Random Writings, Etc.

Evidently there is no picture of this on the internet, so I'm going to put one up myself... Ruby Tequila's Gringo Killer Habanero Hot Sauce

2011-01-01T06:08:00.000-05:00

The whole world should know about this. I found my bottle at HEB a couple years ago, and brought it with me in my backpack--and eventually to Israel. This hot sauce is one of my favorites.

When I returned to America, though, I couldn't find it anymore. Recently, when trying to find a pic to add to my wishlist, I found out that the reason HEB stopped carrying it was that someone had gone politically correct on me and complained about it being called "Gringo killer", as if that was offensive. Thus it had been taken off the shelves.

Bad call, HEB. You don't have to succumb to every person's sensitivities when it violates the common good.

Anyways, here's the image--sorry it's not higher quality!

Japanese + Westerner?

2010-11-27T17:38:00.001-05:00

http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2000/08/07/coupling

http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue4/karen.html

http://www.biz2web.com/grant/c11.htm

http://japanese.about.com/od/relationships/Relationships_in_the_Japanese_Culture.htm

Hebrew Resources

2010-07-27T09:19:00.001-06:00

http://www.hebrew.ecott.ch/#Learning_aids

Lots of links to hebrew learning resources

http://www.laits.utexas.edu/hebrew/heblang/tutorials/new/visualv/index.html

University of Texas verb practice

http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/2864406

Good explanation of Gerunds and some other topics with examples. Very concise.

http://www.internetpolyglot.com/lessons-he-en

Word lists organized by topic.

2010-07-06T05:11:00.000-06:00

I am a 59 year old femalewho suffers from continous outbreaks of a staff condition called MRSA.(look up on google) Unfortunately, I went to have my nails done 5 years ago and they used a dirty tool on me and they broke my skin. The nail tool was not clean and transferred MIRSA into my blood stream. It now is a problem because once MRSA enters your blood stream you are "cursed" for the rest of your life. I am colonized with this dreadful disease now and I am unable to have any surgeries because along with mrsa I have a mechanical valve in my heart. Gradually, your immune system becomes very fragile and you take various antibiotics. This too is very waring on the body
About six years ago, I felt very tired and I was diagnosed with Mitral Valve Stenosis. I had surgery and they implanted a "St. Jude Mechanical Valve" in my heart. I am always ticking. And that is a good thing. Unfortunately, I am unable to have back surgery. I have 3 herniated discs. Titanium is not user friendly with a mitral valve and MRSA. No surgeon will operate onme. If I were to have surgery, there is an 80 per cent risk that I would die. The risk of MIRSA coming to visit is very high.
So I am almost done. I pray for all of you that are in pain. I am embarassed to even share my condition with all of you that have suffered from your loved ones diagnosis.I cry as I type this because it is a dark cold world. I put on a happy face for my family and for that I am eternally grateful.
In closing, I will pray for each and every one of you today and forever. Please help us raise awareness for the #1 staff strain in America called MRSA. Also. for the pain we have been given to endure. My ticking heart goes out to all of you.
Liz
-----------------------------

Now that's heartbreaking.

Chilean recipes

2010-06-25T06:04:00.000-06:00

Empanadas Fritas de Pino
(Fried Meat Empanadas)

In a medium bowl, stir together the flour and salt. Cut in shortening using a pastry blender, or pinching into small pieces using your fingers, until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Use a fork to stir in water a few tablespoons at a time, until the mixture forms a ball. Pat into a ball, and flatten slightly. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until tender. Crumble in the beef, and season with salt, paprika, cumin and black pepper. Cook, stirring frequently, until beef is browned. Drain excess grease, and stir in the raisins and vinegar. Refrigerate until chilled, then stir in the hard-cooked eggs.
Form the dough into 2 inch balls. On a floured surface, roll each ball out into a thin circle. Spoon some of the meat mixture onto the center, then fold into half-moon shapes. Seal edges by pressing with your fingers.
Heat oil in a deep-fryer to 365 degrees F (180 degrees C). Place one or two pies into the fryer at a time. Cook for about 5 minutes, turning once to brown on both sides. Drain on paper towels, and serve hot.

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/4 cups water, or as needed

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 1/2 pounds ground beef
1 pinch salt
2 tablespoons paprika
1 tablespoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 cup raisins
1 tablespoon white vinegar
2 hard-cooked eggs, peeled and chopped
1 quart oil for frying, or as needed

Comment:

Oh, my God! I'm Chilean. Empanadas, are among my favorite traditional food. Chilean empanadas are unique in texture and taste. This recipe is great! You can also substitute the meat filling ("el pino") for Mozarella cheese, poultry, or seafood. When you use cheese, don't use any of the ingredients for the meat one, just the cheese! Sparkle confectioner sugar on the top of the fried cheese empanada before serving. This recipe should've been called "Fried Meat Empanadas" (Empanadas Fritas de Pino). "Pino" is what we call the mix of all the ingredients in the meat. For all empanadas, slide ur clean, wet index finger on the edge of the dough before folding and cooking. This prevents the filling from dripping or falling out while fryng the empanada. Poke the top of the dough with a fork about 3 times before frying so air can exit and prevent dough for exploding while frying. Look for the recipes for all of them and try them. You and ur family will just love them all! Your guests will love them, too. Make at least a dozen of them for a family of three or four. For parties, make sure you make at least 2 per guest. Cook time is less than 5 minutes. Two or three minutes of deep fry should be enough. IMPORTANT: Pls, don't use supermarket dough. The dough recipe is as important as the filling to taste the true Chilean empanadas. Add spices to the filling as per your taste. Don't substitute anything! Enjoy! :)

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Isa's colo de mono

20 whole cloves
5 cinnamon sticks
1 cup water
1 gallon cold milk
1/4 cup instant coffee granules
1 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract (optional)
1 cup pisco, white rum, brandy, or other lightly-flavored liquor (optional)

Gently simmer the cloves and cinnamon sticks in water until reduced by half, about 30 minutes. Add 1 cup of milk, and heat to a simmer, then stir in and dissolve the coffee and sugar.
Strain the coffee mixture into the remaining cold milk, and discard the cloves and cinnamon sticks. Stir in the vanilla extract and pisco. Store in the refrigerator.

------
Chilean Chicken

2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
1 green pepper, finely chopped
1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 cup tomato paste
1 cup honey
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons dried basil
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce or hot sauce
4 tablespoons dry mustard
3/4 cup chicken broth

Directions

Preheat oven to 350°F
Bake chicken for a ½ hour or until done; cool. Cut into bite size pieces and place in baking dish.
In saucepan, combine all other ingredients except chicken broth, simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add broth and simmer another 15 minutes.
Pour over chicken, cover and bake for 30 minutes. Remove lid, bake for 15 minutes.
Serve over rice.

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A political exchange

2010-06-22T16:18:00.003-06:00

‎I'll be decent and respond here, though you publicly and rudely made a backhand comment towards me.

Do you really think you'd talk like that in real life to a 19 year old?

"I owe Chris an apology for treating his FB page like a listserv. To people who think public education is worse off now than in the 1930s, who use the words "liberal" and "leftist" as equivalent epithets in the manner of the Reagan school, who think the health care system isn't broken, and who regard people praying when they want to as a "huge problem," not so much."

I know it's probably been a while since you were in a public school; I, however, spent my days in public school enraged at being forced to participate in a wasteful system--wasteful with time, and wasteful with money. I wrote personal little articles for myself on what would improve the system. I researched education systems in other countries. And because of the personal affront the system afforded me, I came to the position I now have on it.

I'm not talking about something I heard someone else talking about. I sincerely can't stand it.

When I spoke of 'leftists' and 'liberal', I didn't intend it in a derogatory manner. I'm being honest here. I can see, now, how it could be read either way, but I am not polemic against other points of view--that would violate the statement itself. I have lots of friends (maybe the majority) who are of different political persuasion. But when I find people writing and talking like every other point of political view is an idiot, I want to pull my hair out. How can anyone think that way? How can they be so arrogant? So disrespectful? So blind?

Notice this time I phrase it neutrally. That's because now I'm talking about a more general sentiment that I feel just as strongly when I see people on the far right who are simply dogmatic and don't think for themselves... just like those same polemics on the left. The way you were treating Linda, whoever that other person was, and myself. That being said, I personally get to experience the wrath of the liberals and leftists; enough of my positions are compatible with those on the right for them to, generally, be ok with me.

As far as your statement regarding prayer, that's distortion and ridicule. A minaret is not necessary for praying. My comment about France even already demonstrated this; as far as I can recall, open prayer falls into that category of forbidden religious demonstration. That's ridiculous. I'm all about personal religious freedom. However, constructing a minaret is imposing your beliefs on others. What's more, and what often isn't discussed, is the fact that a minaret is viewed as a symbol of conquering within the Muslim world... In today's world, there's no need for a large tower to blast out prayers to Allah for people to know it's time. We have watches. We have mp3 players. Alarm clocks. They aren't building minarets so they can pray, they're building it because they believe they are engaged in spiritual warfare, and they want to impose on those around them. A mosque existing is fine, they are entitled to a place of prayer... but not to putting it on loudspeakers for me to be forced hear.

Is health care broken? I can't know, I guess. My point of view is too small to really say that. I know I hear people on both sides say opposite things, which means I probably shouldn't trust either of them. I'd imagine, though, that if it really were broken, I'd have known someone who had experienced its letdown, or have experienced it myself. I've been to the hospital a few times for broken bones, a blood clot, etc. As far as I know, it went smoothly.

Is it like that for everyone? Well I'm sure it's bad for someone, because there's a movement of people trying to fix it. Whether that's because it's on their party's agenda and they therefore become dogmatic, or the majority of them are personally acquainted with its shortcomings, I have no way of knowing.

What I do know is my opinion on systems being put into the hands of the government from personal experience... So if it is broken, I don't think this is the solution.

Furthermore, I don't want a high-tax government that provides lots of services. I'm glad that it works in some other countries; I believe in America we should be entitled to spend our money as we please, and the government should do as little as necessary. The private sector exists to provide goods and services, and with the right blending I think that's the best option.

Can you still treat me like you did? I'm trying to demonstrate to you that I'm not an idiot, and you're being unfair. I'm not trying to convince you. I'm just trying to show you I'm a real person with legitimate beliefs worthy of your respect.

Have a nice day,

[K]

-------------

Dear K,

Thank you for taking the time to respond, and I'll try keep it short. You get no extra points for being 19; if you're tall enough to get on the ride--the "ride" being FB comments--you're treated like anyone else. Your remark about minarets was this: "I live in Jerusalem, lots of minarets here, and it's constantly a huge problem for a number of people to have prayers going of at 4:15 in the morning, every morning." I guess you're not in a neighborhood where the bells thunder Lauds every morning, but if you carefully read what you wrote--the problem is people who have prayers then. That has nothing to do with the shape of a minaret on the skyline, which is what the Swiss are having problems with. If you meant something else, fine, but that's what you wrote. And I don't know how long you've lived in Eretz, but those of us who are not Christian in the U.S., but "spiritual warfare" is a very common term used by many Christian groups here to describe what they feel needs to be done. (K Street types, etc.)

Insurance: it is against the law here, at least in most states, to drive without auto insurance. The reason is that if an uninsured person gets in an accident and is at fault, but that person cannot pay, we ALL pay through a variety of means, because costs are spread out via increased premiums, medical costs, etc. I am in favor of the same for medical insurance, because the risks are just as great or greater, and "Linda," whoever that is, is being disingenuous if she thinks she can really opt out. That was my point: if she gets cancer or a brain tumor, she'll be in the emergency room instantly, and we'll all be paying for her, despite her fine words about independence and big government. And the emergency room is far costlier than preventative care, so the people so interested in hanging on to their own money are happily wasting . . . mine. No, I don't feel I was overreacting; I think she deserves what she got. You have government care in Israel, if I'm not mistaken; minimal care for citizens' well-being, ESPECIALLY prenatal and preventative care is a moral responsibility. Here, people are without that care, and their numbers are growing exponentially because private insurance companies find paying for them to be unprofitable. That is immoral.

I'm a product of public schools, except for my doctorate, and I teach at one. I don't know where you went to school, but will simply say that there is at least as much waste in private schools as in public. . . plus, they are answerable to narrower constituencies. I'll take public every time.

FINALLY: "leftist" and "liberal" are not at all the same thing. Leftists were hard-left radicals, violent-overthrow types. Liberals? Please--moral responsibility of government to care for its citizens, full equality and inclusion for people of all colors, religions, genders, preferences, etc., and ABOVE ALL *strong* schools. (Not at all warlike, but not pacifists either.) Those are liberal values, which are in many ways antithetical to "leftist" values. Conflating the two is a common technique of the shrieking pop-culture Right here in the U.S., and it is dishonest. (I'm not accusing you of dishonesty; I suspect that you never learned the difference, which goes back to the 1960s.)

I didn't keep it short. Thank you for thinking, but if you step in the ring, young'un, you've got to expect punches to be thrown. And note the importance of *clear* writing, making sure that you have said or written exactly what you mean, and making sure that you know the meanings of words you use . . . and (in the case of Linda) making sure there aren't a hundred holes in your argument. Self-confidence is a good thing. Self-righteousness . . . nope.

Sleep tight, and enjoy Israel. I've never been, but hope to go one day--I've several relatives there.‎

--------------------

I don't want points for being 19, I want points for being human. Nineteen or otherwise, one shouldn't be treated like that for disagreeing. I appreciate being treated like everyone else--as long as you're treating everyone else as an equal. Previously, it didn't feel that way. This time around, the tone is much more reassuring.

"I live in Jerusalem, lots of minarets here, and it's constantly a huge problem for a number of people to have prayers going of at 4:15 in the morning, every morning."

I suppose I could have worded this a little more clearly... Perhaps I was being presumptuous before, but are you aware that minarets have loudspeakers from which they call out prayers a handful (I think it's 5) times a day? I don't know what common knowledge about minarets actually is. Regardless, assuming you knew that bit of information, what I was trying to indicate was the problem of prayers at 4:15am... As in loud calls to Allah waking everyone in the vicinity up, constantly. Disrupting their day. There's a great cafe in the old city I love to bring friends who are visiting to--I just have to make sure to avoid the call to prayer hours, because it's so loud there that sitting outside is unbearable. It's a very disruptive event. People praying at 4:15am, or any other hour, is fine with me. People doing it over a loudspeaker? Not so much. Especially not a tiny minority.

I went and read the article you linked previously, by the way, and the problem the Swiss were presenting was not the dislike of the way it looks on the skyline--that wouldn't have garnered a whopping 60% majority in favor of the anti-minaret bill--but instead the recognition that a minaret is a status symbol of Islam and the Islamization of the country, and of values that are incompatible with the swiss mindset. The Swiss who are in favor of the bill recognize the minaret not as an expression of the freedom of religion of a few people, but of crossing the line to infringing on the religious freedoms of others.

As far as using a similar term to 'K Street' American Christians, that's exactly the type of connotation I was aiming for... political-religious intermingling, intentional, organized, and perhaps slightly sinister in the implication of unstated manipulation.

I'm aware that auto insurance works that way, but notice: it's privately handled. The government doesn't give auto insurance. So in the end, people pay for their own mistakes, and get rewarded for safe driving. Quality of auto insurance is relatively good, it's fairly cheap. There's thriving competition. Why can't there be a solution in that direction for health care? Why do we have to enlarge an already bloated government? As far as profitability, calling something immoral here is sticky. Where does responsibility lay? Can't we just as easily say doctors capable of performing John's surgery (I believe John was the name of the guy in Chris' article?) are immoral for not just taking on one pro-bono case? I mean, really, what does it cost the doctor? The equipment for the surgery, which is half the cost, is already there and paid for. Simply using it won't be that expensive. The other part of the cost is his salary. So he's giving up a few hours of his life, at most... and not a doctor there will do it just because saving someone's life is payment enough? When the care of individuals has become simply about profit, and being a doctor is so lucrative that only those concerned with their profits above the well being of others make it to the field, that's a problem. Why should we expect insurance companies to take on that burden? An insurance company is a corporation. It's raison d'être is to make a profit. If you have a problem with that, then we're talking about the much bigger (and certainly legitimate) issue of corporations in the US... but as it is, I see the human moral failure of the doctors as a much bigger dilemma.

The case of the man in Chris' article was also, I think, a special case. I have no problem with our government helping out the people that have no responsibility for their medical problems. I also think doctors should be willing to give some community service hours towards that respect, rather than lining their pockets with everyone else's money, if it comes to that. But the majority of people who can't get insurance are very likely those who are making poor lifestyle choices health-wise (as is the majority of America, as far as I can tell). Obesity and Smoking are the two top killers in America.

Both of those are preventable simply by abstaining from poor diet choices. Those are our number 1 killers. Why should everyone be forced to pool money to pay for their choices? If there's some form of accountability for those who receive care, to show they are proactive in their health, then maybe we can talk... But I'm not interested in a system that just lets people keep making their mistakes on our dime. I think you'll notice at this point that we're pointing at the same problem: our dime paying for someone else's poor choices.

Maybe there is a problem with health care, I really don't doubt it--I've yet to find a perfect societal institution. But I highly doubt that this system of nationalized health care is the solution.

There is nationalized health care in Israel; there's also a 50% import tax, among others. Living in Israel is really hard under the huge taxation burden, among other things--the cost of living is about the same as in America, the average income and minimum wage are about half of that in America. Even if we call that a well functioning system, it's not the kind I want to have in America. I don't want a baby-sitter government that handles everything; the centralization of power in government is a recipe for disaster. The decentralization of power is one of the greatest achievements in our government's history--the federal states of America, the original primacy of the state, and so on. I believe in the ideas and principles behind those decisions, and am quite sorry to see that being erased.

As far as schools: you 'took public every time'--except when it came to your highest degree. But that's a moot point; the real issue is that I'm talking about public *mandatory* education, where competition is minimal. I know it's not the same at university level--and I would imagine in large part that that is because of the competition of private universities. Our mandatory public education kills competition, and so sinks to low quality because of the lack of accountability. You say that a private school has a lower constituency holding it accountability, but who is holding the school accountable? "The people"? Alas, we're not a true democracy, and our representatives upholding our 'democracy' aren't holding them accountable (I'm really touching on a more severe problem in our country). In reality, whatever system we have watching over the public schools isn't working. Small groups are generally more efficient anyways. And certainly when you bring a factor of profit into the picture, efficiency necessarily increases.

Indeed I didn't learn the difference between leftist and liberal; when I saw left, I mean the opposite of right (which is a bit more clearly defined through being in common use, I guess). As far as liberals, I agree with all of those values--I usually disagree with how they intend to go about it. You make a valid point about use of clear writing here; I learn something every day, I guess. I'll amend my future use of "left" as an American political term in the future.

You should visit while there's relative peace--you never know how long that will last here, and it's thus well cherished. I've been here for almost 1.5 years... I'm at Hebrew University right now, but I just stated this year. Last year I volunteered teaching English in the West Bank and in East (read:Arab) Jerusalem.

You mentioned in yours that you'd try to keep it short; I didn't, and hope it isn't a problem, though I understand if you don't have an hour for composing a response like I just gave. Either way, it has thus far been an enjoyable exchange. The main point of this discussion, as I see it--reconciliation and respect--has been found. The rest is for fun.

May your visit be soon and long.

K‎

--------------

It's a shame that I never got a response to this. I really enjoyed it.‎

---------------

No offense was meant, K. It was just apparent that we have differing views on key issues, and both of us (obviously) have a great deal going on, which is a good thing. You know from Chris, and probably on your own, What Academics Do: a constant barrage of due dates for reviews, articles, papers to be given places, etc. And that's if business is *good*! I'm a Chopin guy, and this year is the two hundredth anniversary of his birth, and so things have been wall-to-wall for me. Given all that plus the odd major performance and my job and time with family, you can see where lengthy FB colloquies fall.

Stay thoughtful, and continue to walk your talk.

Best--JB‎

Viva Español!

2010-06-22T15:58:00.003-06:00

http://www.contactchile.cl/en/chile-chilean-slang.php

imported this list into Anki wholesale.

Demonstration of spanish verbs (PICTURE)

Several useful articles concerning Spanish Verbs

the above page links to the following articles:
http://spanish.about.com/od/verbtenses/a/verbtenses.htm
http://spanish.about.com/od/verbtenses/a/two_past_tenses.htm
http://spanish.about.com/od/verbtenses/a/forming_future.htm
http://spanish.about.com/od/usingparticularverbs/a/verbsforlove.htm
http://spanish.about.com/cs/verbs/a/future_ways.htm
http://spanish.about.com/library/weekly/aa040201b.htm
http://spanish.about.com/cs/verbs/a/future_uses.htm

---

Chilean Food tips

Chilean Foods

---

From Yahoo Answers:

One characteristic of Chilean Spanish which is quite widespread in the spoken, yet not the written language, is the Chilean voseo.

The trick is to look at the conjugation of "vosotros".
If it ends in -áis then it becomes -ái or -áy in Chile.
The endings -éis and -ís both merged into -ís, or -íh, because the final S is aspirated.

For example:

Tú - Vosotros - Chilean voseo

tú hablas - vosotros habláis - tú ablái
tú estás - vosotros estáis - tú ehtái
tú comes - vosotros coméis - tú comíh
tú haces - vosotros hacéis - tú acíh
tú vives - vosotros vivís - tú vivíh
no te preocupes - no os preocupéis - no te preocupíh
no digas nada - no digáis nada - no digái nada
quiero que hables - ... que habléis - ... que ablíh

Notice that some vowels change:
tú duermes - vosotros dormís - tú dormíh
que duermas bien - que durmáis bien - que durmái bien
tú puedes - vosotros podéis - tú podíh
tú quieres - vosotros queréis - tú queríh
tú juegas - vosotros jugáis - tú jugái

Another characteristic of Chilean Spanish, as mentioned before, is that they aspirate the final S within a syllable. Sometimes so weakly that it is barely audible.

For example:
"Cómo estás?" - "Cómo ehtái?".
Nosotros somos chilenos, y ustedes? - nosotroh somoh chilenoh, y uhtéeh?

All in all, Chilean sounds nice, though.

-----

Con Los Años Que Me Quieran

Depression drugs are no better than placebo.

2010-04-26T08:32:00.000-06:00

The Radiometric Dating Deception

2010-03-15T17:09:00.002-05:00

Copied wholesale from:

http://www.tasc-creationscience.org/other/plaisted/www.cs.unc.edu/_plaisted/ce/deception.html

(other related links:
DNA is a code, and no code has ever naturally occurred.
Many, many arguments against Evolution
Are there beneficial Mutations?)

----

According to the Bible, the creation week lasted seven literal days and occurred a few thousand years ago. However, many Christians today accept the teaching of science that life has existed on earth for millions, even billions, of years. This millions of years time scale is based on radiometric dating of fossil-bearing layers of rock. This teaching of long ages for life on earth has led some Christians to question and even abandon their belief in the Bible, since a literal reading of Scripture is not consistent with the belief that life has existed on earth for millions of years. I believe that many educated Christians are especially doubting the Bible because of the supposed evidence from radiometric dating that life has existed on earth for very long periods of time.

In fact, I believe that the question of how long life has existed on earth is even more important than the question of whether life was created or evolved. You see, the theory of evolution has so many problems that most people find evolution hard to accept, and I don't think many people are led to question their faith because of it. It just doesn't seem reasonable that life could develop on its own by chance, and the evidence that this actually happened is missing. It's also not a problem that geologists say that the sedimentary layers of rock took millions of years to form, since there are many evidences that the great geological formations on earth were formed rapidly and catastropically, as in the Biblical flood or subsequent catastrophic events. For example, there is too little erosion between the geological layers for them to have taken millions of years to form. But it is a serious problem when geologists say that they can measure the ages of these rocks by reliable methods, and that these ages turn out to be in the millions and billions of years range. So I believe that this question of radiometric, or isotopic dating, is one of the most important questions in the creation-evolution controversy, and one which Christians have to respond to.

In fact, I believe that the evidence does not permit the long ages given by radiometric dates, so there must be a problem with them somewhere, even on scientific grounds. The geological column has too little erosion to allow for such long time periods. Also, there is too little sediment on the sea floor for the oceans to have existed for hundreds of millions of years, and the continents would have worn away many times in this time period at current rates of erosion. Just the fact that there are so many fossils shows that the great sedimentary deposits on earth had to have formed rapidly, because well-preserved fossils do not form under conditions of gradual sedimentation. So what exactly is wrong with radiometric dating? How can we explain the fact that these dating methods do, in fact, yield dates in the hundreds of millions of years? Why is it that so many museums and textbooks confidently give ages for fossils in the hundreds of millions of years?

