Some have criticized the emerging church for eschewing a definitive statement of faith. I realize this is kind of late to this discussion and dated information, but I ran across this text recently which provides a strong rationale for not attempting to create a doctrinal statement for something as dynamic and conversation-driven as the emerging church. The excerpt was included in Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death (required reading for my advanced media course), and is taken from the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Within that work Franklin quotes Michael Welfare, one of the founders of a noncreedalist religious sect in that day known as The Brethren or The Dunkers (see this wiki for background). When Franklin suggested Welfare publish a doctrinal statement to help abate misinformation about the group that was spreading in society, Welfare responded with this incredibly modest and cogent statement:

When we were first drawn together as a society, it had pleased God to enlighten our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which we once esteemed truths, were errors, and that others, which we had esteemed errors, were real truths. From time to time He has been pleased to afford us farther light, and our principles have been improving, and our errors diminishing. Now we are not sure we have arrived at the end of the progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theological knowledge; and we fear that, if we should feel ourselves as if bound and confined by it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive further improvement, and our successors still more so, as conceiving what we their elders and founders had done, to be something sacred, never to be departed from.

As promised, here is my Macintosh owner's anthology, spanning 15 years. All of these machines were used for my graphic design business at one point or another. This only includes Macs or Apples I have purchased. Going back to college use, we can include: Apple II, Apple IIe, Mac Plus, Mac Classic, Mac IIci, Mac Centris and Mac Quadra machines. Okay, I am a total geek, but I hope the personal history is fun for everyone:


Macintosh LC III
CPU: Motorola 68040 25 Mhz 80 Mb HD
Owned circa 1992-1995 [Sold to a friend]
Status: Unknown, presumed running Mac OS 7.2


Power Macintosh 7100/66
CPU: Motorola/IBM PowerPC 601 66 Mhz 250 Mb HD
Owned circa 1995-1999 [sold to brother-in-law for college]
Status: Donated to school, presumed running Mac OS 9.1
Fun fact: This was the most expensive Mac I have ever purchased


iMac 333 "Blueberry"
CPU: Motorola PowerPC G3 333 Mhz 6 Gb HD
Owned circa 1999-2002, 2005 to present [sold to parents, then reclaimed after their Mac mini upgrade]
Status: Running Mac OS X 10.2.9 "Jaguar" on home network


PowerBook G4 Titanium
CPU: Motorola PowerPC G4 550 Mhz 20 Gb HD
Owned circa 2002 to present
Status: Running Mac OS X 10.3.9 "Panther" on home network via airport wireless


eMac G4
CPU: Motorola PowerPC G4 800 Mhz 80 Gb HD
Owned circa 2004 to present
Status: Running Mac OS X 10.4.8 "Tiger" on home network via ethernet


iMac G5
CPU: IBM PowerPC G5 2.1 Ghz 250 Gb HD
Owned circa 2006 to present
Status: Running Mac OS X 10.4.8 "Tiger" on home network via airport wireless

Recently I mentally traced my fascination with computer technology back to its source. The photo and link will tell you all you need to know about my first, real computer.

The Texas Instruments TI-99/4A.

It’s hard to imagine I had the patience, but I used to spend hours writing text-based game programs in BASIC. The process involved loading my code from a cassette tape into the TI’s memory. From there I’d dream up an intricate web of multiple choice tasks for the game player to navigate the storyline. Make a false move, and you were dead—game over. I had dreams of releasing my fantastic adventure games to the world someday. Those were the days.

I never really did any programming after that. I think this had to do with my own aptitude for code being pretty limited. I’ve always been a words and pictures guy, out of my element when exposed to complex mathematical systems. So all my experience in middle school on Tandy TRS-80s and Commodore 64s never made a programmer out of me. Instead, I gravitated toward my friends’ who had Ataris and ColecoVisions, and stuck to playing cartridge games (I had 3) on my TI.

From there, I transitioned toward becoming an expert user rather than a creator. I learned to type in high school on an Apple ][ (my choice), and used a lab of Apple IIe computers in college (freshman year) to compose all my papers. By my sophomore year I became involved with the college newspaper and a dedicated lab of Macintosh Plus computers (circa 1990), some with external 20 Mb hard drives. After my transition to my alma mater, I upgraded to a lab with the latest Mac IIci models and a laserwriter doing graphic design and editorial work for the college magazine. By then, there was no looking back. In fact, I didn’t use Windows until I demanded to use Windows 3.1 software for my first full time job out of college (for AmiPro and MS Word). Subsequently I never touched a DOS PC.

In future posts I’ll do an overview of the Macs I have owned, and where they all ended up since my first actual purchase.

I would, however, like to extend enormous gratitude to my parents for purchasing the TI 99/4A for me. I know it must have been a sacrifice at the time. It was a catalyst for my future geeky life, and I am very grateful.

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Poppins for terror

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

This is brilliant. I’d like to see the entire move re cut in this format.

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Studio 60’s alternate reality

Friday, December 08, 2006

Let me start this post by saying that I really enjoy this show. The characters are interesting and the pace of the dialogue is fantastic, and often, thanks to Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford, comic. But I want to return to an earlier idea that began when I posted about the program in October.

In the most recent Christmas episode we find the fictional NBS TV network pinned down under an FCC fine for indecency due to an expletive uttered during a live news interview in Iraq when an RPG exploded near the news crew and a soldier. The situation for NBS (a proxy for NBC/CBS/ABC/FOX) was so grave that the lawyers were advising executives that the network could lose its broadcast license if they refused to pay up and move on.

