The Foreignist

Although it was a huge drag to not spend Christmas with our extended family when we lived in Croatia, I did enjoy some of the Croatian and Catholic aspects of the Christmas. The biggest difference is that the Christmas season gets started on December 6th - St. Nicholas Day. This is the day when, in their tradition, the bearded old saint comes to leave (small) gifts in the children’s stockings. No businesses shut down, kids still go to school - but everyone honors the saint who stood in defense of the poor and of children in the face of persecution from Diocletian (the Roman emperor who built Split, Croatia). Children exchange chocolate Santas with their friends. I like this tradition because it gets “Santa” out of the way before Christmas rolls around. Children get to have their Santa and not be confused as to what Christmas is about. AND parents get full credit for Christmas gifts.

Croatians also start growing a small patch of grass or moss inside their house a few weeks before Christmas. It’s used as part of the nativity scene that they set up in their house. It makes it look more natural and symbolizes the life that came at Christmas. Most of their nativity scenes stand in stark contrast to ours in their simplicity - ours this year being the worst I’ve ever seen. The one we put up this year looks like the old TBN set including a stained-glass window.

Croatians wait until Christmas Eve to set up their Christmas tree. The family works on it together as they get ready for their big meal together. Of course, most people go to mass that night because it’s Catholic tradition that Jesus was born on or around midnight on December 25. Another tradition that I really like is that as the parents put their children to bed on Christmas Eve they tuck a little bit of hay under their pillows. Of course it’s just symbolic, but it’s to remind the children how our Saviour came into the world - in a barn. I love multi-sensory teaching tools like that. We ate the seder meal as a family for a Passover/Easter lesson this year. If the Croatians don’t mind, I’m borrowing the hay thing.

Many of the more devout Catholics also honor St. Stephen on December 26th, acknowledging the first of many martyrs.

Then Christmas lasts until the Feast of Epiphany, a.k.a. day of the three kings, which I was never clear on when it was - somewhere around January 6th. You are supposed to take your tree down on that day. The streets are literally line with trees since a majority of people take them down on that day. You don’t have to take it down then, but you don’t want to leave it up much longer. Eastern Orthodox Christmas season starts in just a few days and you DO NOT want to appear to be celebrating THAT.

I’ve said it before, but I think the most interesting scenario that could happen in the 2008 presidential election is to have Mike Huckabee running against Barack Obama - two guys who are good communicators and both bringing something to the table. At least one of the parties has laid a stinkbomb in every election since the ‘92. In the last two elections, both parties have succeeded in alienating the electorate by nominating very wooden or bumbling candidates.

If the voting public can pull off a coup in both sides of the nomination process, we can avoid the matchup the media and the party leaderships want - New York vs. New York (a.k.a. Hillary vs. Rudy).

However, I won’t be watching Huck or Obama. I’m much more interested in the war of attrition that will be waged between their biggest supporters - Chuck Norris vs. Oprah Winfrey. This could be a battle of epic proportions, similar to Return of the Dragon. Oprah has destroyed lesser men (see the smoldering remains of Tom Cruise’s career), but it remains to be seen if she can take on the master.

Now for a moment of gratuitis self-disclosure - I’m not afraid to expose my ignorance. Bible verses like Romans 10:17 leave me flummoxed (see context). Because I’m not a Greek scholar, I have no idea what the original manuscript says. But after looking at the different translations into English, I’m not sure anyone understands exactly what the original manuscript means.

Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. -NIV

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. -NASB

So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. -NKJV

Yet faith comes from listening to this message of good news - the Good News about Christ. -New Living

So then, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message comes through preaching Christ. -Good News Translation

(Belief you see, can only come from hearing the message, and the message is the word of Christ.) -JB Phillips Translation

The point is, Before you trust, you have to listen. But unless Christ’s Word is preached, there’s nothing to listen to. -The Message

So faith comes from hearing the Good News, and people hear the Good News when someone tells them about Christ. -New Century Version

I think this verse is parenthetical (Phillips actually puts the verse in parenthesis). The context of the verse is that people have to hear about Jesus before they can believe in Him. Paul uses this verse to restate, in a few words, what he just took half a page to say. The main theme of the verses before and after are very obvious, so why are the older translations so confusing? Entire sermons have been preached (especially in Charismatic circles) that you get faith by hearing the Bible. In fact, it’s taught you can get increasing levels of faith by hearing more and more of the Bible. In another stunning confession of ignorance, I must confess that I bought into it for a while. Verses that are parenthetical are probably not the right ones to form a whole doctrine around.