This conflict has at times been difficult for me personally. It has been a struggle for me to try to understand the evidences and to learn enough about them to find the answers to these questions.

I was initially involved in some internet discussions where the subject of radiometric dating was brought up, and the arguments in favor of life existing for millions of years seemed almost overpowering. It was claimed that many different dating methods all agree to within a few percent on the ages of the fossils, and that there is no way to explain this except that these methods are giving the true ages. Otherwise, why would they all agree? These different dating methods involve different decay processes, and it is not reasonable to assume that chance or some other process would make them all speed up or slow down by the same amount.

At the time I could find few answers to these questions. There were some creation web pages and books that discussed radiometric dating, but most of them could not really answer the questions of the evolutionists. I ordered one book by John Woodmorappe which did contain some material that was helpful to me.

As a result of these discussions and a considerable amount of research that I did, I wrote a couple of fairly long articles on radiometric dating and put them on my creation web page. One of them was copied to another frequently-visited creation web page. Now many people have seen and read these articles on the web and have been strengthened in their faith in the Bible as a result. From time to time I receive messages from them expressing their appreciation for these articles. Also, these articles are among the most frequently visited articles on my web site.

Here are some of the books I have studied in order to learn more about this subject: This book by Faure, written in 1986, is one of the main textbooks on radiometric dating. This book, by Dickin, written in 1995, is another popular textbook. Here is a book by Harland and others which gives the geological time scale, telling how many millions of years each period is believed to have lasted, and the evidence for this. This book by Dalrymple uses data from radiometric dating to attempt to argue that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old. This book is the proceedings of a conference in which geologists and others attempt to refute creationist teaching. I also have some creationist books. This is a book by Slusher in which he criticizes radiometric dating. This is a new book by John Woodmorappe, published this year, with many quotations from geologists themselves about problems with radiometric dating.

What I want to do today is to present what I have learned about this subject. This may seem like an area that is too technical for a sermon, but I think that the importance of the area justifies it. I don't have all the answers, but I think that you will be strengthened and reassured in your faith in the Bible as a result of what I have learned. We need to pray that the Lord will give spirit-led scientists the knowledge they need to deal with this subject, so that the truth will be revealed, because the conflict is beyond human wisdom. This area is a key support for the theory of evolution, which is undermining Christian values all over the world.

First I want to make a few comments about the geological time scale, then consider several methods in detail, and then discuss some other issues.

The geological time scale, described in this book by Harland and others, is based on less than 800 dates obtained by various methods on rocks from different geological layers. These dates tend to agree with each other, but there are hundreds of thousands of other dates that have been measured and were not listed. Many of these other dates disagree with one another, so it is not clear what the significance of these 800 dates is.

The great majority of the dates on which the geological time scale is based, are measured using one method, the potassium-argon (K-Ar) method. In order to explain the fact that older dates tend to be found deeper down (if this is true), we really only need to explain why this shouuld be true for K-Ar dating, and then we have explained much of the geological time scale.

K-Ar dating is based on the decay of potassium 40 to argon 40. When lava is hot, argon escapes from it, so it starts out with potassium but no argon. Over time, potassium gradually decays to argon, and the rate at which this occurs can be measured in the laboratory. By measuring how much potassium and argon is in a rock, and knowing how fast potassium decays, one can compute how old the rock is. The more argon, the older the rock is. The more potassium, the younger the rock is, since a larger amount of potassium would produce argon faster.

However, the reality is much more complicated than this. The argon does not always escape when the lava is hot. The potassium can be removed later on, invalidating the calculation. Also, rocks absorb argon very easily from the environment. In fact, geologists have to take considerable precautions to get rid of the argon that accumulates on their lab equipment so that they can accurately measure K-Ar ages. Rocks can absorb a considerable amount of argon in this way, so all of the argon in a rock did not necessarily come from the potassium it contains. Atmospheric argon absorbed in this way can be corrected for, because it has a certain amount of argon 36 which can be measured. However, argon also comes up from the interior of the earth, and this argon has very little argon 36 in it, and cannot be detected. So we can explain the old K-Ar dates just by the fact that rocks absorb so much argon that comes up from the interior of the earth. Older rocks would have more time to absorb argon, and there was probably more argon coming through the earth at the time of the Flood and shortly thereafter than there is today. In fact, a number of geologists themselves now say that K-Ar dating is not very reliable, or mainly of historical importance. This is quite an admission, since most of the geological time scale is based on K-Ar dating.

Another problem with K-Ar dating is that many volcanoes that we know erupted in the past several hundred years give K-Ar dates in the hundreds of thousands or millions of years.

A large number of K-Ar dates on which the geological time scale is based, are dates from a mineral called glaucony. However, many geologists say that this mineral is highly unreliable for dating. So here we have a large part of the geological time scale based on a mineral which geologists themselves say is highly unreliable.

So I guess we'll have to discard K-Ar dating as a reliable dating method.

Now let's consider another method that some textbooks say is reliable. This is the dating of zircons by uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating and some other related methods. Zircon is a gemstone, a mineral that can have a considerable amount of uranium in it. However, when zircons form, they exclude lead. Over time, uranium decays to lead. By measuring the amount of uranium and lead in a zircon and knowing the rate of decay, we can measure the age of the zircon. Lead is somewhat mobile, however, as is uranium, and so other methods have been devised that can date zircons even if some lead leaves the rock.

The problem with this method is that zircons can include lead when they form, throwing off the date. They can also lose uranium. In addition, they can travel through lava without melting, so the date computed for a zircon may be measuring a much older event than the lava flow itself. Even geologists recognize that ages given by zircons are often much too old, even for them. Furthermore, a batch of zircons from the same place will often yield widely different ages.

So I guess we'll have to discard zircons as a reliable dating method.

The next candidate dating method is fission track dating. Some minerals contain uranium 238 which decays by fission. It splits in two, and the pieces fly apart through the mineral, creating fission tracks. These tracks can be made visible by etching with an acid solution, and then counted. By knowing how much uranium 238 there is in a rock and by counting the number of fission tracks, one can measure the age of the rock.

There are a number of problems with this method, and even geologists have had intense disagreements about its reliability. The ages often do not agree with what geologists expect. One problem is that certain constants involved in this method are not known or are hard to estimate, so they are calibrated based on the "known" ages of other rocks. If these other "known" ages are in error, then fission track dates are in error by the same amount.

Another problem is that fission tracks fade at high temperatures. So if there are too few tracks, the geologist can always say that most of them faded away. To get a fission track date, one has to know something about the temperature history of a rock.

Another problem is that uranium 238 can be removed from a rock by water. If a sample loses 99 percent of its uranium, then the fission track date will be 100 times too old. In fact, if a rock loses only about 1/350 of its uranium each year, then in 4000 years only one part in one hundred thousand of the uranium will remain, meaning that the date can approach a hundred thousand times too old. Now, 1/350 of the uranium each year is not much, especially when you consider that water occurs practically everywhere in the earth below a few hundred feet, and rocks shallower than this also become wet due to rainfall filtering down through the soil.

Another problem is knowing what is a fission track and what is just an imperfection in the rock. Geologists themselves suggest that imperfections are at times mistaken for fission tracks, and admit that fission tracks are not always easy to recognize. Textbooks have beautiful, clean pictures of fission tracks, but I doubt that these illustrations correspond to reality.

Along this line, it is interesting to note that for every fission of uranium 238, there are over a million decays by a process called alpha decay, in which a helium nucleus is ejected from the nucleus of uranium. The alpha particle creates a long, thin trail of damage, and the former uranium nucleus recoils in the other direction, creating a short, wide track about one thousandth as long as a fission track. Not only this, but what's left of the uranium nucleus (having lost the helium nucleus) decays by thirteen more steps until it becomes lead, so there are over fourteen million other decays for every fission track. Over four million of these occur within a few days. All of these decays emit particles that damage the crystal structure. Some of these decays emit alpha particles, and some emit beta particles, which are energetic electrons. In addition, many millions of gamma rays are emitted, which are high-energy electromagnetic radiation like X rays, and also damage the crystal structure. Perhaps the damage created by all this radiation can be increased by chemical action and be etched by acid to appear like fission tracks. Or if two alpha particle trails are close enough together, perhaps they can damage the crystal enough so that their combined trail will be etched away by acid like a fission track.

Minerals are also subject to alteration by water, which may contain chemicals that react with the rock. Over long periods of time, all of these processes can damage the crystal structure, and it may be that when the mineral is etched with acid, track-like formations appear as a result.

Another problem is that fission tracks in some minerals, like zircons, can survive in lava, so the fission track date can be measuring an older event than the lava flow. Thus we cannot necessarily use this method to date the age of the fossils.

I think fission track dating has more potential than the other methods, but in view of all of these problems, I think we'll have to discard fission track dating as a reliable method.

There are still other methods, such as rubidium-strontium dating, which are based on the decay of a parent substance (in this case rubidium) to its daughter product (strontium). These methods all depend on knowing how much daughter product was initially present, which we cannot know. So we'll have to discard rubidium-strontium dating and similar methods as reliable dating methods

There is also the so-called "isochron" method, which is a clever way to estimate the amount of daughter product present initially, so that one can then use rubidium-strontium dating and other methods to get reliable dates. Unfortunately, isochrons can also be caused by mixing processes that have nothing to do with true dates. One study indicated that nearly all published isochrons have properties suggesting that they result from mixings, and thus are not giving true dates. Another study indicated that nearly all isochrons published have poor statistical quality. Geologists often make excuses to reject isochrons, anyway, when they don't like the dates.

So I guess we'll have to discard the isochron method as a reliable dating method.

The problem is that now there is nothing left! It's also interesting that geologists frequently admit that these different methods usually don't agree with one another. So the next time you see a museum exhhibit with a sign saying that some fossil is so many tens or hundreds of millions of years old, I hope you'll take that with a large grain of salt.

If there is real evidence that these fossils are hundreds of millions of years old, then I want to know about it. But so far I haven't found it.

Could it be that all the old K-Ar dates for fossil bearing layers of rock are due to argon added to the rock and not to the decay of potassium? Could it be that all the old zircon dates are due to inherited lead or inherited zircons, and not to decay of uranium over long time periods? Could it be that all the old fission track dates can be explained by the leaching of most of the uranium out of a rock, or by a mistaken calibration, or by radiation damage, and do not give a true age? Could it be that all of these fossil-bearing rocks are very young?

From all the study I've done so far, nothing would exclude this possibility.

In addition to the fact that these methods all have problems, there are additional problems with radiometric dating. For example, there may be choices of methods to use for dating a rock, and choices of which minerals to date, and geologists choose methods and rocks that give dates that tend to agree with one another. They may treat a rock with an acid, or purify it using a magnetic separator, to get the dates to agree. Then they use this agreement between methods as evidence that radiometric dating is correct.

I've also been bewildered by contradictory statements by different geologists. One source says that low uranium zircons always give dates that agree with one another, while another source says that the amount of uranium has no effect on the fequency with which the dates agree. One source says that zircons have little inherited lead, and another source says that this is a common problem. One source says that historic lava flows rarely give old K-Ar ages, and another source says that they often do. Often I've tried to figure out how some evidence could be true, only later to find out that it's not so.

Now, there are some cases where radiometric dating does appear to be measuring a true age, where many methods agree, such as dating of meteorites, and certain very old rocks on the earth. If these dates are correct, then this material would have to originate from before the creation week. However, radiometric dating is based on the assumption that decay rates are constant. If decay rates have varied, then all methods can be in error, even when they agree.

Along this line, it is interesting that a number of scientists recently have suggested that the speed of light was much faster in the past. Now, the speed of light is a constant, so if this constant can change, maybe other constants, such as decay constants, which measure the rate of decay, can change as well. Here is the article:

Source: University Of Toronto (http://www.utoronto.ca)
Contact: Steven De Sousa , News Services Officer
Phone: (416) 978-6949; Email: steven.desousa@utoronto.ca
Date: Posted 10/6/99
Speed Of Light May Not Be Constant, Physicist Suggests
A University of Toronto professor believes that one of the most sacrosanct rules of 20th-century science -- that the speed of light has always been the same - is wrong. Ever since Einstein proposed his special theory of relativity in 1905, physicists have accepted as fundamental principle that the speed of light -- 300 million metres per second -- is a constant and that nothing has, or can, travel faster. John Moffat of the physics department disagrees - light once travelled much faster than it does today, he believes.
Recent theory and observations about the origins of the universe would appear to back up his belief. For instance, theories of the origin of the universe -- the "Big Bang"- suggest that very early in the universe's development, its edges were farther apart than light, moving at a constant speed, could possibly have travelled in that time. To explain this, scientists have focused on strange, unknown and as-yet-undiscovered forms of matter that produce gravity that repulses objects.
Moffat's theory - that the speed of light at the beginning of time was much faster than it is now - provides an answer to some of these cosmology problems. "It is easier for me to question Einstein's theory than it is to assume there is some kind of strange, exotic matter around me in my kitchen." His theory could also help explain astronomers' discovery last year that the universe's expansion is accelerating. Moffat's paper, co-authored with former U of T researcher Michael Clayton, appeared in a recent edition of the journal Physics Letters.
Copyright (c) 1995-99 ScienceDaily Magazine | Email: editor@sciencedaily.com

Another possibility is that decay rates were increased by some astronomical catastrophe about the time of the flood. It is believed that a huge supernova exploded recently about 1000 light years away from the earth. This produced the Gum Nebula, which covers about 40 degrees in the southern hemisphere, a huge formation. The estimated time for this is 11,000 years ago, but this could be in error, and it could be 5,000 years ago or less, or about the time of the flood. Such a supernova would have showered the earth with many different kinds of radiation that could have excited the nucleii of atoms and led them to decay much faster. This could have even caused the flood, by generating terrific quantities of heat and causing volcanoes to erupt and water to spurt out of the earth. These excited nucleii may have taken a while to go back to their normal states, so decay rates may have been elevated for some time after the flood. I can imagine the terror the antediluvians felt as they saw this huge light erupt in the southern sky, followed by a shower of radiation, the shaking of the earth, and terrific quantities of water gushing out of the earth.

There is a lesson for us in these past events. The Bible says that just as the earth was destroyed by a flood in ancient times, it will be destroyed again when Jesus returns. Then the refuge of lies will be swept away, and the truth will be known, that God is the creator and man owes his allegiance to Him alone. And just as the Lord provided an escape then for those who were willing to obey Him, so He provides salvation for His people today.

Human reason is imperfect, and limited. All these books about radiometric dating were written by men who did their best to understand nature using the scientific method. Their conclusions are subject to change as new evidence is found. But the Bible was inspired by One who is infinite in wisdom, power, and love, who created all things in the beginning by His Word of power. He knows the answers to the questions that we cannot answer, and gives us enough evidence to believe in Him. Even more, the Bible tells us of the love of God, and how we can live better lives here and find salvation in eternity. This book shows us how we can come to know Jesus as our friend and Savior.

Yes, Jesus created life on this earth not too long ago. Man fell into sin, and Jesus came to die on the cross and redeem us from our sins. To all who are willing to believe in Him and repent and confess their sins, He offers forgiveness and eternal life. Soon he is coming again to take us to a better home. Fast fulfilling prophecies show that this event cannot be far distant. Let's not give up our hope because of the uncertain conclusions of radiometric dating, especially when it has so many problems. Now more than ever we have reason to question the long ages of radiometric dating on fossil-bearing rocks. Errors will abound in the last days, but we can have confidence in the Word of God. Soon we will see the Lord face to face, and all uncertainties will be swept away. Let's hold fast our confidence, and be ready to meet our Lord with joy when He returns. May this be the choice of each one here, is my prayer.

Amen.

Back to home page.

Polyglottery, etc.

2010-03-05T17:39:00.004-05:00

A story here details how a man learned Spanish in 6 months.

In 1997 I felt that speaking 3 languages was not enough, and decided that speaking spanish fluently would be a nice thing. I already had some clear ideas on how to learn best languages, so I began to look for a self-study method of high caliber. I found an ad in the Economist which advertised for method written by the FSI, the language teaching arm of the US Department of State. They had one for spanish which I decided to try.
The thing looked pretty disappointing when I opended the parcel, 2 typewritten manuals looking like declassified documents from the 60's, and many, many tapes. But, as you know, the important is the content, not the form. I quickly realised that this method was a good example.
I started at lesson one, with the tape playing. It began :
Listen to this word :
papa
Listen to this other word :
papá
Can you hear the difference ?
Listen again :
papa
papá

The first word means potato and the second daddy. The only difference is in the intonation.
The tape continued its guided tour of the spanish language, very cleverly beginning by simple examples and then letting you infer the rule, then explaining the difference. I soon reached the end of the tape, thrilled by the ease with which I had learned by heart my first dialog. In the evening, I could not help but start another lesson and went on during the night, making those replacement drills at loud voice on after the other. At the end of the first week I was already able to make respectable small talk with perfect prononunciation (I was told so), and I had not written a single line and my eagerness to learn was not diminished my an ounce !
I went on and on, soon finishing the first book and moved to the other one. And then I stopped, having my exams to pass and then some travel to do. I stopped for about 6 weeks (I do not recommend it, but it happens) and then said to myself : Francois, you're really dumb not do it more seriously. You love this method and it's working. So I began again, but now at the increased speed of one lesson a day (recommended was one lesson a week). I took me 2-3 hours of careful study, with a part I could do while driving. At this reckless speed I soon finished the second book, and began to work on the 2 advanced tomes, which came with many tapes as well.
I realised that total fluency was not far from the last lesson, but that I still would need to talk with someone to check if my spanish was really functional and the king was not naked. For weeks I hesitated on the country where I would go, and finally decided for Mexico, the best blend I found of excellent spanish (unlike Cuba), very rich culture (unlike Chile), and relative convenience for the tourist (unlike Colombia).
When I picked up the phone to book a room in Mexico City, I did not even thought of what I was going to say. The spanish flew from my lips without hesitation, and the deal was closed.
In Mexico I found a woman who said she could give me some spanish lessons, a thing I wanted to do to ask some questions I had and make some specialised trade dialogs I could have to make in the future. She made a little test at the beginning, and soon let me lead the lessons as she did not find anything worth working on except some sporadic errors.
For two weeks I talked with the Mexicans about their rich story, current events, customs and culture, I read the national press, bought books and visited the country, all of this made possible by my self study.
So why is this story important to you ? It means that you can learn to speak spanish fluently by self study, learning at your rythm and in less than 6 months if you work 2 hours a day. I used a method created by the Department of State, and I'm not working in any publishing house. This is really my experience and I think it can be reproduced by any normally intelligent, motivated person.
The method I bought is available by Audio Forum, a dealer of language learning methods. However, I later discovered that Barron's sold the same program for a 70% lower price.
Barron's FSI spanish I, 12 tapes, 55$
Barron's FSI spanish II, 12 tapes, 55$
This method has been developped to train diplomats before they went in Latin American countries, and was first published in the 60's by the Foreign Service Institute, the language teaching section of the United States Departement of State.
Tell me if you used this advice !

This Professor Arguelles has learned many, many languages, and would like to start an institute dedicated to polyglottery. He has much to say about learning languages, and his youtube channel is also worth checking out. Here he lists some information, videos, etc. on learning languages.

Also, see these tips on the same website, with things such as...

-----

Some Japanese Phrases are found here.

A Chinese student's blog is found here, with lots of resources.

And now I'm going to turn off my computer and do homework I've been avoiding for 10 hours.

Random Mutation Generator

2010-02-16T11:23:00.003-05:00

Random Mutation Generator

Link at the bottom gives a very clear and decisive argument concerning the ability of random mutation to generate new, meaningful information.

Interesting Book.

2010-02-16T11:06:00.001-05:00

The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (Hardcover)

Search for "Wish List" on this site to see various wish list items of mine (including this book.)

Klekaj Esperantaj Ligiloj

2010-02-16T08:47:00.004-05:00

This seems like an excellent resource:
(Ĉi tio ŝajnas esti bonega fonto)
http://veromondo.blogspot.com/

And from there I found the following:
Kaj de tie, mi trovis la sekvontan

Taken from "http://vortaro-blogo.blogspot.com/".
Prenita de "". (Klaku legi la citaĵon esperante--poste ĵus ekzistas angle, sed ĉe la paĝaro ligilita, troveblas esperante kaj angle.)

"From the foreword / El la antaŭparolo (i) More than forty years have passed since [the dictionary's] first publication under the Teach Yourself imprint. During that time both English and Esperanto have grown and changed considerably. This new edition, published by Mondial, attempts as far as possible to reflect these developments, both by the addition of new headwords and by many other changes and improvements. Forty years ago computers were in their infancy. There was no internet. Plena Ilustrita Vortaro (PIV) had not yet been published, nor had the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and other modern corpus-based dictionaries of English. Esperanto is a functioning language, not a theoretical project: so it is right to pay considerable attention to usage, both spoken and written. As well as informal observation of the language in use around the world, I have been able to draw on the five-million-word corpus of written Esperanto available at tekstaro.com, while Google and Wikipedia/Vikipedio offer an even vaster range of practical usage (though they must be consulted with care). I have taken the opportunity to make better provision for American and international English. Accordingly I have added new headwords such as cilantro, maven, mononucleosis, and zucchini. I have also supplied American meanings to words already included, such as muffler as the equivalent of British silencer.Under the letter S alone, over a hundred new Esperanto root words have been added, ranging from skan/i, skip/o and spam/o to same/o, Samo/o, saud/a, Sejŝel/oj, Siĉuan/o, sik/o and svazi/o. The three hundred or so new English entries under S include scallion, scam, schlep, scrapheap, scrawny and spreadsheet.In English we now use far fewer hyphens than we did forty years ago. We now write most compound nouns either solid or as two words. Instead of the air-lock and air-mail of the first edition we now write airlock and airmail; in place of air-raid we now write air raid. We are also now willing to print the formerly unprintable: I have therefore been able to retire such Latin expressions as membrum virile and use instead ordinary English words, including four-letter ones."

He discusses many interesting problems during his editing of an Esperanto dictionary.
Li diskutas multajn intersajn problemojn dum li redaktas vortaron esperantan.

-------------

And there, I found
Kaj tie, mi trovis
http://tekstaro.com/

Ankaŭ, mi ne memoras se mi metis ĉi tion jam? Ĝi estas ligilo al pli ol 400 eo-libroj:
Also, I don't remember if I already put this here? It's a link to more than 400 Esperanto books:

http://www.ipernity.com/doc/mike59/album/86911

Tab Closure.... Again!

2010-02-09T19:59:00.006-05:00

Kin Dza Dza (@ Filmoj.net)

Esperantaj Filmoj, specifice subtekstoj. Tre bonfarata (kaj bonfaranta) projekt. La specifa ligilo ligas la unuan dublitan filmon esperantan, kiu estas malnova rusa filmo. Devas esti bona. (Specimo ĉi tie)
-----------

http://www.panspermia.org/seconlaw.htm

tons of quoted, referenced explanations of the second law of thermodynamics and entropy, especially as related to biology and 'closed systems' / 'open systems'.
----------

Information Theory and DNA: The Origin of Life

Very convincing argument based on three principles:

1) DNA is not merely a molecule with a pattern; it is a code, a language, and an information storage mechanism.
2) All codes are created by a conscious mind; there is no natural process known to science that creates coded information.
3) Therefore DNA was designed by a mind.

After arguing this with 30 atheists in the world's largest atheist forum, "infidels", he (claims) his theory stood unscathed, (if a bit tightened up). Seems legit.
-----------------

Kajo

Money, money, money... A little about how debt works.

2010-01-15T23:00:00.000-05:00

Here, I have taken some quotes from here, and rearranged them into a digestible format that tells a story.

How is "money" made?

Through these quotes, I have here a little about how economics works on the governmental scale. Bear with the first couple of slow, slightly abstract ones--read for a couple minutes and you won't be able to stop until the end.

It starts off with some basic theory about how money works.
Then some quotes about how that was interpreted in the early years of the American government to be a perceived possible threat, what it could result in.
And then some quotes that show what became of their prophecies.

