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This section lists all blog posts, regardless of topic.
WhoopsSeptember 28, 2008
I had a flashback sitting in church today, to when I was in grade 9 or 10. I was sitting in science class, not paying attention, and our teacher Mr. Ross asked a question. As he finished his question, my attention snapped back. He had asked something about evolution. Did he just ask whether we believed evolution? I wasn't quite sure. The room was completely silent. I think he asked for a show of hands. I felt a need to answer the question, but I didn't know what the question was, exactly, and I was too embarrassed to put up my hand and ask for the question to be repeated because I wasn't paying attention. After the class, a Christian girl approached me and inquired about the situation. She said something to the effect of "Do you think we should have put up our hands?", and in a stroke of idiocy I said something like "Maybe it wasn't really the best time". Wow, lame. I should have just admitted that I wasn't paying attention, and that yes, we should have. I've often thought back to that occasion. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, JudgesSeptember 28, 2008
I'm a ways behind in my reading schedule, but it felt good to finish Judges today. I have lots of thoughts to share, too many to realistically write them all down! Overall, I've really enjoyed reading the Bible as a story. The Old Testament comes to life when you read it this way, connecting the dots as you go. At times it is breathtaking following Jacob's descendants on their long and remarkable journey. How amazing is it to hold in your hands scriptures that are thousands of years old... following along on the journey of man's relationship with God from the very beginning. Here is a list of topics that have struck me, and I could probably go into a lot more detail on some of them.   | Moses: One of the most striking figures in the Old Testament is Moses. Before he enters the scene, the Israelites are a group of slaves in Egypt. By the time Moses dies, Israel is a nation of 600,000 people with a complex set of laws handed down from God, and together they have shared one of Earth's most amazing adventures. They witness God's mighty hand in some of the most remarkable displays of supernatural power recorded in the Bible, they share 40 years of soul searching in the desert, and after it all, they're crouched at the door of the promised land. |
| The promised land: Talking about story, it is extremely satisfying to read about the Israelites, at long last, entering the promised land: a journey, several generations long, finally coming to fruition. |
| Human interaction with God: Another attribute of Moses is his remarkable interactions with God. I can't think of another human figure in the Bible that has such an intimate relationship with God, relaying countless numbers of things to the Israelites. Besides Moses, it is intriguing to read about all of the mysterious encounters with God in the Old Testament. |
| Eternal life: A curious fact about the first books of the Bible is that eternal life isn't really mentioned. Sure, Methuselah is taken away, but that's about it. Strange. |
| Hell: Likewise, the first books of the Bible don't really mention hell. Curious. |
| Violence and war: I'm probably more sensitized having attended a Mennonite church these last few years, but the violence of the Old Testament is a little hard to take at times. On one hand, you have examples of communal stoning, commanded by God, and on the other, you have the sweet mood of the promised land tainted by the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of opponents, including women and children. We understand that part of God's motivation for wiping out these peoples were their detestable behavior, which including child sacrifices, but surely not all of these people were wicked. Many of them would have been not-to-distant relatives of the Israelites. |
| Women: It is pretty clear reading the Old Testament that woman played a very different role in society than men, and a few of the laws sound very odd given our modern day mindset. |
| Polygamy: Today there are two primary models for sexual relationship: The monogamous relationship (marriage + common law) and casual sexual relationship. But during Biblical times, it appears that polygamy was very much on the scene as a very mainstream thing. |
| Unlawful sexual relations: Some striking text in Leviticus that I had never read before. Leviticus 18:22: "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman: that is detestable.", and Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads." Sounds pretty clear to me: God detests homosexual relations. |
| Idolatry: And of course, there is idolatry, one of the most significant themes in the Old Testament. It's hard to understand the temptation, several thousand years ago, to cast an idol and worship it, but it's clear that the temptation was huge. It's very sad, especially in the book of Judges, reading about Israel's failures, to the point of the tribe on Benjamin getting nearly wiped off the map. |
Technology as artSeptember 26, 2008
When Meredith and I were in Madrid this summer, there was an exhibit that used technology and the Internet to create a dynamic display that linked keywords on Internet websites against one of a number of topics, which were color coded, and then marked on a world map where that website was located. It was more complicated than that, but what I found interesting was that technology was being used to create art, and it was in an art gallery! Here's my idea: Create a visually interesting object such as a polished half sphere which would contain invisible cameras, microphones, and speakers. It would use the cameras to visually track people walking around the room, and when someone came close to the object, it would say, "Hi, what's your name?" in a pleasant voice indistinguishable from a person's. The person would then say something like "Daniel", "Daniel Bigham", "My name is Daniel", etc. and using voice recognition the object would be able to parse what was being said. It would then say "Hi Daniel, nice to meet you". If the person then walked away and came back, the computer, having tracked the person walking away and coming back, would say, "Hi Daniel". If the person left the room and came back, an attempt would be made to recognize the person based on a visual fingerprint. To be fun and impressive: | 1. | The voice synthesis, and specifically, name synthesis, would need to be nearly perfect, and sound very pleasant, with good intonation. |
| 2. | The system would need to be able to construct names that it hadn't previously heard by analyzing the phonemes spoken, and then to be able to re-speak those phonemes. |
| 3. | The visual tracking algorithms would have to be really good. |
I think this would be a neat "art" piece, albeit a bit noisy. older >>
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