Stay safe ...

When we are at McDonalds on a break, if there are kids there, we generally hand out pedestrian reflectors.

However, on occasion, I must admit that we are sometimes forced to consider: do I *really* want to aid in perpetuating this particular gene strain? ...

Sermon 68 - Ruth 3

Sermon 68 - Ruth 3

Ruth 3:1-4

One day Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi said to her, "My daughter, I must find a home for you, where you will be well provided for.  Now Boaz, with whose women you have worked, is a relative of ours.  Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor.  Wash, put on perfume, and get dressed in your best clothes.  Then go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking.  When he lies down, note the place where he is lying.  Then go and uncover his feet and lie down.  He will tell you what to do."

And now we come to the really problematic part of the book and series.  Here, in chapter three, we have Naomi counseling Ruth to seduce Boaz, in order to trap him into a marriage.

Okay, maybe that's overstating it a bit, but that's certainly the way that it looks.  But let's break it down a bit.

First of all, Ruth has been very kind to, and supportive of, Naomi.  How on earth can Naomi repay any of this?  Well, she can take some thought to Ruth's future.  And Ruth's future is pretty bleak.  The Israelites are possibly not noted for their hospitality to foreigners, even though God keeps telling them to be kind to foreigners, because at one time they *were* foreigners.  So the Israelites are even commanded not to get too close to the foreigners.  Not to intermarry with them.  So Ruth, in a patriarchal society where there really is no place for the women, except as wives, may be in for a world of hurt when Naomi dies.  When Naomi dies, Ruth has basically no claim on the Israelite community at all.

So Naomi is probably correct in terms of thinking that getting Ruth married is possibly the most important thing that she, Naomi, can do for Ruth.  And we've already got a candidate.  Here is Boaz.  He is wealthy, and, from all indications, he's a pretty good guy.  He has treated Ruth more kindly than he needed to during the period of the harvest.  It seems to have a relation to one of the main themes of "Pride and Prejudice," by Jane Austen: when you have responsibility for daughters, what is more important than getting husbands for them?

We might question Naomi's plan, but, really, can you come up with a better one?

Naomi explains to Ruth about the harvest.  At the end of the harvest, when you have harvested, dried, and threshed all the grain, you have this enormous pile of the grain that is going to keep you over the next year.  It is the harvest festival.  It is the time of thanksgiving.  This is the time of gratitude for the fact that God has provided for you for the next year.  There is going to be a party.  Probably all the harvesters are going to be there.  I'm not sure about the women who are helping to clean up after the harvest.  Obviously there's going to be feasting.  And, as Naomi mentions, there's going to be an awful lot of drinking.  And as the party winds down, the people involved in the harvest, and particularly Boaz, are going to be sleeping there, turning in for the night, and sleeping beside this huge pile of grain which represents their security for the next year.  And they're probably going to be plastered.

It's pretty clear, from the instructions that Naomi gives Ruth, what she intends to happen.  Ruth is to wash and make herself up, wear perfume, and put on nice clothes.  She is not to participate in the party: she probably isn't invited.  But, as the party is winding down, she is to take note of where Boaz beds himself down beside the pile of grain.  And when he's asleep, she is to go and snuggle into bed with him.  I mean, this wording about uncovering his feet is pretty strange, but it's pretty clear what the implication is here.

Naomi is pretty sure that Boaz is going to wake up, be physically intimate with Ruth, and then, the next morning, feel guilty enough about it that he's going to have to marry her.  And then Ruth will be married and secure.

Well, Ruth goes along with this plan.  But, apparently, Boaz doesn't.  He wakes up in the middle of the night, and there's Ruth, basically in bed with him.  But he doesn't proceed in the way that Naomi seems to have foreseen.  Or, then again, maybe Naomi *did* foresee this.

Anyway, he realizes what is happening.  He realizes that Ruth is making a play for him.  And, as a matter of fact, he's pretty grateful for it.  Like I said, one of the reasons that we know that Boaz is older, is because he tells us so.  He says that he is grateful that Ruth has not gone after a younger man, in her search for husband.

