me and others around me. You see, I was never quite sure where my Dad stood on matters of faith, and although I knew he attended church off and on during his life, it was mostly off during the last few decades. Sure, we had discussions about God, the Bible, and the different things going on in various churches in the area, but I was never completely sure where he stood and with the onset of his illness I suddenly felt a sense of urgency. Only God knew his heart, however.

His second time with pneumonia was different, though. He actually didn't look all that ill and on the last night I was able to talk to him, we discussed many things, including current events and efforts to build a new temple in Jerusalem. There was a great sense of peace about him, too. Towards the end of my visit, one of the last phrases he said was "I'm just down, but I'm not out."

A day later his blood oxygen levels dropped dramatically and a day after that he was gone.

The takeaway message from all this is that it is vitally important to witness to others about what God has done for you in your life, even if it is in a small or subtle way. We really don't know when our last day will come, or when we will take our last breath of fresh air, or when that last day will be for others around us.

So many times, too, I have seen witnessing opportunities with friends, co-workers, and strangers that never came around again. Sometimes I did a decent job of witnessing, and in other instances, I fell short of the mark. Like any skill, however, I am learning, and learning to recognize that with some people, you may only have one shot at witnessing to them.

In Job 12:10 it states, "In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind." Make every moment count. Seek out ways to share what the Lord has done. It's not all that difficult and it might change someone's life. After all, the next time you see a particular friend, relative, or stranger, it could very well be the last.

This entry is a part of the Christian Writer's Blog Chain for the topic "Fresh Air". Please take the time to visit the other sites listed to the right. Thanks for stopping by!

Two Sides to Every New Piece of Technology

2011-06-16T15:46:00.000-05:00

Often times with each new piece of technology, it seems there are two sides to its implementation that should merit careful consideration. Recently there was an article (press release?) about a company that has created a light bulb with a chip inside of it that would allow each bulb to have it's very own unique IP address. While that's a bit unusual, I can see some good outcomes of this as well as some strange ones. From the article:

"You could monitor, manage and control every light bulb from any Internet-enabled device – turning lights on and off individually, dimming or creating scenes from your smartphone, tablet, PC or TV – to save energy as well as electricity costs."

First, let's look at the benefits of such creativity.

Maybe you could turn your smartphone into a remote control of sorts, setting your lighting, air conditioning, etc. when you are away from home. In the home, I'm sure you would be able to do the same. Additionally, you will probably be able to adjust your lights and appliances as a whole and monitor their power consumption or maybe even keep energy costs down by turning off lights in rooms where no one is present. Some of this technology is essentially already in existence in different forms, but this could bring it to a more user-friendly level.

Now what about the flip side? Well, are they talking about IP addresses that are available to the internet, or just to your home wireless router? It's difficult to deduce from the press release.

If it is made available widely, then what? What if someone decides to launch a denial-of-sevice attack against the group of IP addresses that represents the appliances in your house? Would it trigger the same effect as a power outage or loss of control over your appliances? Sure the article mentions a 128-bit AES encryption mechanism, but it may not take much just to create some type of disruption. I'm sure the sophisticated malware writers out there could potentially have a field day with this one.

Can you imagine inviting a group of guests over only to have all the lights and the appliances in the house start going haywire just as you are pullng a turkey out of the oven? Or, what if someone decided to run up your electric bill by turning up the thermostat full tilt and turning on all your lights/appliances while you are on vacation? Yes, there are plenty worse things that could happen, but it would be a weird thing to get stressed out about and could get potentially dangerous if safeguards are not put in place (i.e to prevent the air conditioner from running in the winter or to prevent the furnace from running nonstop until something overheats).

Whatever the outcome, this could get interesting.

April Rain

2011-06-13T21:27:00.003-05:00

A poem from my upcoming book, Horizons.

April Rain

I walk downtown
but the 50-story rocketships
can't offer peace
like the sleepy April rain

Gray green red violet black
umbrellas
blossom up
as the tasteless drops
swarm earthward onto the pavement

But the concrete, the street signs
can't offer paint
for the newness of approaching spring

The crisply shined windows
can't offer reflection
for the dreamy glow of summer
silently igniting

The Art of Hoop Jumping

2011-06-12T21:49:00.000-05:00

A few months back I entered one of my novels into the Writer's Digest Self-Published book contest. I did very well (19/20 score, very positive comments), but the last line of the judge's comments got me thinking about a lot of things:

"The main thing I want to suggest is that Michael Galloway keep writing and look for a major New York house for his next book."