------------------------------

"The actual process of money creation takes place in commercial banks. As noted earlier, demand liabilities of commercial banks are money.."Confidence in these forms of money also seems to be tied in some way to the fact that assets exist on the books of the government and the banks equal to the amount of money outstanding, even though most of the assets themselves are no more than pieces of paper--.", P.3."Commercial banks create checkbook money whenever they grant a loan, simply by adding new deposit dollars in accounts on their books in exchange for a borrower's IOU.", p. 19. "The 12 regional reserve banks aren't government institutions, but corporations nominally 'owned' by member commercial banks.",
p. 27.- Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

“The banks do create money. They have been doing it for a long time, but they didn't quite realise it, and they did not admit it. Very few did. You will find it in all sorts of documents, financial textbooks, etc. But in the intervening years, and we must all be perfectly frank about these things, there has been a development of thought, until today I doubt very much whether you would get many prominent bankers to attempt to deny that banks create credit.” — H. W. White, Chairman of the Associated Banks of New Zealand, to the New Zealand Monetary Commission, 1955.

"While economic textbooks claim that people and corporations are competing for markets and resources, I claim that in reality they are competing for money - using markets and resources to do so. Greed and fear of scarcity are being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the kind of money we are using. For example, we can produce more than enough food to feed everybody, and there is definitely not enough work for everybody in the world, but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. In fact, the job of central banks is to create and maintain that currency scarcity. Money is created when banks lend it into existence When a bank provides you with a $100,000 mortgage, it creates only the principal, which you spend and which then circulates in the economy. The bank expects you to pay back $200,000 over the next 20 years, but it doesn't create the second $100,000 - the interest. Instead, the bank sends you out into the tough world to battle against everybody else to bring back the second $100,000."- Bernard Lietaer, Former Central Banker

"Banks lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment, out of nothing." - Ralph M. Hawtery (Former Secretary of the British Treasury)

“The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing.” — William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England, 1694.

"The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is, perhaps, the most, astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banks can in fact inflate, mint, and un-mint the modern ledger-entry currency". Major L. L. B. Angus

"Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin. Bankers own the earth; take it away from them but leave them with the power to create credit; and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again. Take this power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for then this world would be a happier and better world to live in." — Sir Josiah Stamp, Director, Bank of England, 1940

----------------------------
And so we find...

"If you want to be slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers control money and control credit.” — Sir Josiah Stamp, Director, Bank of England, 1940

"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages...will bear its burden without complaint, and perhaps without suspecting that the system is inimical to their best interests." - Rothschild Brothers of London, communiqué to associates in New York June 25, 1863

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." - Mayer Amschel Rothschild, 1790

What could enable someone to speak this way? What could give someone such confidence?

"Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce... And when you realise that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate." - James Garfield (assasinated within weeks of release of this statement during first year of his Presidency in 1881)

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be." - Thomas Jefferson

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." - Henry Ford

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Translated into America's economy... What did Jefferson mean by freedom?

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." - Thomas Jefferson, The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill, (1809). This prophesy has come true.

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." - Thomas Jefferson

"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our constitution - taking from the federal government their power of borrowing." Thomas Jefferson, 1798

"I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions, in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy..... I see in the future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.

I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of the war." - Abraham Lincoln

"The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the United States great enough to wear his boots and the bankers went anew to grab the riches. I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America and use it to systematically corrupt modern civilization." - Otto von Bismarck, German Chancellor (1815-1898), after Lincoln assassination.

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And so what happened? What became of that prediction?

"Federal Reserve is not Federal and it has doubtful reserves. The name is an open deception designed to give this private bank the appearance that it is operating in the public's interest, when in fact it is run solely to gain private profit for its select stock holders. It came into being as the result of one of the slickest moves in financial history. On 23rd December 1913 the house of representatives had past the Federal Reserve Act, but it was still having difficulty getting it out of the senate. Most members of congress had gone home for the holidays, but unfortunately the senate had not adjourned sene die (without day) so they were technically still in session. There were only three members still present. On a unanimous consent voice vote the 1913 Federal Reserve Act was passed. No objection was made, possibly because there was no one there to object."

from Who owns the FED

''We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of
small groups of dominant men"

- Woodrow Wilson, 28th US President (Just before he died, Wilson is reported to have stated to friends that he had been "deceived" and that "I have betrayed my Country". He referred to the Federal Reserve Act passed during his Presidency.)

"This Act (the Federal Reserve Act, Dec. 23rd 1913) establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Woodrow Wilson) signs the Bill, the invisible government of the Monetary Power will be legalised... The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency Bill." - Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr (1859 - 1924) Congressman (father of the famous aviator)

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson." - Franklin D Roosevelt, 32nd US President

"I have never seen more senators express discontent with their jobs. ... I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices to doing something terrible and unforgivable to this wonderful country. Deep down in our hearts, we know that we have bankrupted America and that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. .. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected." -John Danforth, Republican senator from Missouri, reported in the Arizona Republic of April 21, 1992

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Other odds and ends:

"In addition to almost unlimited usury, the bankers have another method of drawing vast amounts of wealth. The banks are able to approve or disapprove large loans to large and successful corporations to the extent that refusal of a loan will bring about a reduction in the selling price of the corporation's stock. After depressing the price, the bankers' agents buy large blocks of the company's stock. Then, if the bank suddenly approves a multi-million dollar loan to the company, the stock rises and is then sold for a profit. In this manner, billions of dollars are made with which to buy more stock. This practice is so refined today that the Federal Reserve Board need only announce to the newspapers an increase or decrease in their "discount rate" to send stocks soaring or crashing at their whim. Banks collect billions in interest by loaning to Government and the Corporations!" - Pastor Sheldon Emry
Instances of shrinking money supply with adoption of gold and rejection of silver standard:

"I went to America in the winter of 1872-73, authorised to secure, if I could, the passage of a bill demonetising silver. It was in the interest of those I represented - the governors of the Bank of England - to have it done. By 1873, gold coins were the only form of coin money." -
Ernest Seyd, agent of Bank of England.

"There does exist and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for 20 years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret record." - Carroll Quigley, Georgetown University professor (deceased), in Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, 1966, p.950

"Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal — that there is no human relation between master and slave." - Leo Tolstoy

"The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the US, if they remained as one block, and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world." - Otto von Bismark, Chancellor of Germany 1876

Criticism of the Federal Reserve

(The answer?)

A Story--Lifestyle lost in America led to Cairo, Egypt.

2010-01-15T19:45:00.000-05:00

Story Below

a This blog (link through clicking the title) has a lot of interesting Egyptian culture information, etc. It's written by an American woman who married a an Egyptian guy after being there for 6 weeks.

A couple of interesting posts outside of the one I've copied here:

Now for the story:

Either this deep desire of mine
will be found on this journey,
or when I get back home!

It may be that the satisfaction I need
depends on my going away, so that when I've gone
and come back, I'll find it at home.
--Rumi
From The Essential Rumi

**************************************************************

Someone asked me a while back if I love Egypt or hate it. After long thought, I would have to say I neither love it or hate it. So why did I come?

If I had to pinpoint the exact moment that things started to spiral downward in my life it would have to be October 4, 2004. Standing at my computer on the factory floor entering that nights scrap/loss data my boss came to me and whispered over my shoulder the words that would change my life forever. "Scott has instructed me to write you up for a second shift mistake." I knew what that meant. The company had been downsizing for a while and their end goal was to eliminate mid-level management positions without the benefit of having to provide unemployment payments, opting instead to set people up to be fired. They had been after me for a while. I was the last group leader left out of three shifts. Glancing over my shoulder at the clock on the wall I noted the time. 6:50 am. Ten minutes left on my shift. I finished entering my data, left my keys next to the computer, picked up my bag and walked to the door. Arriving at the time clock early was uncharacteristic for me and was noticed by several people who had also gathered at the time clock. "Third shift group leader is here before 7 am - that's a first." And it was. It was not usual for me to leave before 7:30. But I was leaving for good. I did not go in to work that night. Terry called me the next day and said that they had been waiting for me at the front door so they could "walk me out" upon my arrival. So that's the gist of how I lost a well paying job.

Like anyone who has ever quit, been laid off, or fired from a job, I did not feel bad - I felt energized. When one door closes another one opens. I was ready to try something new. I held out a great hope that things would be OK although I knew in my heart it wouldn't be. I chose instead, to be in denial about the situation. I didn't stay unemployed long. I started waiting tables for $2.13 per hour. Worked two jobs - the second one being a retail clothing store for $6.00 per hour. Retail generally does not allow full-time positions so the maximum hours I could get per week ranged from 15 to 20 depending on if I volunteered to cover shifts for other employees. I went from bringing home $1,000.00 per week to bringing home (between two jobs) $250.00 per week. Now, I'm not good at math so I will leave you to calculate the percentage that my salary dropped on your own. Each week I would have to take from my savings to pay bills. I knew this would not last long.

2005 was fairly stable for the simple reason I was still able to supplement my income with the money I had saved over the last six years. By the end of 2005, however, things went from bad to worse. On December 26, 2005 my son was arrested and went to jail. Without going into all the details at this time, by February of 2006 I had a nervous breakdown. It happened one night in the McDonald's restaurant in Princeton. I started crying uncontrollably and could not stop. I was yelling and screaming then just collapsed on a table. I had people trying to approach me and give me religious pamphlets "Jesus saves". All I could do was scream at them "get away from me with that shit!" I don't remember how I managed to leave the place or get home. I spent the next couple of days in a daze sleeping when I was not working and dragging myself to work. The thing about working in Customer Service and Retail is that you are expected to be happy and smiling all the time. I was reprimanded at work for being in a "depressed state" and this was bad for business. There was nobody I could turn to, nothing I could do but go home and sleep and cry and shake. I stopped eating. I stopped caring about living.

About two weeks later my income tax check arrived. I had made good money the year before, but was in a high tax bracket because of overtime so I got roughly around $900.00. This is a lot of money on one hand, but on the other hand it isn't. I sat one night in Panera Bread just staring at my computer screen. My mental state was deteriorating rapidly. Everything was falling apart around me and I felt I could not control it. Then I realized what I needed. I needed to get away. I had a standing offer from a friend in Ohio to visit her sister in Jordan. All I had to pay for was my airfare. I would take her up on the offer.

When I told my boss "Y" that I was going to Jordan he told me I should go to Egypt as well. I told him I would love to, but I did not have any money for hotels, etc. He offered to call his family and have me stay with them. So I booked tickets. I would fly into Cairo and travel overland to Jordan (a cheaper route than flying) and then fly home from Amman. I stayed in Egypt only a few days. There was no money to do touristic stuff. I left Egypt on the overnight bus to the the Red Sea and then took the ferry to Jordan. Another bus to Amman. My friend's sister was lovely. I spent most of my week there with her in the apartment. Again, there was no time or money for touristic stuff. However, it proved to be just the break I needed. When I arrived back home I felt ready to start over again.

2006 continued my the same way the previous year had. I had waiting jobs. Some days I would work a 10 hour shift and make only $50.00. Most of this would be spent on gas to get back and forth to work since I lived 45 minutes from any civilization this required driving 90 minutes per day to get to work. It wasn't the driving time that bothered me, I was used to that, what bothered me was that during this period gas had hit an all time high in the US. It was approaching $4.00 per gallon. At one time it would cost me $20 to fill my tank, but during this period it was closer to $45.00. I had to fill up the tank every other day. It got to a point that I became sick of pumping gas.

A curious set of events had been set in motion as a result of my trip to Egypt. One was that "S" felt sorry for the fact that I was unmarried and gave my email address to all his single friends. I would come home at night and find my inbox full of promises of love and marriage proposals from guys who were in their late 20's. Complete strangers. This may appeal to some 40 year old women, but it was a huge turn-off to me. First and foremost, I had no desire to get married. I was quite happy being single. If I was to ever get married it would be for love with someone of my own choosing and not because someone felt "sorry" for me. The other thing that happened was people began to try to convince me to move to Egypt. What could I do there I asked? You could teach English. I said it was a nice offer, but explained to them that I had no teaching experience, no college degree I did not see how logically this scenario could work. However, almost everyone I talked to assured me that fact that I was American and a native speaker of English was all that was needed for every school in Egypt to roll out the red carpet for me. I was told I would get paid 5 times that of Egyptian teachers. That I would have an apartment provided for me. I would have all kinds of benefit packages like plane tickets to my home country, etc. It all sounded too good to be true. I pushed it all to the back burner and continued to push my way forward any way I could in the US.

In the early part of 2007 it became apparent that all my efforts to get back on track or get ahead were going to be useless in the end. I was "pissing in the wind" so to speak. Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. I finally made the decision that I had long put off and that was to put my house on the market for sale. Now, to my my house was nice. It was built in 1918 but had been well maintained. It was not perfect, but it provided shelter and warmth. The problem is, I had paid (and mortgaged) $50,000 for it and it was in reality worth much less. I also contacted an attorney regarding the possibility I needed to file bankruptcy. Now, in a perfect world, my house would have sold quickly and I would have made a profit of about $15,000 since I had some equity in it. I would then take this money and move into an apartment and start my life over. That was the plan anyway. But it's not a perfect world and the real estate market was just at the beginning of it's slow period. Months passed and no one even looked at the house.

Knowing that in a few short months, I was facing the possibility of foreclosure and being left with no where to live and no money, I began to reconsider those offers my Egyptian friends were telling me about. I began to search the web for "teaching in Egypt". I was led to a website of a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) training program that promised guaranteed results and job placement assistance. I talked to more people in Egypt, all of whom reiterated the same sentiments as those from before: you will have no problem finding a job in Egypt. I considered the scenario. I would go to Egypt, take the TEFL certification, get a job, be provided with housing and benefits on a two year contract. This would allow me the opportunity to save thousands of dollars after which I could then return to the US and start over once again.

In early June of 2007 I purchased a one way ticket to Egypt for February 12, 2008. I basically had to steal the money to buy this ticket. I stole it from myself. I sold all the appliances in my house. The stove, the refrigerator, the washer, the dryer, the dishwasher - I sold all my furniture. How was that stealing you might wonder? Well my house was contracted with the realtor as "including all appliances". If someone had wanted to buy the house and found all the appliances gone I would have been in big trouble. But I knew by this time the house would never sell. I continued to live in the house with no furniture and no appliances for two months until one day near the end of July, in a blistering heat wave, the air conditioner died. I would spend the next 8 months sleeping on a friends couch.

Shortly after I bought my ticket to Egypt, I knew the next thing I needed to do was find a place to live temporarily when I arrived in Egypt. I had planned to attend the TEFL course in Alexandria straight away and housing was included with that. I had already applied to the TEFL program and been accepted. I listed Egypt as my first choice and Argentina as my second choice. (A representative from TEFL who I spoke to on the phone helped me rule out a European location because of the difficulty involved in obtaining work permits and long term visas in countries in Europe since preference for jobs went to those with EU citizenship.) I figured I would be able to find a job shortly after that, and might need a place to live only for a month or two while I sorted out all the details with a school. I also began at this time contacting schools by email, sending my CV, joining FaceBook groups about teaching in Egypt, networking with my contacts in Egypt, etc.

A few days after I had purchased the ticket, I was sitting in Borders bookstore. This had always been my favorite place to go and it continued to be a sanctuary for me. I could only allow myself to buy a cup of coffee and wander around the store. I sat in the aisles and read all the books about Egypt because I could no longer afford to buy them. This particular day a magazine on the rack caught my eye. It was Transitions Abroad. I picked it up and flipped through it. It was chock full of tips and information for people who are considering teaching abroad. There were job postings, info on shipping companies, articles by ex-pats. I broke down and spent the $4.95 for the magazine.

When I got it home I read it cover to cover. I found an article about a website called "couchsurfing". It was like a backpackers dream. People from all over the world who have a couch or spare room in their home agree to "host" travellers usually on a short term basis. I looked up the website and found hundreds of profiles in Egypt. I created a profile and contacted those who had listings who were women or ex-pats. I did not want to contact any of the numerous Egyptian men who had profiles, because it appeared they were using the site as a way to meet foreign women. I did not have time for this. The people I had contacted emailed me back and told me they were unable to commit to anything with me because my request was coming too far in advance and they were not sure if they would still be in Cairo that far in the future. I was back at square one. I carefully began to look through and read all the profiles on the site. I only got through the first two pages when one particular profile caught my eye. It was a guy in Maadi. What attracted me to his profile was that he said he liked dogs. I was planning on taking my dog with me. I did not even look at any other profiles, but I sent him a message. I told him of my plans to arrive in Cairo and take the TEFL and that I would be looking for a place to stay for a week or two.

A reply came very quickly. I sent him my phone number and told him it would be easier if we speak in person. He called me right away. I explained my situation to him. He listened and was very helpful. He told me he has an extra room in his apartment and that he travels frequently for his job and would probably be in the Gulf at the time of my arrival. He told me I could have his apartment for as long as I needed it. Then I dropped the bomb. I have a dog. "Great. Bring the dog. I love dogs", he replied. He then offered to keep the dog for me while I was in Alex provided he was in Cairo at the time. This would save me a considerable boarding expense. I could not believe my good luck. What I didn't know then, was that I had just had my first conversation with the man I would end up marrying. Of course at the time there was no hint of a romantic relationship between us. We kept in touch by phone after that initial conversation. "W" would call me once a month of so and ask me if I needed anything. He helped me to arrange shipping some of my things through his company (sparing me yet another considerable expense) and answered all my questions. He was a nice guy and a decent guy and a huge help to me and that was the extent of it. But in my mind, things seemed to be going very smoothly with my plan to move to Egypt. I began to think it hadn't been such a bad idea after all.

Having the living arrangements and the dog situation scratched off the checklist was a huge burden off my shoulders. It was a good thing too, because things were about to get more difficult in my current situation. I had to sell my car at the end of June. Living so far away from any place to work, and in an area with no public transportation, I had to convince "T" to let me borrow his truck. I kept working at my job at the restaurant, and pumping gas into a huge gas guzzler day in and day out. Things were plugging along fine until sometime in July when a deer ran head first into the side of the truck one night on the way home. "T" was pissed to say the least. Even though his insurance covered it with no deductible he was the kind of guy who valued his cars above everything else. My driving privileges were revoked. After 3 days of having to call in "sick" due to lack of transportation, I convinced "T" that I would lose my job if I couldn't use the truck. He relented on the condition that I go straight to work and straight home.

It was a few weeks later that my air conditioner died. Now not only was I driving his car, I was sleeping on his couch as well. "T" worked at night arriving home at 9 am. I worked during the day arriving home after he left for work. It was a good arrangement in that our paths rarely crossed. But I still had to go to my house daily and pack up an remove the remaining items. I rented a storage locker in town for $30 per month. I would wake at 5 am everyday and go down to the house. Load up bags and boxes of stuff and move them into the storage locker. Other things that I couldn't bear to part with, but knew I would never see again, I hid in "T's" attic. I gave many things away, threw many things in the trash, gave some to my son, etc. The hot mornings of summer turned into cold mornings of the fall and each day would find me sitting in the storage locker sorting and re-sorting into "keep" and "get rid of piles". I had started holding yard sales earlier in the spring so the things left were the sentimental things. I would sit in the locker surrounded by what was left of my life. Boxes of photos and negatives. Boxes of keepsakes, artwork, and school projects my son had made from Nursery school up to 5th grade. Mountains of papers I had saved some from when I had been in High School. Little by little it was disposed of. The only way I could get through it was to tell myself over and over again that if I died tomorrow I could not take any of this with me anyway.

Eventually, it became too much to bear and I left the house one final time leaving much stuff behind. At the end of September my court date came up and I turned the keys to my house over to the bank. Even though "T's" house was only a few blocks from mine, I could not drive down that street again. One day I worked up the courage to and happened upon a scene that I had not expected. The bank had hired a company to come and clean out the remaining items from my house. I saw my things being loaded into a truck. Lamps, ice skates, jewelry, photo supplies, etc. What was left of everything I owned in the world piled into a trailer bound for Goodwill or the Salvation Army. I never went past my house again. (The bank listed my house for sale at the cost of what I still owed on my mortgage. It sat empty for nearly 2 years selling only in the spring of 2009. I heard this from a friend. When I visited the States in August of this year, I did drive by again. The bushes in the front had been removed and new flowers planted. But it was still difficult for me to see this.)

In the beginning of October I was growing increasingly restless driving to work everyday only to be turned away for "over staffing". I quit the job in the restaurant. It was costing me more to show up everyday than I was actually earning. Luckily though I caught what I thought was another break. I was contacted by a temporary employment contractor I had applied with previously. They were looking for temporary employees to work for a sub-contractor of Toyota. I would be earning $8.00 per hour. This was a higher salary than I had earned in the past 2 years. I would have 4 solid months to work before I would be leaving for Egypt. This would allow me to bring home around $275 per week. I would be able to save a significant amount of money to use for my TEFL course as well as living expenses until I could find a job in Egypt. "W" also called me at the end of November and told me he had to take a business trip to the States at Christmas time and he would like for us to try to meet. I searched for flights between Indiana and where he would be in Colorado and found the prices over $800. This was more than my ticket to Egypt. I had photographed a wedding at the end of October - the last piece of business that I had pending from my photography business I had tried to start earlier that year to supplement my income. So I had $500 saved from that. I told "W" that it did not look like I could justify flying to Colorado over Christmas because it was too expensive. He was very disappointed. He did not realize how far away Indiana and Colorado are and that there are no trains or busses in the US for cheap, fast interstate travel.

One day in mid-December I showed up at my job in Toyota only to be told that they were in a slow down (always happens when they hire too many expecting some to quit after a few days) and they would need to be sending people home for the day. Since I was low on the seniority list, I was chosen to go home. By some stroke of genius I had brought my laptop with me that day, so instead of going straight home, I went to the truck stop to use the wifi. While there, I searched a few different sites for prices to fly to Colorado. I managed to find a flight for $400. I decided that you only live once, and the plant would be shut down for a week at Christmas so I decided to book the ticket. I emailed "W" and told him the good news he was thrilled.

Now, you already know that this story has a happy ending, but it did not start off that way. When "W" and I met in person we hated each other. He thought I was a tough woman and thought I was fat. I was not particulary attracted to him either and found him to have some annoying habits. We fought rather frequently over the next few days, although remained cordial and friendly with each other at the same time. After all, he had been so kind to me and so helpful and I was forever in his debt for this. Nonetheless, we shared some memorable moments together including Christmas dinner at the home of one of his colleagues (the same one we plan to visit this year). I arrived back in Indiana on December 27 and reported back to work at Toyota on January 2, 2008 as scheduled. When I got to work, I discovered that all the temporary employees were being "laid off" temporarily. Great. Now I have only 6 weeks left in the US and no income coming in. I had been counting on being able to work right up to the very end and was counting on that money. (Ironically, I got a voice mail from the employment firm on February 10 saying that I could report back to work February 11).

So once again, I found myself unemployed. The last 6 weeks were hard for me because I would have to leave the house everyday to avoid seeing "T". Since I did not have a job I was not allowed to drive anywhere. The only place to go in this town was the public library which closed at 5. I would spend my days sitting in the library and then walking around town freezing until nightfall. I slept constantly just hoping for the hours to pass faster if I was oblivious to them. My mother had to send me the $800 I needed in order to put my dog on the airplane.

I arrived in Egypt on February 14, 2008 flat broke. "W" was a man of his word and picked me up at the airport, but if looks could kill... I'll skip all the boring details here in interest of making an already long story a little shorter, but we were married 6 weeks later. Stranger things have happened I'm sure. How we went from being acquainentces to hating each other to being married in the span of 6 weeks is beyond me. But I'm told there is an expression "out of hate comes love". We are living proof of that.

Three days after my initial arrival in Cairo, "W" had a contact at a school who who was in desperate immediate need of a native English speaker. I happened to be in the immediate need of $1,200 to take a TEFL course. I postponed my TEFL course from March to April and took the job. So here I was in Cairo less than three days, on a bus on my way out to 6th of October. The position was with a Junior Kindergarden class. It was at this moment that I discovered I suck at teaching and I'm not good with kids. The co-teacher had years of experience so I basically just became her assistant. I tied shoes, wiped noses, dried tears, broke up fights over toys, opened packages of snacks, etc. As the month passed, I realized more and more I was not cut out for this kind of work. But determined to finish what I had started, I decided to go ahead with my plan to take the TEFL. Perhaps I would be able to find a job working with adults. The temporary job gave me exactly the money I needed for the TEFL class. "W" and I got married April 3, 2008 and on April 4 th I left for a 10 week stay in Alex. (The TEFL certificate itself is only one month, but I had signed up to do the teaching internship afterward to gain practical experience.)

