life without a blog

aye... refreshing no? yes we're alive. life is just too interesting to sit and type. maybe i'll be back in a couple weeks.

oh, i am reading Anselm of Canterbury. if anybody wants to stretch their mind with some medieval devotionals, i highly recommend.

life without a fridge

i know that we had a tough time getting used to the small refrigerators here in the uk. how on earth did people survive before the power grid and vapor compression heat exchangers? here's a clue...

fridge-less living

the really simple life

now here is an inspiring example of simple living... looks more like camping year round! don't think it would work too well with kids though. also a little too cold in canada; but well worth the read.

"We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do. We must waste less. We must do more for ourselves and each other. It is either that or continue merely to think and talk about changes that we are inviting catastrophe to make."

Wendell Berry, from the essay "Word and Flesh," What Are People For? North Point Press, 1990

Living Outside the Box

engineers without borders

hey, now here we go - 'geers getting in there and helping people! too bad they didn't have this when i was in school....

EWB Canada

technology challenging poverty

here is a great bunch. sustainable use of technology to reduce poverty and it's effects (food and clean water are two big ones) throughout the developing world

Practical Action

it's hard to find ways to use engineering to benefit those who could really use it. maybe there are some organizations like this in canada!?

speechless

3 men were made martyrs in turkey

what is most amazing is the widow is asking people to forgive the perps

...

simple living

reading this post about facebook vs. myspace over at tim's blog got me to thinking. all these people living so much of their lives online. if they don't yet have a second life, they still invest a lot of time publishing their thoughts & stuff. why don't i? sure i blog, but it's fairly sparse and short. mostly we blog to post pix of the kids (but that's pretty sparse too).

it's kind of strange, being an electronics engineer at a semiconductor company - ooooo the technomages themselves - and yet take me away from professional life and something strange happens. i like to go outside. i like to walk. i like to read books - the paper kind - philosophy, theology, technology, astronomy, engineering, woodwork, fiction, whatever. sure the internet is great for research, but if i'm really interested i'll buy the book (or at least print the article off).

i'm very interested in unplugged life. unplugged from utility companies, media conglomerates, advertising, retail thieves, most of modern life. i tried to find a term that would apply to my attitudes: luddism, anarcho-primitivism, anti-modernism. none of them fit. but simple living seems to work.

technology is useful, a means to an end. but not an end in itself. maybe i'm an old-worlder, but i'm still firmly in meat-space.... until i start my real second life!

gridblog: earthday

well, john's request for an earthday post fest ties in with my thoughts as of late. unfortunately, i'm too lazy to read up on the earthday site other than the front page. so, it looks like it's about climate change. ok. on that topic i would point everyone to the half plan at builditsolar. This family cut their energy usage by 1/2 in one year. sure it cost some money, but the return on saved energy bills was 45% the first year! oh, yah and they saved loads of CO2 emmisions.

now, i'm thinking that living off-grid would save even more (money & green-house-gas). not using nasty utility energy or burning fossil fuel. all we need are good electric cars and it's perfect ;-).

back to the half plan. they have stuff to help you make your own half plan. hey what have we got to lose? save money, and our kids' future while your at it!

self-sufficient.... no.... God sufficient living

after reading john's consumerism post it got me to thinking... no, not about joining a commune... but about unplugging from the world, or at least the materialist-consumerist-lemmingish aspects. i mean unplug; both metaphorically and physically. let's go off-grid. live on what God gives us (gives everyone). ok, so let's take our inventory:

• earth
• plants
• animals
• sun & rain

wow, looks like He has given us everything doesn't it? maybe crofters have it right? i wonder if it might be possible to 'live off the land', right in the middle of a developed, first-world country. hmmm i like a challenge. it seems that The Lord Almighty gives everything needed to all, regardless of your opinion of him. might just need a little ingenuity to "...subdue it". how cool would that be?

are the odds in favour of Christianity?

well, who would have thought it? statistical methods actually support the historicity of Jesus' resurrection. and the math really isn't that scary.