There are several possible meanings to this line.

One, the book I entered was strong, but unfortunately it was self-published, and in some circles, that pretty much means that a traditional publisher will not pick it up unless you have some astounding sales to show for it. Two, I'm "not quite there yet", but if I keep at it, I will be, and I should shop my next novel around when I complete it.

Then there is the third possibility. My writing is strong, I could have traditionally published this book, and I should traditionally publish my next book (assuming it is well written). The judge also mentioned they did not see any way I could improve on the book I did send in. So...this leads to the next question.

What if I don't want to traditionally publish at all now? What if I've been so turned off by the industry/submission process in general that all I want to do is get on with my life, write great books, and build a reading audience? Or should I continue to perfect my hoop-jumping skills and try to jump through a continually shrinking set of hoops?

I don't mean to sound sour, but I have spent many years sending off query letters, waiting for replies, etc. At times it was an agonizingly slow process. It didn't help that I was very picky about who I send my queries to. To add to the slowness, however, some agencies didn't want you to query multiple people at once. That always struck me as odd, considering many agencies nowadays have gigantic slush piles, limited staff to review the queries that do come in, and many of these agencies are under great pressure by editors and publishing houses to "minimize risk". So, why then, should I spend several weeks in waiting when the package I spent hours creating gets reviewed in 30 seconds or less?

I've read innumerable articles and books on the art of the query process. I've read many articles on how to build the perfect synopsis. I've read many articles that dissected successful authors' query letters and how they made it through the hoops. I've tried innumerable techniques. I also went to a writer's conference where the seminars were good, but when I overheard a writer cornering one of speakers (maybe "trapping" is a better word here) and the editor sounded polite but kind of miserable, I cringed.

Would there come a day when I would spend my time attending conferences just trying to corner agents and editors?

Sorry, I'll pass.

So again I ask, am I in the business of hoop jumping or writing great books?

At the end of the day, I'd rather look back and say I helped to push the art of fiction writing a little further forward, and pushed myself to my limits. That, to me, is a job well done.

Descriptive Overdrive

2011-06-02T15:33:00.000-05:00

There are hundreds, if not thousands of ways to describe a given object.

Take for example, this picture of a brick. How would you describe it?

Here's a sample description list for this particular object.

Heavy, red, pitted, rectangular, cracked, chipped, brown, construction, dense, coarse surface, sturdy, durable, strong.

Great. So there are many ways to describe a brick.

Okay, let's say instead you have a scene which somehow involves a brick wall. Or the building or the destruction of that wall. Now what?

Well, for one, you can tie the descriptions of the wall to a particular chararcter. Let's say you have a construction worker. How would they describe the brick wall? Or, what about a disgruntled youth thinking of grabbing a brick to go break a window? How would they describe the wall? What about someone standing by the ruins of the wall after a fire or natural disaster? The list is really endless, but in this circumstance, you can tie a scene's desciptions to your point-of-view character, and it could dramatically alter how the wall is described.

You can also pick certain descriptions to evoke a particular mood. For example, you could describe a brick wall as being aged, weathered, chipped, faded, and forgotten. You could probably also choose to focus on other elements, such as strong, tough, a necessary wall between neighbors, etc.

In short, the descriptive words you use can have a major impact on how a reader feels about your scenes, your characters, and your story. At the same time, however, you have to be careful not to go into "thesaurus overdrive" and plug in every interesting sounding word you can find as alternatives to more mundane words such as "red" or "crumbling".

If you get too creative, however, the descriptions end up drawing full attention to themselves and you run the risk of throwing the reader out of the story. If someone is constantly looking words up or trying to visualize what a dilapidated, crimson, hodgepodge barricade looks like, you may end up losing your reader before they even turn the page.

Soundbite Christianity

2011-05-31T15:45:00.001-05:00

I'm noticing an alarming trend in many churches today. Maybe the issue has always been around, or maybe I'm just more aware of it nowadays, but I'm seeing a progressive increase in what I call "soundbite Christianity".

What I mean by this is that I will often see people quoting a verse out of the Bible (sometimes completely out of context) but they won't spend the time to actually see where in the Bible the verse comes from. Nor will they take the time to read through the Bible book by book to see what it says as a whole. As a result, I've lost track of the times I've seen people rehash what another preacher has said only to say something different and contradictory the next week because they heard yet another online sermon by someone else.