Right before leaving for Alex, I was contacted by a school I had previously emailed my resume to while I was still in the US. I had an interview lined up and a potential job offer for the 2008 school year. I really thought things were looking up. My time in Alex went great, and my teaching internship was with an adult intermediate level class. I came back to Cairo in early July and had only 6 weeks before I had to start my new job.

I'll pause here for a moment and reflect on how nicely this fit into my original plan assuming I had not gotten married. It seemed to be working out rather smoothly. I would come to Egypt, take the TEFL, get a job, etc. Just like I had planned it. Had I needed it, this school would have secured housing for me. The salary was decent, transportation to and from school included. It was all as I had imagined it would be when I made the initial plan to move to Cairo and work for 2 or 3 years before returning to the US. I hadn't planned on getting married and that surely was not called for in the original recipe, but it was the icing on the cake.

Here's the point where it turns south. I soon realized I sucked at teaching even more at the new school that I had at the first one. I was a high school graduate, with no experience in education, only qualified to teach English and I was placed as a homeroom teacher for second graders. I was responsible for teaching English, Math, Science, and Social Studies. I was in WAY, WAY over my head. I gave it a concerted effort and was holding on and trying my hardest with everything I had in me. I was fired at the end of November after working only 3 months. Thus ended my teaching career in Egypt. I applied at some other schools only to be told I'm not qualified or to be offered assistant teaching positions for 1,000 LE per month. Granted 1,000 LE per month is what Egyptian co-teachers make (and some full teachers as well), I could have stayed in the US waiting tables for that much money each month. When you consider my original intention to come to Cairo and work was so that I could earn money to save and move back home, these latest developments reflect nothing short of a flat out failure. There is no way I would have been able to remain in Egypt past the day of being fired. I would have had to pack it all in and come up with plan B, find some way to get the airfare home and call it a day. I failed miserably at what I set out to do. Hindsight is 20/20 and in retrospect, I know I would have admitted my defeat and gone back home.

But in the end, one year later, I'm still in Egypt. I didn't come to Egypt so I could get married. I didn't get married so I could stay in Egypt. I didn't marry my husband because I loved Egypt. I married him because I love him. I know now that the certain something I thought was waiting for me in Egypt, was - only it was not in the form of what I thought it would be. I know now that my pull to go to Egypt was not to teach and earn money - but because it was my destiny to meet him. We will be married for 2 years this April and every day that passes our love grows stronger. I know that sounds so cliche, but considering we did not know each other very long when we married it is a positive thing. It may not have been my choice to still be in Egypt after 2 years, but I am, and having him by my side, being so supportive and understanding of my frustrations, makes it more bearable for me. I don't know what the future holds for us or where we will end up living. All I know is that I needed to make this journey.

2009-12-30T10:55:00.000-05:00

http://bibleworks.oldinthenew.org/?page_id=151

resource with lots of 'modules' (read: free source materials) for bibleworks (CHM files/windows help file)... textual criticism, commentaries, etc.

Man Lives without Money for 9 Years.

2009-12-19T04:59:00.000-05:00

From http://matadorchange.com/man-has-lived-9-years-without-money%E2%80%94social-rebel-or-simply-a-mooch/, written by Gabriela Garcia. (Quoted here just in case that disappears; I've simple taken the article, and attached a couple of interesting comments to the end. By all means, visit the original site to give a hit to their page, and give them the chance to hit you in the eye with advertising, which gives them money to pay for this article which you read now for free.... ;)

-------------------------------

Daniel Suelo, 48, has been living without money or any barter system, and no food stamps or government help, for the past nine years. While in Ecuador on a Peace Corps mission, he witnessed a rural community acquire increased monetary wealth through farming and shift their traditional lifestyle towards a diet of unhealthy, processed food and a newfound addiction to television.

The experience led Suelo on a spiritual quest that realized itself in India, where he was particularly moved by the Sadhus, wandering monks who renounce all money and possessions. He made the conscious decision to return home, quit his job, and carve out a life without money.

As he put it, “I simply got tired of being unreal. Money is one of those intriguing things that seem real and functional because two or more people believe it is real and functional.”

Photo: platschi

Today, Suelo lives in a cave in Utah and gets around by hopping trains or hitchhiking. For food he relies on dumpster diving, foraging, fishing, and, occasionally, hunting. From the public library he authors a blog and a website where he discusses his everyday life and offers up deep philosophical musings on why a society based on the concept of money is harmful and contrary to our true nature.

He says he’s never been happier, living like “ants and deer and slugs and sparrows and bacteria and atoms and galaxies.”

Though Suelo’s story is a particularly riveting one, less radical communities of “freegans” are cropping up in places like San Francisco and New York. These groups have risen out of a desire to boycott what is seen as an unethical corporate system and to minimize the waste of resources. To varying degrees, freegans salvage edible food from dumpsters, squat in abandoned buildings, and encourage a reconsideration of the benefits of leisure and play as opposed to excessive work.

These movements have not flourished without criticism. Freegans are often dismissed as freeloaders. Others assess the lifestyle as a way to deal with extreme liberal guilt while still living within the confines of privilege and comfort. Daniel Suelo frequently receives hate mail expounding him to get a job and stop mooching off society.

It’s a valid discourse. It’s nearly impossible to be completely self sufficient. Suelo frequently relies on hitched rides, a library that’s supported by taxes, and the various cast off excesses of consumer society. He dismisses that this devalues his philosophy, asking “Are swallows nesting in house attics dependent upon money?”

He cites that goods flow from producers (laborers) to bankers, brokers, and landlords who produce nothing. He frequently touts his lifestyle as a return to a way of living more in line with the natural world, a way towards freedom from things that don’t exist towards one of generosity and truth.

However, it can be argued that a system of barter is indeed a part of our nature. Our nearest relatives, the chimpanzee, frequently barter food for grooming and sex. Even Neolithic cavemen bartered. A return to a world without money would be possible only if human beings, like bees and ants, decided to utilize our skills equally so that we may benefit from each other freely.

Photo: scriptingnews

Knowing the history of humanity, however, it doesn’t seem that we can adhere to such noble principles. Furthermore, even without money or a bartering system, human beings could still find ways to oppress each other.

It’s also important to note that Suelo’s lifestyle would not work if he lived in a less monetarily wealthy country. Many people live with virtually no money, and there are no overabundant dumpsters or gifts from generous neighbors to compensate for a lack of “monetary illusion.” In those places, not being a slave to a piece of paper also results in starvation and death.

Many travelers often walk a thin line between admiring a community and romanticizing poverty. It’s possible to question whether Suelo’s motives lie in some kind of imperialist nostalgia towards the communities he encountered on his travels.

However, philosophically speaking it is true that we tend to live in a real-life matrix. Our society as a whole is comprised of things that exist only in our collective consciousness rather than in reality.

“It is interesting to witness someone who disagrees with conventional society to such a degree that he opts out of it completely.”

Take for instance, the idea of borders. In the 19th century, Native Americans referred to the border between Canada and the United States as the “medicine line” because they were perplexed that the American troops would chase them through the land but suddenly stop when they crossed that invisible line. They thought it was magic; to the Native Americans, all of it was just land.

Just like borders, money is a concept that becomes real only because we believe in it collectively. As Suelo says, “If a dollar bill represented itself, it would no longer be money. It would simply be a piece of paper with pretty art on it.” The fact that people will kill each other and ruin the earth for an abstract concept seems almost ludicrous when analyzed from that angle. It’s downright maddening when multiple psychological studies confirm the old adage that money really does not buy happiness.

Who really understands our complex monetary system, other than the few who benefit tremendously from such knowledge? Henry Ford once said, “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” Rarely do we ever question our entire financial system until some kind of disaster, like the current economic recession, sparks the discussion.

Regardless of any stance, it is interesting to witness someone who disagrees with conventional society to such a degree that he opts out of it completely.

Do you find Daniel Suelo’s lifestyle commendable or outrageous? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Two notable comments that appeard on the page:

1.

By Damien:

Great article, Gabriela, about one of my oldest and closest friends. Unlike some other pieces written about Daniel, yours gives him the respect and dignity he deserves, focusing on global issues of poverty, wealth, spirituality and human happiness. Daniel has a degree in Anthropology from CU, Boulder, which is where we met in the 1980’s, in a course on the Psychology of Religion.

My favorite anecdote about Daniel is the way he made it to my wedding in 2001. At the time he was living in a swamp in Florida, rich in wildlife, taking meals with the Hare Krishnas and spending his days doing research in the university library. To get to the wedding in Utah he contacted the Drive-away company and offered to transport a vehicle. They set him up with a brand new Mercedes convertible. Along the way he would park this $60,000 new convertible adjacent to dumpsters so he could rummage for some food “to go.”

Daniel’s lifestyle over the last decade can be portrayed as anthopological research, living in a fringe subculture of a powerful and wealthy society. What he notices about the rest of us is both intriguing and compelling. But Daniel is also a great biblical scholar who reads Hebrew and other ancient languages, finding profound nuances in scriptural passages, then conveying deep truth in a way that awakens more conventional people like me. His current lifestyle is driven by a passionate, mystical philosophy that will never allow him to feel homeless on a planet that is entirely owned by God.

Although Daniel tries never to barter, at one level he does participate in the same kind of barter system known for centuries to Franciscan or Buddhist monks. His presence in our house “adds value” to the quality of life experience that my wife and I enjoy. He brings peace with him wherever he goes. We adore him, and so do all of our animals, whom he often “babysits” when we travel. You could even say our many fruit trees adore Daniel. He has helped prune and cultivate them over the years, thoroughly enjoyed many afternoon naps in a hammock in their shade, and savored their bounty with a kind of deep, mystical gratitude that few of us humans ever really feel.

If anyone could call Daniel a “mooch” it would be me and my wife, because our home (and refrigerator) are always and unconditionally open to him. Yet we have never felt mooched, or otherwise taken advantage of. Quite the opposite, we look forward to his arrivals, feel enriched during his stays, and are saddened by his departures. Daniel is not a weight on society, holding us all back, as the word “mooch” implies. Instead, he is more like an angel who asks for nothing, but lifts us up others with his peace, love and wisdom.

Perhaps the “mooching” equation should be turned around. How many in the world, who enjoy great material wealth, truly have an endless supply of love, wisdom, inner peace and happiness that they share freely with others around them? In many respects Daniel can be thought of as a saintly leader, one who has made great personal sacrifices in order to develop broadband access to God. Now the rest of us get to “mooch” off of his free internet wi-fi connection to heaven whenever he is around.

2. By Daniel Suelo, about whom this article is written.

Thank you, Gabriela. A well-written article that raises thoughtful questions & does not tout assumptions & opinions as fact.

I’m actually sitting by my friend, Damian in a Moab coffee shop right now. He wanted to show me your article & his comment above, making my head swell

To those who assume I don’t work. It may or may not be true! But why do you assume it? Must one toot one’s own horn before work is valid? Must one work for one’s own credit (money), publish it, before work exists?

About comments on “what would happen if everybody did what Suelo does?” I don’t expect everybody to live in a cave & dumpster dive. I do implore everybody to take only what they know in their own hearts cwhat [sic] they need, and give up excess to those who have less than they need. If this happened, I certainly wouldn’t have to dumpster dive. I do envision money going obsolete. I envision communal living, making it possible for families to live moneyless. Communal living already exists in every society, even here in the most capitalistic. It’s called sharing, what we learn in kindergarten. We must cultivate it until it chokes out our selfish system naturally.

To those who say it isn’t possible to live this way in a poor country. If that is so, why then are there sadhus & monks & bikkhus & faqirs in poor countries, living without money, and they are actually respected? I’ve traveled & lived in “developing” countries. I’ve seen intense poverty. What astounded me was the incredible generosity there. Making sure anybody, friend or foe, has food & even a place to lay a head, when they visit, is common practice in poor countries. It’s called hospitality. It’s not about throwing money at organizations, it’s about actually loving your neighbor as yourself.

I’ve observed that the amount of waste a region produces is inversely proportional to its generosity. By the grace of God, in regions where people are stingy, I can find food in dumpsters. People who are generous also usually don’t waste, & they don’t question you whether or not you are deserving of their hospitality. The Universe always provides, everywhere, as it has for zillions of years, to the just and the unjust.

Also, when wasteful people don’t rape the environment, you can actually live off the land.

Why is it that an American in suburbia deserves his or her opulence, while a child working 14 hours in a sweat shop overseas to support American opulence does not? Who is the mooch? [blogger's note here: see thestoryofstuff.com concerning that statement; 'we don't pay for the stuff we buy. those underpaid elsewhere pay the costs.'] Do you really receive your wealth by your own skill & work or by Grace? Isn’t this exactly what your Holy books (Bible, Quran, Book of Mormon, Buddhist sutras) say?

Look up & see. Virtually all energy on earth, including that running this computer, is given totally by Grace from the sun. You can’t even pay the sun back if you wanted to! But a middle man has taken possession of what was free & decided you owe him for what was given freely to him. Every acre of land we think we own was openly stolen, even by our own legal treaties. One day we might get it.

Yes, every single life-form in the universe is a mooch, dependent upon every other life form. Get that mooch-ness in balance!

a couple links

2009-11-17T03:05:00.000-05:00

a couple links, since I'm probably about to lose my tabs upgrading to 9.10...

http://eo-literaturo.wikispaces.com/Prometeo+katenita+(AESCHYLOS)
http://ihop.org/Group/Group.aspx?ID=1000036187
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=chromium+browser&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10
http://www.metamorpha.com/Community/Forums/tabid/60/forumid/15/threadid/3/scope/posts/Default.aspx

Tab Closure! Esperanto Etc.

2009-11-03T14:23:00.000-05:00

Getting fluent, baby!

Scholarly Linguistic articles on Esperanto:

Economy of words in Esperanto

Overview of linguistic studies in Esperanto

Study on 8 Native Child (age 6-14) Esperantists

Random Esperanto Web(English):

Answering Esperanto Criticisms: Several hundred criticisms well answered. (Don Harlow, among others)

Do All Journalists Speak Esperanto Now? (Noticing several pro Esperanto news articles from several sources)

The Threefold Benefits of Esperanto (Very persuasive article written by native Hungarian)

To heal the mind's eye of hate (an article about zamenhoff)

Esperanta Artikloj (Esperante):

Esperantaj Politikoj (Harlow, ĝisdatigita 2007)

Esperantisto de la Jaro (interview/s? with Bertilow Wernegren (s/p?))

La Ondo de Esperanto (Reta Revuo? Ŝajnas bonega...)

Esperanto kaj la Reta Revolucio

La Lacionoj de La Danĝera Lingvo

Recommended Country Names (Issued by the Esperanto Academy spring 2009)

Ĉu Zamenhofa Maljusteco?

Esperanta Paĝaroj:

Pasportaservo.org (!!!)

Listo de ZEOj (Zamenhof Esperanto Objekto) ĉe Vikipedio

Cxirkaux la mondo en 80 jaroj

Retejo (Ukranian Esperanto site)

Mediocre Funny Pictures (Esperante)

Blog of Razeno (guy who compiled the Nepalese-Esperanto Dictionary)

Karlo @ Project Gutenberg (Novel by Edmond Privat, Famous early Esperantist author)

Unua Mezoriento Kunveno (Filmeto ĉe Farbskatol)

Bona Espero (Sengepatrejo/orfejo en Brazilo kiu uzas Esperanton)

E@I (Interesa Blogo...por dividi spertojn? Bezonas legi pli)

Esperanto Novaĵaj Paĝaroj:

China's Official Esperanto Organ

Libera Folio

Radio Verda

Christianity & Esperanto:

Ecumenical Esperanto (Blogo en La Angla kaj Esperanto)

Spirita Nutraĵo

General Language Stuff:

Cool German polyglot girl's English blog

Cool Irish polyglot guy's blog (English)

Fun Finnish Phrases! (See also her Esperanto stuff)

General:

Comparison between Dispensationalism & Covenant Theology

Wow. Was pushing 60 tabs. Since my reeklernado recently, my web perusings seem to have amassed a large amount of Esperanto material on the web... I haven't even got to read all that I put here, I just got sick of having so many tabs.

A picture into the early world of Esperanto

2009-10-17T07:12:00.001-05:00

HEARINGS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
SIXTY-THIRD CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION

ON

H. RES. 415
A RESOLUTION PROVIDING FOR THE STUDY OF ESPERANTO
AS AN AUXILIARY LANGUAGE

========

STATEMENTS OF

HON. RICHARD BARTHOLDT
A REPRESENTATIVE FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI

AND

PROF. A. CHRISTEN

------------
MARCH 17, 1914
------------

WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
1914

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SIXTY-THIRD CONGRESS.

DUDLEY M. HUGHES, Georgia, Chairman.

WILLIAM W. RUCKER, Missouri. JAMES F. BURKE, Pennsylvania.
ROBERT L. DOUGHTON, North Carolina. CALEB POWERS, Kentucky.
JOHN W. ABERCROMBIE, Alabama. HORACE M. TOWNER, Iowa.
J. THOMPSON BAKER, New Jersey. EDMUND PLATT, New York.
JOHN R. CLANCY, New York. ALLEN T. TREADWAY, Massachusetts.
THOMAS C. THACHER, Massachusetts. SIMEON D. FESS, Ohio.
STEPHEN A. HOXWORTH, Illinois. ARTHUR R. RUPLEY, Pennsylvania.

James L. Fort, Clerk.

ESPERANTO.

---------

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION,
Tuesday, March 17, 1914

The committee this day met, Hon. Dudley M. Hughes (chairman) presiding.

STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD BARTHOLDT,
A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

Mr. BARTHOLDT. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I do not wish to occupy your
time, for the reason that I can be here almost any time, while Prof.
Christen has made a special trip from New York for this purpose, and I
should like to give him all the time you can afford to devote to this
bill.

I merely wish to say, in explanation, that I have not, as you will
notice, introduced this bill by request; I have assumed responsibility
for it personally because I thoroughly believe in it. I first introduced
the bill in the shape of a request to the Committee on Education
to investigate the subject; that is, as to the practicability and
advisability of introducing Esperanto as an auxiliary language in the
public schools. That resolution was referred to the Committee on Rules
and, of course, I could not get any action in that committee, and for
that reason I introduced the bill in its present form, which merely
provides that Esperanto be taught as a part of the course of study in
the schools of Washington, this being the only jurisdiction we have in
the matter of education.

We Americans are known the world over as being deficient in the
knowledge of languages. I think we might as well admit that. While
every other nation is teaching two or three languages in its schools we
have failed to do so, and yet the requirements of international trade
and commerce make it absolutely essential that our young men should be
taught at least one language or two languages besides their own. Now,
this being the case and Esperanto now being taken up by nearly all the
civilized countries as an auxiliary language, how easy it would be for
us, instead of compelling our children in the schools to learn Spanish,
French, and German, to simply take one lesson a week in Esperanto and
thereby enable this nation to correspond and communicate in a common
language with all the other nations of the world.

The CHAIRMAN. Your idea would be that the various nations would
understand Esperanto, and that whenever they would use that language all
would understand and comprehend it? Is that your idea?

Mr. BARTHOLDT. Yes. I want to say that there is a movement on foot in
nearly every civilized country to make Esperanto a part of the course of
study in the schools. If that were carried out, each country would learn
its own language and Esperanto, in England English and Esperanto, and
so on, so that the international language would really be Esperanto. As
one who has studied languages to some extent I can feel the shortcomings
and handicaps of a man who, for instance, having studied French for some
time, comes to Paris. The very moment you open your mouth the people
will notice that you are "a foreigner," no matter how well you speak
French, so that the other man, the native, has a certain advantage over
you. But if that Frenchman were obliged to speak Esperanto with you then
you would be on a common level and neither would have an advantage over
the other. I have read in several of the Esperanto newspapers that, for
instance, in England the great manufacturing establishments are now
printing their catalogues and price lists in Esperanto, and that other
publications are sent all over the world printed in that language, in
matters of trade and commerce. So you can see it is coming. And since
we have not overcrowded the minds of our children with languages as
yet, I think it would be advisable and profitable for us to start with
Esperanto.

I want to add that it is a very easy language. I have learned it in four
lessons. Of course I have not had the time to keep it up, and you must
keep in practice.

The CHAIRMAN. Does Esperanto partake more of the Spanish language?

Mr. BARTHOLDT. No. For an English speaking person it is very easy to
learn, because it is composed of words taken from the English language,
some from the German language, and some from the Latin. But the whole
construction of the language is so remarkably simple, that you will
wonder why it is that a universal language of that kind has not been
introduced before for the use of civilized men.

That is all I wish to say, gentlemen, and I take pleasure in introducing
Prof. Christen, of New York, to you, whom I regard as one of the
greatest living experts in that language and a missionary for Esperanto.

STATEMENT OF PROF. A. CHRISTEN,
46 MANHATTAN AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY.

Prof. CHRISTEN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, this is quite a novel
experience to me. I do not even know how these hearings are carried on,
but I am entirely at your disposal and shall be very glad to answer
questions. If I had my own way I would like to speak for at least an
hour and a half or two hours, but I understand that you can not give
me so much time. Therefore, it will be rather difficult to put in
all the information I would like to lay before you. I should like to
tell you something about the absurd and ridiculous linguistic chaos
to which the world has been brought through those great agencies of
progress which have now practically abolished distance and brought
the ends of the earth nearer to each other than were the opposite
frontiers of the smallest kingdom 400 years ago; (1)[1] then about the
advisability, nay, the absolute necessity of an international language;
how various attempts have been made to meet this growing demand for a
special international language, not for home consumption but only for
intercourse with all other nations, and why this one is, in my opinion
and in that of many wiser men, bound to succeed, and that is because it
absolutely fills the bill and is fool-proof; as a scientific and at the
same time practical scheme, it can not be improved upon. Next, I should
like to speak about the reason why neither English, nor any other living
language, can ever become international. No living language can become
international because they are all too difficult, too complicated, and
not neutral; (2) and then, perhaps, I ought to give you a few outlines
of the construction of Esperanto to show you why it is so easy, how
it meets all the requirements of the case, and is going to succeed.
However, I do not suppose I shall be able to do all of this, and,
therefore, will merely take a few points.

[1]See additions to verbatim report of hearing.

Dr. Bartholdt has mentioned to you the movement that is already in
existence for Esperanto. Here is the official yearbook of the Universala
Esperanto-Asocio (3), the best-organized international society that
the movement has yet produced. This society is called the Universal
Esperanto Association. It is not a propaganda society, but purely a
commercial league for the coordained use of the language, not merely
for the spread of it, but for its practical use among those who have
already learned it. This association has 698 branches throughout the
world, and is in its sixth year. Here is a map showing the places in
which the society is represented, and to-day, if I want any information
on any industrial, commercial, educational, scientific, or any other
matter--say, in Portugal, Russia, Japan, Spain, Belgium, Holland, or
China, etc.--I look up the place nearest to the district from which
I want that information and find the address of the Esperanto center
there. Then I write to the delegate and ask for the information in
Esperanto, and no matter what language he speaks at home I will get a
reply in Esperanto, and he will take any amount of trouble to satisfy
my demands. This society has done a remarkable amount of excellent work
in the last five years, and Esperanto is more and more used for all
practical international purposes.

Now, Dr. Bartholdt told you about many commercial houses in different
countries already using Esperanto practically, that is to say, actually
using it for their business purposes internationally, printing their
circulars, price lists, catalogues, and so on, in Esperanto, and using
it for correspondence.

I am reminded that seven years ago, in the north of Scotland, I saw
a communication to a Scotch railroad company from a French railroad
company written in English, but across the communication there were
stamped the words, "We correspond in Esperanto." And that was six or
seven years ago, and since that time Esperanto has made very great
strides.

I have here a number of trade catalogues in Esperanto, and you will
see from the nature of them that they are really very elaborate things
and on which these firms have spent a great deal of money, which they
would not do if they did not think the thing was actually paying. I have
only about 40 such samples here because I can not carry them all about
with me. For instance, here is a very elaborate, costly, and handsome
catalogue from the biggest firm of photographic instrument makers in
Germany, and, I believe, in the world.