A Bayesian Analysis

reclaim easter from the bunny!!

i've seen posters around town for the past month, on walls and on the buses. yesterday there were even people handing out little bunny shaped fliers for it.



wish we could have gone, but it's my son's birthday, and both the kids will be in bed...

rock on scotland!

stubble jumping

wow. it's feels like such a relief having made the decision now. we're going home. now that i'm thinking about it there are some interesting insights into life that i have gained...

i have a new appreciation for canada. not because i've been to some developing country or seen people living in poverty. it's because i live somewhere ridiculously affluent, but even more absurdly expensive! i can't think of how to save any costs off our budget without moving into a 1 bed flat!!

family is the greatest support system (both bio and christo fams). this is especially evident with a growing family. it's fun to explore the world, but eventually ya want to settle down "where everybody knows your name".

people are mostly the same the world over. at the basic level we all want pretty much the same things.

it's just really trippy thinking about being back to stay. so many times we've been booking a return flight.

not this time.

attitude check!

i'm not ashamed to own my Lord
nor to defend his cause
maintain the honour of His word
the glory of His cross

amen.

Gridblog: Generosity

due to receiving another of God's great gifts into our lives, i haven't been spending much time on the computer at all. other than uploading pix of our new family member from the camera, i really haven't had a desire to get an lcd-tan.

being that i'm getting pale, and friends are slagging me for my lack of picture posting on the family site, i'm online. and hey - a gridblog topic has been announced! and so i will add a short rambling to the group.

generosity should be encouraged - at a personal level. none of this left wing "have the government take care of them, isn't that what our taxes are for". that's all well and good, and the government should help those who have no where to turn. but let's not get lazy in our giving. find a cause that touches you; give to it generously.

give from what you have. if you are blessed with money, give it. if you are blessed with time, spend it. if you have skills and abilities that can be of use, put them to it. most of all, give with a joyful heart.

pax

the problem of evil blog

a relatively new blog concerned solely with the aforesaid problem. this could be very interesting as it is often one of the last resorts of disbelievers.

who's soliciting who?

talk about the pot calling the kettle black?

even old people can be a threat....

get this, the us secret service actually came to some 81 year old dude's place and questioned him over an editorial letter he wrote. they were concerned that it might be construed as threatening to the president.

the queen city

well, it's official... not only is regina a great place to live, it's the most affordable city to buy a house in canada.

it's quiet in here.... i think i like it...

yes, here in my own out of the way part of the net. posting ideas that probably only my wife and brother read. for the most part, i think i like it like that. i'm sure that some blog reading vagabond may find his random click bring him through some day... and that's ok. maybe someday i'll go back through this blog and see how my ideas have evolved. laugh at myself. grin at my sad attempts at poetry or photography. and that's going to be fun.

so am i talking to myself? most likely. but that's ok with me.

goodnight myself.... g'night.

christianity today

my eyes are getting sore after staring at a bunch of different sites about the emerging church movement. a lot of it seems to be verbiage defending itself from 'evangelicals' who are 'attacking' and then dishing out as good at it gets to the 'evangelicals' and 'modernism' in the church in general.

why all the labels? it seems that each time a group of Christians want to challenge their thinking and grow closer to God, the come up with a new label. a new rallying cry. a new set of tenets, even if the tenet is the lack thereof.

how about this for a radical idea?
- Christians are followers of Christ.
- Christians try to find out the truth of what God wants for us.
- Christians try to share that truth with the world.

... and the truth shall set you free

any questions?

are answers bad?

following on from thinking about velvet elvis, i've been reading up a little on the emerging church thing which it's author is a part of. the book struck me as asking a lot of questions, encouraging the asking of questions, but not giving what the author thought were answers, or may be answers, or hints of answers. it seems that questions, and dialog, and investigating, etc. are the end... rather than the means.... to the answers.

what good is questioning if not to find the answers?

velvet elvis

i received this book for Christmas last year and read it before the hols were finished. i thought that i'd post my thoughts on it, since i have seen it pop up in discussion at a few places.

i will sum up my assessment with a comment (as best i can remember), that my father-in-law made when i was telling the generous gift giver what i thought of it:

searching and questions are important, sure. but when you get to a certain point, you become more interested in answers, you already know the questions.

lord of it all

in some recent discussions, a supposed dichotomy has been raised. God or science as the answer to "why". i say that this is a not a dichotomy. the two are different. science has no power to answer why. it is descriptive. it isn't metaphysical.

now i hear the inevitable 'god of the gaps' rant coming. i'll repeat, there is no dichotomy. regardless of whether science has an equation for something, God is still the why. he is the why of the things we understand as much as those we do not. science was invented by people who believed in God, thought that he was an orderly God, and that his creation would therefore be orderly. they didn't have a problem with filling in knowledge gaps. this wasn't threatening to their belief in God.

it confirmed it.