He also doesn't sleep with her.  As a matter of fact, he takes great care with Ruth's reputation.  He gets up, before it's light, and makes sure that she is on the way home before anybody realizes that she has even been there.  But first he tells her that he will make sure that she is married.  He knows that he has the right of redemption of the property, and he also knows that along with the right of redemption comes the responsibility to marry Ruth.  He also knows that there is one person who has a closer claim than he does.  So he tells Ruth this, and tells her that he will make sure that this is addressed.

So, Ruth is off home, and reports all this to Naomi.  And Naomi seems to know Boaz pretty well.  She tells Ruth not to worry: the situation is going to be resolved, and resolved quickly.  Boaz will not rest until he puts things right, and does it the right way.

Boaz is going to do it by the book.  He isn't going to sleep with Ruth on the threshing floor, and then have a hurry-up marriage to cover things up.  As a matter of fact, he's not even going to get engaged to Ruth at all, at least, not right away.  There is somebody else who has a greater claim, and Boaz, as much as he may want to, and there are indications that he wants to, is not going to jump the line.  He is going to do it properly.  He is going to do the right thing, but he's also going to do the right thing in the right way.

Ruth series

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/sermon-65-ffff3-ruth-1.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/sermon-67-ruth-2.html

Sermons: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

Job 30:20-23

Job 30:20-23

I cry out to you, God, but you do not answer;

    I stand up, but you merely look at me.

You turn on me ruthlessly;

    with the might of your hand you attack me.

You snatch me up and drive me before the wind;

    you toss me about in the storm.

I know you will bring me down to death,

    to the place appointed for all the living.

Gboard, recidivus

As I have mentioned before, I hate soft keyboards on phones, and I tend to use Gboard for dictating to my phone when creating pretty much anything.

Gboard is not perfect. Today, however, it seems to be particularly glitchy, and is creating messes out of the simplest text that I dictate into it.

HCW - 5.02 - datacomm - intro

HCW - 5.02 - datacomm - intro

When we start talking about data communications, we have to talk about timing again.  Timing seems to show up an awful lot, in terms of computers, doesn't it?  Well, yes it does.  And here we are again.

If you study into the details of data communication ..., well, I know you won't.  Very few people do.  You use it absolutely every single day, but almost nobody, even those who do go into studying information technology quite extensively, goes into the details of data communications.  If you do, you quickly run into this issue of timing.  As a matter of fact, when you start out, with the basics, you will probably run into terms like synchronous communications, bi-synchronous communications, and asynchronous communications.  Synchronous, and bi-synchronous, communications were the originals.  When people started to do data communications, this issue of timing was so important that there was actually a timing signal over the communications channel.  And you could only send a packet of data immediately after the timing signal had pinged down the line.  Bi-synchronous just meant that the timing signal was sent in both directions.  Asynchronous doesn't mean that timing is not involved: definitely not.  It just means that you didn't have to wait for a specific timing signal: you could start communicating anytime you wanted to.

There is another pair of terms that you might hear when you start talking about data communications.  This is serial, and parallel.

You might not hear these terms being used, an awful lot, these days.  They used to be very important, a while ago.  They generally referred to the connections, almost always by cables, that you made with the peripherals that you attached to your computer.  Serial means that the information was sent one bit at a time, in a stream of bits.  And, when we talked about data communications today, this is, most often, the type of communication that we are talking about. 

Parallel communications sends a number of bits, all at once.  Back in the days when serial communication was problematic, and noisy, and slow, using parallel communication was a way of speeding things up.  Obviously, it is difficult to send a number of hits, together,  along a single wire.  Signalling happens by changing the signal, from off to on, or high volume to low volume, or high frequency to low frequency.  When this change happens, you can only send one bit of information with it.  Parallel communication used to have ribbon cables, where a number of wires were packaged together, side by side, in a plastic ribbon.  (Each wire carried one signal, in the same way as the serial communications.)  You don't see this as much anymore, and it was mostly short range anyway.

However, parallel data communication may start to have a comeback sometime soon.  A lot of people are experimenting with various forms of quantum networking and communication.  Quantum entities can carry more than one bit of information, and so it may be possible to create parallel communication technologies, once again.  (Actually, there is a form of data communications called quadrature amplitude phase shift keying that uses a combination of high and low frequencies, and volumes, and other changes that can carry up to seven bits of data at a time, but that's getting a bit advanced for now.)