Here is a pamphlet issued by the Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles,
a very attractive pamphlet. That was published in order to attract
European immigration to that portion of California, and that same
chamber of commerce has made large use of Esperanto for that purpose.
Two years ago they sent a man to lecture all over Europe and in some
parts of Asia on the attractions of California. That lecturer visited 27
different countries; he lectured in 120 different towns during 18 months
and every one of his lectures was given in Esperanto, and in several
places he was obliged to give his lecture two or three times, because
the crowds that came were so large that it was impossible for everybody
who desired to hear the lecture to get in at the same time. There were
large numbers of people in every place who actually understood him;
all did not understand him, but a large number did in every town. For
instance, in Paris and Barcelona there are many thousands who understand
Esperanto. Here is another German firm in Berlin. Here is a bookseller
in Paris issuing a catalogue entirely in Esperanto. Here is a leaflet
about the Panama Exposition published in Esperanto. Here is the town of
Baden, a watering place near Vienna. They publish a guide of their town
in Esperanto. Here is a catalogue issued by the Oliver Typewriter Co.
printed in Esperanto. Cook's famous touring agency has used Esperanto
for the last seven years. Here is a Scotch tea firm publishing a
circular in Esperanto. Here is a bicycle-saddle maker in Germany using
Esperanto for publicity. Here is a Berlin taximeter catalogue in
Esperanto. Two years ago there was held in Leipsic the greatest hygienic
exposition ever held anywhere. It was the most successful of its kind up
to date, and hundreds of thousands of people attended from all over the
world. In that exposition Esperanto was used to a great extent and the
exhibition authorities published a guide to the exposition in Esperanto.
Here is a railroad company that uses Esperanto. A great many railroad
companies in Europe already use it. They issue regional guides to the
most attractive parts of their districts in Esperanto. Here is a Paris
automobile company with a circular in Esperanto. Here is the biggest
iron works in England, the Consett Iron Co., of Durham, a firm that
employs 30,000 hands, and that firm publishes its catalogues and price
lists in Esperanto. This is only one of their Esperanto publications.

Here is a circular issued by a Paris department store. All the big
department stores of Paris not only use Esperanto in their publications,
but actually have interpreters for Esperanto in their stores. The
biggest ink firm in the world--the Stephens Blue Ink Co., in London--use
this language for their correspondence. About six years ago they began
to use Esperanto and published their advertisements and their circulars
for foreign trade entirely in Esperanto. The town of Antwerp publishes
an illustrated guide of the town in Esperanto. Here is a very big
Anglo-American firm of medical supplies, Burroughs, Wellcome & Co.,
and they use Esperanto in many of their circulars. The Government
of Brazil three years ago sent a man to lecture in Europe as to the
attractions of Brazil. That man lectured in Paris to an audience of
3,000 people entirely in Esperanto, and the Government published his
lecture in that language. Here is a curious document. This was issued by
the anti-alcohol congress in Italy last year, and you will notice that
Esperanto is used, and that it is recommended as the only remedy against
the language trouble which entirely hampered the deliberations of this
congress, as it does all international conventions of every kind. I will
hand this to Mrs. Crafts, because she will be able to tell you more
about it, since she was there.

That is the commercial side of it, and these are only a very few
samples of the actual and practical use being made of Esperanto in
this one alone. I could produce, no doubt, a great many more such
examples, but I can not carry them all about with me. Here are some 60
to 70 guide leaflets published by so many different towns in France,
in Italy, in Austria, in Germany, in England, and in several other
countries--leaflets printed in Esperanto for the use of foreigners and
tourists. They give them information in Esperanto about the various
things they might first need to know on arriving at those cities. For
instance, here is Milan, Italy, and Poitiers, France, and Insbruck.
Austria, and Tavia, Italy, and Davos, Switzerland, and so on. In the
same line here are 20 more elaborate guidebooks to various towns in
Europe, published entirely in Esperanto by the local authorities. Of
course, you will not have the time to look at all these things just now,
but I will leave them with you. Then, again, I think I can safely say
that there are over 100 periodicals published in Esperanto in different
countries.

Esperanto is making very rapid progress in Japan and China; for
instance, I have here an excellent Esperanto paper published by a native
society in Japan.

The CHAIRMAN. In what nation is it progressing most rapidly?

Prof. CHRISTEN. That is difficult to say, but seven years ago France was
at the head, and Germany did not take it up for a long time. Then about
five or six years ago England shot ahead of France, and then suddenly
Germany took it up, and now I think Germany is ahead of all the other
countries in the practical use of Esperanto. But it is making good
progress everywhere--in France, in England, in Denmark, in Bulgaria, in
Spain, in South America, in Germany, in India, in China, and in Japan.
In Germany the authorities and scientific people have very strongly
espoused Esperanto. For instance, the Government of Saxony sustains
financially an Esperanto institute in Dresden, and that does a great
deal of good work. The Government of Saxony is also a large contributor
to an Esperanto library, which is the biggest in the world, as yet.
And in many towns in Spain, in Germany, and in France, especially in
France, whenever an Esperanto lecturer goes into a town he gets a
stipend from the town; the town pays out of the city funds the expenses
of his propaganda, or partly pays them; they contribute 50 or 100
francs, and frequently more, according to the size of the place. That
is the practice in many places in other countries besides France, but
especially in France. Even the Russian Government gives financial aid to
Esperanto propaganda.

The CHAIRMAN. As I understand it, this is not supposed to be a universal
language?

Prof. CHRISTEN. No; an international language.

The CHAIRMAN. But at the same time it is a language in which all the
universe can meet upon a common plane and converse?

Prof. CHRISTEN. That is the intention, to give the whole of the
civilized world one and the same secondary language.

The CHAIRMAN. In which they can all meet on a common plane?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes; no matter where you may go, if you know Esperanto,
you shall not be a foreigner anywhere. The intention is to do away with
this terrible handicap of being unable to converse with your fellow men
of the various countries you may visit unless you learn all or most of
those languages, a thing which, as you know, is in most cases quite
impossible. It is the intention to have all the nations understand
Esperanto, and by that means make it possible for all the peoples of
the world to commune directly with each other. The time has come in the
world's history when a common vehicle of human expression is absolutely
necessary, and the barrier of Babel must fall, as mostly all other
obstacles to free intercourse have already fallen, before the triumphant
advance of modern science and technology. It is positively fatuous and
futile to ask the modern man, be he in commerce or science or what not,
to become an expert in his particular line of endeavor and a polyglot
besides. It can not be done. Languages are too many and each one too
complicated for our crowded curricula. The obligatory study of foreign
languages belongs to a remote past when there existed no sciences and
no industrial arts, when life was less crowded and when there were
fewer world languages. Even less than a hundred years ago a man was an
accomplished cosmopolitan if he knew French and his own mother tongue.
To-day he wants and ought to be conversant with French, German, and
Spanish, at the very least, besides English, and before long he will
have to tackle Russian and Japanese. As a matter of fact in some of the
European countries and in South America the school children actually
spend from 35 to 60 per cent of the school time in acquiring that sort
of an education, which is really not education at all but only a means
to an end.

The CHAIRMAN. What progress has Esperanto made in the United States?

Prof. CHRISTEN. In this matter the United States is behind all other
progressive countries. There have been many sporadic efforts made and
there are Esperanto groups in different places from New York and Boston
to Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Tacoma, etc., but as
a national movement it is not what it should be, and the difficulty
is, to far as I can make it out, the enormous size of the country. It
is difficult for a society, without very large funds, to carry on an
effective propaganda all over the country.

Then another difficulty is that Americans are not generally very much
given to what I should call ethical ideas of this kind, that offer no
immediate and sudden cash returns, until they really become a craze or
until a certain class, perhaps, takes them up. (4) Let us not forget
also that the American people are not so much in touch with the language
difficulty as are other countries, and they do not yet appreciate the
enormous use that Esperanto will be to them, for, in my opinion, no
white people will benefit more from Esperanto than will the American
people, chiefly because like all English-speaking nations they are very
poor linguists. Then it is becoming more and more acknowledged among
educational people that the English language is the only language that
can not be taught. It is well known that if you put educated people from
different countries together the Anglo-Saxon will invariably be the one
who understands his own language least. That is due to the peculiar
construction of the English language.

However, Esperanto would not be difficult for the American people
because it is so scientific, so logical, and entirely free of all
irregularities. Prof. Mayer, of the University of Oxford, learned
Esperanto in his seventy-ninth year. I heard him make a speech in
the language about six or seven days after he took it up, and he
declared that Esperanto ought to be introduced into the educational
system of the country. He was professor of the Latin language at
the Oxford University. He declared Esperanto ought to be introduced
into the schools, into the kindergartens, where children of 5 years
of age should begin with Esperanto, and I hold with him, because
if children were to learn Esperanto it would be of help to them in
their English. It is extremely easy to learn and can be learned in
a very pleasant fashion, because it is so scientific and so simple. (5)

If children understood Esperanto, they would understand English better,
and much of the time we waste in trying to teach them English would be
profitably spent, for they would have something to go upon, something to
compare English with, and that something so scientific and so logical as
Esperanto. Take, for instance, analysis. I will not say it is difficult
but I will say it is impossible to analyze an English word, because
every word can be so many things. It can generally be an adjective,
a noun, a verb, a preposition, a conjunction, and an interjection,
that is, the same word, without any structural change, so that it is
difficult for a child to discriminate and label the word. Take the word
"benefited." That might be used in the past tense (I benefited), or as
a past participle: (We may have benefited), and it is impossible for
a child to sense the difference, and such confusion occurs to a great
extent with most words in the English language.

I am a teacher of languages and have done nothing all my life but study
and impart languages. If I had to teach you gentlemen, say, French
upon the theory that you were going on an important mission this day
12 months, and that it was absolutely necessary that you should speak
French (or any other language that I could impart you) by that time, I
would say it was impossible for a number of busy men to acquire a new
language inside one year; that I could not guarantee useful results,
but that if you would take two months to start with for the learning of
Esperanto, then I might be able to teach you the other language in the
rest of the time, because Esperanto is the best foundation for learning
any language. And, as I say, an English-speaking student, be he young or
old, knowing Esperanto would more easily distinguish the parts of speech
in English and possess a real and valuable "linguistic feeling" (which
he now entirely lacks) because of his Esperanto.

The CHAIRMAN. Is Esperanto made up of the derivatives of the various
languages?

Prof. CHRISTEN. I will explain that, if you like, in a very few words.
Esperanto is the work of a Polish scholar, Dr. Ludovico L. Zamenhof,
who started with an inspired mind. I should say he was a great genius.
He had studied a large number of languages, for, as a boy, nay, as a
child in the cradle, he spoke four languages, because so many different
languages were actually spoken in his home town. Then at school he
learned several more and it is due to this polyglotic experience and the
evils caused daily by Babel in his own circle that as a child, almost,
he conceived the idea of constructing a language that should at once and
for all time put an end to a foolish and intolerable situation. He must
have been inspired in what he did, because he at once hit upon the only
possible solution of the thing, and he hit upon it without knowing that
scores of others, older and more learned, had tried the same thing and
failed. His first stroke of genius was in the composing of his entire
vocabulary by borrowing all his words from well-known sources. With the
true insight of the genius he decided that the words of an artificial
international language must be taken from international sources, and so
he first of all hit upon the good idea to use first of all those words
which are already common to most languages, and there are a great many
more such words than we have dreamed of. He decided that that should be
the starting point of his world tongue, because everybody would know
those words to start with. Take the names of animals and produce that
come from certain parts of the world and carry their names with them,
such as elephant, tiger, lion, camel, and a great many more. Take the
rose: the rose is a rose in every language; so an orange, a lemon, a
nut, and tea, coffee, and tobacco, etc., are the same in most languages.
They may not be spelled the same or pronounced the same, but they are
international, and therefore they are Esperanto. That was the foundation
of the vocabulary in Zamenhof's new language--take words that everybody
would know and use them in Esperanto (6).

Mr. TOWNER. How do you determine those common names?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Well, he formed his vocabulary; he selected these words
because they were international--to the exclusion of anything else.

Mr. TOWNER. Well, that was not definite; it might be enlarged?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Oh, yes.

Mr. TOWNER. What was the vocabulary that he first issued?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Offhand, I think, about 963 words.

Mr. TOWNER. What is the vocabulary now?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Probably about 3,000 words. Now, I have dealt with the
so-called international words; but the bulk of every language consists
of what I would call home words, which every country has for its own;
and the only way to bring equivalents for such words into the language
was to select them from all the principal languages under consideration,
which means, of course, the European languages and to select these words
on the principle of greatest internationality--that is to say, such
verbs as to come, to do, to write, etc., or the nouns, hand, knife,
water, table, etc., or adjectives, like good, bad, healthy, etc. Before
he put these words into his vocabulary, Zamenhof had their equivalents
in all the European languages before him, and then he took from the
whole list the root which was the most prominent, the root that occurred
oftenest, and this became Esperanto, the idea being that the words
selected should be common to at least four or five different languages.

Mr. TOWNER. You do not mean that, do you? You do not mean that the only
words you would put into the Esperanto vocabulary would be those that
might be common to at least four or five of the principal languages?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes; whenever it is possible to find such words, and the
words do not conflict with the general harmony of the language.

Mr. TOWNER. That is what I thought you meant.

Prof. CHRISTEN. The consequence is that a language formed on these lines
must be a Latin or Romance language because Latin gave birth to at least
six languages: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Roumanian, and
English, and besides, Latin and French have influenced and enriched the
literature and languages of every other modern nation. The dictionary
of Latin words contained, for instance, in Russian or German would be
a very large volume indeed. It is a fact that all modern attempts at
making an artificial language, and their name is legion, especially
since the acknowledged success of Esperanto, are based on Latin.
Consequently also, the international language must be largely English,
because mostly those Latin words will be chosen that are common at
least to French and English. I have lectured to hundreds of English
audiences, and I have given them numerous examples of Esperanto words
in my lectures that could be easily understood by everybody. Take the
words "skribi," to write; "lerni," to learn; "mangxi," to eat; "trinki,"
to drink; "tablo," a table; "glaso," a glass; "nazo," the nose, and
"busxo," the mouth; "mano," the hand; take the adjectives, bona, bela,
granda, kapabla, etc. Few, indeed, are the Esperanto words that do not
connect at all with the English; in most cases, in at least 87 cases
out of 100, you will find those words connect with one or many English
words.

Mr. TOWNER. You mean that 87 per cent of the words now in the Esperanto
vocabulary are formative words?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes: they are connected with the English language, and
from each Esperanto word you can form mechanically absolutely every
word that sense and logic can possibly connect with the one and only
meaning of the original Esperanto word. I am accustomed to lecturing
before audiences and making this statement, which I make without fear
of contradiction, that "if all of you were to take up Esperanto now and
carry it on until you were as expert in it as I am, you would not in the
whole of your studies come across more than 60 words, probably not more
than 50 words, which are entirely new to you."

Mr. TOWNER. Of course, a vocabulary of 3,000 words is a very limited
vocabulary; it is a primitive vocabulary?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes?

Mr. TOWNER. How are you going to increase it? For instance, how are you
going to make it a literary language? How are you going to write poems?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Personally I should not want an international language
for poetry, although Esperanto does in fact lend itself excellently
to the purposes of the muses. But to answer your question: First of
all, the Esperanto language does not contain any words at all; I think
there are only 138 full-fledged words, prepositions, adverbs, and
conjunctions, but the rest of the vocabulary is formed of roots only.
Let us take the words "to sew," "to stitch." The root is "kudr." It is
only a root, and that alone stands in the vocabulary. Now, if you want
to make this root into a noun "o" is added to it, "kudro": if you want
to make it an adjective, you add "a" to it, "kudra"; if you want to
make it an adverb you add "e," kudre, which would mean by or through
sewing, "sewingly," if it could be so expressed in English; and if you
want to make it a verb it would be "kudri," because every infinitive
ends in "i." You see, with that root to begin with you can form four
words, and you can express a great deal more in Esperanto than anybody
can possibly imagine; in fact Esperanto is, on account of its perfect
and absolutely complete flexibility, more precise and more comprehensive
than any language under the sun. As I said before, you can form four
words from every root at the start if sense allows it, and sense allows
you a great deal more leeway in Esperanto than anybody can possibly know
about, because in no language are you allowed to proceed by sense. The
English language does not allow it, nor does any other, not oven German
or Greek, but it is allowed in this most logical of all languages,
Esperanto. (7)

Mr. TOWNER. Take the illustration you have just used. We say "The sewing
is beautiful." and "We find her sewing assiduously." Now, we use the
same word, but the formation of the sentence determines whether or not
it is a noun or a verb.

Prof. CHRISTEN. You mean the distinction between the participle and the
noun?

Mr. TOWNER. Yes.

Prof. CHRISTEN. With your permission I will not answer that
particularly, but will deal with the whole subject. I want to say that
from every root you form four words, the four principal parts of speech.
And the first thing to remember is this positive stroke of genius--that
every noun ends with "o," every adjective with "a," every derived adverb
with "e," and every infinitive with "i."

Mr. TOWNER. How would you carry that to proper names?

Prof. CHRISTEN. London would be Londono; Robert is Roberto, but proper
names you are at liberty to do with as you please; give them the
Esperanto ending or leave them in the original form.

Mr. TOWNER. What about Washington?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Washingtono.

Mr. TOWNER. I mean, you would really change it?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes; if you prefer it; that is, if it sounds better.

Mr. TOWNER. In the language?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes.

Mr. TOWNER. For instance, if you were speaking about the city of
Washington, you would not say Washington, but Washingtono?

Prof. CHRISTEN. You will find it frequently printed as Washingtono.

Mr. TOWNER. Why do you do that, because Washingtono is not the name of
the city?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Let me say that you say London in English, but that is
not French.

Mr. TOWNER. But we always spell Paris the French way, although we do not
pronounce it the same way; that is, "Paree."

Prof. CHRISTEN. But London is not London in French; it is "Londres" in
French.

Mr. TOWNER. Do you mean to say that if a letter were addressed to London
from Paris the Frenchman would not pronounce and write it London but
Londres?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes.

Mr. TOWNER. He does not say London?

Prof. CHRISTEN. No, he says Londres. And the same is true with Dover;
Dover is not French; The French would be Douvres. However, I want to say
this, that after the first three or four years after I took up Esperanto
geographical or proper names were left optional and they were not given
any particular spelling in the Esperanto language and are not now. Many
Esperantists now would say Washington and London. But you can make the
change if you want to.

Mr. TOWNER. Internationally, has not that come to be the custom, to
pronounce the geographical names and proper names in the way they are
pronounced in the country in which they originate?

Prof. CHRISTEN. I think so. As I said, there is no arbitrary rule about
personal names or geographical names. Now, let me proceed with this
marvelous scheme and repeat that every part of speech is distinctive
in itself; that is the reason a child, when it follows Esperanto, will
not find English so hard and will understand English better than in any
other way. Such a child will understand English far better than if it
did not understand Esperanto, and that is a statement I often make in my
lectures.

Mr. RIPLEY. We had a man here the other day who has a language which he
claims is an improvement on Esperanto.

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes?

Mr. RIPLEY. He is from Ohio, I believe.

Prof. CHRISTEN. I know. Since Esparanto began to move forward there have
been at least 30 to 40 different schemes elaborated, and that is easily
done. You can do it overnight. But there is no scheme that has ever
touched and no scheme that can ever touch Esperanto, because it has hit
the mark from the first. (8)

Mr. TOWNER. What do you do with adverbs? Do they have a definite form?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Every derived adverb ends in "e."

Mr. TOWNER. So you could not distinguish from the form between a verb
and an adverb, could you?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Perfectly. The adverb ends in "e" and the infinitive
ends in "i."

Mr. RIPLEY. It is your contention that children will do better in
English if they acquire a knowledge of Esperanto?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Undoubtedly; this is a statement I make in my lectures:
If you gentlemen will give me a number of children aged 4 or 5 years
I will give them a quarter of an hour's pleasant explanation about
grammar, that is Esperanto grammar, and they will understand it after a
quarter of an hour's explanation; then I will jumble together a number
of blocks, with various words on these blocks, and I will say to these
children "pick out every noun," and they will be able to do it--that is,
pick the nouns from the adjectives--and so with every part of speech.

The CHAIRMAN. Because they will know to a certainty?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes; every word tells its own tale on account of its
distinctive ending. Now, that is a thing you can not do in English; that
nobody can do in English, because we can not tell the parts of speech
simply by the appearance of the words; we can only know from the context
and that is not always easy!

The CHAIRMAN. How does that apply to other languages?

Prof. CHRISTEN. The same thing applies more or less to all, because they
are all irregular; they were not formed; they have "growd" like Topsy.

Mr. TOWNER. The Latin language is more regular?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes: but it does not begin to compare with Esperanto.
Now, we have had these four words, and I want to proceed a little
further, and I will take up something that will help me to answer your
questions. If I had to teach you gentlemen French I would have to make
you commit to memory 2,667 endings and contractions for the verb alone;
it would take you months and months to learn that alone. The same
absurdities and even worse occur in Italian, in Spanish, in German, in
English, and in all so-called natural languages.

Mr. TOWNER. And we never could learn these irregularities and
exceptions.

Prof. CHRISTEN. Well, if you did learn them you would never remember
them at the right time because the whole scheme is so complicated.
This is only one of the many reasons which make us so shy at speaking
foreign languages. Now, the same thing is true of German, and of all
other languages, but it is not true of Esperanto. I will teach you the
whole Esperanto conjugation in five minutes and you will never forget
it, because there is nothing to remember. You already know that a noun
ends in "o" and that the infinitive ends in "i," and so on: there is
absolutely no difficulty whatever. (9) Now, I am sorry I have to speak
so rapidly, because I would like to give you more information.

The CHAIRMAN. We would be glad to have you add to your remarks.

Mr. TOWNER. You can extend your remarks.

Prof. CHRISTEN. Since my time is up and, indeed, far exceeded, I will
be very glad to do so. But before I leave you, let me read one or two
items, which will only take two minutes more. Here is a quotation
from the British Esperantist, of November, 1913, showing the progress
Esperanto is making:

The central Esperanto bureau, of Paris, gives the following
statistics: In 1889, there had been published 29 books in
Esperanto; in 1899, 128; in 1910, 1,554; in 1912 (to August
30), 1,837. Enough already to keep most readers going for
full five years of Sundays, and the output, both of bookshop
and of press, is increasing daily.

Mr. TOWNER. In a general way, what is the character of this literature?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Up to now chiefly textbooks for learning Esperanto,
such as this little book [indicating], which can be purchased for 10
cents. You can learn the whole mechanism of the language from one of
these little books. Then there are a great many other publications,
translations, scientific articles, etc., and we have already several
novels originally written in the new language.

Mrs. CRAFTS. May I say a word right here? I hold in my hand the New
Testament, published by the British and Foreign Bible Society together
with the Scotch Bible Society. It is a translation from Nestle's Greek
Testament, and the Old Testament is now being translated by one of the
most eminent Hebrew scholars in the world.

Prof. CHRISTEN. Here is the next item, which I would like to read to
you:

Evening classes for the study of Esperanto under the auspices of
the L.C.C. (London county council) are being held at the Halstow
Road Nonvocational Institute, Greenwich, S.E., on Thursday,
7.30-9.30 p.m., and at Bloomfield Road Commercial Institute,
Plumstead, S.E., on Fridays, 7.20-10.50 p. m. Instructor Mr.
William H. Dennis, B.D.E.A., 108, Eglinton Road, Plumstead,
S.E., from whom any information may be obtained. These classes
are designed especially to meet the requirements of the serious
student, beginner or advanced. (10)

That is from London. Then I have another quotation which I want to read
from Edinburgh:

The chief constable of Edinburgh has interested himself in Esperanto,
especially in view of the 1915 congress. The chief constable has
ordered a copy of "Esperanto For All," to be sent to the 650 members
of the Edinburgh police force, with a recommendation that the police
learn the language. A class for policemen is being arranged, for
which 14 names have been received.

Esperanto classes for policemen have been conducted for several years
in several towns in Germany, in France, in Spain, etc., and even during
their hours of duty classes are going on in Esperanto so that policemen
may learn Esperanto without the loss of their own personal time. I thank
you, gentlemen, for bearing with me so long.

Mr. BARTHOLDT. I should like to have an opportunity, if possible, at
some future time to have you give us about 10 or 15 minutes to hear Mrs.
Crafts.

The CHAIRMAN. We shall be very glad indeed to give you that time.

(The additional matter submitted by Prof. Christen follows:)

(1) We are apt to lose sight of the fact that the whole world's
business is daily becoming more and more internationalized and that
what in former centuries was done parochially is now more and more
done internationally.

The first public international convention ever held took place
less than 75 years ago; it is a significant fact that this was a
peace convention. To-day there are over 300 societies: Commercial,
scientific, religious, sociological, industrial, sporting, etc.,
organized internationally. During those seventy-odd years over
2,000 international congresses of one kind or another have actually
taken place, and now a days not one year passes without several
scores being added to the total. An incomplete list for 1914 gives
49 such prospective international gatherings and over one score of
exhibitions, fairs, and festivals of an international character.

