Review of "House of David"

Making Biblical epics suddenly seems to have become fashionable again.  "The Chosen" project has been going on for a few years now.  There have been two animated movies recently, "The King of Kings" (for some reason structured as Charles Dickens telling his son about Jesus' life), and "Light of the World" Jesus' ministry told from the perspective of a strangely pre-teen John the Evangelist).

And now we have "House of David."

First of all, even the title is pretty misleading.  David was not only a king, he was the founder of a dynasty.  His son was Solomon, famous for his wisdom.  (His grandson, Solomon's son, was not exactly exemplary, and a number of other kings in his dynasty were less than stellar monarchs.)  Two of the gospels in the New Testament go to considerable length to demonstrate that Jesus was, in fact, a descendant of David.

Actually, in a number of senses, the House of David starts even before David was born.  There was, for instance, Ruth, who was David's great-grandmother.  (Ruth is also probably my favorite book in the entire Bible.  But I may be biased about that.)

And the movie (mini-series?), "House of David," really only covers the story of David and Goliath, and a little bit leading up to that.  The movie doesn't even really cover David's reign.  So, the "House of David" movie ends even before the House of David, as a dynasty, even begins.  (OK, it claims that it's season one, so if we get a season two we may go further.  But, at the turgid pace that it moves, we may have to wait for season five before we even get to David's *first* coronation.)

But in another sense, the movie "House of David" is about so, so much more than the House of David.  The movie script is about so much more than can be attested to by scripture.  Did you know that David was a bastard?  Neither did I!  And I have read the Bible, cover to cover, at least twenty times.

The thing is that, like "The Chosen," and the two animated movies, "House of David" has decided to give us background.  And backstories.  And explanations.  And all kinds of details that cannot be verified from scripture.  In fact these details aren't even reasonable inferences from what we do know about scripture, or the historical and social facts that we know about the times.  For the most part, these additional details are pretty much purely speculation.  To put it plainly, they're just fiction.  They're made up.  The way that the scripts for these movies and series are written is what Gloria's family would have called sowing a coat around a button.  You take a fact, usually a small fact, from the Bible, and then you embroider.  Heavily.  The first episode of "The Chosen," for example, relies on half of a verse in the New Testament.  From this half of a verse they have created an entire backstory for Mary Magdalene.  They have also created a backstory for Matthew (or Levi), the tax collector, and a backstory for the centurion who sent to Jesus asking for his servant to be healed.  None of these backstories have any support for from scripture.

Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are all known as the people of the book.  The books are slightly different, and the specific definition of what "the people of the book" might mean is probably not precisely agreed to by anyone in any of the three religions.  But all of them would agree that you mess with the established canon of scripture at your peril.  You even have to be careful when you do interpretations.  Adding things to the canon, or taking things away from the canon, is dangerous.  In fact pretty much the final words of the final book of the Christian Bible makes the point that if anybody adds to this book, all of the plagues described in the book are going to be added to them.  Adding to scripture is dangerous.

This insistence on the Canon is something that I, as an information security maven, understand all too well.  One of the three central pillars of information security is that of integrity.  It's why we ask people to sign written contracts, and it's why we have witnesses signing and attesting to the signatures of those signing contracts, wills, and marriage certificates.  It's why we digitally sign documents when they are electronic.  It's why we have the business proverb that pale ink is better than the strongest memory.  Ensuring that the canonical document, or collection of documents, is unchanged is how you insure that you keep the intent of the original document.  It's the reason that, in translating the Bible into English, we look at many different documents, and even tiny fragments of the documents or pages that represent the oldest samples of those documents that we have available to us.  It is all too easy to start reinterpreting a document when you are translating it, or translating it to a new medium, to some interpretation that you would prefer because the original is not quite convenient for you.

So, no, I can't say that I'm a really big fan of the "House of David" movie.

How Computers Work [From the Ground Up]

In the seniors' computer club, when asking for new topics to cover in the new year, somebody asked me to address how computers work.