Recently, somebody asked me what was the difference between wifi and the Internet.  This is a fairly common question. Wifi is one of the various short-range communications technologies that you use to connect to the much wider and larger network known as the Internet.  Internetworking, or just internet, with a lowercase i, used to be a technical term to describe what you needed to do to connect two devices that used different communications technologies, or were made by different manufacturers, since pretty much every manufacturer had invented their own communications protocols.  However, once people really started to build communications networks between computers which were all made by different manufacturers, we needed internetworking on a very large scale.  And there were formal attempts to ensure that all computers could talk to pretty much any other computer.  This, and the links between all of those computers, became the Internet, with a capital i.  The Internet is this large scale network that connects pretty much every computer to every other computer, all around the world.

That may not explain very much, quite yet.  And we're going to go into some further details.  But before I do, I want to introduce something that became very important in ensuring that we could connect every computer to every other computer.  This is the OSI model.

OSI is the international organization for standards. (Yes, I know, the three letter acronym doesn't seem to match the name.  That actually involves politics, and we don't need to get into it right now.  As a matter of fact, for my part, I'd be glad *never* to get into it.  It's *much* more complicated than computer are or were.)  Anyway, these are the people who make sure that technology has standards, so that when one person says that this device is a standard what's it, the other person knows what particular functions this what's it has.  And, of course, they were very involved with the protocols and standards to ensure that computers could communicate with each other.

(Of course, this resulted in a completely new set of standards.  The nice thing about computer standards is that there are so many of them.  And if you don't like any of the ones that we have now, just wait until next year, when there will be a whole bunch of new ones.)

The one really good thing that came out of all of this was the OSI model.  When we were talking about programming and software, we talked about layers: layers of hardware, layers of operating systems, layers of utilities, and layers of other types of software.  The OSI model is based on layers.  It has seven layers, that divide aspects of data communications into specific functional areas.  If you stick with these layers, and ensure that the layer you make can talk to the layer below you, and you can talk to the layer above you, you can create your own communications technologies and protocols, and it will work with pretty much everything else.

There are seven layers to the model.  Everybody has their own favorite mnemonic to remember the names of the different layers.  My personal favorite it is Please Do Not Take Sales Person’s Advice.  This allows me to remember that the actual layers of the OSI model are Physical, Data Link, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation, and Application.

We are going to go through at least the first three layers of the model.  It turns out that the OSI model is not only good for building new communications technologies and protocols, but it also makes a really great way to separate the functions, and therefore, it gives a nice structure for teaching about how data communications work.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/hcw-310-coding-hll-logo.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/12/how-computers-work-from-ground-up.html

Next: TBA

Sermon 67 - Ruth 2

Sermon 67 - Ruth 2

Ruth 2:2

And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, "Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor."

Leviticus 19:9

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.

Naomi and Ruth return to Naomi's home, in Bethlehem.  They are in straightened circumstances.  They have no way to make money.  Ruth suggests to Naomi that she, Ruth, go into the fields and pick up leftover grain.

This is a reference to a very interesting command that God has given in the law.  God says not to reap the harvest right to the edge of the field, or to go back and pick up anything that you dropped when you harvested the field.  As a matter of fact, this specific command is given not just once in the law, but twice in Leviticus, and then, again, in Deuteronomy there is an interesting reference to the fact that anybody who is walking in your field is allowed to pluck individual grain that is growing in your field, as long as they don't actually cut the growing grain stalks.

Most people say, in interpreting these types of commands (and there are additional commands about not beating branches of olive trees twice, that seem to amount to the same thing), that this is an early version of social welfare that God is setting up for the poor among his people.  After all, in one of the mentions in Leviticus, it specifically says to leave them for the poor and for foreigners.

But I think that these commands, and certain other references, go further than that.  When I first started to run across these kinds of references, when reading the Old Testament, what struck me was that God doesn't seem very interested in efficiency.  When you are harvesting a field of grain, it would probably be more efficient to reap right to the edges of the field.  And, in harvesting up all that grain, it would probably be more efficient to go back over the field and pick up anything that you have left behind.  God doesn't really seem to care about efficiency.