What lamentable and foolish and provoking situation at such gatherings
is due to the multitude of tongues only those know who have wasted
time and money in attending them. Usually three or more languages are
officially accepted and most of the time is irretrievably lost in
misunderstandings and more or less inadequate translations.

Compare with this the nine yearly international Esperanto congresses
held at Boulogne, Geneva, Cambridge, Dresden, Barcelona, Washington,
Cracow, Antwerp, and Berne, at which from 800 to 1,500 delegates from
20 to 30 different countries spent a week in complete communion through
this wonderful language. Orations, discussions, sermons, concerts,
theatrical performances, and general fellowship among the members being
freely enjoyed by all, and often by individuals who had only had a few
weeks of acquaintance with the language.

An international language of some sort has become an absolute necessity
of our new era of universal solidarity.

A hopeful sign of progress is that many international organizations have
already declared in favor of Esperanto for their future meetings.

(2) The impossibility of ever making any national language international
will at once become clear if we imagine the whole youth of the United
States condemned to become proficient in French or Spanish or German.
Say we take the easiest of them, Spanish: does anyone dream the thing
possible? Only an infinitesimal fraction of our young people could
attain even a smattering, and that at the cost of from two to three
years' study; and even then it is quite unlikely that other nations
would adopt the same language. But if they all did this impossible
thing the Spanish speaking peoples would still have the pull on them
all because they grow up with the language and have not to acquire it
artificially.

What holds good for Spanish holds good for even other so called natural
language, including English, and more with English than any other on
account of its barbarous spelling and pronunciation.

None of these objections, neither structural nor national, apply to
Esperanto, which is entirely neutral and ideally simple.

(3) The U.E.A. (Universala Esperanto Asocio) has its central office
at 10 Rue de la Bourse, Geneva, Switzerland. Yearly dues 50 cents for
private members, $2.50 for business firms. These contributions entitle
the members to use the machinery of the association for the acquisition
of information--free of cost, except postage--on any subject whatever
(except confidential matters), the only condition being that the request
be written in Esperanto. A sufficient amount of Esperanto for this
purpose can be acquired by anyone in a few days, or even in a few
hours. It is not even necessary to have a teacher, the textbooks being
very easy to master. In America, if local booksellers do not yet stock
Esperanto literature, the would-be student may apply to Peter Reilly,
Esperanto bookseller, 133 North Thirteenth Street, Philadelphia, Pa.

A growing number of Esperantists all over the world are using the
services of the U.E.A., not only in correspondence, but actually
traveling through many countries for pleasure or profit by means of
Esperanto alone, and finding everywhere helpful hints and congenial
surroundings in the local Esperanto groups.

In addition to the U.E.A. there is an international Esperanto society
for the propaganda of the language; this has its world center at 51 Rue
de Clichy, Paris, France, and powerful national societies in France (240
branches), in England (118 branches), in Germany (over 250 branches),
etc.

(4) I should, however, add, in justice to the American people,
that wherever Esperanto has been brought to their notice by press
or platform it has been well received. I have myself lectured to
large and sympathetic audiences in Chautauqua, Buffalo, New York,
Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Washington. Public schools, high schools,
and universities have frequently opened their doors to Esperanto, and
in my own case the University of Pennsylvania and the University of
Columbia have shown their open-mindedness to the extent of engaging a
paid lecturer for a prolonged course.

So has the Department of Education of the city of New York.

In the Bureau of Standards, Washington, D.C., a considerable number of
scientists have declared in favor of Esperanto, and are adepts of the
language.

My experience is that in this country the informed public warmly
approves of Esperanto and the ideals it stands for, but expects
the spread of the language to come through the schools. There is
consequently in this country a special inertia in this matter, in spite
of approval; this makes organised propaganda extremely difficult in such
a vast territory.

Accordingly the national organization, the E.A.N.A. (Esperanto
Association of North America), central offices, Newton Center, Mass.,
has so far had but a checkered and precarious existence.

A rival society, the U.S.E.A. (United States Esperanto Association) has
its headquarters at Shaller, Iowa.

(5) If I were asked how Esperanto could best be introduced into the
schools, I should suggest that a limited course of lecture lessons,
say, from 6 to 12, to the teachers would suffice to give them all that
is necessary to enable them to practice the language until complete
proficiency is attained. In many places there is even now a supply of
local Esperantists ready to cooperate with the schools.

After a month's study any teacher should be able to teach others and
perfect himself in the process. At that I would teach the language only
to the pupils in their last year of school; many of them could make
immediate use of Esperanto on entering business; most of them would
probably get enough of the language during the last session at school
to engage them to keep up the practice afterwards according to local
opportunities.

Please do not judge of this probability by your experience with other
languages, which most students drop as soon as possible. Their endless
complications make the study and practice irksome and futile, while
Esperanto is positively fascinating.

In my opinion two lessons of 45 minutes a week would amply suffice to
secure practical results never dreamed of in the French, German, or
Spanish classes. After a very short course of study, the boys and girls
would get an opportunity to correspond with scholars of their own age
and station in many lands. There are even now hundreds of school boys
and girls in France, Germany, Austria, Spain, and even in China and
Japan eager for such interchange of thoughts by means of Esperanto.

The hour or hour and a half spent weekly on this subject would be amply
repaid by the increased intelligence and linguistic feeling of the
pupils, and ultimately the subject could be taught with great benefit to
the whole school, doing away with the necessity of ineffectual attempts
at teaching foreign languages to all and sundry, regardless of taste and
capacity.

(6) Perhaps a few remarks may be in place here to substantiate still
more clearly the postulate that Esperanto fulfills absolutely the ideal
requirement of a language that means to be introduced throughout the
world as a secondary or auxiliary language: Facility of acquirement to
all nations.

(a) There is not one difficult sound, such as our th, our obscure
vowels, the French nasals, the German ae, oe, ue, etc. The vowels are a,
e, i, o, and u. Each has but one sound value, and that long and full,
approximately as in the phrase: "Pa may we go, too?"

(b) The tonic accent, an insuperable difficulty in English, on account
of its irregularity and elusiveness, is in Esperanto invariably on the
last vowel but one.

(c) The grammar is reduced to a minimum, the whole mechanism of
Esperanto being compassed within 16 rules which any one can grasp and
assimilate inside one hour.

(d) The vocabulary is extremely small, less than 1,000 roots, mostly
common to every Aryan tongue, being sufficient for all ordinary purposes
of language.

This is due to the marvelously ingenious system of word building, which
enables anyone to derive from a dozen to one hundred and more words from
every root, there being to this derivation no limit but that of common
sense.

Of course, the vocabulary for science and technology is considerably
larger, but equally flexible.

(e) There are no troublesome genders; sex is expressed by the insertion
of "in" before the "o" ending of nouns, and of course only in the case
of animate creation. For instance, "viro" is man, "virino" woman,
"frato" brother, "fratino" sister, "kuzo" male cousin, "kuzino" female
cousin, etc. And here Esperanto has over all other languages not only
the signal advantage that there are no irregularities, but the far
more important advantage that the scheme is applicable to all cases.
For instance, although we have in English from 30 to 40 different
ways of forming the feminine such as father, mother; brother, sister;
uncle, aunt; bull, cow; stallion, mare; fox, vixen; etc., yet in most
cases we possess no decent or sensible way to indicate the sex of the
individuals; as, for instance, in the cases of teacher, doctor, friend,
cousin, neighbor, witness, elephant, camel, goat, typist, stenographer,
companion, president, chairman, etc.

Last, but not least, every word parses itself by its distinctive ending.

(7) The stupendous flexibility of Esperanto will be still better
understood if I state here that it possesses some 30 particles (prefixes
and suffixes), each with a definite meaning and each available whenever
you want to attach that particular meaning to any word.

We have already seen that the suffix "in" expresses the female sex
whenever it may be desirable to give it expression. So "id" denotes
the offspring, "il" the tool or instrument, "isto" the profession,
"ul" the person or individual, "ec" the quality (abstract), "ajx"
the concrete thing, product, or result, "eg" means large, and "et"
small, etc. Now, let us see how this works out in practice. Bovo is
bull; bovino, cow; bovido, calf; bovajxo, beef; bovidino, female
calf. And you may say bovego, boveto, bovinego, bovineto, bovidego,
bovideto, bovidinego, and bovidineto if you wish to add the idea of size
or smallness to the original or to the derived word.

Again: "Lern" is the root for learning. We first get lerni, to learn;
lerna, learned; lerne, learnedly; learno, learning. Next, using a few of
the particles we can make: lernebla, capable of being learned; lernema,
inclined to learn (studious); lerninda, worth learning; lernilo, a
text book (a tool); lernisto (a professional learner), a student;
lernulo, a learned person, a scholar; lerneco, learning in the abstract;
lernajxo, the matter to be learned (concrete), etc. And once more
note that what you can do with one root you can do with every root
in the vocabulary. So that the originally available number of words
is multiplied ten and hundred fold. Which simply means a tremendous
saving of labor in learning words and forms and yet secures a range of
expression and a degree of precision undreamed of in any other language.

(8) On the possible rivals, past, present, or future, to Esperanto see
closing remarks.

(9) To complete what I said on the verb during the hearing I give here
the entire paradigm of the verb in Esperanto.

Paroli, to speak; parolanta, speaking; parolata, spoken.

Present, I speak, etc.: Mi parolas, vi parolas, li parolas, sxi parolas,
ni parolas, vi parolas, ili parolas, oni (one) parolas, gxi (it)
parolas.

There a thus only one ending "as" for the present of every verb and the
same for every person.

In the past the ending is "is": mi parolis, I spoke, etc.

In the future "os" mi parolos, I shall speak, etc. In the conditional
"us": mi parolus, I should speak, etc. In the subjunctive "u": ke
mi parolu, that I may or might speak, the tense being sufficiently
indicated by the antecedent verb.

For the imperative we use the subjunctive without conjunction and
generally without subject.

The participle has a most ingenious flexbility, it having three forms,
anta, inta, onta for the active, and ata, ita, ota for the passive;
parolanta, speaking now; parolinta, having spoken; parolonta, about to
be speaking; parolata, being spoken now; parolita, spoken formerly;
parolota, to be spoken later.

Only practice can reveal the wonderful usefulness of this scheme, again,
of course, applicable to all verbs.

One interesting sequel is, that as every word can be turned into a
noun--if sense demands it--by simply changing the ending into o, we
therefore get: parolanto, the present speaker; parolinto, the past
speaker; parolonto, the future speaker.

Let no one say that such richness and possibility of precision is of
no importance; many a life's jeopardy has turned on less. Nor can it
be said that this unlimited capacity of expression makes the mechanism
of the language cumbersome, for the whole scheme of Esperanto can be
thoroughly mastered in a few hours.

(10) In England Esperanto has been on the school rates for several
years; any technical or continuation school can apply to the board of
education for permission to put Esperanto on its program. In 1909 it was
already thus taught in 33 centers.

The London Chamber of Commerce holds examinations in Esperanto every
year, and has done so since 1907. The United Kingdom Association of
Teachers prepares for the certificate of proficiency in Esperanto.

In the town of Lille, France, Esperanto has been taught in the high
schools for at least nine years; about 1,500 pupils benefiting yearly
from this. The same is true of Rio de Janeiro, in Brasil.

In conclusion, I wish to register my opinion as an unbiased student of
the whole movement for the adoption of an international language that
Esperanto has nothing to fear from any rival scheme--present, past, or
future.

Of upward of 150 different projects that have seen the light since the
seventeenth century, not one was born with a life worth saving but
Esperanto; not one has ever attained one-hundredth part the power and
vogue and vitality that Esperanto has achieved.

One only of all these schemes has ever come prominently before the
public before Esperanto came into the field, Volapuek, and this failed
of its own defects.

One only among some 20 or 30 imitations of Esperanto, namely, Ido,
succeeded for a time in creating a diversion in the Esperanto camp.
If Volapuek died of its defects, it is permissible to say that Ido
never lived on account of its numerous authors' everlasting chase
after theoretical perfection, each one having a different opinion--and
changing the same with every wind--as to what constitutes perfection
in every one of a thousand features of a human language. Accordingly,
the Idoists have altered their mock Esperanto a hundred times in six
years, so that no one has been able to keep track of the changes, and
the adherents of the secession themselves have never been able to learn,
speak, and use the language.

During these six years Esperanto has succeeded in establishing itself
and getting a firm hold in every civilized country from China to Peru
and from Greenland to Zanzibar, because it is a live and growing
language, perfect in so far that it is endowed from the start with all
the power of evolution without the need of any internal changes in its
wonderfully simple structure.

Here are a few quotations from great thinkers as to the need for an
auxiliary language:

The diversity of languages is fatal for genius and progress. If
there were a universal language, we should save a third of life.
(Leibnitz.)

The interrelationships of the peoples are so great that they most
certainly need a universal language. (Montesquieu.)

One of the greatest torments of life is the diversity of language.
(Voltaire.)

What an immeasurable profit it would be for the human race if we were
able to intercommunicate by means of one language. (Volney.)

It seems to me quite possible--probable even--than an artificial
language to be universally used will be greed upon. (Herbert
Spencer.)

The learning of many languages fills the memory with words instead of
facts and thoughts, and this is a vessel which, with every person,
can only contain certain limited amount of records. Therefore the
learning of many languages is injudicious, inasmuch as it arouses
the belief in the possession of dexterity, and, as a matter of
fact, it lends a kind of delusive importance to social intercourse.
It is also injurious in that it opposes the acquirement of solid
knowledge and the intention to win the respect of men in an honest
way. Finally, it is the ax which is laid at the root of a delicate
sense of language in our mother tongue, which thereby is incurably
injured and destroyed. The two nations which have produced the
greatest stylists, the Greeks and the French, learned no foreign
languages; but as human intercourse grows more cosmopolitan, and
as, for instance, a good merchant in London must now be able to
read and write eight languages, the learning of many tongues has
certainly become a necessary evil; but which, when finally carried
to an extreme, will compel mankind to find a remedy, and in some far
off future there will be a new language used at first as a language
of commerce, then as a language of intellectual intercourse, then
for all, as surely as some time or other there will be aviation. Why
else should philology have studied the laws of language for a whole
century and have estimated the necessary, the valuable, and the
successful portion of each separate language? (Nietsche.)

In this connection it may be well to repeat once more that Esperanto is
only an "auxiliary" language. Nobody dreams of it being a "universal
language."

EXAMPLES OF ESPERANTO.

Simpla, fleksebla, belsona, vere internacia en siaj elementoj[1],
la lingvo Esperanto prezentas al la mondo civilizita la sole veran
solvon[2] de lingvo internacia: cxar[3], tre facila por homoj nemulte
instruitaj, Esperanto estas komprenata sen peno de la personoj bone
edukitaj. Mil faktoj atestas la meriton praktikan de la nomita lingvo.

[1] "j" has the sound of English "y", as in boy, and is the sign for
the plural of nouns and adjectives.

[2] "n" is the mark of the accusative or object of the verb.

[3] The diacritic sign ^ occurs on c, g, h, j, s and has the force
of an h after the first and the last--ch, sh. gx is pronounced
like English g in George, which g without sign has the value of g in
good. jx is pronounced like s in pleasure, while j simple has the
sound of y in yes, esp. jes. hx occurs rarely and is doomed to
disappear in favor of k.

Kaj se vi pregxas, vi ne devas esti kiel la hipokrituloj, kiuj volonte
staras kaj pregxas en la lernejoj, kaj apud la anguloj de la stratetoj;
por ke ili estu vidataj de la homoj. Vere, mi diras al vi: Ili ricevis
sian pagon. Sed se vi pregxas, iru en la cxambreton kaj fermu la pordon,
kaj pregxu al via patro en la kasxito, kaj via patro, kiu vidas en la
kasxiton, rekompencos gxin al vi publike. Kaj se vi pregxas, vi ne
devas multe babili, kiel la idolistoj, cxar ili opinias ke gxi estos
akceptata, se ili faras multe da paroloj. Tial vi ne devas simili al
ili. Via patro scias, kion vi bezonas, antaux ol vi petas lin. Tial
vi devas pregxi tiamaniere. Patro nia en la cxielo. Via nomo estu
sanktigata. Via regno venu. Via volo farigxu sur la tero, kiel en la
cxielo. Nian panon cxiutagan donu al ni hodiaux. Kaj pardonu al ni
niajn kulpojn, kiel ni pardonas niajn kulpulojn. Kaj ne konduku nin en
tenton, sed savu nin de la malbono. Cxar via estas la regno, kaj la
forto, kaj la gloro en eterneco. Amen. Cxar se vi pardonos al la homoj
iliajn kulpojn, tiam via cxiela patro pardonos ankaux al vi. Sed se vi
ne pardonos al la homoj iliajn kulpojn, tiam via cxiela patro ankaux ne
pardonos al vi viajn kulpojn. (La Evangelio Sankta Mateo VI, 5-16.)

END

This etext was retrieved by ftp from ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg
It is also available from www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg

Produced by David Starner, William Patterson and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

========================================================================

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

The Esperanto alphabet contains 28 characters. These are the
characters of English, but with "q", "w", "x", and "y" removed, and
six diacritical letters added. The diacritical letters are "c",
"g", "h", "j" and "s" with circumflexes (or "hats", as Esperantists
fondly call them), and "u" with a breve. Zamenhof himself suggested
that where the diacritical letters caused difficulty, one could
instead use "ch", "gh", "hh", "jh", "sh" and "u". A plain ASCII
file is one such place; there are no ASCII codes for Esperanto's
special letters.

However, there are two problems with Zamenhof's "h-method". There is
no difference between "u" and "u" with a breve, and there is no way
to determine (without prior knowledge of the word(s) involved, and
sometimes a bit of context) whether an "h" following one of those other
five letters is really the second half of a diacritical pair, or just
an "h" that happened to find itself next to one of them. Consequently
other, unambiguous, methods have been used over the years. One is the
"x-method", which uses the digraphs "cx", "gx", "hx", "jx", "sx" and
"ux" to represent the special letters. There is no ambiguity because
the letter "x" is not an Esperanto letter, and each diacritical letter
has a unique transliteration. This is the method used in the ASCII
versions of this Project Gutenberg e-text.

However, in the discussion of the name "Washington", "W" and "sh" were
indeed used in the original document. "Esparanto" and "flexbility" were
also found in the original document and retained, along with a "than"
where a "then" was probably intended.

In addition, the 7-bit ASCII version of this book uses the German
"-e" convention to represent characters with umlauts. The 8-bit ASCII
version uses the ISO-8859-1 character set to represent these German
and Volapuek characters. The HTML version uses Unicode and therefore
displays properly all the characters for the languages... including
Esperanto!

Love/Dating statistics among Americans.

2009-10-15T01:33:00.000-05:00

Check the title link. Among other things, apparently...

...15% of online Americans check an online dating website at least once a month.
...of one study, 2% of married couples met at church. (3% met at online dating sites.)
...88% of women and 82% of men get married at least once in their lifetime. (Which is, incidentally, what I was searching for when I found this article).
..."Which is better: love at first sight or friends first? In a study from the University of Groningen, Dutch researchers interviewed married couples and asked them how their relationship started¹³. They also assessed the couples’ personality types, and the quality of their relationship. Results showed that relationship quality was similar between friends-first and lovers-at-first-sight, although friends-first lovers were more intimate and committed, whereas lovers-at-first-sight had more passionate relationships. In terms of personality, friends-first lovers tended to be more extroverted, independent, and emotionally stable. For lovers-at-first-sight, relationships were more loving when both partners shared the personality trait of conscientiousness. If you’re neat and clean, you’ll fight less if your partner is also neat and clean.

Whether your relationship starts off as friends-first or lovers-at-first-sight, you’ll probably end up as best friends. In a study from Texas Tech University, 44 percent of students said that their closest friend was also their romantic partner¹⁴."

...And at any given time, 56% of men and 50% of women are married.

Interesting. In case the link disappears, here are the references given by the articles:

Madden M, Lenhart A. (2006). Online dating. Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Janka PA. (2005). Getting laid in NYC: technology for the single man. http://www.puaratings.com/articles/janka-nyc
Arrington M. (2006). Online dating 2.0: thirteen sites to find love. TechCrunch. July 23, 2006.
Hitsch GJ, Hortacsu A, Ariely D. (2004). What makes you click: An empirical analysis of online dating. Published online October 2004.
Troy AB, Lewis-Smith J, Laurenceau J. (2006). Interracial and intraracial romantic relationships: the search for differences in satisfaction, conflict, and attachment style. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 23(1):65–80.
Wikipedia. Nichelle Nichols. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichelle_Nichols
Wikipedia. Bob Jones University. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Jones_University
Alvarez L, Jaffe K. (2004). Narcissism guides mate selection: humans mate assortatively, as revealed by facial resemblance, following an algorithm of “self seeking like.” Evolutionary Psychology. 2:177–194.
Kirsta A. (2003). Genetic sexual attraction. Guardian. Saturday May 17, 2003.
Hazan C, Diamond LM. (2000). The place of attachment in human mating. Review of General Psychology. 4(2):186–204.
Aron A, et al. (1989). Experiences of falling in love. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 6:243–257.
Noller P, et al. (1994). A longitudinal study of conflict in early marriage. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 11:233–252.
Barelds DPH, Barelds-Dijkstra P. (2007). Love at first sight or friends first? Ties among partner personality trait similarity, relationship onset, relationship quality, and love. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 24(4):479–496.
Hendrick SS, Hendrick C. (1993). Lovers as friends. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 10:459–466.
The National Marriage Project. (2004). The state of our unions 2004: the social health of marriage in America. Rutgers.
Frazier P et al. (1996). Desire for marriage and life satisfaction among unmarried heterosexual adults. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 13(2):225–239.
Stafford L, Kline SL, Rankin CT. (2004). Married individuals, cohabiters, and cohabiters who marry: a longitudinal study of relational and individual well-being. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 21(2):231–248.
Hawkins DN, Booth A. (2005). Unhappily ever after: effects of long-term, low-quality marriages on well-being. Social Forces. 84(1):451–471.
Orbuch TL, et al. (2002). Who will divorce: a 14-year longitudinal study of black couples and white couples. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 19(2):179–202.
Zagorsky JL. (2003). Husbands’ and wives’ view of the family finances. Journal of Socio-Economics. 32:127–146.
Kelly C, Huston TL, Cate RM. (1985). Premarital relationship correlates of the erosion of satisfaction in marriage. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 2:167–78.
Stafford L, Canary DJ. (1991). Maintenance strategies and romantic relationship type, gender and relational characteristics. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 8:217–242.
Utne MK et al. (1984). Equity, marital satisfaction, and stability. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. 1:323–332.
Albada KF, Knapp ML, Theune KE. (2002). Interaction appearance theory: changing perceptions of physical attractiveness through social interaction. Communication Theory. 12(1):8–40.
Schultz W et al. (1997). A neural substrate of prediction and reward. Science. 275:1593–1599.
Johnson JH. (2004). Do long work hours contribute to divorce? Topics in Economic Analysis & Policy. 4(1):1–23.

cpu scaling in ubuntu/debian, specs from terminal

2009-07-18T01:19:00.000-06:00

guide: http://embraceubuntu.com/2005/11/04/enabling-cpu-frequency-scaling/

forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1062340.html

----------------------

system specs: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=398742

K

Cracking WEP (In Ubuntu) + Challah and other recipes+Geek+Majest, snowbird

2009-07-10T15:05:00.000-06:00

The title leads to http://ryanunderdown.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/turkeyfarm.html, which is the link for the wep cracking article.

fooddownunder.com contains these recipes for whole wheat honey challah bread.

And.... 100 Essential Geek Skillz. Certainly a flawed list, but a nod in the right direction nonetheless.

K

Why Chinese is so Damn Hard.

2009-05-24T02:40:00.000-06:00

Well put. Click the title to read the article.

A response to a post of Quell's.

2009-03-31T05:20:00.001-06:00

Concerning the post in general--

It's good to hear this being said within your realm. I offer overwhelming agreement, with but one caveat: your emphasis on the individuality of two within marriage, on the maintenance of separate identity.

It's an interesting question, and not one easily answered... actually, even one wrongly answered constantly, with the correct answer veiled to us, being so rarely demonstrated (or so I would posit, at least). How do two people relate to each other within marriage? What does that even look like?

