http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/articles en matt@fitzage.com Copyright 2008 2008-04-22T18:22:01-07:00 http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/capital_punishment/ http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/capital_punishment/#When:18:22:01Z This won't be, as you may suppose, any sort of defense or condemnation of capital punishment. I just wanted to share an intriguing quote on the topic from chapter 2 of The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. “It's a good thing, at least, that there is not much pain,” he observed, “when the head falls off.” “Do you know,” Myshkin answered warmly, “you've just made that observation and everyone says the same, and the guillotine was invented with that objective. But the idea occurred to me at the time that perhaps it made it worse. That will seem to you an absurd and wild idea, but if one has some imagination, one may suppose even that. Think! if there were torture, for instance, there would be suffering and wounds, bodily agony, and so all that would distract the mind from spiritual suffering, so that one would only be tortured by wounds till one died. But the chief and worst pain may not be in the bodily suffering but in one's knowing for certain that in an hour, and then in ten minutes, and then in half a minute, and then now, at the very moment, the soul will leave the body and that one will cease to be a man and that that's bound to happen; the worst part of it is that it's certain. When you lay your head down under the knife and hear the knife slide over your head, that quarter of a second is the most terrible of all. You know this is not only my imagination, many people have said the same. I believe that so thoroughly that I'll tell you what I think. To kill for murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands. Anyone murdered by brigands, whose throat is cut at night in a wood, or something of that sort, must surely hope to escape till the very last minute. There have been instances when a man has still hoped for escape, running or begging for mercy after his throat was cut. But in the other case all that last hope, which makes dying ten times as easy, is taken away for certain. There is the sentence, and the whole awful torture lies in the fact that there is certainly no escape, and there is no torture in the world more terrible. You may lead a soldier out and set him facing the cannon in battle and fire at him and he'll still hope; but read a sentence of certain death over that same soldier, and he will go out of his mind or burst into tears. Who can tell whether human nature is able to bear this without madness? Why this hideous, useless, unnecessary outrage? Perhaps there is some man who has been sentenced to death, been exposed to this torture and has then been told ‘you can go, you are pardoned.’ Perhaps such a man could tell us. It was of this torture and of this agony that Christ spoke, too. No, you can't treat a man like that!” Literature, Politics, Theology 2008-04-22T18:22:01-07:00 http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/confession/ http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/confession/#When:20:33:01Z Our Sunday morning worship liturgy lately has included reading extensive portions from the Psalms, especially in relation to confession of sin. One thing that has started to stick out to me is how different the confessions of sin that David makes are from the confessions that I make. The thing that sticks out to me about David's confessions is that we do not see any mention of the actual sin. Instead, we see admission on David's part that he is thoroughly corrupted by sin. In fact, none of the Psalms referred to as the Penitential Psalms have any confession of specific sins committed. Take this example from Psalm 38. Psalm 38:5-8 My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness, I am utterly bowed down and prostrate; all the day I go about mourning. For my sides are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart. While it's quite likely that David had specific sins in mind, he doesn't focus on them specifically in his confession. Instead, he speaks broadly about the affect that his sins have on his spirit, and feels that there is no soundness left in him at all. The clearest example we have that David is confessing something much deeper than specific sins is Psalm 51. This Psalm was written after David was confronted by Nathan the prophet regarding David's adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband to cover it up. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Like the other Psalms, there is no mention of the specific sin that prompted the confession. There is, however, a very clear indication that David considers himself to be thoroughly corrupted by sin, and that this was true from the time of his conception.. Compare this to way I tend to confess my sins (and I'm sure I'm not alone here). My confessions run along the lines of “I screwed up again, God. Why did I do that again?” These confessions show that I have an idea of myself as basically good but I occasionally screw up. But that's not the picture of the human condition that we have in David's confessions. But of course his confessions don't stop there. In addition to being confessions of his own corrupt nature, they are also confessions of God's glory and grace, and the recognition that only God