Maybe this is another example of how I think Bible translation scholarship is getting better, and the science/art of expressing the original Greek manuscripts in English is improving. I know there are KJV purists out there, but KJV English is a barrier to people understanding the the Bible.

I really enjoyed “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” and “The World is Flat”, although I think Friedman is a bit too kind to big business. Here’s an excerpt of one of my favorite Friedman articles:

In the world of ideas, to name something is to own it. If you can name an issue, you can own the issue. One thing that always struck me about the term “green” was the degree to which, for so many years, it was defined by its opponents — by the people who wanted to disparage it. And they defined it as “liberal,” “tree-hugging,” “sissy,” “girlie-man,” “unpatriotic,” “vaguely French.”

Well, I want to rename “green.” I want to rename it geostrategic, geoeconomic, capitalistic and patriotic. I want to do that because I think that living, working, designing, manufacturing and projecting America in a green way can be the basis of a new unifying political movement for the 21st century.

Near the end of “The World is Flat” he explains how energy independence could be this generation’s moonshot. Just like Kennedy was able to focus the scientific and engineering expertise of the nation on getting a man on the moon, the time has come to do the same with energy independence. Bush is obviously not the right guy for that job, but who is? Is that person out there? Does it have to be a president? Could it be Al Go.., who are we kidding? I don’t think it’s Google, although I think the private sector will play a huge role. I still think it has to be the president that spearheads this effort. I’m not hopeful that any of the candidates for either party have the political will to tackle such a huge issue. But it is the defining geopolitical issue of our time.

The rest of the Thomas Friedman article can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/

As an engi-nerd, I’m fascinated with the way Google does business, develops and launches products, and how they go about things seemingly oblivious to conventional business wisdom. While the PC vs. Mac debate wears on, I do most of my computing on a 10-year old laptop running a stripped down version of Ubuntu. I do just about everything using webservices, and rarely fire up any applications on my laptop other than the web browser. Gmail, Google docs, and Picasa for Linux allow me to do what I need to do other than just browse. They’re not the best, but they run just fine on my 400 Mhz/128 MB laptop. Eventually, I’ll buy something newer (not new).  I do miss not having a DVD drive.

Recently Google announced that they will be releasing an operating system for mobile phones. Service providers have to be worried about what kind of crazy apps will be enabled on phones with the Android platform. They are even sponsoring a contest for developers to see who can come up with coolest widget for the Android platform (prizes worth $10 million). I think one reason for Google’s success is how they appear to involve users in their product development. Everything is always in beta (which scares off corporate users) but I don’t mind, because all of its free. Enough of my advertisement for Google services.

My recent interest in Google stems from this announcement on their website. Here’s the first part of the press release:

Google’s Goal: Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal
Creates renewable energy R&D group and supports breakthrough technologies

Mountain View, Calif. (November 27, 2007) – Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced a new strategic initiative to develop electricity from renewable energy sources that will be cheaper than electricity produced from coal. The newly created initiative, known as RE<C, will focus initially on advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, enhanced geothermal systems and other potential breakthrough technologies. RE<C is hiring engineers and energy experts to lead its research and development work, which will begin with a significant effort on solar thermal technology, and will also investigate enhanced geothermal systems and other areas. In 2008, Google expects to spend tens of millions on research and development and related investments in renewable energy. As part of its capital planning process, the company also anticipates investing hundreds of millions of dollars in breakthrough renewable energy projects which generate positive returns.

“We have gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building efficient data centers,” said Larry Page, Google Co-founder and President of Products. “We want to apply the same creativity and innovation to the challenge of generating renewable electricity at globally significant scale, and produce it cheaper than from coal.”

Make no mistake about it - this is about increasing profits. One of Google’s main expenses is electricity. If they could run a data center with cheap, renewable electricity, they will have solved one of the only problems that limits their expansion. One big data center can use as much electricity as a city of 40,000 people. It’s easy see how Google would be interested in finding solutions other than just buying electricity at standard rates. The two that they are currently proposing are solar thermal and high-altitude wind energy. Basically, it’s steam created by focusing solar energy, and wind energy collected in low-level jetstream by kites or balloons. I’m hopeful that they have the corporate culture and brains to push those technologies forward. They obviously have the motivation and cash to invest. Companies like Google could serve as catalysts for renewable energy because they have the cash to invest, unlike utilities or municipalities (without raising rates or taxes). If they succeed, it will help them in their quest to make MS irrelevant. It very well could help all of us in the process.