I would personally imagine it's something a lot more unified than which you speak. It's a hard question to even fathom, but I imagine its reality is somewhat difficult to understand until it's experienced, in a similar way to a parent's love for a child... I can't picture that kind of sacrificial love, but I've heard a number of people tell me that once they had a kid, it's like a new part of their brain functioned. They didn't know that had the capacity to care for someone else like they now do, like they did the moment they saw their child.

I don't think it works with your spouse like that, a 'love at first site' thing. Rather, I think the birth of that kind of love and unity, "oneness", is one that comes through much labour and time. But I picture two people being changed, growing to know and fit each other in a way such that they become inseparable in their deepest parts... assuming, of course, that both allow the other to know their deepest parts, something rare in this day, and in all the days of fallen man.

I don't have any experience with marriage, so I can't speak with any authority on this topic, as I've never experienced what I believe. I could go on to from whence I draw my conclusions, but that's unnecessary in this context, I think.

Concerning the "hardest question in the world" (with which I poke playfully at your less-than-sophisticated hyperbole ;)--

I think you hit the nail on the head in realizing the issue at hand is loyalty, devotion... and commitment. I would suggest the reason this question is so difficult to answer is because it is circumstantially contrary to the nature of man's heart. Dating is just not how love was meant to be done. We weren't made to become deeply emotionally (or otherwise) involved with other people without the pretext of commitment... when the bridges of intimacy are built between two, and then betrayed, inescapably the break is a messy one that gets in the way of future 'bridges'. People destroy themselves using this pattern, and assume something is wrong with them, and so break their ability to bond deeply so seriously that it stops to happen at all, in any deep place, and thus to stop hurting--which, of course, is according to one paradigm 'broken, jaded', and to another 'wise'.

(I happen to side with the former, if you didn't gather. ;)

The situation in dating looks like this: "Let's trust each other, but refuse to be accountable to each other, so either of us can pull out if we choose to."

That's what I call a flaky friendship at best. I should hope my close friends will not just bail on me when they feel like it, but be with me through thick and thin--how much more so the one I am to share my love with throughout my life?

I know that'll leave people saying there's no other way, that you need to date to learn how to be in a relationship--to which I respond that people have done otherwise for all of history. I find friendship far wiser than dating for finding romance--for one, I can get to know a person who isn't trying to impress me constantly better than otherwise, as with dating. Secondly, however, and relative to this discussion, I can make a commitment to a friendship, to care about a person as a friend, without crossing a line I shouldn't.

Anyways.
That's maybe a bit more than two cents,
but you chose to read it,
so decide for yourself if it makes sense--
and accordingly take it or leave it.

K

Esperanto, Etc.

2009-03-26T01:26:00.000-06:00

I see a few criticisms of esperanto in these comments, that in all honesty don't bear up very well under any scrutiny.

These comments seem to generally be of 2 kinds:

1) variations on "I'm too busy", or "I'll wait till it's more popular". OK, fair enough. That's for you to determine; maybe you'll find time for it later.a

2) the other comments basically boil down to "That's not how it's done in english" , or "It's not what I'm used to". Well guess what, there's 5 or 6 thousand languages in this world, and each one has its own way of doing things. What may seem like the 'natural', 'straight-forward', 'easiest' arrangement to a native anglophone may be equally inside-out, backwards, complicated and arbitrary to a native speaker of, say, korean.

Every gramatical feature is a trade-off, and Zamenhof not only theorised but extensively tested his language project before releasing the basic, proven framework. Over this 8-year testing period, he discovered that many seemingly great ideas didn't work well in practice. For example, eliminating case entirely was one of those ideas -- he found that relying on word order instead, quickly becomes more complex, and arbitrary, and difficult than a case to identify a direct object (especially for people accustomed to a different set of word-order rules).

3) (though this hasn't come up) While by far most proposals to reform or 'improve' esperanto amounted to attempts to make it more 'european'. On the other hand, some find it to european already. After having learned the basics, I myself fell into this camp, until I met some japanese and korean esperantists at the Calgary Winter Olympic Games. My 2 semesters of japanese night-school wasn't a lot of help. Their 12-14 years of english study wasn't much use either. Though none of us had studied esperanto for more than 6 months (part time), we understood each other quite well, and far, far better than in english. Their attitude was "If we don't find esperanto to be 'too european', you're just making excuses". I decided that maybe they had a point.

--http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/02/08/114917.php

An Esperanto Overview

Word Formation in Esperanto (And a general, very readable introduction to Esperanto's grammar as compared with other languages--from "The Global Village").

To Buy Pasporto Servo

Is Esperanto Too European? (Isolating, Agglutinative, or Inflectional?)

Argument on the wiki talk page of Interlingua Vs. Esperanto...

Hodiaŭ, etc. Plena Gramaro.

Esperanto Word Building (Don Harlow).

K

Thank goodness for science. How well would we believe what we already know?

2009-01-04T18:04:00.000-05:00

Scientists: True love can last a lifetime

Story Highlights
Scientists have discovered that people can have a love that lasts a lifetime
About 10 percent of couples appear to feel young love's first blush permanently
Research has suggested first stages of romantic love fade within 15 months

(CNN) -- Love's first blush fading? Lost that loving feeling? Love is not all around?

Sick of cliches?

Take heart, scientists have discovered that people can have a love that lasts a lifetime.

Using brain scans, researchers at Stony Brook University in New York have discovered a small number of couples respond with as much passion after 20 years together as most people only do during the early throes of romance, Britain's Sunday Times newspaper reported.

The researchers scanned the brains of couples together for 20 years and compared them with results from new lovers, the Sunday Times said.

About 10 percent of the mature couples had the same chemical reactions when shown photographs of their loved ones as those just starting out.

Previous research has suggested that the first stages of romantic love fade within 15 months and after 10 years it has gone completely, the newspaper said.

"The findings go against the traditional view of romance -- that it drops off sharply in the first decade -- but we are sure it's real," said Arthur Aron, a psychologist at Stony Brook, told the Sunday Times.

--Man really was made to be monagamous, I think...

Interesting article from the UK Times....

2009-01-04T12:37:00.000-05:00

As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God

Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset

Matthew Parris

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

Ubuntu 8.04 on a Dell Latitude C640- The Perfect Install?

2008-11-16T16:54:00.000-05:00

I AM GRATEFUL!

I can finally open skype and firefox at the same time on 8.04 and make calls. The guide just worked, perfectly. (Note: Skype's needed settings are referred to in Appendix C).

Problems on my laptop (fixed= [x] || not yet fixed= []:
(My laptop is a Dell C640 with an ATI Radeon 7500, 1 gig of ram, 2.2Ghz processor)

Compiz Fusion/Restricted ATI Video Card Drivers: [x]
Skype/Flash/Firefox/Pulse issues: [x]
Sleep/Hibernate/Closing Laptop Lid: []
HP Firewire/USB combo card (PCMCIA) not functioning: []

(NOTE: whether the card is broken or ubuntu doesn't support is debatable at present- see link for more info. The card's HP Product Number is PM098A#ABA rev 1.0- A, and the S/N is UMI5302481, Model Number is UT-5271-1)

iPod 6G support connection issues (via Floola): [x]
Video Editing via ANY means []
ffmpeg functionality (Floola, mp4ize) [x?]

I didn't have ffmpeg support working when I started this, but in the middle of typing, when I was getting the URL for the thread I linked to, I saw that he had responded that it should now work. I tested mp4ize, and it is converting. I will fix this if the conversion turns out to have been faulty, or if it doesn't also work with Floola's converting abilities.

Anyways! Almost everything is fixed now. Video editing seems just around the corner, and sleep and hibernate have yet to really be worked on.

Thanks to all the people on the Ubuntu Forums who have helped, and to those who put together 8.04- for all of its flaws, its a fantastic distro.

?

Dough, fo.

2008-10-10T21:23:00.000-06:00

Considering making some Pita & Challah from scratch.

Wikipedia articles I have open:

Haredi Judaism
Zohar
DJ Spooky
Saladin
Supersessionism (with which I disagree heartily)
Zionism
Masoretic Text
Yeshua (name)
Greater Iran

Useful bug report for me currently, concerning my audio problems.

A heavily biased article on the Gaza Strip.

Don't know if this site is worth registering with or not.

I was having a problem where, if I closed my laptop lid, when I opened it it would not come on. The command here, if I open a terminal and type it in, allows me to turn it back on. (Don't forget to type in the password after you enter the command, since you are using sudo, even though your screen is off).

yeah.

Boulder, and other tabs.

2008-08-18T00:00:00.001-06:00

I'll have to add some routes to this when I move to Jerusalem, and scope out the climbing scene there.

http://bouldr.net/#climb/59.355596110016315/129.7265625/-62.431074232920906/-146.25/All/All

Also, some ardour links:

http://ardour.org/files/manual/sn-main-windows.html
A forum entry:
http://ardour.org/node/1079
A practical manual:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000224

Ubuntu Low memory config options, including cubuntu, and command line only ubuntu.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/LowMemorySystems

.L

Looks interesting- Hebrew Nation's History

2008-07-31T01:23:00.000-06:00

http://www.zionpress.org/the_israelites.html

Hm. Will go over later. Look promising, mildly atheistic/reformed judaistic.

.K

Completely dedicated to G-d, engaged.

2008-07-18T04:17:00.000-06:00

As I read a blog of a man who took a vow of homelessness, the most recent posts were about his wedding party, and how he's taking a job. I jumped from there to the beginning of the blog, two years prior, and read for a couple of hours with interest.

And then I started to wonder how he met a girl in the midst of all of that, and how living with that kind of dedication allows marriage?

I wanted to post the answer, as I sought it out; I also thought this very important as I read, because I have had similar convictions and questions as this man. To observe his choices, and say that he still appears to be honorable and Godly in all of it, makes it very interesting.

---------

Engagement Tears

Last August I was wandering around the city and I noticed a girl singing on a microphone out on Swanston St, in front of St.Paul's Cathedral. She was singing Christian songs, shyly, to a backing tape, virtually all alone, except for a couple of guys nearby handing out tracts (printed Christian material). She was very pretty and I stopped, watched and listened from a distance. As I stood there I thought to my self 'any girl who loves God enough to sing songs to Jesus in the street, is a girl I'm interested in'. Now, just over a year later, we are engaged to be married! :)

Love on the Streets:

When I started my Faith Walk I never had any intention of getting involved in a relationship. In fact I had never even been in a relationship (except with God). Sure I grew up interested in girls, it's just I never went 'looking' for a relationship. I was always focused on exploring my spirituality and the few times when I did express my interest in someone, it was never returned. Making the decision to leave my career and sell all I had also included an acceptance within my self that I may never experience that side of life, as I wouldn't consider myself of interest to any girl (based on today's materialism and financial security priorities, let alone the psychological and spiritual complexities added into my life's journey this year).

When I started attending a Church comprising of homeless and street people (Church of Hope) I was happy to discover the girl I had seen a couple of moths earlier was helping out with the singing and worship music during the services. And when I joined the Flinder's St Steps outreach choir, late Saturday nights, she was there too. I stood next to her when we sang, but never made any attempt to communicate with her, as I was fully loaded with dealing with being newly homeless at the time.

I was immersed in the street world, living and sleeping rough, with guys like Warren (wrapped in cardboard down alleyways) and it took all my attention and focus on God just to survive. Actually, I had once mentioned to a friend that my biggest enemies to watch out for would be 'the distraction of girls' and 'pride'. One person from America emailed me some questions about the issue of female relationships in my situation, and I pretty much rebuffed the suggestion of any possibilities. Not that their aren't any relationships on the streets; their are lots, albeit they tend not to be very healthy ones. I remember one girl was walking along with mention "I've lost my boyfriend, I can't find him.." "What's his name?" I asked. "I'm not sure" she said. "How long have you been going out?" I asked. "He's my third boyfriend today.." she replied!

After a few months I started helping out at the Church, which later grew into a leadership role. I discovered the girl's name was Nella and we became friendly, chatting and helping each other with tasks and supporting each other on the streets. She had come to Church of Hope a few years ago as she felt God asking her to change from hating drug dealers and addicts (that influenced one of her friends) to loving them [Love your enemies]. This is her testimony that gives on the Sat night 'Steps' microphone every few weeks (last week she gave her testimony and someone listening decided to give their heart to the Lord!) So we started singing duets together at Church, chatted as a team at the food vans and visited people in hospitals together.

As Winter approached I was quite interested in Nella but the implications of making a step in that direction seriously concerned me.. could be a gift? could be a distraction? I had to weigh up and think about all the implications and what God would want, before I even gave a hint of interest. I thought talked to a few few people about the theology of singleness Vs partnership, and an Orthodox priest said something good about 'walking hand in hand together towards God'.

I worked on the friendship a bit more: the first time I called her from a pay phone I hoped the conversation might go for at least five minutes.. it went on for three hours! (well I just listened mostly) At one point I was tired from standing so I reached around the side of the booth and grabbed some milk crates to sit on. And then one night we were at the Steps and she was nearby with a friend talking to a girl (stranger) about the grief and difficulties of the recent death of that girl's mother. She was standing quietly in the dim light, with a hood up (almost biblical) and she was full of compassion. I said in my mind (and I guess my heart) 'ok God, I choose her', which surprised me, as I have never really asked god for any thing before.

I am always very strict on myself for saying 'what you will Lord', and this was the first time I actually bypassed that. Well I said nothing and it started to rain, so we all went our separate ways. After Nella went to drive home I went back into the city (about 12:30am) and sat and thought about things more. About half and hour later Nella called me on my mobile and asked me (as it was raining) if I wanted a lift back to the Shed. I was surprised and thought 'she must be half way home by now' but said 'sure!' right away. [She later told me that despite the fact she had left the city she felt prompted by the spirit to call me and come back to offer the lift.] So we drove back to the shed and as we neared I was trying to work up the courage to ask her out, but my adrenaline was pumping too fast and I chickened out, and she went home.

The following week she dropped me home again and gave me a shiny new blanket to help keep me warm in the night. I thought I would try a little tester and so asked her if she was curious would she like to come back and see the shed? She said yes and we walked round the back of the house for a look. After she was happy it was solid and fairly weatherproof we walked back to the car. As she said goodbye I asked her out. She was fairly shocked, thinking I was like a monk and not interested in that sort of thing, and I explained that I was but being independent gives you leeway to make your own rules :) She said she was concerned that she wouldn't want to be a 'distraction to the mission' and despite my assurance that she was a valued support, not a hindrance, she left to drive home, leaving me standing there thinking 'right, time to move on.'

Two days later I was at a friends house when she called me up. She wanted to explain further that she was interested but very concerned about a relationship impacting my work. I too was similarly concerned but I had the benefit of chewing it over for a couple of months first while she only had a couple of days. We discussed it for a few hours and by the end we agreed to give it a go! Woo Hoo. The next night she called me back and grilled me for another three hours about my history and intentions. She didn't want her time wasted and we agreed we were both only interested in the relationship as long as we were looking for a marriage partner and that God would be first in all things. That night I got out the blanket she had bought me and slept in it, even though it was a bit cold (without the sleeping bag), as a metaphor that I would commit to the relationship even if it wasn't always providing me quite enough warmth. I got through the night and a few days later we went on our first date.

We got on better than we expected and were constantly surprised about how much we had in common. We worked on keeping a high commitment to street mission as well as alone time, and I kept a sharp eye out for any signs from God as to approval or disapproval. In fact the street work went even better and we felt good about being a good example of a proper Christian relationship to our street community. A few times she had strong headaches and I prayed for healing and they instantly disappeared (once stopping in the middle of Flinders St to pray, while crossing the road, with cars streaming by each way, because it felt good to have a partner you could pray with instantly whenever the need arose, wherever you were!). Early on I gave her my only valuable possession: my 'FAITH' stone that I had carried around in my pocket from the start of the walk. I told her we were now growing in faith together, and she has carried it everywhere since.

Were there any negatives? Not really. We acted as a team, organising Church of Hope, out on the streets when she was available (she works full time as a civil engineer during the week), and talked to people together about God, and she was with me every step of the way as I worked to get Warren into De Paul House Detox unit, where I visited him every day. When he walked out after four days she supported me in my stress and struggle to cope with loving him further as he went back to the drugs and alcohol and sleeping rough on the street. She also had some spiritual gifts that blossomed together, that gave us confidence in our partnered relationship with God, except.

Except there was one time when she had a dream about finding a stick, with the star of David carved on it, in a park. She had to return the staff to a synagogue which she was very reluctant to do. She told me about the dream the next day and later we went to Church. After Church there was some games on in the hall and we decided to go for a walk together first. As we walked along we went through a park we had never been to before, and she suddenly exclaimed that this was the park from her dream the previous night, and then she got worried that the stick symbolized me, as I had slept in a few parks and had a Jewish family background. She certainly didn't want to have to give me back.. and I thought deeply about it, and we carried on, taking extra care to make sure 'Jesus was at the steering wheel, not us.'

Well after four great months of dating I was thinking asking her to marry me. There was no real need to make an actual decision. In my mind the decision was made back on the Steps, just before I asked her out, when I said to God 'I choose her' and everything that followed was just enjoying seeing how God planned for things to unfold. I was pretty laid back and happy about the relationship. She would often ask me 'Do you have any specific questions, anything you need to know?' and I would say 'not really'. I was just happy to trust in the Lord to see what happened. Trusting him that my decision was his decision, planned from when he knew me, before I was born.

So Monday last week I wasn't planning anything to happen exactly at that time, but when I asked her where she wanted to go for a walk, she decided the State Rose Garden, down at Werribee. We drove there late afternoon and walked around. Tens of thousands of beautiful colored roses all in full bloom, and no one around. Down the back was a little wooden gazebo and we sat down together and I knew it was the right moment. I talked of what she meant to me, got down on one knee and asked her to marry me... she said yes! :) We hugged, kissed and the sun shone as the tears dripped down her face, and I kissed them, those sweet salty tears.

Smile

The next couple of days were my happiest, before they then became my saddest. Wednesday, after my first day back at work at World Vision, I hit the streets only to learn Warren had died of a drug overdose. I was devastated. I had never had a friend die before. We had spent a lot of time together over the year, and while he was happy for me to pray with him a number of times for his struggles, I was never quite sure of the state of his soul, and the chance to reach out to him further, deeper, was gone. I walked around the city for an hour shaking with tears and felt like wandering aimlessly all night. But the Lord cut through my feelings to remind me I was partnered now, and so I called Nella and she drove out and picked me up, and comforted me that night as the grief and shock set in.

The saddest and happiest week of my life. A few guys on the street who were his friend turned deeper to their wine. I am trying to turn deeper to my God, my Father, thinking about how Warren like to be a father figure to the kids on the street. And what of the timing? I later found out he died on the Monday afternoon, the very same moment in time I was out of the city proposing to my girlfriend.. Not that I think my location would have made any difference, as he never took the drugs in my presence. I can take some comfort that that he often said to me "Go spend time with your girlfriend, you deserve it".

So I was the rich man that went out to meet Lazarus. Amazed at my transformation to the point where I am grieving for one of Melbourne's homeless drug addicts. Hoping he is now resting peacefully in the arms of Abraham. Now a homeless beggar myself, engaged to a Godly woman, making herself beautiful in the ways of old. Seeking to walk together, hand in hand, towards God, Heaven, and the friends we shall meet there within.

-------------------

-- selleverything-givetothepoor-followme.blogspot.com

Qpitch

2008-07-17T16:44:00.000-06:00

Qpitch, a cross platform tuner for computers using microphones.

has a gusty .deb, but the src is a pain to install... I've been working on it for a couple hours now. No makefile, you should use tmake, though I'm still having problems with dependencies or something.

(Couldn't get Qpitch to work, just got fmit to install, but haven't figured out how to use it or it isn't working.)

.L

Hebrew Learning.

2008-07-07T03:41:00.000-06:00

Anki has been very useful for learning the alphabet & vowels, via spaced repition.

foundationstone.com.au has been the backbone of my learning; I recently found hebrew4christians.com and it is of great interest.

To practice typing, this website seems useful.

.L

Tab Closure.

2008-07-04T12:37:00.000-06:00

(really cool Jesus clothing)

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=86392

http://moziani.tripod.com/alphabet/ammm_1_3.htm

http://search.mercola.com/Results.aspx?q=teflon&k=teflon

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2008/planet.in.peril/

http://www.gotquestions.org/did-Jesus-exist.html

(Needing addendum.)

.L

Anslem's Ontological Argument for G-d clearly explained.

2008-06-14T02:40:00.000-06:00

From "freeessays.cc", an article that has finally helped me understand Anselm's argument for the existence of the greatest conceivable being. (Title is hotlinked to source.)

Text:

Throughout history It has been man kinds quest to find a proof of the existence of God. Even today, religious archeologist, plunder the Earth, looking for Noah's Ark, The Ark of the Covenant, or the site Jesus Christ was thought to have been buried. These men and women are searching for artifacts to prove the existence of God to people who believe there is no God. Many people, however, do not need artifacts to prove God's existence, they have faith, and like St. Anselm of Canterbury, believe that God is the greatest of all conceivable things, nothing else can be thought to exist greater than God. St. Anselm states that he wants to find a proof of God, not because he does not believe in God, but because he believes in God, he wants proof of his belief. This means he is not searching for proof for his own sake, for he already believes God exists, he is searching for proof for his belief's sake. He believes he was put on Earth to find God, and he has not yet accomplished what he is searching for. Knowing this, St. Anselm sets up an ontological argument to prove the existence of God. First of all, to fully understand this perplexing argument, you must strongly believe the definition of God St. Anselm gives, which is as followed: God is something that which nothing greater can be conceived. This means that no one can think of anything that is greater than God. Even if a person does not believe that God exists, as long as the person believes this definition of God, St. Anselm can prove the existence of God. The second idea you must believe, in order to fully understand the argument, is, it is greater to exist than not to exist. Next, St. Anselm describes two kinds of existence: existence in the mind, and existence in reality. Existence in reality is very easy to believe. If you can touch, see, smell, hear, or taste something, in reality it exists. Existence in the mind is harder to understand for some, because many people only believe what they see. St. Anselm gives a beautiful illustration of how he can prove that something can exist in the mind, and also in reality. He gives us the example of a painter, before the painter paints a picture, in his mind he has an understanding of what the painting will look like. After the painter has made the painting, the painter will believe it exists in his mind, for he had the vision of the painting before he performed it, and in reality, because now he can see the painting with his own eyes. Now, St .Anselm has proven two things: God is that which nothing greater can be conceived, and it is greater to exist than not exist. Given you already know that something can exist in the mind as well as in reality, you are now fully ready to understand St. Anselm's ontological argument. Which is as follows: God is by definition the greatest being possible. A being who fails to exist is less perfect than a being who exists. Therefore, God must exist, necessarily. If a being failed to exist, the being would be, that than which nothing greater cannot be conceived. Since God is a being that than which nothing greater can be conceived, God must exist not only in your mind, or understanding, but also in reality. Therefore God exists. Now then, anyone who truly believes the definition of God can still say God does not exist in their mind. However, in reality, the person who truly understands this ontological Argument cannot deny the existence of God. For God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived. After St. Anselm first interpreted this ontological argument, it was no surprise to that some one would say that his argument was flawed. Gaunilo was a monk in the church along with St. Anselm. Gaunilo believed that you could set up this argument with anything, as long as it was by definition perfect, and make it seem to exist. The example Gaunilo gives is an argument of the perfect island. Gaunilo says that there is a lost island that no one has ever found, it possess the most fertile soil and riches beyond any mans dreams. Having no people on it, the island is more perfect than any other country. The argument is as follows: The perfect Island is the greatest possible island. An island that fails to exist is less perfect than an island that does exist. Therefore, the perfect island exists, necessarily. St. Anselm responds by saying that, this would be true if perfect island was defined as that than which no greater can be conceived. Since almost anyone can conceive something greater than an island, Gaunilo's argument is flawed. Gaunilo is not the only other philosopher who has tried to find flaws in St. Anselm's otological argument. Many have tried but it is almost impossible. First of all, no one can conceive of anything greater than God, even if you did St. Anselm would say it is inconceivable. It could be possible to turn this ontological argument into a mathematical equation to find just how flawless the argument is. For example, you can change the sentence, God is by definition the greatest being possible, into, God is the greatest number possible. Given that you know that the greatest number possible is infinite, we would call God- all numbers imaginable. The next sentence is A being who fails to exist is less perfect than a being who exists. We could turn this sentence into, a number who fails to exists is not imaginable and a number that does exist is imaginable. Therefore, God is all imaginable numbers. Here again, if I cannot think of a number it does not exist, if I can think of a number no matter how big it is, it will never be bigger than God. This equation was not set up to show any significance or to disprove St. Anselm argument, it was set up to reinforce just how flawless it is. The only real flaw in the argument is how one sided it is. First of all, if you do not believe in St. Anselm's definition of God, or if you do not believe to exist is greater than not to exist you cannot use this argument. The argument only proves that God exists only if you believe that God is the greatest possible being. It has been proven over time that this argument has not changed everyone's mind that God exists. If an archeologist was to find the Ark of the Covenant, or Noah's Ark it would have much more impact on peoples beliefs in God than this argument. Secondly, If a person believes that something, besides God, is the greatest possible being, then the argument would work for that. Then again, I am sure St Anselm would say that whatever it was I believed in that was the greatest possible being, that thing would be the same as God.