has the ability to cleanse us. In fact, there is much more time devoted to God in these confessions than there is to the human condition. Psalm 51:1-2 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! Psalm 51:7-12 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. Psalm 102:18-22 Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the LORD: that he looked down from his holy height; from heaven the LORD looked at the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die, that they may declare in Zion the name of the LORD, and in Jerusalem his praise, when peoples gather together, and kingdoms, to worship the LORD. Psalm 130 Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. Psalm 32:1-5 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah Again, contrast this to your own confessions. Are they full of praise to God? Do they recognize that we have no hope apart from God? That there is nothing we can do about our sin? That apart from God we are completely corrupt and sinful? And how much time do you devote in your confessions of sins to recognizing and extolling the supreme greatness and goodness of God compared to how much time you spend saying “I screwed up. I screwed up. I screwed up.”? This latter approach is a very man-centered approach that carries with it the idea that there is something we could have done to not screw up. We, even as Christians, are not basically good people who do bad stuff sometimes. We are bad people who can only do good when God in his grace enables us to do so. Realizing this will free us up to look outside ourselves to God rather than looking inside ourselves in a vain attempt to fix what's wrong. Featured, Theology 2008-04-19T20:33:01-07:00 http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/backpack_calendar_and_reminder_scripts_for_quicksilver/ http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/backpack_calendar_and_reminder_scripts_for_quicksilver/#When:16:12:00Z Update March 4, 2008:I've updated the scripts so that they no longer cause Quicksilver to reactivate after finishing the task. If you'd like this functionality, you can re-download the scripts bellow, or you can just add the line "return null" (without the quotes) before the line "end process text" towards the end of the script. I decided to take the backpack calendar and reminder scripts and make them a bit easier to set up. The functionality is essentially the same as the old ones, and there isn't really a reason to upgrade if you have them set up already (as far as I recall). I did learn some new information about the reminder scripts, though. The information I had before allowed for setting reminders by setting the number of minutes in the future you wanted the reminder to be. I've since learned that you can also set a specific time, as long as it's on the same day. You can't use this to set reminders for future dates, so the calendar script is better for that. The syntax for the reminder script is either "+120 Reminder Text" or "5pm Reminder Text." The syntax for the calendar isn't much different. "5pm tomorrow Do something" or "5pm 3/1 Do something else." You can also do all-day or multi-day events by leaving off the time, as in "3/1 Do something" or "3/3-3/12 Do something." Unlike the previous scripts, I've broken out the user specific information into the beginning of the script to make it easier to set up. You'll need to replace the values YOURAPIKEY, YOURACCOUNT, and for the calendar YOURCALENDARID. To find the calendar ID, you'll have to view the source of the Calendar page and look for something like this: /calendars/9999/edit', The number in that link is your Calendar ID. If you have more than one calendar, there will be multiple. They are followed closely in the same line of code by the calendar name so you can tell them apart. You can download these scripts here. Technology 2008-02-29T16:12:00-07:00 http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/advanced_backpack_quicksilver_scripts/ http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/advanced_backpack_quicksilver_scripts/#When:17:44:00Z Update March 4, 2008:I've updated the scripts so that they no longer cause Quicksilver to reactivate after finishing the task. If you'd like this functionality, you can re-download the scripts bellow, or you can just add the line "return null" (without the quotes) before the line "end process text" towards the end of the script. After updating my backpack task script the other day, I got to work on the script for adding notes to a page. While doing this, I had some more ideas to make both scripts more powerful. I have a link here to the latest scripts. Here is the general idea. The notes script allows you to add a note to a backpack page, obviously. You can either type just a line of text, which will create a note with no title, or you can type a title followed by a colon and then the body of the note and the script will create a note with a title and body. The task script is even more exciting. If you just type a line of text, it will add an item to the list that you have specified in the script. If you type text followed by a colon and then more text, it will create the item in the list and then it will also create a note with that same text as the title, and the text following the colon as the body. So this: Will result in this: And this: Will result in this: So if you are the kind who likes to add notes to your list items, this