I just finished listening to the 9 CD unabridged audiobook, 1491 - New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann, that I checked out from the library.

What was civilization like in the Americas before Columbus arrived in the New World?
1491 debunks much of what we what we were taught about America before the arrival of Columbus.

Did the Incas fall to Pizarro because they had no metallurgy to produce steel for weapons or was it because a smallpox epidemic ravaged the community, killing 1/3 of the population, including many of the leaders, and led to internecine strife.

Most American history books describe the continents before 1492 as a vast, sparsely populated, underused territory, whose primitive peoples could not stand up to the advanced technologies of the Europeans. But the author argues that smallpox and other diseases were inadvertently introduced by the Europeans. Without immunity and without a knowledge of how to quarantine an infectious disease, these diseases swept across the continent faster than the explorers who brought it. What they “discovered” was a land stripped of the thriving cultures that had existed for centuries.

The Native American cultures were quite heterogeneous and possibly more advanced socially in many ways than their counterparts in Europe. These first Americans were not the noble savages who left no mark on their world nor dreamy proto-environmentalists who lived in static harmony with nature.

Instead, the author contends they were a far more urban, more populated, and much more advanced people, who developed maize, tomatoes, and other vegetable and radically engineered their landscape, possibly even creating “timeless” natural features including the Amazon rain forest.

Going back further in history, the author brings together more recent discoveries and theories of archaeologists, anthropologists, paleolinguists, and others to make the case that the first inhabitants may not have walked over the Bering land bridge around 12,000 B.C. but may have come along the Pacific coast by boat up to 20 thousand years earlier.

An interesting read. I highly recommend it.

This past weekend my two 14 year-old boys and I joined about 75 other crazy folk to participate in the Vancouver WA Cache Machine. Usually when a person goes geocaching it is either solo or with 1 or 2 other people. In a cache machine a large group starts at daylight and tries to find as many caches as possible before the end of the day (dark for some, bedtime for others). Even though 70 people may start out together, by the 3rd or 4th stop the group has dispersed as people make wrong turns, stop for coffee, skip a cache they had found previously, or just plain get lost, so that usually it is only 2 or 3 cars at a time pulling up to find any given cache.

With the group dispersed, if you do have problems finding a cache it is very likely someone else will pull up and double the manpower in the hunt. If you get behind, it you will probably come upon a group hunting for a tough one, which you get to claim quicker. And if all else fails and you really fall behind, you can always skip ahead and rejoin a larger group. By the end of the day you have usually ended up caching with a dozen different groups, meeting a dozen or more other cachers from as far as Montana. I met up again with folks I had met 5 years ago at the first cache machine. And at the end of the day, there is a group dinner where you can swap stories and meet up again with the people you met during the day. The cache page also has a photo gallery

We did pretty well for the day. A cacher from Walla Walla, IHaveCats, met us in the morning and acted as my navigator until she had to leave around 9 pm then we finished up with Shutle64 until about 11pm. In total we found 79 caches in that one day, but 2 did not count for me because I had found them in previous trips to Vancouver. But not only did we find those 79 caches, but on our way to Vancouver, traveling with Shutle64, we found 26 caches along the Interstate in Oregon and on our way home we found 32 more along Highway 14 in Washington. So, that 3 day weekend allowed me to nab 135 caches, more than I had ever found in a full month of caching before! Here are the stats for the weekend by itself and here are my cumulative stats.

Cache Machine History

The first cache machine I know about was in Bremberton WA five years ago. The boys and I did not participate in that one but have attended 4 others before this one in Vancouver. I found a list of 21 cache machines that have been held in the northwest and travisL, the brains and braun behind most of the cache machines, is making plans into 2010 for future cache machines:

• Yakima II, March 29, 2008
• Missoula, June 28-29, 2008
• Victoria II, September 2008
• Whidbey, January 2009
• The Palouse/Quad-Cities, March 2009
• Vancouver BC II, June 2009
• Tri-Cities II, September 2009
• Olympia II, January 2010

The boys and I will definitely be attending Yakima II, and I believe we will make a family vacation out of the cache machine in Missoula. Von would love to drop me off in Victoria — but we will have to see how that meshes with school schedules.