At least, not in the way that we perceive efficiency.  If you get to know how God has created the world, you start to find all kinds of really complicated ways to do things, that are built into God's creation.  Yes, it's interesting.  Sometimes it's really beautiful, but efficient?  No, definitely not in the way that we think efficiency is important.

But then, you start to learn even more about creation, and how the natural world works, and you realize that God has reasons for many of the very complicated ways that the natural world works.  And that they are a lot better then the ways we think the world should work.

But let's get back to this thing about efficiency. Yes, when mentioning wheat and olive trees, there are mentions of the poor and foreigners.  But then there are some other commands that don't seem to have anything to do with simply leaving grain behind for people to pick up.  There is, for example, the sabbatical year.

Every seven years, you are supposed to not plant your fields.  You are not supposed to do any work.  You are not supposed to plant, and you are not supposed to harvest.  You are supposed to use up what God has given you in the preceding six years.  Not only that, if anybody owes you any money, you are supposed to forgive the debt.  If you hold a mortgage on anybody's property, you are supposed to forgive the debt.

That's not very efficient.  It's not an efficient way to run a business.  How can you run a business if, every few years, you are supposed to just forgive the debt of anybody who hasn't paid you what they owe you!  I mean, how can you run a capitalist system with that kind of ridiculous requirement?  It's not efficient!

Capitalism is very big on efficiency.  As a matter of fact, an awful lot of the businesses, the really, really big businesses that we have these days, run on efficiency.  They have found ways to shave this, and trim that, and outsource this type of work to somebody else, so that they can be just one or two or three percent more efficient than other businesses.  And that's how they got to be so big.  Capitalism is a way of making sure that you make the most possible money out of any situation.  And it works really well.  It makes sure that some people make a lot of money, and that creates wealth.  And there's nothing wrong with wealth is there?

Well, see, there's that point that Jesus made, one time, that you are either going to serve God, or you are going to serve money.  And there was that first commandment, in the ten commandments, that you should have no other gods before God.  And, right now, there are an awful lot of people in our society, and even an awful lot of people in our Christian churches, who feel that there is nothing wrong with money, and God never said that there was anything specifically wrong with money, and money is really useful.  Even the churches need money.  And, really, it's better to rely on having money in your bank account than it is to rely on God.

Think about that.

Capitalism is our new God. 

Capitalism is our new false idol. 

And while you're thinking about that, think about all the times that God said that you don't *need* to be efficient with your harvesting, because I am going to give you so much that you won't need it.

Who are you going to trust: God, or money?

But we seem to have drifted pretty far from Ruth.  Ruth is out in the field, picking up after the harvesters.  Ruth's work is not very efficient.  She is picking up leftover stalks of grain.  Individual stalks, lying on the ground.  She has to bend over and pick each one up.  She has to carry them with her, as she goes through the field picking them up.  After all, it's not her field.  If she puts a bundle of the stalks of grain down someplace, the people who are harvesting the field have every right to believe that it's their bundle, and come along and take it.  Then, when she gets too tired from all this stoop labor picking up individual stalks of grain, she probably needs to find some place to beat the stalks of grain, and separate out the actual grain seeds, which are, after all, the part that you want to eat.  (The straw from stalks of wheat has pretty much no nutritional value.)  When she gets home, she's going to have to spread all the wheat seeds out, all over again, because, in order to store them for any length of time, you have to make sure that they are dry enough so that they won't either sprout, or get moldy.  It's not very efficient.

Boaz's operation is probably much more efficient.  He has, either as part of his household, or has hired, harvesters.  The scythe probably hasn't been invented yet, but they have sickles to cut down the standing grain.  Then he has a group of women, once again, either from his own household, or hired, to pick up the cut stalks of grain, and tie them into bundles or sheaves.  These sheaves are probably left standing in the field for a few days, so that so that the bundles of grain on the tops of the sheaves will dry out, and the grain will be dry enough, when they do the actual threshing, to be ready to store for the rest of the year.

Boaz has a fairly big operation.  It really seems like Boaz is pretty rich.  He has enough money not only to hire harvesters and extra staff, but he's hired enough extra staff that he needs to have an overseer for the whole operation.