I'm not sure what the root causes of this issue are, but I'm sure part of the blame can be placed on our increasingly technologically based culture and our continued bombardment by all types of media. The problem with the all the messages is that many of them are either advertisements or a rehashing of what someone else has said. In some cases, it's just noise, and it is getting more difficult to sort out the truth from the noise. Add to this a general increase in "busyness" in our culture, and a general, long term tiredness seems to set in. As a result, it's easier to just repeat what someone else has said rather than work things through on your own.

That said, we are also in an unprecendented era of communication. We can communicate all the way around the world in less than a second, have access to all sorts of video and audio online, etc. Along with that are ample resources to help someone along in their Bible studies, including numerous reference books, Bible study books, audio and video versions of the Bible, etc.

Yet soundbite Christianity (and along with it, Biblical illiteracy) still seems to be increasing.

In some cases, Bible studies that are focused on Scriptural books rather than the Bible itself add to this trend. Now don't get me wrong, there are many sound books out there that are great for increasing your understanding of the Word, how to apply it, etc. Those can be great starting points. But at some point, a believer needs to sit down with the Bible itself and read it on its own terms.

But what about many churches nowadays that read an Old Testament passage, a Psalm, a New Testament passage, and then a few verses out of a Gospel every Sunday? Isn't that a good starting point?

Sometimes.

The sad fact is, those are the only pieces of Scripture most believers hear or read all week long. In many denominations the lectionary system is still in widespread use, and it either revolves on a one or a three year cycle. It's covers a decent amount of basic ground, but it's surprising how much information gets left out.

Many times I've also seen the weekly readings turned into soundbites. For example, a few weeks ago I noticed that the New Testament reading was taken from Acts 6-7. The only problem was large portions were skipped over in the reading. We read about how Stephen was chosen and prayed over. Then the reading skipped down to where he was stoned and Paul (Saul) stood by and watched. Completely removed from the reading was Stephen's speech to the Sanhedrin and the message within it. In the end, it left several people confused as to why Stephen was actually stoned. I subsequently pulled out a Bible and explained to those gathered about the missing information in the readings.

Other times I've seen whole verses selectively dropped out of a Psalm. Very strange.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and bash on the lectionary system. In some skilled and gifted preacher's hands, there have been some amazing sermons given. The system has also been around for centuries, for what it is worth. But the sad part is that it is the same readings every year (or three years). And it is repeated over and over and over...

What Gets Lost

If our only exposure to the Word comes in soundbites, many things get lost.

Context gets lost. Meaning gets lost and replaced by the mood of the day. The interconnections between the books and verses of the Bible (via symbolism, quotations, fufilled prophecy, etc.) get distorted or go missing altogether.

Know what else suffers? Discernment. Our own understanding of God's character suffers. Your peace of mind suffers. Our one-on-one time with the Lord suffers. I find it funny that I know people who can spend hours reading 800 page novels/non-fiction books, but won't give up ten minutes of their day to read a single chapter out of the Bible on an even semi-regular basis. It's sad, but an ever increasing reality.

I know for many years I put off reading the Bible all the way through. I read a few books out of it, and some of those I read multiple times. Eventually, however, God led me off of the fence and I came to realize how foolish it was to have procrastinated on such a subject for so long. I've also come to realize that despite multiple readings, I'll never get to the bottom of the Word.

Description Lists

2011-05-26T17:56:00.000-05:00

Here is a technique I often use when I get stuck writing a scene.

Sometimes if you have problems visualizing a scene or a setting in your mind (or in some cases an object), those issues will appear on the page, too. Many times in the rough draft stage this will manifest itself as a lack of detail, or maybe just vague details when describing or setting the scene.

Unfortunately, if you are having difficulty visualizing a scene, chances are your readers will have the same problem. In fiction, its important to immerse your reader in the story by drawing on multiple senses...but if the details are not sharp enough, then you run the risk of disengaging your reader early on.

For example, if you were to write a description of a room, what details would you include? It's easy to describe a room as being spacious but full of furniture. But everybody has a different definition of the words "spacious" and "full of furniture". It may be engaging on some level, but if in a subsequent sentence you state that the room the main character frequently trips over the sofa, does that mean he is clumsy, or that the sofa takes up most of the room?

