Source Checking

Posted on June 12, 2014 by ehurst

I’m sincerely glad there are people who have time and inclination to check the sources on propaganda. This is the best thing about the Internet, and one of the primary reasons for all the efforts to throttle it and control what comes across the wires.

First and foremost: Uphold your intellectual independence. That’s merely a reflection of the same spiritual independence I teach every day. The world in which we live is inherently deceptive by its very nature, so we are hardly surprised with efforts to manipulate us based on false information. That such deception is so total and pervasive is easy to forget.

Think about it — the same people who make all this wonderful noise telling us about Snowden’s documents are the same people who lie brazenly about the Thai government. See for yourself.

And who can forget that the main financier of Greenwald’s project site is Omidyar, a fellow deep in the pockets of the CIA/NSA contractor matrix? Yes, everything they report is shocking, but it’s all old news, stuff they knew long ago, in the case of Thai fishing slavery. It’s also pitched in such a way as to blame the wrong people. As for Snowden’s revelations, most of that is very much out of date. You aren’t going to hear too much from Greenwald the stuff they are doing today, and you certainly won’t hear much about what frustrates the NSA because of what they can’t do.

Is it enough just to know? Again, truth itself is our fight. We are not activists: “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” Truth is the battle. The key to our mission rests in freeing the individual from arbitrary and useless group actions — AKA herding. Yes, most of the world is sheeple, but the solution is not pushing with yapping dogs nipping at their heels, but with offering genuine leadership. The nature of our business is raising up a voice of truth, and only those who follow our truth voluntarily are subject to the disciplines of the truth. That discipline of truth is so very foreign to what most people envision today that we are very fortunate just to get them to start pulling away from the false image.

To those captured by the lies, our mercy is merely living the truth with a serenity that captures the interest of the few who notice their chains. Only when you have geographic proximity to some fellow escapees can we discuss how to act as a group. When we do talk about group action, we have to move into an entirely different world. Right now, the major focus of our mission is simply getting people to see the lies. One of those lies is a deep and unquestioning assumption that this world of shadows is “reality” and that there is such a thing as “objective truth.”

Live and communicate your best grasp on truth.

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Tomorrow Never Comes (Updated)

Posted on June 11, 2014 by ehurst

There’s no tomorrow.

That is, there’s no tomorrow if “tomorrow” means more of today. This seems like a good time to remind my American readers that we are under God’s wrath and it’s going to get worse before it’s over. We are already in a steady decline as a given, the background against which other events will be set. But we should surely expect some jerks and jolts, a few precipitous drops.

I don’t have a word from God on the timing, only one of those gossamer threads of warning that reads in my flesh like tension. A significant number of independent sources are predicting stuff throughout the rest of the year. Some of them claim it could start as early as this weekend. Perhaps all of them are correct in one way or another, in that it may be a whole series of shocks. What makes it a bit unnerving for me is that my spirit vaguely agrees with the broader pessimism.

As Douglas Adams would say, “Don’t panic.” If my teachings of Christian Mysticism mean anything, we are otherworldly in our orientation and rather serene about our human existence in chaos. It’s supposed to be crazy here. When you can absorb that, a bleak future is just another adventure in faith.

Yes, there are things you probably should do, but they must follow your basic calling. For a computer nerd like me, it meant once more turning away from Windows and shifting to OpenSUSE. There might be other reasons for that choice, but I find it a suitable compromise between competing demands. I’m not making a sales pitch; you aren’t supposed to copy my actions unless you have your own good cause. To be honest, it all hinges on communications for me. A computer is just a glorified typewriter with the ability to toss the documents in a non-paper format to the far corners of the globe. For now.

Even that could change, and there are active attempts to slice and dice our current level of access to something more tightly controlled than in Islamic countries. Long term, that would mean my computer is just a typewriter with electronic storage. That’s reason enough for keeping my laptop, but not much else.

But the single most important thing I do is communicate the message of faith. Regardless of the context or circumstances, that’s all I really to have to do. And I keep doing that until I part from this world.

Everything else is just details.