And, when Boaz comes out to see how the harvest is going, he asks about this lone woman, who is not part of his harvesting crew.  And the overseer reports that the woman has asked permission, and is being a hard worker, and that this is the woman who came back from away with Naomi.

And we get the first strong indication that Boaz is a really decent guy.  He goes and talks to Ruth.  He doesn't have to.  This isn't somebody who is a part of his household, and it's not one of his workers.  But he tells Ruth to glean in his field during the harvest.  He tells her how to identify which fields are his, and tells her to follow along after his female employees, so that she is safer.  He informs Ruth that he has talked to his harvesting employees, and that they are not to harass her, which must be a significant danger when you are a single, lone woman, during a mass harvesting operation in widespread fields.  He even tells her that she has permission going to go and drink from the water that is provided for his workers.

He tells her that he is aware of what she has done for Naomi.  He knows that she has left her people, to accompany and support Naomi.

He says, May the Lord repay you for what you have done.  May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.

At lunch time, he makes sure that she comes, sits down, and gives her bread, and roasted grain, and even some condiments for her lunch.  Separately, he instructs his employees not to harass her, not even to shoo her away if she starts harvesting too close to the standing sheaves.  He even tells his people not to be too efficient in gathering up the sheaves: in fact to pull some stalks of wheat out to leave for her to glean.

Ruth's returns home to Naomi, at the end of the day, with at least thirty pounds of wheat. This is a heavy burden to carry home, but it is also obviously a good deal more than you would normally expect to gather from the inefficient stoop labor of gathering up leftover cut grain.  She has some leftovers from her lunch.  That's probably what they have for dinner that night.  Naomi asks where she worked, and Ruth explains.  Naomi tells Ruth to stick with Boaz, and introduces this concept of the guardian redeemer, which will become more important in chapter four.

So, after the disaster of chapter one, we get a little glimmer of hope in chapter two.  And it's nice to close chapter two with a vision of Naomi and Ruth having a hopeful conversation, and a nicer dinner than they expected to have.

Boaz is going home to a bigger house, with more things around him, and with storerooms, or probably out buildings, because he seems rich enough, which guarantee that he's going to be able to have meals for some time to come.  After all, he is running an efficient operation, and, from the facts we are given about his employees, his female employees and, and even the fact that he needs an overseer to manage all of this, Boaz is wealthy.  And there's nothing wrong with that.  We also have indications that Boaz, for all his wealth, is a nice guy who is looking out for other people.  But he's going home to eat dinner alone.

Ruth and Naomi are not wealthy.  Wherever they are living, it's probably one room.  After they have dinner, they are going to have to move away everything that they set up to have dinner, so they can spread out their bedding, to have a place to sleep tonight.  But they are together, and talking over the events of the day.  They are eating a dinner, probably better than they expected, that has been provided by the hand of God.  Just for that day.  There is a little extra food around, the harvest of the grain, but they will have to spend some time spreading that out and drying it, because they don't have any guarantee of how much more they are going to get.  God has provided this dinner, and they are relying on God to provide for the future.

I know which dinner I'd rather be at.

Ruth sermon series

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/sermon-65-ffff3-ruth-1.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/sermon-68-ruth-3.html

Sermons: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

What truth followed you home from church today?

On the @worthysip account, on Instagram (which is generally pretty good), today I saw ask "What truth followed you home from church today?"

What truth followed me home from church today is yet another reminder that our response to any kind of pain and distress is "Footsteps": even if you can't feel any comfort, God is there, so we, in our busy lives, don't have to do anything to help or comfort.  We can just say "God loves you!" and leave it at that.

Livestream

I am waiting for the livestream of my niece's wedding, watching on YouTube, with a chat channel on YouTube and another on Facebook Messenger.

It is somewhat weird that the last time I did something like this was for Gloria's memorial service ...

HCW - 3.10 - coding - HLL Logo

HCW - 3.10 - coding - HLL Logo

We have talked about machine language and assembler.  No, I haven't taught you, at least not all the way, how to program in these languages.  But these are the languages which, at its most basic level, explain how computers work.  (Computers work by doing tiny, simple things.  But they do them reliably, and very fast.  So you can do a lot of them in a short space of time.)  These are known as low level languages.  That means that you are as close to the actual workings of the computer as possible.