I finally broke down and bought myself an MP3 player. I had held off for a long time because I could put my audiobooks on my Palm T3. What pushed me over the edge?

Von received an 8gb iPod nano for Christmas. Yeah, in order to avoid the 10th commandment I would have to buy one for myself. I could not bring myself to spend the money for an iPod (my Norwegian blood won out here). I liked the Sansa models I saw at the stores but they were still more money than I wanted to spend, so I kept looking.

I have been using my Palm as an MP3 player. PocketTunes works very well on the Palm but the maximum memory card that the Palm T3 would take is 1gb. Half of that is used by other software so that only left me half a gig. Still plenty for a couple chapters at a time on the palm, but I would always seem to run out of book before I remembered to update.

I tried using my new Razr2 phone. But the software on it was just too cumbersome. It would probably work ok for music collections, but I have fewer than 12 cds. I want to listen to books and podcasts and the regular ID3 tagging system just doesn’t work that well for those.

Then it happened. A note on the Fatwallet Hot Deals Forum showed that Woot! had refurb’d 4gb Sansa e260s (engadget review) on sale for $49.99 plus $5 shipping. I bit. The e260 looks to be a decent MP3 player and it will take a micro-DD card as well as having a built-in FM radio.

Also, in my earlier searching I found that an alternate operating system, Rockbox, will also work on the Sansa. I will probably write up my experience with Rockbox but the main reason I wanted to use it was that it adds a lot of features to the unit and allows you to customize the unit beyond just adding various ’skins’.

My current project is to find a decent podcast aggregator for the thing. All such software downloads the podcast and puts it on the mp3 player. The difficulty is what the software does after you listen to it on the MP3 player. Most don’t sync back to the podcast software. I want one that does. We will see what I can find.

I just received an e-mail from St. Anne’s Public House that they will have a booth at the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) 2008 Convention. I think this is a hoot! They will be setting up a booth as an English Pub right around the corner from organizations like TBN and 300 others. Oh, the humanity!

Michael Collender, who is the producer of St. Anne’s Pub, will also be one of the speakers at their “REACH” conference which focuses on cutting edge media. Six thousand “cultural influencers” are anticipated at the conference and St. Anne’s Pub is hoping to expand its reach while there.

I have enjoyed the quarterly audio publication since 2002 when I picked it up at a history conference (on cassette back then). Since then I have listened to their quarterly ‘New Draught‘ online or downloading it to my MP3 player. I have also subscribed to the ‘On Tap‘ selection as a podcast.

Why is it called St. Anne’s Public House? According to the website,

the “St. Anne” part is short for the “Company of St. Anne’s”, a group of very average people who fight off the evil nasties of N.I.C.E in C.S. Lewis’ novel, That Hideous Strength. We liked the idea that God uses pretty average people doing average things for His glory. The “Public House” part of the name came from an inspiring talk by Dr. Roy Atwood. The Public Houses and Coffee Houses of 17th Century England were places for public discourse. So it is the discourse, more than the alcohol, that we are emphasizing. But we do enjoy a nice glass of Shiraz now and again.

If you haven’t heard of St. Anne’s Public House, drop in and take a listen.

Why listen to a daily audio podcast of the Bible? There are two points that need to be addressed in this question. First, the idea of listening to rather than reading the Bible and second, the idea of dividing the Bible into daily chunks.

An audio Bible is, of course, not a substitute for a printed Bible. It does, however allow one to “redeem the time” by listening to God’s Word at times where it would be impossible to be reading. But what I like the most is that there are no verse numbers while listening! You get more of the flow of the book when you are not constantly distracted by the alien verse numbers printed on each page.

The Bible was also designed to be listened to. Before the printing press people had to gather to hear the Bible read. Even the recipients of Paul’s letters heard them read to the congregation. They did not make zerox copies and pass them out with the Sunday morning church bulletin.

Even though it does remove the artificial verse numbers from the passages, daily readings do still divide the text — even if it is into 365 daily segments.
Artificial? Yes. But it does get us immersed into the Word each day.