Update: I suppose this piece is about as good as any other to sum up some of the probabilities. It’s long and I recommend the comments on down the page, as well. A quick summary is that the folks running our government at the ground level are being manipulated by the plutocrats to provoke an armed revolt. The Bundy Ranch was a near miss because the Feds didn’t expect the high and heavy response. They thought the militias had been stomped during Clinton’s administration, but here they were and ready to fight. So we can expect them to let the economy collapse and right when it’s really painful they’ll try again and it will be bloodshed.

Meanwhile, look for all the dirty tricks you can imagine and false flag events that will get worse as time goes on.

As always, this is not our fight. Every government on earth is wrong; so what’s new? That has nothing to do with whether any or my readers might have to do something crazy involving weapons and such — on either side — but that such is just shadows of truth. Act according to your convictions, but know this is not where God’s real interest lies. I tend to think the plutocrats are hoping it turns into a quagmire, and that the Feds don’t actually win. That sort of thing makes the whole world more vulnerable to their larger plans. But again, it’s not our fight because our whole mission is getting the message out for the world to see, however much of our world’s attention we can grab. If only for just one moment at a time, we need to show sanity and justice as God revealed it.

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OpenSUSE KDE Desktop

Posted on June 10, 2014 by ehurst

I sincerely want you to have an easy time migrating from Windows to Linux. I still maintain that OpenSUSE is the shortest path of migration for Windows users, even more than Kubuntu. That’s because with the YaST configuration tool, there is almost nothing you can’t configure with a nice GUI tool. I sincerely believe Linux will offer more freedom of control regardless which brand you choose, but SUSE is about as close as you can get without learning everything from scratch.

Note: By default, everything in KDE is one-click. There is little use for double-clicking. Because of this, in most file dialogues, you have the option to click the upper left of the icon field and add it to the next action, or subtract it. Clicking anywhere else on the icon and it activates/launches.

It’s possible the default desktop will be fine for you. However, you should be aware that SUSE tends to lock stuff down in the sense of saving you from what you don’t know. So that sexy black theme with the transparent taskbar (actually called the Panel) at the bottom of the screen can’t be adjusted much. For example, you can’t move it to another margin of the screen. And the default KDE menu is altogether annoying to someone who has some idea what’s on the system.

One of the first things I do is find and click on the “Configure Desktop” menu item. First, take notice of the back button on the upper left — “Overview” is grayed out, but becomes active when you zero in on any of the items. That’s how you come back out to the overview.

In the top row, the second item is “Application Appearance.” Take a look at the items in the left vertical pane. You might want to select a different widget style. I prefer Cleanlooks. Next item down is color; I’m not a fan of green and black, so I chose Steel and made some adjustments to darken everything. You can work that out for yourself. Under “Fonts” I had added a bunch of Windows fonts and used them for some parts of the interface. I also enabled the anti-aliasing and under the “Configure” button I set it to full hinting.

Back in the main overview window, second row and second item is “Workspace Appearance.” Again, the left vertical pane is your cues. For decorations, I chose Plastik. The really big change is the “Desktop Theme.” Pick almost anything except “openSUSE” and you regain the freedom to change things around a bit. Back in the overview, the same row and last item is “Workspace Behavior” — poke around and you can disable that annoying business of maximizing the window when you bump the top of the screen with it.

Back in the overview window, it was the fifth line down where you find a place to add your own fonts: “Font Management.” In the left pane select “Personal fonts” and then hit the Add button at the bottom. From there, navigate to wherever you have your font collection. Pick your fonts and add them to your usable collection. Get used to that file manager window; you’ll see it a lot. It should be about as self-explanatory as the one for Win7.

Most everything else in this settings panel is fairly self-explanatory, but comes with things you’ll never see in Windows, so be warned. Ask questions. One of the biggest changes for Windows users is multiple virtual desktops. On that Panel next to the menu button is a small icon showing two rounded rectangles stacked vertically. Right-click on that and you can change things, including how many virtual desktops you can have. I use four most of the time, and I hate having them stacked. You can change the arrangement in the dialog under “Virtual Desktops.”