But, of course, you have heard about programming languages.  If you were at all interested in them, you will have heard about lots and lots and lots of different programming languages.  There are even different kinds of programming languages.  These are all high level languages.  There are interpreted languages, and compiled languages.  There are procedural languages, functional languages, fourth generation languages, object oriented languages, and many, many, many others.

And every single one of them falls into only *one* category of what computers actually do.  Database management.

All of the higher level languages, every single one of them, is just a database that takes the commands of those higher level languages, and turns it into the appropriate collection of machine language opcodes.  That's all they do.

So, how do you choose which language to use in any situation?  It really doesn't matter.  Some of these languages are better, or easier, when dealing with certain types of functions than others.  Very often a language has been specifically written because somebody got tired of the work that they had to do in writing the same type of function, over and over again, and so decided to create a new language to make it easier to address that particular type of function.  That is basically how all higher level programming languages get invented.  So, generally speaking, the best choice of programming language is the language that is being used by the people who are doing the same type of thing as you want to do.

If you want to learn how to program a computer in a higher level language, all by yourself, then simply get a language, and search for some lessons on the Internet, and start doing it.  That's all there is to it.  Try and find a language that you can download and install on your computer for free.

If you want a specific recommendation for a computer language to get you started to learn how to program a computer, then, yes, I do have one specific suggestion.

Logo.

You probably have never heard of Logo.  If you *have* heard of it, you have probably heard of it as a programming language for kids, or for use in schools.  And it is.  In fact, if you have any children in your family, or in your life, who are at all interested in learning how to program computers, then I would suggest that you help them to get started with Logo.

The thing is, Logo is not simply, or only, a programming language for kids.  Logo is a full and complete programming language.  It can do basically anything that any other programming language can do.  In fact, it is based on, and is itself, an artificial intelligence language.  That is, it is a language which you can use to program artificial intelligence programs.  It is a program which will allow you to build artificial intelligence systems.  It's easy enough for kids, but it can do way more things than kids initially want to do.

One of the things that makes it easy in terms of learning how to program is that it has some very easy graphics functions.  If you explore the graphics functions, and if you do some research on the Internet in order to find out how to program the grass graphics functions, you will probably see references to the turtle, or possibly turtle graphics.  On your computer, the turtle is a reference to the triangular pointer on the graphics screen.  But, in fact, a number of versions of Logo have connections to robotics.  Logo was also intended to be used for robotics, with a little robot, that looked very much like a Roomba, where the Logo commands could be used to write a program that would trundle the turtle around in various shapes on the floor.

So, like I said, Logo is a pretty good start in terms of learning how to program.  It's easy to start out with, with the graphics, it's fully functional, you can use it to build artificial intelligence systems, and you can even use it to build robotics systems.  Pretty advanced.

(For those of you who think that "virtual" meetings are really cutting edge technology, forty years ago I set up and managed the technical side of the world's first fully integrated hybrid conference.  It was about Logo.)

And you can even teach kids who can't read yet how to use it.  Most of the graphics commands have two letter abbreviations, which is easy enough for the kids to learn and memorize.  Using Logo to teach kids how to program the computer is probably also pretty good preparation to get them ready to learn how to read.

No, I'm not going to teach you how to program in Logo.  As I say, an awful lot of you don't want to learn how to program a computer, and I don't believe in setting exercises to program to learn how to program in Logo anyway.  Part of the point in using Logo to teach kids how to program a computer is that they learn how to program a computer simply by playing around with it.

(In terms of education, Logo is part of what is called "discovery learning."  About fifty years ago, the people who were big on Logo were annoyingly vocal about the benefits of simply letting kids fool around with it.  I didn't really believe all the hype, but I got an opportunity to try it out one time.  And it really, truly, works!)

So I will teach you how to get it and explore it.

There are a number of versions of Logo that you can buy.  I don't see anything wrong with any of them.  However, I don't really see the need to pay for something that you can get for free.  There is a free version of Logo, if you have a Windows computer available here. If you have a Mac computer, there is a version there are a couple of versions available here and here.  However, I can't really recommend them, not because I think there's anything wrong with them, but simply because I never have downloaded and installed them on my (one) Mac computer, so, you're on your own as far as taking the risk of downloading software from somewhere.