This very benefit though can also be a detriment.
The primary problem though with a daily Bible reading or listening is that it might allow one to feel they have met any legalistic obligation or feel it gives them braging rights, “I read through the entire Bible last year!” We need to read/listen to the bible not to check of an item on our to-do list but to transform our lives. Are you getting to know God better or just becoming more familiar with the narrative?

Let us get to know God better! Here are a few of the podcasts I have qued up daily:

• ESV: Through the Bible in a Year - Readings from the Old Testament, the New Testament, and from a Psalm each day using the English Standard Version. Each year the Old Testament is read through once and the New Testament and Psalms are both read twice. The ESV is my preferred translation, so I enjoy listening to this each day. (Shortly after publishing this, the ESV feed has failed. I have sent an e-mail to see if it can be fixed)
• PodBible - Bible in a Year - 20 minutes a day / 7 days a week - The entire Contemporary English Version of the Bible is read straight through from Genesis to Revelation in 365 segments. The reading was was done by a couple hundred volunteers at a church in New Zeland. The Contemporary English Version simplifies “Bible” terms into more understandable words and phrases.
• Listener’s Audio Bible - Proverbs - 3 minutes a day / 7 days a week - Proverbs is divided into 31 chapters so each day the corresponding chapter is read. Max McLean brings a professional dramatic expression to his presentation.
• The Daily Audio Bible - 20 minutes a day / 7 days a week - The podcast author has a very distinctive (my kids call it scary) voice and style. Each week he reads from a different translation.
  The reading includes background sounds that are designed to allow the listener to “disconnect from the ‘matrix’” that can become everyday life and sit by the sea, meander along a mountain stream or wander through a forest as the rain gently falls and begin to feel the deeper work of God in your life.” The readings appear to follow the same plan as The One Year Bible and the schedule can be downloaded as part of the journal available for download on their resources page.

No excuses! Whether you read or listen, you have no excuse.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

Not sure my daughter would need this instruction book, but just in case… She did just give me a new grandchild — a beautiful baby girl…


She has numerous photos, of course, on her blog. Here are links to two of the posts: Ilse Aoibheann Winckler

HatTip: A Welsh View

While some critics of the Federal Vision still consider its adherents to be Reformed, many consider them outside the Reformed camp, and some have gone so far as to call the adherents heretical. I had been under the impression that the ferocity of the attacks were out of character. Not so. John Frame, in a paper written a couple years ago titled, “Machen’s Warrior Children“, provides a history of “the twentieth-century Reformed pattern of being militant about their views.” Frame is Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida.

J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) battled against modernist (aka liberal) theology within the Presbyterian Church, USA (PCUSA). Machen finally left the PCUSA in 1936 and helped form what would become the Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination.
Frame contends in his paper that Machen’s spiritual descendants, his ‘warrior children;, took this fighting spirit and turned it inward, with a mantra of “Truth Before Friendship.”
Which would be fine if we were dealing with foundational theological doctrines, but few of the fights were of that magnitude doctrinally (though the heated debates were of the same magnitude). He enumerates 21 theological conflicts that have divided and are continuing to divide (sometimes too literally) conservative Reformed circles. The Federal Vision controversy would just be #22, although opponents would want to just lump it into #9, Covenant and Justification.

1. Eschatology
2. Christian Liberty
3. The Incomprehensibility of God
4. Apologetics
5. Philosophy
6. Sabbath
7. Charismatic Gifts
8. Theonomy
9. Covenant and Justification
10. Law and Gospel
11. Counseling
12. The Days of Creation
13. Worship
14. Roles of Women
15. Preaching and Redemptive History
16. Subscription
17. Church Unity
18. Tradition in Theology
19. Sonship
20. Christian Hedonism
21. Multi-Perspectivalism

Many of these controversies led to church splits and new denominations. Like an immune system gone haywire, fellow believers turn inward and attack each other. Calling into question motives, brothers and sisters in Christ opponents are told that they are “not Reformed” or that they are denying the Gospel. In his conclusion, Frame asks:

Since Jesus presents love as what distinguishes his disciples from the world (John 13:34-35), this bitter fighting is anomalous in a Christian fellowship. Reformed believers need to ask what has driven these battles. To what extent has this controversy been the fruit of the Spirit, and to what extent has it been a work of the flesh?