Let's take it a step further.

Let's describe the room as being as having a vaulted ceiling. Let's say it contains it contains a large sofa, two end tables, a television, a piano, a floor lamp, and a wandering cat.

That's better...but it's still not engaging enough.

So what's the solution?

If possible, go to the place you want to describe in a scene or a novel (or short story, etc.). Or, if you need more concrete details about an object, put that object in front of you if possible. In some cases, you may have to use a photograph (or several). In other cases, you may have to find a substitute (more on that below).

Now, grab a notebook or your laptop and write down as many details as you can. Keep in mind that many of these details may or may not end up in the finished product. The point is to pull in as many details as possible so that when you do write that particular scene, you'll have an ample pool of information to draw from. These details can be visual, aural, or even involve taste, smell, and touch.

For instance, a subplot in a story I once wrote had a woman painting an outdoors scene. Although I could visualize the process in my mind for the most part (especially what she was painting), I wasn't happy with what I initially wrote in the rough draft. It was okay, but the details didn't "pop" off the page like I wanted them to.

Since I didn't really have the time to travel to a nearby forest (and this was before the days of image search online), I sat in front of a window overlooking a small set of woods. I then proceeded to write down extensive details about those woods and compiled them into a list. I then referred back to that list as I wrote particular scenes. Not every detail was put to use, but it had the remarkable effect of making the scene feel much more alive. I also pulled out a paintbrush to remind myself of things such as the sound of a paintbrush hitting a canvas, etc.

Circling back to our room example, you could compile a list like this (focusing on one object in particular...a mounted fish on the wall):

walleye, driftwood, glass eyes, dusty, shiny, scales, sharp teeth, white belly, brown, gold, painted, white-tipped tail, swimming, fins, smooth

(Now, if you really wanted to go far with this description, you could look up taxidermy to get even more specific.)

Writing these lists also forces you to slow down and really think about the description process in general. In another post, I'll elaborate on the infinite number of ways you can describe an object, and how that can be affected by the characters in the scene and the mood you want to portray. For now, though, I hope you can see how easy it is to compile description lists that may come in handy in many future projects.

No More Coffee

2011-05-25T16:01:00.004-05:00

I had a recent conversation with a friend of mine that somehow ended up on the topic of shadow boxes. One of the items he talked about in his shadow box was that of a miniature coffee grinder. He then went on to describe how that coffee grinder represented marriage and more specifically, how the beans that went into the grinder were representative of the different personalities involved in marriage and how God sort of blends them together.

It was a great image...except if I had a shadow box, there would be no coffee grinder.

Why?

Because I don't drink coffee anymore.

You see, I used to love coffee. In fact, at my first job, on the first day I discovered it, I drank eight cups in about four hours. (That was a mistake.)

As the years went on, I continued to drink it on a regular basis. I would drink it at home or stop by a Caribou Coffee or a Starbucks to grab the coffee of the day when I was on the run. Good stuff, especially the darker roasts.

But when I started to work on a particular novel manuscript of mine a few years ago, I soon realized it was a project unlike any other. After a few drafts/edits, I began to run into numerous problems just trying to focus/concentrate on the editing process. Eventually, things slowed to a crawl. This dragged on for weeks until I finally lifted the issue up in prayer. I asked God, "What's interfering with my writing?"

I'd like to say I heard or sensed a reply, but none came. So I asked again the next day. About an hour later, as I was in my kitchen and grabbing the handle on the coffee pot, it more or less came to me: it was the coffee.

So I turned the coffee pot off and stopped drinking it for the rest of the day. Keep in mind that I already downed probably a pot of coffee at work earlier in the day, and I put another pot on when I arrived home. Looking back, I had no doubts I was on my way to downing two pots that day.

What I didn't realize is that I would only drink 4-5 more cups of coffee after that. What I also didn't notice until later was that a few days before I prayed that, the coffee at worked began to taste downright nasty. Sure, with free coffee in the breakroom you get a variety of people making it, who dump different amounts of grounds in the filter, etc. But no, this was definitely tasting just strange.

So the following day I went to the downstairs cafeteria and ordered a Starbucks coffee. I knew this would be the end of the disgusting breakroom coffee.

I brought it upstairs and drank maybe half of it. Good grief, I realized...I was losing my taste for this, too. I only had a few more cups after that and well...the last cup made me physically ill.

