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!