Of course if you call your opponents heretics you can rationalize your un-Christian treatment of them, barring Jesus’ command to “Love your enemies”.

HatTip: John H. Armstrong

In researching my earlier post about Machen I ran across a talk given by John Piper in 1993 about Machen’s Response to Modernism. He quotes an address by Benjamin Warfield given in 1909 at the 400th anniversary of Jon Calvin’s birth.

Calvinism is not a specific variety of theistic thought, religious experience, [or] evangelical faith; but just the perfect manifestation of these things. The difference between it and other forms of theism, religion, [and] evangelicalism is difference not of kind but of degree … it does not take its position then by the side of other types of things; it takes its place over all else that claims to be these things, as embodying all that they ought to be.

Piper goes on to summarize:

So he says Lutheranism is “its sister type of Protestantism” and Arminianism is “its own rebellious daughter”. Calvinism’s grasp of the supremacy of God in all of life enabled Machen to see that other forms of evangelicalism were all stages of grasping God which are yet in process of coming ot a full and pure appreciation of his total God-centeredness.

Piper near the end of the Q&A session on the mp3 recording says that those who have errors in their doctrine, who do not hold to the reformed faith, are not heretics but simply ‘defective’, though I would reverse his response and say that it is his baptistic views that are defective. :)

I mentioned earlier that I bought myself a Sansa e260. One of the reasons I wanted an MP3 player was for podcasts. Podcasts, for the non-techy, are best described as TIVO’d radio shows on the internet. Instead of having to listen to the shows when they were broadcast, you can listen to them at your leisure. Many podcasts are actual radio shows that are made available online, others are internet only productions. With my MP3 player I can listen to the shows when I want and where I want.

The basic job for podcast software, aka podcatcher, is to download your chosen podcasts when new shows become available. Sounds pretty simple and it is. There are dozens of programs which will do this. I have used Newsgator for the last 2 or 3 years on my PC to do just this. Throwing the MP3 player into the mix added a new twist, the shows downloaded to the PC must now be synchronized with the player.

Sync’ing the shows at first glance did not seem like it would be a hard job. You are in a sense, just backing up the show to your little player. The trick is, what happens when you delete a show on the PC? Should it be deleted on the player? What if you delete a show on the player? Should it be deleted on the PC? These were the questions I was ‘learning’ and trying to answer as I looked at different methods.

Another twist I added to my setup is that I have 2 computers I use. My office computer and my home laptop. I want to be able to update my player from either machine. Using a USB thumbdrive should solve this, but not all software is designed to let the user configure where it keeps its list of downloaded shows.

The first promising program I found was MediaMonkey. It is a program designed to sync your music with your player and has added some features to sync podcasts as well. The problems I ran into with this was that it would not work on my office computer. Every time I ran the program my computer would slowly lock up. At first I did not even realize it was MediaMonkey that was causing the problem. I was having problems getting the files to sync and after reading through all a lot of articles on the user support forum I read someone’s post about lockups when they had their U3 enabled USB stick in their computer. A light went off, I quit using MediaMonkey and my computer quit locking up.

After some more searching I found HappyFish. This program looked real promising. I set it up, downloaded a handful of podcasts, and nothing. I could not get it to sync with my Sansa. Again, reading the user support forum I found the answer. It does not appear to like some Sansa players. I was disappointed because it appeared to have some features I was looking for.

Doing some more searching I finally came upon myPodder / PodcastReady. PodcastReady is designed to allow you search and set up the the podcasts you want to download using a web interface. myPodder is then run on your PC to actually download the podcasts. I have been able to get this pair of programs to work for me and will write about my setup in a follow-up post. Hopefully development will continue on this software. My concern is that the blog and forum for the software appear to get little attention. It may just be that they are hoping to get bought out by someone but it is disappointing to see questions posted on the user support forum go unanswered for months.

Sex offenders are required to register with their local police departments in most states and this information is available to the public. Some enterprising souls have combined the power of Google Maps with this data so that you can see who you need to be concerned about in your neighborhood.