This got me thinking: Is this a realistic scenario? Yes and no.

It’s hard to know when this script was written, or how much credit Sorkin gives the average viewer of the program for awareness of current FCC issues. In early November the FCC ruled quite the opposite. In fact, the commission stated that profanity can indeed be aired uncensored in broadcast news interviews, but not on awards shows or in fictional shows.

The November 6 FCC press release stated, “…the broadcast of the ‘S-Word’ during [CBS] ‘The Early Show’ was neither indecent nor profane in this instance due to the fact that it occurred during news programming.”

I suspect that series creator Aaron Sorkin knows about this recent ruling, but am not sure what his motives are for sending the Studio 60 storyline down an alternate reality. It could be that it’s just good drama, and that an FCC decision against profanity on the news could just as easily have happened and created the conditions for the fiction to become reality. I can give this the benefit of the doubt.

But here’s where I’m troubled. The FCC gets a boatload of criticism from Hollywood and the media networks over decency issues. Do we really need to use dramatic license to conceal a pretty logical and consistent decision by this regulatory body? Is it irresponsible to pretend media regulation is worse than it really is, when so much of the Studio 60 program freely mixes in real events and people with its fiction?

Now, this isn’t some moralizing protest or outcry. This is a media ethics critique. My concern is about what the show’s creative element believes about its audience. Are we using fiction, and distorting reality, to confirm and propagate particular beliefs and attitudes? Are we crossing the line into propaganda? Is the audience being entertained or indoctrinated?

That said, I’m not against any program (fiction or non) with a strong point of view. Studio 60 doesn’t have to be unbiased or benign in any way. Hell no. But I do think that the questions raised here are worth consideration, regardless of what side of a social-political media argument one is on. As for the Studio 60 storyline, in the words of NBS President, Jordan McDeere, “Lawyer up, Jack. It’s the news.”

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Xmas in Cupertino moved to January

Friday, December 08, 2006

January’s MacWorld is shaping up to be the mother of all rumored product launches. Here is quick list (in no particular order) of what could be announced:

- The iPhone cell phone (slim and smart/PDA models)
- Widescreen iPods with touch screen click wheels (possible WiFi)
- iTV launch in final form and detail
- MacOS X Leopard (set to launch in Q1 or Q2 in 2007—could be sprung early)
- iWork w/Numbers spreadsheet App
…and one more thing, of course.

Just to tide us over through the holidays, I somehow missed this great Wired article published in October. It details the development and birth of the iPod. For technology history buffs, this has all the interesting details on the design and production process involved.

One more dark horse prediction: OS X for PCs.

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Merry Christmas from Ohio, USA

Friday, December 08, 2006

Over The Rhine is releasing a full-length Christmas project called Snow Angels. If you are an OTR fan, you’ll understand how fitting that title is.



I didn’t stumble onto this until recently, but now realize that this is the Christmas album I’ve been waiting for all my life. Check on this info page linked here for a complete track list and a couple of free MP3s. Sweet!

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A disturbing ONE

Saturday, December 02, 2006

Okay. I work for a large corporation. I admit to performing music (a cover song) at a corporate meeting--rewriting the lyrics and everything (a funny version of YMCA). But nothing compares to the current viral video for U2's "One" covered at a corporate meeting by a Bank of America sales guy.

It's beyond the pale. The lyrics start off a little quirky, and then get downright creepy. My advice would have been, what reads okay on paper will probably sound really weird when sung to an audience by a Bono wanna-be wearing a shirt and tie. But some people just don't have that kind of internal editor. Lucky for us.

I would link to it here if YouTube still had it, but you'll have to do some clever Google searches to find it on the web. Try this link for starters. I have no idea how long it will last. Obviously B of A lawyers wanted this thing off the 'net. Easier said than done. If I ever do this, somebody please rush the stage and slap me upside the head.

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Speed: A new reason to think different

Saturday, December 02, 2006

It’s kind of a strange new world now that we have Macs and Windows PCs running on the same Intel chips. It leads to new questions about operating system performance that deserve some exploration: All chips being equal, what would be the performance difference between running the same applications in Windows Vista or MacOS X on the same hardware configuration? Why would anyone switch from Windows to Mac to run Adobe Creative Suite, for example? Why would anyone care?

Here’s where things get interesting. As many PC users will discover in 2007, Vista has a lot of high gloss user improvements and security features making it more akin to the look and feel of MacOS X. But, I suspect, what people also will soon discover is that an entirely new disparity between Windows and MacOS X has emerged—and rather quickly: system speed. For all its improvements, Vista is huge and requires a big bite of the PC's processing power to run. Many will be alarmed to see what the minimum and suggested system requirements are--all before their favorite apps get their share.

Brian Caulfield for Red Herring: "Meanwhile, Microsoft struggled to lash a fresh batch of innovation together with the massive amount of software and hardware the Windows operating system has to orchestrate. Windows was already so sprawling that Sun Chairman Scott McNealy once referred to Windows as a 'welded shut hairball.' 'It’s being driven by the inability of debugging and development efforts to scale up,' said Linux advocate Eric Raymond of Vista’s many delays. 'In other words, Vista is too big to work.'" (Portion excerpted from MDN)

All things being equal (CPU model and clock speed, RAM and video processor), OS performance will be a whole new ballgame. Next year let’s watch the Mac go head to head against a Windows Vista machine running the same software, and let the fun begin. I can see the new Ad campaign now: all your software runs faster on MacOS X.

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