What people will pay for a class of good is a big deal. Forgetting which class you’re put in is a giant mistake. The barrier for entry into social spaces is nothing. It costs nothing for friends to get together and hang out at someone’s place. You can’t be more expensive than that. When it comes to work, however, people are more than willing to pay for something that will make them money. Saving money is the same as making money.

Never forget this rudimentary lesson of pricing. It makes me think about what kind of product I would be inclined to put out there. One where people will pay me directly, or one where I will be indirectly paid. The formula for any indirect payment seems much more vague and hand-wavy. The formula for direct payment is very straight forward. It is a harsher reality, because if you’re not good enough, you’re not getting paid. I like that. If you have a social media service, you might have lots of registered users. You might have some traffic. You might get paid. You might not. But you’ll never know if you’re actually succeeding at your task. Meaningful metrics are much harder to obtain for you.

Good. That settles the evolution thing. Now we can concentrate on loving each other.
on Ken Miller, Chromosome Fusion

As I’ve said before, take Scripture seriously and Why I’m Against ID

Jesus asserted that those around him were misrepresenting God. Jesus made this claim merely by going back and reading over the prophets. He took what he read there, combined it with his own personal experience and knowledge about himself (either as a prophet, the prophet, the Messiah, or God – take your pick) and came out with his conclusion.

Taking scripture seriously means acknowledging that there are texts that have been used in dangerous and harmful ways to subjugate women, legitimate violence against gays and lesbians, foster suspicion of other religious traditions, commit violence, and support barbarous ancient practices such as slavery. Taking scripture seriously means trying to understand what the original authors intended and, through literary, linguistic, or historical criticisms, either redeeming these texts from modern misinterpretations or, in the most extreme cases, condemning them. HT: HuffPost

Jesus took Scripture seriously, and threw down the edifices created by the institutions which were corrupt. Christianity after Jesus looked seriously at the biblical texts in an attempt to create an understanding of themselves in the story of God. These are all things we must do in our time. We must take Scripture seriously in combination with our experience and traditions. And we have to be open to talk about it. We have to be open to learn from one another.

ID presumes that science can talk about design and meaning. This is why basic disagreement. Of course, without this basic point the entire argument is useless. Science cannot talk about meaning. It can only analyze. Any analysis cannot determine whether a thing is correctly put-together or in error. It cannot determine chaos from design. That determination requires a knower. Science strictly works only in the realm of objective knowledge (otherwise the scientific method is bogus and self-contradictory). A personal knower is required to give objects a design, a meaning, the label of correct, or in error.

The first thing to realize is that a knowledge of physics and chemistry would in itself not enable us to recognize a machine… At what point would you discover it is a machine (if it is one), and if so, how it operates? Never. For you cannot even put this question, let alone answer it, though you have all physics and chemistry at your finger-tips, unless you already know how machines work.
Personal Knowledge, Michael Polanyi, pg 331

Therefore, what Christians should be arguing is that we do believe humanity was designed – along with everything else. And we shouldn’t be looking for the scientific analysis to “prove” it, since it cannot. What we should be arguing is that when scientists turn around and place meaning into the incredible odds of life on this earth (what they’re really talking about is not “the chance that life started here” but rather the innumerable situations by which our kind of life would cease to function) that we are just a big accident. Science does not tell us we are a cosmic accident. People are telling us that. And that is what we should be arguing against.

Paley’s watchmaker argument applies here. Science cannot say “that is a clock”. Only a person who knows what a clock is can say “that is a clock”. Recognize that the Christian problem is, in the context of the ID argument put forth, you are asking people who do not believe we are designed to admit that we are designed. Science cannot tell them, or us, that we are designed. We believe that we are. You cannot merely ask another who does not believe this to admit it. It goes against their system of belief. In order to accomplish the task you have to alter their system of belief such that the idea of our design is not foreign.

The great movement for independent thought instilled in the modern mind a desperate refusal of all knowledge that is not absolutely impersonal, and this implied in its turn a mechanical conception of man which was bound to deny man’s capacity for independent thought. Such objectivism must represent the public good in terms of welfare and power and set in motion thereby the self-destruction of freedom. For when open professions of the great moral passions animating a free society are discredited as specious or utopian, its dynamism will tend to be transformed into the hidden driving force of a political machine, which is then proclaimed as inherently right and granted absolute dominion of thought.
Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, pg 214

The refusal to allow personal knowledge a voice within greater society will diminish the society over time. It rules out of court the entire realm of value propositions (posited, at least, by Christianity) based on the common welfare which is unquestionably right to do so and ought not be challenged.