Since I've been asking myself the same question, for over five decades, and I'm still quite sure that I don't fully understand how it all works, and since I've been teaching how computers work for at least four decades, initially I thought this might be a non-trivial task.  Remember that this is for a bunch of seniors, from a town where neither the high school nor the college have any computer courses aside from graphics for games.  So it can't require any technical sophistication, and it should be available for the general public, for business people, for students, even at the elementary grades, and for anybody who is interested in how the computers that run our world actually work.  I have seen lots of attempts, by various people, to explain how computers work, and mostly what they demonstrate is that the instructor really doesn't understand how computers work.  The results tend to be non-illuminative, and generally pretty boring.

I once took a course on computer architecture with a bunch of doctoral students in computer science.  We were divided up into groups and the groups gave presentations on different aspects of computer architecture, with the individual members of the groups covering particular topics.  My group was addressing the most fundamental aspects of computer architecture, and I was addressing the use of electrical circuits to create logic circuits, and why sometimes using the seemingly most straightforward circuit was wrong, and that complicated gates were often, counterintuitively, faster and more power efficient than taking the seemingly obvious route.  After my presentation I started to get what I considered to be really strange questions, and at one point I got frustrated and burst out "You do know that when you create an electrical circuit you have to have a source, and a sink, and a constant and continuous path between them, don't you?"  After the class in which our group had done our presentations I was talking with the leader of our group and I apologized for losing my temper and said that I shouldn't have assumed that they didn't know such an obvious and basic fact.  "Oh no," she replied, "that was useful!  I didn't know that!"

I have learned a bit in all that time.  And, mulling it over, using all that I had learned over more than fifty years, I started to get a few ideas of how this might be done, and done effectively.

So, as an addition to my (generally failed) attempts to provide seminars and workshops to the churches in town, so that they could then provide presentations (such as security for seniors, the Jesus Film Festival, dealing with depression, grief resources, and public art in Port Alberni) that might draw in the unchurched, allow me to propose to you "How Computers Work [From the Ground Up].  (I even have a sermon  that might start it off.)

Computers run our lives. We use computers for our work, pretty much regardless of what our work is.  We carry computers around in our pockets, pretty much all the time.  Computers handle our communications with each other, our social activities with each other, our reservations for restaurants, hotels, and airlines, and computers mediate pretty much everything that goes on in our lives.  It would probably be a good idea to find out how they work.  Starting with how to build devices and circuits to do logic, and how to do logic to do calculations and to hold information in memory, a series of possibly eight to ten one-hour presentations cover how computers work, how they do what they do, what they can do, and what they can't do.  This isn't just how to use common computer tools.  This is a basic understanding that lets you know what tools computers can build.  What tools can be built with computers, and what can't.  And, how they operate, right from the ground up.  When this series is over, possibly you won't be able to take a box of transistors and build your own computer, but you will have enough information to go and learn how to do this if you want to.

This is still a work in progress, but topics include:

 - In the beginning ...

 - COMPUTERS ARE NOT MAGIC!!!

 - Logic

 - Memory

 - Computers do two things ...

 - Programs

 - Data Communications

 - Networks (and how to do *everything* *MUCH* cheaper!)

This series is going to be technical, in the sense that I'm providing technical information and explanation, but it's not going to be technically demanding.  There aren't any prerequisites.  I'm going to begin with the supposition that the audience is not going to know anything about how computers work.

Review of "Sense, Sensibility, and Snowmen"

Hallmark has done a movie called "Sense, Sensibility, and Snowmen."

I don't know whether you would call it an "adaptation" or a "based on."  Mainly it seems to be "based on" merely the names of some of the characters in "Sense and Sensibility."

I really like the books of Jane Austen, but I am not simply and automatically opposed to adaptations.  I think "Clueless" is actually rather underrated as an adaptation of "Emma."  I don't think "Bridget Jones Diary" is as good an adaptation as "Bride and Prejudice."  I don't think anyone expected "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" to be a very faithful adaptation, and I didn't mind it.