And you can guess what happened next...suddenly it got much easier to edit and work on my project.

Now here's the catch: a year earlier I tried stopping my coffee drinking on my own. That lasted two weeks and I failed miserably. Hmmm...there seems to be some kind of Biblical pattern developing here...

Is God still in the deliverance business? Definitely.

Crosses in the Old Testament

2011-05-23T15:55:00.001-05:00

A few years ago I participated in a Bible study that looked at different forms of musical worship in the Bible. One of the diagrams that was used during the presentation was that of the Tabernacle (the full description of the Tabernacle can be found in Exodus 25-31, and in Exodus 35-40). The interesting thing about the diagram was that if you looked down on the Israelites' encampment around the Tabernacle from the air, the tribes of Israel were laid out in the shape of a cross, with the Tabernacle in the middle. (See Numbers 2.)

From that point on, I kept that image in the back of my mind, especially when it came to researching the details of the various temples in the Bible.

Well, the other week I potentially found yet another cross...but not in relation to a temple. This one was in Numbers 35:1-34, which describes the cities of refuge. Cites of refuge were places in Israel that one could run to in the case of accidental manslaughter.

What caught my attention, though, was Numbers 35:4-5, which describes the layout of the common land around the city of refuge:

The common-land of the cities which you will give the Levites shall extend from the wall of the city outward a thousand cubits all around. And you shall measure outside the city on the east side two thousand cubits, on the south side two thousand cubits, on the west side two thousand cubits, and on the north side two thousand cubits. The city shall be in the middle. This shall belong to them as common-land for the cities.

I'm not quite sure what this looks like, but the first verse sounds like the description of a circle. The second sentence, however, seems different (but maybe it is just a larger circle, I don't know). Maybe the east/south/west/north thing is throwing me off, but it sounds like the description of a cross.

Whatever the case...my search will continue for crosses in the Old Testament.

Parting Waters

2011-05-20T12:35:00.000-05:00

Did you know that waters are parted four times in the Bible?

I'm sure many are familiar with the scene from the movie the Ten Commandments, where Moses parts the Red Sea with his staff in dramatic fashion. In the Bible, of course, the parting of the Red Sea is found in Exodus 14.

The interesting thing is, though, that it is not the only place where waters are parted in the Bible. Waters are also parted in these three passages: Joshua 3:1 - 4:18, II Kings 2:7-8, and II Kings 2:13-14.

In Joshua 3:14-17, for example, the Israelites crossed into the Promised Land via the Jordan River:

So it was, when the people set out from their camp to cross over the Jordan, with the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people, and as those who bore the ark came to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests who bore the ark dipped in the edge of the water (for the Jordan overflows all its banks during the whole time of harvest), that the waters which came down from upstream stood still, and rose in a heap very far away at Adam, the city that is beside Zaretan. So the waters that went down into the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, failed, and were cut off; and the people crossed over opposite Jericho. Then the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood firm on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan; and all Israel crossed over on dry ground, until all the people had crossed completely over the Jordan.

In the II Kings 2:7-8 passage, Elijah and Elisha are also crossing the Jordan River, but in this case Elijah rolls up his cloak and strikes the waters:

And fifty men of the sons of the prophets went and stood facing them at a distance, while the two of them stood by the Jordan. Now Elijah took his mantle, rolled it up, and struck the water; and it was divided this way and that, so that the two of them crossed over on dry ground.

Likewise, in II Kings 2:13-14, when Elisha crossed the Jordan, he also rolled up his cloak (well, Elijah's cloak, really) and struck the water:

He also took up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood by the bank of the Jordan. Then he took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, and said, “Where is the LORD God of Elijah?” And when he also had struck the water, it was divided this way and that; and Elisha crossed over.

In addition, in the Joshua passage, it talks about memorial stones being placed near the river to commemorate the crossing. In Joshua 4:4-7 it reads:

Then Joshua called the twelve men whom he had appointed from the children of Israel, one man from every tribe; and Joshua said to them: “Cross over before the ark of the LORD your God into the midst of the Jordan, and each one of you take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, that this may be a sign among you when your children ask in time to come, saying, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’ Then you shall answer them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD; when it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. And these stones shall be for a memorial to the children of Israel forever.”

Has anybody gone on an archaelogical search today to find these stones?