I never have any use for the “Activities” and always remove it. Again, right-click to see the options. You can also select “Panel Options” and get a chance to add or change some of what’s on the panel. I hate the default menu, so I remove that add back the old simplified one featured next to it in the list that displays when you select “Add Widgets.” You can play with them. Click on the widget and drag it where you want it on the panel, then let it go. You might need to play with it to make it work.

I usually change the clock display. You can add all kinds of system monitoring stuff. One of the bad things is how little you can do with them in some cases. They don’t all do very much that’s useful. On the other hand, Linux is notorious for having way too many options in general, and KDE is far more complex and confusing than the Windows desktop.

Under Panel Options you can select “Panel Setting” and get a chance to move the panel or change it’s width. Once you have everything the way you like it, I would recommend you select “Lock Widgets” to prevent accidental changes. If you need to make intentional chances, you have to select “Unlock Widgets” first.

Finally, I really hate having that folder window sitting on the desktop background. Right-click on the background and select the option at the bottom; the name of it changes with what you do next. It opens a dialog and I always preferred the “Folder View” because it allows dropping icons directly on the desktop the way it works in Windows. Then I remove some of the default icons and add my own, dragging them out from the menu. First time around you’ll have to tell the system you trust the icon. After that it works fine.

Post queries or additional items you think would surprise a Windows user. Let’s make this easy for folks migrating.

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OpenSUSE 13:1 Partitioning

Posted on June 9, 2014 by ehurst

The default for installing is to shrink any existing partitions for whatever OS is already on the machine. You could simply overwrite any previous OS, but then SUSE pushes on you a partition scheme that I find hard to use. I like to build stuff from source, and the root partition is simply too small. Instead, I favor having the entire system in one root partition.

During the installation process, you’ll come to a step for partitioning the hard drive. If you intend to keep your old OS, SUSE can do a fine job of shrinking the original and making room to dual boot. However, I highly recommend you de-select for “Propose Separate Home Partition.”

If you want to wipe the drive and give it all to SUSE, it’s a little tricky because it’s not obvious. From this page, after de-selecting the separate home partition option, click “Create Partition Setup.”

On the next page, click the radio button for your disk description (usually the fist option). Click “Next.”

On the next page, select “Use Entire Disk” making sure the separate home option is still de-selected. Make sure all the current partitions are selected for removal. Click “Next.”

A new suggested change should give you a small SWAP partition (you shouldn’t argue with that) and a large main partition for everything else. Walk through the rest as you normally would.

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Another Migration Option: OpenSUSE

Posted on June 8, 2014 by ehurst

If you are considering migrating from Windows to Linux, how about OpenSUSE?

OpenSUSE is the free version of SUSE Linux. It is not all that well known in the US; it’s based in Germany. Among Linux users, it’s generally considered unorthodox because the company has contracts with Microsoft (AKA “The Borg”). Oddly, MS sold more SUSE licenses than almost any other vendor, despite being pretty darned expensive. It was also one of my first exposures to Linux back before the turn of the Millennium.

This is not your hobby Linux. Yet it is much more user friendly than Red Hat and the clones. It’s friendly in the sense that it will save you a lot of heartache if you don’t really need Linux, per se, but simply an escape from Windows for whatever reason. The default KDE desktop is lighter and faster than Win7 on the same hardware, but I suspect it wouldn’t make you all that happy on XP-grade hardware. Instead, it has one of the widest selection of hardware drivers, and these are generally much better integrated than in other brands of Linux. SUSE also tends to automate things rather like Windows does.

So it’s a very good path migrating from Windows if your motives don’t include adopting the semi-religious devotion to the sacred path of Open Source. However, it can be almost as much work as Windows has gotten to be, and it can be cranky in its own right. You won’t do this just for fun; you should possess at least a power user background in computers or get someone experienced to hold your hand. There are some parts of it that simply aren’t ready for the GUI, and requires some commandline-foo. On the other hand, it’s very work-oriented and the configuration tool (called “YaST”) is one of the easiest ways of configuring obscure stuff, including servers, for Linux.