is as close as you get with Backpack. As usual, replace the variables at the top of the script with the ones from your account. This article gives the instructions for finding the information you need. Technology 2008-02-28T17:44:00-07:00 http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/apple_and_note_apps/ http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/apple_and_note_apps/#When:16:14:00Z Starting with Tiger and the introduction of the sticky note dashboard widget, Apple seems to have been having a love afair with the Marker Felt font. Much has been said about this already, and how it shows up in places that are otherwise examples of excellent typography. For example, the typography on the iPhone is generally great, but Apple chose to use Marker Felt in the Notes app, in an attempt to give it a more handwritten look. The font also shows up in Mail.app in the new notes feature. Unlike the iPhone, however, the user is at liberty to change the font if they so choose. This is the first thing I did with that feature. But I haven’t been using the notes feature in Mail, because it doesn’t look much better to me with a font other than Marker Felt. I think it has something to do with the incongruity of the yellow legal pad look with a toolbar that has the dark gray look of the rest of the app. The iPhone doesn’t bother me in this regard. I think it has to do with the fact that it’s not just a yellow sheet of “paper” stuck in where it doesn’t belong, but they’ve made the rest of the app fit in with the metaphor. The toolbar area looks like a legal pad also, which makes the rest of the metaphor feel better. Interestingly enough, Marker Felt doesn’t bother me as much on the iPhone, and I think it’s because it fits in better with the fact that the notes app itself is more consistent within the app. I think I would be more likely to use notes in Mail if the note window was more like the iPhone notes app and looked more like a pad of paper. Or, if they did away with the fake paper look altogether. It would also be nice if these notes would sync with the iPhone notes and Stickies, but that, especially Stickies, might be too much to ask for. This was written in the Notes app on the iPhone. Technology 2008-02-27T16:14:00-07:00 http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/backpack_quicksilver_task_script_for_new_backpack/ http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/backpack_quicksilver_task_script_for_new_backpack/#When:16:23:00Z Update March 4, 2008:I've updated the scripts so that they no longer cause Quicksilver to reactivate after finishing the task. If you'd like this functionality, you can re-download the scripts bellow, or you can just add the line "return null" (without the quotes) before the line "end process text" towards the end of the script. Backpack was recently updated, and I'm not sure if there are going to be additional API changes. For now, though, I've updated the task script to go beyond what it did before and post to specific lists on a page, since you now have the ability to have more than one list on a page. Download the script here and unzip it. Double click the AppleScript to open it in Script Editor. Change the variable information at the top, replacing APIKEY, USER, PAGEID, and LISTID with your information. If you are on an account that uses SSL, find where it says "http://" in the code and change it to "https://". Save the file to ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions/ using whatever name you want. Relaunch Quicksilver. You will activate this the same way as the other scripts: Activate Quiksilver with whatever your keyboard shortcut is. Type period to enter text entry mode and type your text to add as a list item. Hit tab to allow you to select the action to be performed. Type a few letters to bring up the script you just created and hit return. I don't know how to make it not return the result that makes Quicksilver pop back up. If anyone knows, let me know in the comments. At least it lets you know that it worked. Now, if you don't know how to get the information for the variables, here it is: For the APIKEY, click on My info on the right side of the Backpack header menu bar. There is a link to display your API key at the bottom of the main section. For USER, enter the name of your main account, the same thing that you enter before backpackit.com to get to backpack. For PAGEID, enter the number that shows up in the URL field when you visit that page. For LISTID, the only way I know to find this is to view the page source, search for the name of the list, and find the number that shows up right before that. It will look something like span id="name_list_1509503", but you only need the numeric portion. Technology 2008-02-26T16:23:00-07:00 http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/christians_and_politics/ http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/christians_and_politics/#When:17:27:00Z Let me start out by saying that this article will make no attempt to provide an overarching “theology of politics,” or anything of that nature. The purpose, rather, is to explore some of the confusing aspects of politics as they relate to Christians. Christians who live in a democracy (or something of the sort) are in a unique position in history, as we who have an unprecedented ability to become involved in the political process. We don’t have much in the way of explicit