Marianne and "Ella" are sisters.  They are in business together.  Both of their parents are dead.  Marianne is the sensible one, and probably the elder.  Ella is the sensitive one, and a bit of a flake.  We never meet Willoughby: he has dumped Marianne before the movie even begins, and she doesn't care much.  Edward Ferris is firmly established as head of the family company, his father is still alive, and his mother is in favour of the match with Ella.  Brandon is his cousin and close friend.  There is a Lucy Steele, but her character is so irrelevant that one wonders why.  Most of the rest of the characters in the book don't exist in the movie, and there is pretty much no travel.  Marianne never gets her heart broken, and Ella never has to keep any secrets.

"Sense, Sensibility and Snowmen" is far from the worst movie Hallmark has ever produced.  (But there's a lot of competition.)

Interested?

He is in the helping professions.  As a matter of fact, not only in the profession that he is in right now, but in some side hustles that he has previously had.

And we were talking about training, and education, and degrees that we have held.  Well, for the most part, of course, about how the training that *he* has had, and the degrees that *he* holds, and the fact that a not particularly distinguished degree, that he holds, allows him to do the job that he currently holds, because, even though the degree is not in the field that he should have had agreed to hold this particular position, the fact that it's a master's degree technically fulfills a checkbox, and that means that he gets to hold this particular job.

But, as I say, he is in a helping profession.  And this particular conversation, in a significant part, we were having because he thought that he was helping me.  Even though he wasn't really asking all that much about me and he was talking mostly about himself.

It would have been nice, and would have been helpful to me, if he had, in fact, asked about me.  Expressed some sort of interest in me.  Instead of just, whenever I mentioned anything, it reminded him of an experience that he had had, or a job that he had done, or various other aspects of his life and experience.

And the really funny thing was, that, at one point in the conversation, he started talking about how *interested* he was in other people.  And, specifically, how interested he was in people like me, as I've had a wide and varied background.  He is so terribly interested in people like me, who have had an awful lot of interesting experience.  It is so interesting to find out about people, like me, who have had all kinds of interesting experiences, in all kinds of interesting fields.  They have so many stories to tell.  *I* have so many stories to tell.  He was so very interested in people like me.

And he kept talking.  About himself.  About his background.  About his qualifications.  About his experiences.  About the jobs that he has had.  Throwing in very occasional questions about me.  And every time that I answered one of the questions, my answer prompted him to remember a number of his own experiences that he needed to tell me about.

He was, of course, completely oblivious to the contradiction here.  The fact that he was talking about how interested he was in other people.  The fact that he was interested in people, specifically, like me.  And the fact that he really wasn't asking all that many questions about me, and he couldn't wait to interrupt whatever I was saying with his own stories and experiences.

Nobody listens (2)

At one point here I included a post noting, in a joking way, that nobody actually listens to what I say.  I have, at times, wondered if I over-exaggerate some of these notes or comments.

Recently I had a couple of conversations that indicate that I do not exaggerate.

In the same day I had two conversations, both with people who know me reasonably well.  In the one case it was somebody with whom I have had extensive experience doing volunteer work together.  In the other it was with somebody I have known for a long time.

Both conversations turned to my recent health issues.  In both conversations, the other party asked for details of what had been going on, and I gave details of my experiences.  In both conversations, slightly later in the conversation, the other party raised the topic again, and, once again, ask all the same questions.  I gave all the same answers.  In neither case did the other party recognize either the fact that they were asking the same questions, or that we had previously covered the topic, or that I gave all the same answers, all over again.

I wasn't wrong.  Nobody listens.

So, Rob, where are you going to church these days?

2 Corinthians 2:1-2

So I made up my mind that I would not make another painful visit to you.  For if I grieve you, who is left to make me glad but you whom I have grieved?

We need Remembrance Day

I put myself through university working as a nurse.  I worked at Shaughnessy Hospital, back when there *was* a Shaughnessy Hospital.  It was a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital.  So I was working with veterans.

One day, as I was getting one of the old guys up, he mentioned that he was a veteran of two wars.  In the full flush of my youthful ignorance, I replied, "Oh, the first world war and the second world war?"  No, he replied, the Boer war and the first world war.