---

Also, intriguing, though I'm not sure I agree with it. In fact, I feel pretty certain that it is flawed. Still, it entices me, and does have some truth in it. http://www.someofthepartsbook.com/

.L

Support Letter

2008-06-12T05:12:00.000-06:00

The most recent draft of the letter I am going to be sending out to request financial and prayer support for Israel:

[quote]
Dear _,

I hope this letter finds you well. :)

I'm raising money to go to Israel for 9 months, as part of an opportunity to be one of a handful of students to be discipled, while doing full time missions work & being a full time theology student.

Growing up I wanted to be many things- when I was younger, the ice cream man, and later, fields such as law (because Mom said I loved to argue), and microbiology ('cause cells sounded so cool!). But as I got older, I learned that ice cream is bad in large doses, arguing is not the way to solve a problem, and microbiology can save a man's body, but not his soul. The more I thought about the rest of my life, the more I realized I didn't want to do anything other than serve God.

I didn't know quite what that was at 15, as a freshman- but in light of the truth, all other walks of life paled to me. I became convicted that my life was to be one of complete dedication- and this frightened me. This lifestyle was one of complete trust in God; and that trust, while required of all Christians, is easier to casually believe in than depend on. Yet it did not deter me- I knew that my relationship with God would be meaningless unless I learned that trust.

So I translated this thought into action. I began to lead the highschool bible study for our youth group. I began building a youth worship band. I enrolled in VLI (Vineyard Leadership Institute, a college level course in theology offered through my church). But most importantly, I began to seriously contemplate where I was going in life. I learned of this opportunity to go to Israel last year, but decided to wait- I still had a lot to learn from leading the bible study, from VLI, and leading worship. Yet even then I was telling people of my plans to go to Israel for full time discipleship, ministry and college in a year.

Now that time has come. After consulting those who have wisdom and are within reach, I send out this letter to you. To give an idea of what I'll be doing, this is part of an email I received from the pastor running the program:

A typical week - As I have said before, we are dedicated to holistic discipleship, meaning that we want you to grow intellectually, spiritually, and in your practical skills. A typical day would include some time of devotion, study, and work.[...] Ministry opportunities would include youth ministry, public services like teaching English, outreaches at various Israeli events, and on and on.

What this comes to is your support, joining with me to reach Israel. All costs observed, the price is $10,000- a little over $1,000/month. If you can give a one time donation, or are able to give monthly/quarterly support, pray and ask God if that is how he would have you participate- housing is $350/month, tuition is $1650/semester. Regardless of financial support, I ask that you add me to your prayer list. If you have wisdom, I'd love to hear it, and if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

You can contact me by email or phone @
[censored]

As references, [censored] (counselor), [censored] (friend), and [censored] (pastor), have offered to vouch for me:

[censored] (house) | [censored] (cell) | [censored] (email)

Checks can be made out to "[censored]" (my church), with "[censored]" in the 'note' section to indicate it should go towards my Israel fund; the deadline is the first week of September. Mail checks to:

[censored]

As with all things of value- in love,

[censored]
[/quote]

I may have to get it even shorter (this is heavily truncated from the original, perhaps a little larger than half its original size), but I think this is the smallest I will be ok having it- anything much beyond this will be losing important content for the sake of snappiness.

Our Kenotic Lord.

2008-06-11T14:26:00.000-06:00

Our Kenotic Lord.

A blog entry worth reflecting on. Also, the blog itself (NEW LIFE ASIA) is of note for being written by a Catholic, yet still being of the heart.

Also, a truth I have contemplated before, from another post on that same blog:

"But faith can be also defined as trust, trust that God has the ability to do what he has promised. And this disturbing characteristic of faith often reveals that deep down in our hearts we are unbelievers. Yes, we adhere to Christian faith; yes, we believe in God and accept the teaching of our Church. But, do we trust? Do we trust that God can provide for our needs as He did for the widow in Zarephath? Do we trust that God can heal us as He healed Naaman? The most disturbing passage I have found in the Bible is this: “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12). It is disturbing, because, as I look around, I hardly see myself and many of my brothers and sisters in faith doing what Jesus had been doing. Jesus unveils our lack of trust in God in order to remind us that it is not enough to adhere to a certain religion and declare, from time to time, belief in God. Jesus unveils our lack of trust to help us realize that faith is a close relationship with Him who is able to provide, heal, forgive, and gift us with life that last for ever."

Faith is not a belief, it is a conviction. That is the meaning of the Greek word for faith.

I have said before that I know the truths of God, but I do not trust him. I haven't yet seen that I can depend on him in my life. I haven't had to rely on him in such a way to build that trust.

Also- a book I borrowed from Mikki Getterman, "Hebrew Christianity" by Dr. Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, is very good- it seeks to define the distinction between Hebrew & Gentile Christians, and does so very well. I can see this book being one I come back to for years and refer any young Hebrew Christians to.

.L

Lin[u]ks.

2008-06-11T00:55:00.000-06:00

Audio editing on Linux.

A comparison of Ardour, Audacity, & SND. I am currently messing with Audacity, after reading that article; while I'd really prefer to be using Ardour, I just want to start recording, and don't have enough experience to go after a full featured program like Ardour. The learning curve isn't something I'm willing to take no- however, eventually, maybe after a few months of getting familiar with Audacity, I'll take the plunge.

Quantum Physics.

I haven't seen anything worth keeping here on video editing in linux; it looks like it is as simple as cinelerra, unless you are working with raw dv- then you should also use kino for grabbing.

.L

On Fantasy (& Self Preservation in the form of written opinions)

2008-06-10T21:12:00.000-06:00

This post is something I've been meaning to do, and something I wished I'd be doing my entire internet-savvy life. I am going to put some of my forum responses that have been especially wise or insightful. Posting on a forum, interacting with people on a specific topic, with a wide enough audience to get many perspectives, yet in a format that allows an opponent to think thoroughly through their position to answer intelligently, allows- nay, encourages- great depth of expression, and is very revealing, both to yourself and others.

Without further ado-

---
What makes any fantasy world more interesting than the real world? There are no brighter colours there. There is nothing new there. It is merely a distortion of meaningless parameters of the true world.

Only a fantasy world could be as uniform as you describe; the real world is richly diverse, beautiful, terrible, dark, bright. But what is more, meaning is only found in the real world.

I despise any form of escapism that I ever find myself participating in; I cannot imagine the mentality of one who willingly indulges in such a lifestyle.

--
I received a response, to which I responded-
--

The expression of meaning is, itself, meaningless, unless it compels you to change "in the real world", or is expressed to others in the real world, so as to change/affect others. Practical & meaningful are not necessarily interchangeable; I wouldn't call myself practical at all times, though I recognize the wisdom of concerning yourself with practical applications. I am, however, infinitely concerned with meaningfulness.

The large majority of the world is not globalized. Even though I live in the US, in a prosperous city, my city is beautifully messy and unique- there are thousands of hidden gems to find, active culture, and always things to do. I recently bumped into a group that plays 4 way chess twice a week at this nice coffeeshop downtown, at 2am. That's just one recent example.

Perhaps Scotland is too limited a sample of the world, is what I'm getting at.

You say this world seems dead, and talk of beautiful cities in the fantasy world- yet all I can think to myself is how much more I'd rather experience the beauty of Paris, Rome, Beijing, the Grand Canyons, Angel Falls, Anchorage, etc., than just read about/look at an artists' rendering of a fabricated world that, honestly, I do not believe compares with the rich hues of nature.

I really think it's all a problem of perception. What you paint as "the real world" is much more dark and fantastically boring a place than is really there. You say there is no struggle in our world, yet wars are fought all around the world; single mothers in poverty are out there every day living the most dramatically wearing lives you can imagine; everyday out there is someone who is having their world turned upside down. Every single day, thousands upon thousands of people suffer a painful death of someone close to them. Every day someone finds hope, every day a child of destiny is born. Every person has a life story that is worth hearing, has struggles, heartbreaks, and victories that make their life worth hearing. All the things that are worth finding in a fantasy are really more readily available, and more attractive, and, simply, meaningful in the real world, in our world. Because at the end of the day, we are alive. We hurt. We love. The fantasy world is but a pale imitation of our true, living earth.

To see the world any differently seems a delusion; yet, I guess, a shameless escapist cannot be bothered by such a problem. Delusion is the rule of thumb to such a mind, and it is not a problem.

From: http://intpforum.com/showthread.php?p=6449
---

More to come in this series later.

.L

Evolution gets patched again: new fossil dramatically upsets timeline for the umpteenth time.

2008-05-29T21:48:00.000-06:00

Live Birth Fossil pushes live birth back 200 million years than earlier thought, to 380 million years ago. The fossil is of a mother fish still attached to her young by an umbilical cord.

"It shows us that live birth was occurring at the same time as egg laying, and that these mechanisms evolved together rather than sequentially."

--Co-author Kate Trinajstic, who together with Long found the fossil.

"The discovery is certainly one of the most extraordinary fossil finds ever made, and changes our understanding of the evolution of vertebrates."

--John Long, head of science at Museum Victoria.

This is the oldest 'mother' fossil ever found, and also the oldest example of a species that engaged in penetration sex, or 'internal fertilization'.

Evolution remains vague enough to just get patched again; again it is demonstrated that evolution is not falsifiable to the majority of modern scientists.

Tab Closure V(?)

2008-05-20T15:08:00.000-06:00

How to properly untar any tarball according to extension.

A few verse riddles.

A comprehensive list of Fallacies and their descriptions.

How to do a minimal install of Ubuntu.

Boot Hanging Troubleshooting page.

XDM display manager.

Lies We Tell Children.

2008-05-18T04:25:00.000-06:00

I do not agree with all it says, but I have spent time thinking as I grow about the same balance...

...I don't want to lie to my kids, but I don't want to expose them to sex & murder at a young age, either. Where is the line?

Link.

.L

Free MIT Psychology course, etc.

2008-05-14T11:43:00.000-06:00

MIT lectures & PDF's (Psychology 101)

I wish I'd been able to do this as a child. :(

I still want to go and do that, even. It's in Canada.

Customizing Fluxbox

Description of a person.

2008-05-07T11:55:00.000-06:00

[quote]Many things listed here apply to me as well.
Unfortunately for me, I tend to be too much of a mirror when in social gatherings (such as school). Therefore I am mirroring extroverts quite often whenever I am too exhausted mentally. That sounds a little strange, even to me...let me try to explain a bit. Being an INTP, I'm often listening to several conversations at once when in school, constantly assessing peoples' reactions and their emotions. Though it's a fascinating thing to do, and often engages most of my observant side, sometimes when I am stressed or extremely tired it is too much for me to handle. So rather than turn into a rock, I slip into the mindset of an extrovert, blending in seamlessly with the people around me...so while I'm giving my introvert self a break, my extroverted side is kicked into overdrive. And though that really isn't such a terrible thing, I find that it brings too much attention to me even after I've slipped back into being and introvert. Many people say that I'm too "moody", or they get concerned for my mental state, et cetra.
That was a long explanation. My apologies. The reason I brought the mirror thing up is because when I'm in that extrovert mode, I'm often prone to show false caring or sympathy (not empathy) to other people, while still keeping things light with humour. This unfortunately makes me popular at times...apparently my extrovert side puts people at ease and they find it easy to have a good time around me. But as soon as the introvert comes back out, it's like I fade away, and leave them wondering what happened.
Anyway. On to a different subject. Does anyone else here have a problem with manipulating people? I've found that I'm quite good at it...always have been. It's so simple to see things from the other person's perspective, and mold your argument or cause into something that they would find acceptable. I've been trying not to use that skill as much, but it's rather difficult... Your thoughts?[/quote]

-Chimera.

I feel like I know someone who this applies to.

Nice to hear someone describe themseelves this way.

Tab Closure IV

2008-05-06T01:29:00.000-06:00

Turning Torso Pictures

Remember Everything You Ever Learned (Wired Article)

Cool Survival Gadgets

Most Wanted Rare Gadgets

Cheapest BJJ gi around

La Vortaro

Fustian

Pragmatics (Philosophy)

OWL (Programming)

Etc.

Tab Closure III (?)

2008-05-04T22:14:00.000-06:00

Esperanto Go Association

Layman's Atomic Bomb Information (totse)

GOo (vikipedio)

Dahon Folding Bike Gear

Aliens Likely Do Not Exist

Processing (programming)

Jose Gonzalez - Teardrop (tab)

I Shall Not Pass This Way Again (poem)

Llama.

Quote:

2008-04-18T02:33:00.000-06:00

Samantha: i heard you screw up a word once. that was so cool.

(quoted.)

More MBTI & Linux (Tab Closure) (+Swappiness/Swapfiles)

2008-04-14T01:33:00.000-06:00

How to install anything in linux/ubuntu.

Upgrading older installs of firefox via python script Ubuntzilla.

Interesting INTP profile+MBTI for kids+Type relationship analysis.

--

More:

What is Swap memory?

Adding a Swap File.
(see post 3 & on)

All about Swap memory.

Tuning Swappiness.
--

Linux Networking/SSID scanning

2008-04-10T17:20:00.000-06:00

This is so frustrating...

At least I finally figured out that the problem was my driver for my wifi card did not support scanning.

That was because of this comprehensive article.

Got some helpful info on DSL here.

Lots of information in Wireless Tools used in DSL's (and most distros of linux) reitoire here.

Linux Wireless Commands found.

Actually found the definition of ESSID.

Theology, Patriotism, Poetry, INTJ's

2008-04-10T04:34:00.000-06:00

Concerning "The Problem of Evil"

Extremely in depth view at the argument of G-d allowing evil to exist, if also benevolent.
Excerpt:

a. God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good, and therefore should have the will and the ability to eliminate evil and/or suffering.

b. Such a god would be obligated by His/Her/Its/Their ethics to eliminate evil and suffering (i.e. there is no adequate reason for it to be allowed to eventuate/continue);

c. Evil and suffering ostensibly occur.

Therefore, the god described in proposition A does not, in fact, exist.

It is now well known in philosophy that this argument is considered by the majority to be unsustainable, especially its logical form [cf. RRB, chapter 6; and Howard-Snyder's intro in his book TH:EAE, noting that the logical argument "has found its way to the dustbin of philosophical fashions" (p.xiii)] due to the inability (logically) to demonstrate the truthfulness of the parenthetical clause in Step B. Since we cannot even conceive of all the possible "permissible reasons" that would render evil "justifiable", we cannot therefore show that there are no such reasons. We can perhaps show that all historical proposed "reasons" are inadequate so far, but this is a far cry from showing that any future conceivable one would likewise fail.

--

The Patriot Analogy:

A simple (yet effective & clear) analogy that demonstrates how to answer the question, "Who is a real christian?"

Loyalty & love, and to a point clear understanding and adherence of doctrines (country or religion), seems to be the yardstick. (After all, a fascist is hardly a Patriot, no?)

--

Another reason why I don't keep a gun in the house.

A clever poem that struck me in my younger years. Recommended by Q, long ago.

--

INTJforum A very active forum filled with many INTJ's, and several other letter variants that find them worth discussing with for their various reasons. Also, see INTPforum.

Tab Erasure.

2008-03-27T02:03:00.000-05:00

Tabs I have open:

Google search- "memory in transplanted hearts"/[cell memory]

Biblical Translation Information

Free Piano Lessons

Free Foreign Language Courses (university)

Internet Polyglot- English Hebrew Lessons (vocab)

MBTI type INTP profile from typelogic

Responsible Citizen, Expose Yourself To Turth:

2008-03-27T01:59:00.000-05:00

Why We Fight
The Corporation
Who Killed The Electric Car?
Fight Club (just for fun?)

(to be added to)

.L

Stickmen Sufjan

2008-02-14T01:33:00.000-05:00

XKCD Comics-
Brilliant.

http://xkcd.com/374/
http://xkcd.com/377/

(I read all 385 on his website as of yet).

An [excellent] article on Sufjan Stevens:

Between Hipsters & God, There's Sufjan Stevens

Linux video editing

2007-11-24T05:06:00.000-05:00

http://cvs.cinelerra.org/docs/split_manual_en/cinelerra_cv_manual_en_19.html#SEC268

http://docs.pclinuxos.com/CreatingVideoDVDCreate

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

http://www.100fps.com/

Hebrew Textbook

2007-09-30T02:04:00.000-06:00

Looks good to me.

.K

Facinating Experiment on Obedience.

2007-09-24T00:20:00.001-06:00

http://www.skullandcrossbones.org/articles/obed.htm

.K

Carputer?

2007-09-07T00:26:00.000-06:00

I know it's been done before, but I haven't seen one, or read about one before this.

Seems simple enough.
(In the same spirit, there's the CradleVue...)

.K

Driver's License

2007-09-05T13:28:00.000-06:00

Documentation:

Bring a Social Security card+Passport OR Birth Certificate OR State issued Photo ID.

(And your own car to take the test in, complete with stickers & all that jazz).

The process & requirements are clearly available here.

.K

Vanagon Stuff

2007-09-05T13:24:00.000-06:00

CUSTOM MODS:
Here a man presents his very customized Vanagon, including how he installed a heater, solar efficient curtains, a custom awning, his own audio system (with remote), a satellite video system, a trail bike mount on the front of the van, an upgraded power system, solar panels, a trailer hitch storage chest, and improved the Westfalia's stock fridge.
Also, the mention of Isotherm fridges comes from his site.

CUSTOM MODS (2):
This website lists several small, but helpful Vanagon mods.

TIRES:
This guy had a Vanagon. He was going to buy tires, and did he research before hand. And he documented his research well, and shares all the important information in layman's terms.

BTDT:
Been There Done That is a valuable reference tool for Vanagon repair and maintenance, a collective of many people's knowledge & discussions via some mailing list. Very well organized, supposedly similar to Bentley's. Also see:

Performance Recipe.
Vanagon Rescue Squad.

.K

Hydrogen Power...

2007-09-05T12:46:00.000-06:00

...Will never work.

And a small part of me hates Bush for trying to deceive the public on this one. I'm not a Bush hating type of person- he's not as bad as everyone cracks him up to be, I don't think. But outright deceit...

...K

2007-08-23T08:04:00.000-06:00

Hacked.

This article documents a very important idea concerning our future, the future of international relations. It would have been worthy of sci-fi 40 years ago.

.K

Two notable songs

2007-08-23T07:55:00.000-06:00

Road Trippin' by Red Hot Chili Peppers

This is That New Song by Badly Drawn Boy

2007-08-23T07:11:00.000-06:00

Inkaleidoscope. Clever name.

Writings on middle east morality. Joint blog. Interesting.

.K

Quaestionis Animus

2007-08-02T00:51:00.000-06:00

I quaestionis animus.

quaestio -onis f. [seeking , searching; inquiry, investigation]; esp. [judicial inquiry]; 'quaestiones perpetuae', [standing courts of justice].

animus -i m. [the spiritual or rational principle of life in man]. More specifically: (1) [the seat of feeling , the heart]; 'animi causa', [for pleasure]; loc. (or genit.) 'animi', [at heart]. (2) [character, disposition]; as a trait of character (esp. in plur.) [courage, spirit, vivacity]; also [pride, arrogance]. (3) [the seat of the will, intention]: 'habeo in animo', [I am resolved]. (4) [the seat of thought, intellect, mind, memory, consciousness].

(I am certain I am not conjugating these latin words correctly, but the idea stands.)

.K

A PHILOLOGIST ON ESPERANTO

2007-08-01T23:21:00.000-06:00

An article by J.R.R. Tolkien, concerning Esperanto.

Did anyone know he had a journal in Esperanto? I've written in my spotty Esperanto before, in my journal. I like the idea of it- it would be very secure from prying eyes, and good practice, for thinking in the language.

I just might start doing that again.

.K

Tabwiki

2007-07-25T16:23:00.000-06:00

This is a website that has the potential to eliminate the frustrating world of guitar & bass tabs, which plagues users with many different tabs of varying accuracy. The idea is a 'wiki' style tab site, making individual pages for each song. A well organized site, it allows individuals to talk about the best way to represent a single tab, allowing collaboration towards one tab, as opposed to sporadic, dissonant efforts of many people.

It doesn't have much support, but already has many tabs written- well worth trying before going to other sites, and very standardized.

.K

Pandora's Music, Box Aside

2007-07-25T11:46:00.000-06:00

Pandora is an internet radio site that will tailor it's playlist to your preferences- you enter music you enjoy, (artist, album, or song), and it finds music similar to it. You then rate the music with "Thumbs Up" or "Thumbs Down", and thus whittle away at a carving that becomes uniquely yours.

Unavoidably, you find many new artists on the way.

This is my Pandora account.

.K

Ninja Training Course

2007-07-25T11:36:00.000-06:00

This is the second man to ever complete this course, out of 2400.

I could do all of this, except for the following two exceptions:

-That last swing off of the bar onto the cushion would, indeed, be very difficult- I might not get it every time.

-I am not in shape enough to climb that rope as fast as he did, in the last trial.

.K

Cello, Flute + Beatboxing

2007-07-25T11:31:00.000-06:00

Project Playlist

2007-07-25T11:20:00.000-06:00

This is a purported social networking site. This is my page on this site.

It won't ever function- at least, not as a social networking site. But it is darn handy for finding/playing music on the internet, and serves a handy place in our world by allowing you to store all of those links in a little flash player that will stream your discoveries.

.K

Guitar Tuner

2007-07-25T11:17:00.000-06:00

A rather handy online guitar tuner.

I found this by typing "guitar tuner" into my browser's address bar- another thing that makes Firefox so wonderful.

.K

In Support of Esperanto

2007-07-25T11:14:00.000-06:00

This chapter of a book outlines one man's experience with Esperanto, and is one of the most convincing practical defenses of the validity of the language I have read, bar none.

.K

Labels: Christian?

2007-07-25T11:08:00.000-06:00

This is an article about

1. The usage of the title "Christian."
a. The history
b. Biblical references
c. Problems [philosophical]
d. Results

[quote]

Now, I come to a more important point of this treatise. This name Chnstian has become a mental and emotional block to prevent our acceptance of others who follow Christ.

We define who is a Christian and how to become a Christian, but the Scriptures do not accommodate our definitions. In telling how to become a Christian, we use the examples of the conversion of those on Pentecost, the Samaritans, the Ethiopian treasurer, Cornelius, and Saul. Their acceptance of Jesus made them believers and disciples, but not Christians, for no one had ever been called a Christian at the time of their conversion.

After defining a Christian as one who hears, believes, repents, confesses faith, and is baptized, we have consistently refused any acceptance of, or fellowship with, any who have not measured up to our scruples about those actions of obedience. We have drawn a convenient line there that excludes most of the Christian world as being unbelievers and non-Christians.

When we think of a person as a believer or disciple, that convenient sectarian line disappears. While a believer/disciple will obey the "five steps" as he learns and is convinced of the need, he will also continue to learn and obey all the Scriptural directives for his discipleship as long as he lives. He will never cross the line into the ultimate. At what point can we say that he became a believer/disciple whom we may accept? Is it not when his faith is initiated causing him to take his first feeble steps to follow? He is then a believer and follower and, hopefully, he will continue to grow and advance in his relationship with Christ. I can accept him as a believer/disciple even though I might consider him to be at a less advanced stage than I enjoy. We can grow together. I am not to become his judge, especially to judge him by the artificial standard that I have made by defining when a person becomes a Christian. He is a believer and disciple-learner, follower, adherent-at every point on the road of his spiritual progress. The concept that I am rejecting is that he becomes a Christian, whom I can accept, only at one point in his spiritual journey, and that, thereafter, he is a Christian whether he progresses as a learner and follower or not.

Jesus told us to make disciples, not Christians. There may be no difference in the two, but we have made one to accommodate our sectarian distinctions.

[/quote]