biblical commands on how to handle such a form of government, or any government. There are, however, some guidelines given that can help us, even beyond the explicitly governmental commands to submit to our rulers and pay our taxes. What makes politics so confusing and agonizing in a democratic society is that we don’t even have much in the way of biblical examples of people living in this environment, much less commands on how to deal with it. At least with some other forms of government there are clear examples given of people living in those environments. The few examples we do have of people trying to do their own thing usually turn out very badly, as they are a result of rebellion, not submission. But God has placed us in a representative democracy. I think it’s important to recognize the distinction between our situation and a real democracy, as we do not directly influence most laws of the land. This can significantly change how we vote, since we are choosing representatives who all have some problems as opposed to picking and choosing exact votes on specific issues. It seems that many Christians, however, vote as if they were voting on each issue specifically. They look at what are some of the most important issues and vote for a candidate who has a good position on those issues, whether or not his position on other issues is good. For example, if I were voting directly on the issue of abortion, I would vote for outlawing it every time. When it comes to voting for a representative, however, I have to balance this issue with all the other important issues that come into play during an election. In the upcoming presidential election, there are a number of candidates who are anti-abortion. But what are their positions on issues like war and peace? Or how do they treat the poor? Sadly, those who are good on the first issue are hardly ever good on the last two. Obviously these aren’t the only three issues affecting a presidential election, but they are very important ones. And when it comes to a presidential election, what affect will my vote have on abortion? George W. Bush is anti-abortion, but having him in office for two terms hasn’t really done anything about this issue. Abortion is a firmly entrenched practice in this country, and no president has the ability to change that. So then I look at the other issues that should be important to Christians and try to vote based on a combination of issues. But even that is obviously not so simple. For starters, there is not a single candidate who has all the characteristics that I want in a president. Therefore I have to balance the issues that I think are the most important with the issues where I think a president can actually make a difference. This is a bit pragmatic, but is there any advantage to voting exclusively on principle in matters where our vote will really not make a difference? But lets move to a different side of the coin. In all of these issues, we cannot rely on government to accomplish what God has called the Church to accomplish. We cannot abdicate our responsibility of caring for the poor, for example, to the government. But are there times when it is suitable to have the government supplement what the Church is doing? Caring for the poor is a good example in this area, because it’s clear that we are commanded by God to care for the poor (even though this seems to have been forgotten by large segments of “Christians” today). The Church must do something to take care of the poor. This will help reach them for Christ, yes, but caring for the poor is important in any case, not just when it is tied to evangelism. So, should we use government to some degree to help accomplish this purpose? My knee-jerk response would be “no,” but is that more of a product of a lifetime of Republican conditioning, or is it the most biblical route? If I truly care for the poor, won’t I want to seem them helped in any way possible? Of course you could argue that the government is not very efficient at this task, and you would be right. But is that a good enough excuse? Like I said before, I don’t really have the answers to the complicated issues of politics. But there is so much more to consider than many Christians seem willing to admit. There is another very important thing to consider. In regards to the moral issues that we find so important (and rightly so), what will accomplish our goals? Politics? Getting Christians into office? No. The only thing that will stamp out abortion is people turning to God. Even if abortion was outlawed, it would still continue. It would just go underground like it used to be before it was legalized. But if we truly want to stamp out abortion, we will attempt to reach people for Christ. Only as God changes their hearts will they turn from their sin. The most important thing to remember is that God is in control. The hearts of our leaders are in his hands, and he uses even their mistakes and sin to accomplish his purposes. The most effective way that we can change this country is to pray, because ultimately the way we vote matters very little. I grow up in an environment where politics were treated as very black and white. There were only a few issues deemed worthy for Christians to care about , and anybody who wasn’t a Republican was looked upon with extreme suspicion. In fact, I don’t know anybody who would have admitted to being anything other than a Republican. Over time, I’ve come