Once you get used to the SUSE way of things, it’s pretty easy to maintain. As you might expect, the primary advantage making it worthwhile is all the security of Linux with far fewer long-term hassles.

Yours truly isn’t in the mood to write up a hand-holding guide right now. If you can install Win7 by yourself, you are smart enough to handle OpenSUSE. One of the main problems is a portion of the defaults aren’t what most Windows users would like. It makes dual-booting between Windows and SUSE easy, but if you want it take the whole hard drive, you’ll have to poke around awhile during installation. I highly recommend you don’t accept the default of creating a separate HOME partition. While the separate partitions make it easy to migrate up to the next version, the installer makes it very hard to give the other (root) partition enough space to be useful.

Another difficulty is that the installer offered no way I could see to check for updates during the installation. You’ll be saddled with a huge collection of updates as soon as you get logged into your desktop. The GUI for this can be a little confusing, throwing conflicting warnings at you. It’s one of the few things very poorly executed. You also may not like the default desktop decorations, because it tends to limit the options. Once you get past the initial hurdles, things get much smoother.

For example, SUSE has one of the smartest firewalls available. It’s default KDE desktop is very easy to configure and most system controls are very well integrated. I frankly recommend you avoid using non-standard repositories. The fonts aren’t as good as Linux can do, but good enough. The default licensed codecs are likely to cover most of your multimedia needs. You can get Adobe’s Flashplayer if you need it. Most of the standard stuff is good enough.

Some very large European organizations, like the municipal offices of Munich, have switched wholesale over to SUSE and things are good for them. It’s worth investigating, but only if you are serious and you don’t actively hate MS. It’s still one of my favorite brands of Linux on some hardware.

Update: Here is an installation walk-through.

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Psalms: Intro and Ch 1

Posted on June 7, 2014 by ehurst

Introduction

The English name of this book arises from a the Septuagint, and is a Greek word (psalmoi) meaning songs accompanied by a stringed instrument (psalter). David started the collection with older existing material and wrote many more. Quite a few were added later and it’s hard to be sure who and when. The Hebrew language and culture do not lend themselves to our kind of precision in attributing authorship. Most Scripture was regarded as property of the nation via the Covenant of Moses. David had wanted to build the Temple and commenced collecting the materials, including these songs. By the time Solomon actually finished the Temple, much of the organization for worship was already in place, including a very large choral group and orchestra.

Because this collection had a distinct official use in ritual worship, it was arranged, and perhaps the songs edited, up until the time of Ezra when it reached the shape we see today. There is a sense in which all the scholarly discussions of the various types of songs and how they were used may not reflect what the author had in mind. Somewhere between the raw original and historical significance is something we can use to build our own faith.

We could hardly pretend to know how the ancients sang these songs, and it’s unlikely many today would have much appreciation for that style of music. So while something is lost in the translation across centuries and cultures, we can still fulfill the central purpose in seeking to understand something of Hebrew worship. Because of their enduring popularity, it is very easy to find all sorts of commentary celebrating just about every aspect of these songs. Rather than bog down too much in all the academic details, what follows here is a very focused search for the moral significance. If these songs do not contribute to changing us in our context today, it’s hard to justify all the work in preserving the ancient knowledge.

Ch 1

Our first song offers a conceptual contrast between just and unjust hearts. Scholars noted long ago the common Hebrew progression of walk, stand and sit representing a progressive fall into wickedness. How happy is the man who can avoid this vicious slide into sin! The moral justice of God is its own reward, incomparable to whatever it is sinners strive to gain by taking moral shortcuts. This man never takes his eye off pleasing his Lord.

We know that grass and some shrubs simply go quiescent in drought, but such are easily removed when dry. Trees generally require a perennial water supply, however they are far more valuable, particularly in the semi-desert land of Palestine. Men who commit themselves to pleasing God are like trees fortunate enough to grow along a real stream instead of a seasonal wadi, with roots spread far and deep. This fellow is fully in touch with how God created the universe to run and hardly shakes when the storms of life come. His life is morally fruitful. The person who truly desires to please God seldom fails because God does not measure mere performance. Instead, He enables it.