Family Watchdog allows you to locate where sex offenders live and work by entering either a zip code or a name. It places icons into Google Maps near the addresses of registered sex offenders. I say ‘near’ because, at least in Washington state, only the block address is given not the actual address. The icons differentiate between those convicted of offenses against children, rape, sexual battery, and other offenses. If you click on one of the icons it will display information about the sex offender including not only their name and offense but also a picture.

I just finished listening to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Empire and enjoyed it. Afterwards i find out that this is the 2nd book in a 15 book trilogy! I checked and my library does have the 3rd book and so have put that on reserve.

The book really is two stories (guess they were published in a Sci-Fi magazine prior to being published as a book), the first story deals with the fall of the Empire while the second deals with the fall of the Foundation. Strange that the book is titled in the reverse. Just to confuse things more, the first book of the trilogy is called “Foundation”. So, “Foundation and Empire” is two books but does not include the book “Foundation”. Strange thing is when I looked at Amazon it appears that the paperback version of the book is now out of print.

Kidding aside, the stories were good with just enough twist in the plot to keep you reading listening. I look forward to the next one!

I have been running Mozy for about 6 months and have found it to work well. Luckily, I have not had to use the recover side of the software yet, but from what I read and my experience so far I am guessing that will work well also.

There are 3 flavors of Mozy, MozyHome Free, MozyHome Unlimited, and MozyPro. The Free version is hidden pretty well hidden. You must go to the MozyHome Unlimited version and look for the button linking to the Free version on the left bar.

All 3 versions give you pretty much the same features (unless you are running a Windows server). The difference in price has to do with the amount of backup storage you receive. All 3 give you:

• Open/locked file support: Mozy will back up your documents whether they’re open or closed.
• 128-bit SSL encryption: The same technology used by banks secures your data during the backup process.
• 448-bit Blowfish encryption: Secures your files while in storage, providing peace of mind that your private data is safe from hackers.
• Automatic: Schedule the times to back up and MozyHome does the rest.
• New and changed file detection: MozyHome finds and saves the smallest changes.
• Backs up Outlook files: Disaster-proof email protection.
• Block-level incremental backup: After the initial backup, MozyHome only backs up files that have been added or changed, making subsequent backups lightning fast.

A more detailed list of the features can be found on the comparison page.

Oh, yes, and though it is not mentioned anywhere, there is a hidden beta feature that will allow you to backup your network drives too. When picking files and directories to back up ‘File System’ tab, just right click in the white space. You will be able to type in the URI for the network drive and treat it just like a local drive.

The MozyHome Free version gives you 2 GB of backup space and requires only an email address. They even give you a referral link that if used by someone else, will add an extra 1/4 gig per referral (thank you if you use it).

The MozyHome Unlimited version gives you, you guessed it, unlimited storage for $4.95 a month. I wish we could use this at the office! The home version also works on the Mac.

With MozyPro you must purchase the storage space you want. Each machine you want to back up costs $4.95 per month (which includes the first 2 gig) and then $0.50 per gig above that. The pro version does support Windows Server software if you need that.

It does not take much to get started. Just sign up for an account by creating a user account online, download and install software and then select files to be backed up. You can select individual directories and/or files or set up the types of types of files you want to back up, and MozyHome does the rest. I have my home machines set up to backup with the free version and we are using the Pro version at the office.

I just installed Pagebar2 on this blog and really like it. Instead of the oh-so-plain
<< Previous and Next >>
I now have a fancy selection bar at the bottom of the page.

Guess it does not take much to make me happy :)

LittleGun.be has more photos of this little ring cannon.
I think it would be the ultimate in conceal-carry,
though you would have to be careful while fishing your keys out of your pocket.

HatTip: Gizmodo

Read the whole page. Especially the suggestions.

To get this page all you need to do is use Google’s “I Feel Lucky” button that automatically jumps you to the site that would have shown as the first result.

To do it yourself:

1. Go to www.google.com
2. Type in the search term: find chuck norris
3. Click the “I’m feeling lucky” button

Mike Huckabee may have been able to track Chuck Norris down to do a TV Commercial for him, but the rest of us are out of luck.

HatTip: John Battelle's Searchblog