to realize that Christians should be concerned with much more than just abortion, marriage, and gun control. While I’m not really trying to convince anyone of a specific point of view here, I hope I’ve helped you realize that you may need to take a broader look at how we as Christians handle politics. Featured, Politics, Theology 2008-01-25T17:27:00-07:00 http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/search_weirdness/ http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/search_weirdness/#When:17:33:00Z When looking through the searches that bring people to fitzage.com, I am often humored by the results. Sometimes I learn things about the way google works, and other times it’s just funny. For example, when you have a front page or archive pages that include the text of multiple articles on a wide variety of topics, combined terms from the different articles can make for some interesting searches making their way to my site. Take this search: “Christian reviews, presidential.” This doesn’t really fit any articles on my site. Yes, I have a very basic list of some presidential candidate scores. I also have the word Christian numerous times, including in the article about presidential candidates. I also have a reviews section. But the combination isn’t quite what the visitor was looking for, I’m sure. There are other ones with the same problem, like “tim keller sexual sin.” They were probably looking for some article written by Tim Keller on sexual sin. Tim Keller is mentioned in one of my articles, but sexual sin isn’t discussed in that article. Rather, it’s discussed in an article with some thoughts from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Adina’s name also gets mixed in with some other things frequently: “pastor and adina” and “adina beer” are two recent ones that bear no resemblance to anything I’ve written. They just pull in Adina’s name from the header, and random text from any of the articles on any pages. Another one that caught my eye was “are girls named adina prett” (and yes, the y was missing. On the front page of fitzage.com, the word girl shows up once, the word pretty shows up once, and Adina’s name shows up once in the header. There must not have been very many other search results for that search. And yes, Adina is pretty, although I can’t speak for other girls of the same name. Sometimes people actually appear to get exactly what they’re looking for. Like “interesting facts about beer,” which bears a striking resemblance to one of my article titles. Also, “calorie counts for guiness beer,” which is included in the same article, although a little buried perhaps. I also get a number of visits for searches with variations on the theme of alcoholic root beer floats, as I posted an article a while back on how tasty a root beer float was with a little rum added to it. I also get a number of visitors looking for Geek Squad reviews, based on my article I wrote about them. I gave them a thumbs down. On a similar note are people looking for CoffeeFool, who I also gave a thumbs down, without ever having actually tried their product. I’m guessing the person searching for “the demon drink the spirit behind alcoholism christian” didn’t really get what they were looking for, as there is no beverage called “the demon drink” on this blog. I have learned that I should probably write more reviews, because there are a number of searches that make it to the reviews portion of my site looking specifically for the products that I have reviewed. My Twitter friends have told me I should write more Mac software reviews, as I seem to have tried a huge number of the available shareware apps. Maybe I’ll get on that. In regards to that, the person who searched for “nissan steal thermas” is lucky that Google is a better speller than they are. Technology 2008-01-23T17:33:00-07:00 http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/presidential_candidate_scores/ http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/presidential_candidate_scores/#When:04:28:00Z On a list of issues that are seen as key dividing points among presidential candidates, here are the scores based on how many of these issues I have in common with them. Any point of agreement earns points, and any point of disagreement removes points. Giuliani is interesting. Basically, he gets his terrible score because he's pro abortion and gay marriage, but he's also extremely pro-Iraq-war, Guantanamo, Patriot Act, etc, so there was nothing to redeem him. I would have serious issues with the Democratic candidates on things like gay marriage and abortion, but at least they have the redeeming qualities of hating the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, etc. You can take the quiz here. Paul 16 Huckabee 8 Cox 7 Kucinich 4 Biden 3 Brownback 1 Gravel 1 McCain 0 Thompson -1 Obama -1 Tancredo -1 Richardson -2 Clinton -4 Romney -4 Edwards -4 Hunter -5 Dodd -5 Giuliani -20 Politics 2007-11-18T04:28:00-07:00 http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/cheeseburger_club/ http://fitzage.com/index.php/main/comments/cheeseburger_club/#When:19:55:00Z The cafeteria at work sometimes makes this incredible sandwich they call the cheeseburger club. Today I tried my hand at making my own. It's very tasty. Three slices of bread, a burger party, some bacon, cheddar, mayo or miracle whip, ketchup, ham and turkey, lettuce, tomato, and mustard. Food 2007-11-07T19:55:00-07:00