Contrast such with the wicked. They are like what’s left when the harvest is done, discarded and allowed to drift with every wind. They don’t belong anywhere in particular, but are especially out of place when God’s wrath falls. The wording specifically avoids the idea of eternal judgment in favor of the human experience. The image shows the wicked won’t be welcomed among God’s people, won’t be supported and defended from trouble.

The summary is how God holds the just in high regard and protects them, but the unjust wander off into destruction.

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Whence Two Realms?

Posted on June 7, 2014 by ehurst

People have asked me where I get the concept of Two Realms.

I admit my terminology is my own, so you can call things what you like. However, it’s pretty simple — read John 3. Jesus tells Nicodemus that there is a distinct division between a realm of spirit and a realm of flesh. Jesus expressed dismay that the senior academic of the whole Nation of Israel had lost touch with this understanding. It did not originate with Jesus; it was inherent in the Old Testament.

So as you read through the New Testament, you cannot ignore the concept as Jesus expressed it. If He discussed it Nicodemus, you can be sure it was common knowledge with His disciples in one form or another. Are we surprised that Paul, an academic who had been training to eventually succeed Nicodemus, would after his conversion begin writing in terms of Two Realms? It’s hard not to notice the very otherworldly viewpoint.

What is a little less obvious is how very much our Western assumptions about reality are so very different from those of the Ancient Hebrew. That’s the reason for the book linked on the lower right side of this blog. Where did I learn that stuff? The chief source for shaping my understanding was Edersheim, particularly in his book The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. It’s hosted several places online and sold in various editions in print. Starting around Book I Chapter 2, Edersheim traces, with copious references, how the rabbis themselves reported their own shift from the ANE mystical outlook over to the Hellenized rationalism. Notice how old his book is: 1883.

Where did Edersheim get it his sources? He was a converted Jew, a serious scholar in the orthodox traditions. By the way, he belonged to the Free Church of Scotland, which emphasized the human necessity of living in a small, close-knit community with a very wide degree of individual freedom. That denomination was mostly absorbed back into the official Church of Scotland later, but people still remember the message.

While my particular verbal formulations are my own, the ideas are not at all new.

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Reminders

Posted on June 6, 2014 by ehurst

PCM was a great reminder. The effort to go through it enough times to reduce some of my obscure grammar and expand on some areas where it moved too fast was a real blessing. It reminded me of things that had faded from the forefront of my consciousness.

That some wag posted a mocking review, plagiarizing my long description on the Smashwords page for the book, is par for the course. It’s precisely a major point in the book: We don’t expect folks to like our faith. It’s not persecution, just trolling. I think the book makes it clear it’s not for everyone.

But the fresh effort at formatting back and forth between various types of editors and word processors reminded me that I need to go back to composing the material in a plain text format from the start. It’s easier to stay focused that way. I can examine oddball grammar later with a checker. Pushing the thing back and forth between Word and LibreOffice was a huge mistake, because the latter redefines critical elements and breaks things, and Smashwords can’t process the document into ebooks. So it’s best to write it in a plain format, and then spiff it up for Smashwords using the safest path. Composition with a word processor is very distracting. Besides, it’s easier to shake it all out into multiple formats from plain text.

Just a reminder for you folks: The most valuable thing you can give an author is feedback.

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PCM Published (Updated)

Posted on June 5, 2014 by ehurst

Cover art for The Practice of Christian Mysicism

Cover art for The Practice of Christian Mysticism

Done! This will be the first book where I provide my own formatted plain text, along with the HTML version I sometimes produce. I’ll offer links later. Right now, The Practice of Christian Mysticism is up on Smashwords and you can get your free copy here.

Update: [removed]

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The Book Draft Is Ready

Posted on June 4, 2014 by ehurst

For my devoted readers here, I’m giving you an advance look at The Practice of Christian Mysticism in draft form. It was formatted in Word 2003 and you can find it here (gone).

I’m going to let it rest for a day or so and publish after one more final reading. I also need to work on the cover art. Thank you for praying while I worked on this.

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