That being said – we’re constantly reinterpreting everything. I understand that, and it is a necessary element. But it is only valuable when you can still remember the original context and meaning (if you’re not doing that, you are a revolutionary – not one who stands in the tradition).

Why does this bother me? Because under that clause we are systematically removing the values and morality of religion from speaking about public life. There is a grand delusion that people have fallen into where only science or fact can talk about public life. Only objective data (which boil down to Kantian ethics) are useful at all for the public domain. In this way the project of modernity is still ticking right along.

The movement to ban the ability of churches, or people of faith, from acting on behalf of that faith in public is growing. In effect, the message of Christianity is being censored out of public life. At this point it is only Christianity. But as soon as an imam or rabbi says something people don’t like, they’ll be out too.

The hypocrisy of it all, for me, is that Christian theology is only one way of talking about meaning and value. Other religions perform the same task. Other philosophies, including the materialist, secular, scientific philosophy which is in dominance today is performing the exact same task. All these systems of value do it on radically different terms and premises. But they are all playing the same game. The hypocrisy is that one value system, which now has power, is ruling out of court the other value systems that have the ability to topple it. They’re not doing it by appealing to an argument, or that their system is “better”. They are merely doing it by mischaracterizing what is actually going on. They say they’re not playing the same game, but different games – and that religion game is outlawed from public life.

I’m not worried for a minute that they’ll “win” and something will happen to religion. Religion has been the primary mover of humanity and culture until the mid 1800′s in Europe, and the mid 1900′s in America. It is still the primary mover in Africa and South America. Asia is a little harder to diagnose. I’m just worried that we’ve stopped actually thinking about what is going on. Because should the tables of power turn, voices for value should not be arbitrarily silenced.

How could one person pray the prayer of the fellowship without being steadied and upheld in prayer by the fellowship itself? At this very point, every word of criticism must be transformed into fervent intercession and brotherly help. Otherwise, how easily might a fellowship be broken asunder right here!
The free prayer in the common devotion should be the prayer of the fellowship and not that of the individual who is praying. It is his responsibility to pray for the fellowship. So he will have to share the daily life of the fellowship; he must know the cares, the needs, the joys and thanksgivings, the petitions and hopes of the others. Their work and everything they bring with them must not be unknown to him. He prays as a brother amongst brothers. It will require practice and watchfulness, if he is not to confuse his own heart with the heart of the fellowship, if he is really to be guided solely by his responsibility to pray for the fellowship.
Life Together, pg 63

I had this experience a couple of years ago where I got to sit in on the editorial meeting at the Onion. Every Monday they have to come up with like 17 or 18 headlines, and to do that, they generate 600 headlines per week. I feel like that’s why it’s good: because they are willing to be wrong 583 times to be right 17.
Ira Glass

The Onion is a hands down success. Everyone recognizes their brilliance. They are wrong 583 times per week. And they know it. They relish in it. Being means they can be right. I have to remember that being wrong is part of being successful. If you are never wrong – how do you know you are right?

Update: Ticket: 6623 is out there (mine is a dupe). You can see no one has touched thing in over a year. It was originally slated for release 1.0. We’re on 1.2. I don’t want to tell you how this makes me feel.

This one is far, far worse. That means it has to do with IE (7 and 8, why bother checking 6. Honestly). And javascript. And form elements. Let yourself be warned. If you ever, at any time, try to manipulate the “checked” status of a radio button or checkbox and that node is not attached to the DOM at any point in its animated and exciting life that “checked” status you so desperately needed falls away into the ether. Thank you IE. Once again, thank you.

“If that’s what he means,” says the student to the poetry teacher, “why doesn’t he just say it?” “If God is real,” says the parishioner to the preacher, “why doesn’t he simply storm into our lives and convince us?” The questions are vastly different in scale and relative importance, but their answers are similar. A poem, if it’s a real one, in some fundamental sense means no more and no less than the moment of its singular music and lightning insight; it is its own code to its own absolute and irreducible clarity. A god, if it’s a living one, is not outside of reality but in it, of it (though in ways it takes patience and imagination to perceive). Thus the uses and necessities of metaphor, which can flash us past our plodding resistance and habits into strange new truths. Thus the very practical effects of music, myth, image, which tease us not out of reality but deeper and more completely into it.
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/hive-of-nerves/