So, I knew veterans of the Boer War.  I even knew a veteran who had received one of Queen Victoria's scarves, and it was only much, much later in life that I realized the significance of that, and I rather suspect that almost none of you who will read this will, in fact, understand what that was.

But the point that I'm trying to make is that I have known veterans from the Boer War, and the First World War, and the Second World War, and the Korean War.  And I knew actual deserters from the American military, and the war in Vietnam.  (Yes, there were a lot of draft dodgers who came from the United States to Canada during the time of the Vietnam war, but there were deserters as well.)

And I have known veterans from wars and conflicts since.  The list goes on, and the names of conflicts and wars are not less important, but grow too many to list.  Although the reasons for remembering the wars do not change, and do not grow any less important, but rather more important.

The veterans from wars that are older and fading into history are dying off.  Gloria and I attended one particular Remembrance Day service for twenty-five years.  It, like the wars that people might consider less significant, was not a particularly notable service.  It was in an old folks home (or "care facility," if you will), and Gloria sang at the service.  For twenty-five years.  We saw veterans from different wars dying off, over the years.  It affected me deeply, because we knew these people (and also because the memories involve Gloria).  So much so that, these days, I have difficulty attending Remembrance Day services that are simply pro forma political appearances, rather than services.

I have known these people.  They are different people, because people are all different.  They had their own reasons for going.  Sometimes to save comrades, sometimes to protect family, or communities, or their country.  They had different experiences.  They had different attitudes to what Remembrance Day was all about.

And as the veterans from different wars, and particular to the First World War, where the whole Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day, or Veteran's Day thing started, people start to wonder what is the point of Remembrance Day.

One thing that we are remembering is that war is hell.  War doesn't just affect those who go to fight in it.  It does not just affect those from the armed forces, of the various countries involved, and who are actual combatants.  War is terrible.  It hurts a lot of people.  It destroys lives.  It leaves injuries on veterans, it leaves injuries on civilians, and in many cases it actually leaves injuries on the land itself.  (I have been to the Vimy Memorial, on the crest of Vimy Ridge.  Signage warns you to stay on the paths.  Sheep graze on the grass.  The sheep leave behind droppings that might make walking on the grass a bit messy, but that is the least danger that you face by walking on the grass.  The sheep are there because that is the safest way to keep the grass trimmed.  [Well, maybe not for the sheep.]  The battle of Vimy Ridge started on my birthday in 1917, more than a hundred years ago, and there is still ordinance there that makes it too dangerous to run a tractor lawn mower over the grass, let alone allow tourists to wander on it.)  War is terrible, and we should always remember that we should take every effort to avoid war.

We also need to remember those who go to war.  We need to remember, with gratitude, the thin Blue line, or the thin Red line, or the thin camouflage line, or whatever color we use and choose to represent those who, for whatever reason, go to stand in the gap on our behalf.

We need to remember those who went, and did not return, and made the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf.  We need to remember those who went, and who did return.  All of those made a sacrifice.  Sometimes the sacrifice was time.  Sometimes the sacrifice was friendship, with their comrades who made the ultimate sacrifice.  Sometimes their sacrifice was injuries and disabilities, and losses of others sorts.

We need to remember that a sacrifice is a sacrifice, in the same way that, in regard to grief, a loss is a loss.  After Gloria died, I was having coffee, on a fairly regular basis, with a fellow whose wife was still alive.  He didn't understand the grief of the loss of his spouse.  He kept on asking me what it was like.  I would try to explain what grief was like.  He never did understand, but he did keep on asking, and it was kind of him to keep on asking, and to try to understand, in opposition to the great many people who did not understand, and who tried, sometimes rather desperately, to avoid the subject or any thought of that kind of loss and grief.  He never did understand.  I hope he never does understand.  Grief is an awful thing, in the same way that war is an awful thing.  And we who have not gone to war need to understand that we never will understand.  But we need to remember that there are those who do, all too well.

We need to remember that war is awful, and is to be avoided.  We need to understand that we do not understand the experience of those who went, and we need to be grateful and thankful for their service.

We need Remembrance Day.