But there's another option.  Probably a safer option, and probably easier for you to try.  These two websites here and here will let you run, explore, and learn Logo regardless of what computer you have.  They are websites, and the Logo program runs on those websites.  So you are not actually downloading anything.  And, regardless of what computer you have, as long as it has a web browser, you can use these websites.  You can use these websites if you have a Windows computer, or if you have a Mac computer, or if you have a Linux machine, or if you have an iPad, or if you have a tablet, or if you just have a cell phone.  Of the two, this particular one has a reference to the logo programming language actually on screen, so that might be the choice that you might prefer initially.  However, just simply looking up "Logo programming language" in a search engine will find you lots of sets of instructions, lots of discussions, lots of videos showing you how to use the program, and lots of sites where you can get instructions on all of the commands in the language.

So, it's up to you.  If you want to learn how to program, start searching up about Logo, and just start playing around with it.  That is how people learn to program computers.  They get a programming language, and they want to do something, and they figure out how to do it.  Anybody who says anything else is trying to sell something to you.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/hcw-306-coding-opcodes.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/12/how-computers-work-from-ground-up.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/hcw-502-datacomm-intro.html

Why sermons?

I am, particularly since it is highly unlikely that anybody will ever preach these sermons, starting (probably fairly late in the game) to very strongly suspect that the real reason that I am writing them has something to do with my grief work.  (Another indication that I am more on the instrumental, and therefore cognitive, end of the grief range continuum.)

(The fact that it has taken me this long to figure this out is probably an indication that I still have a ways to go in this process.  Oh, joy.)

If it is true that sermon writing is part of my grief process, that may explain why I am having so much trouble with the series on Ruth (which might indicate that I am still reasonably close to the intuitive end of the continuum).

Sermon 66 - FFFF4 - Bathsheba

Sermon 66 - FFFF4 - Bathsheba

Matthew 1:3-6

Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar,

Perez the father of Hezron,

Hezron the father of Ram,

Ram the father of Amminadab,

Amminadab the father of Nahshon,

Nahshon the father of Salmon,

Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,

Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,

Obed the father of Jesse,

and Jesse the father of King David.

David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife

2 Samuel 11:2,3

One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace.  From the roof he saw a woman bathing.  The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her.  The man said, "She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite."

So on to the fourth foreign female failure, and the story of David and Bathsheba.  I am quite sure that you all know this one.  This is David's famous big failure.

Just to set the scene, the Israel is at war.  They are fighting somebody, but David has stayed in Jerusalem.  Obviously this is not a major battle for Israel.

So he's walking around the roof of the palace in the evening, and he sees this woman taking a bath on a roof nearby.  She is Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.  (And, yes, I know that some people will object that I have not proved that she is foreign.  Uriah the Hittite is foreign, but he may be fighting in King David's army, because he is married a Jewish woman.  We are even given her father's name.  Okay, I haven't proved that all four are foreign, but there's a chance.)  So he summons her to the palace, and asks to have sex with her.  And she agrees.

Now, at this point, possibly particularly because she ends up in the genealogy of Jesus, an awful lot of people will try and object that Bathsheba hasn't really done anything wrong here.  Yes, she is the wife of Uriah.  Yes, by sleeping with King David, she is technically committing adultery.  But you can't really say no to a king.

Well, maybe so.  But David is, pretty famously, and probably pretty famously even then, known for his love of God.  David obviously knows the ten commandments.  He knows that committing adultery is a bad thing, and that by sleeping with somebody else's wife, both of them are committing adultery.  It would probably be pretty easy to point this out to him, and there's a really, really good chance that, simply pointing it out would make him change his mind how about sleeping with her.  And there's no indication here that she even tried.

Anyway, on with the story that we do know.  Bathsheba gets pregnant.  She tells the king.  He then compounds the original sin of adultery, by setting up Uriah to be killed.  God sends the prophet Nathan to point out that this is a pretty big sin, and, to his credit, David realizes that he has really messed up, big time.

And the punishment is that the child is to die.

David pleads with God for the life of the child.  In fasting and ashes.  Literally.  He is so distraught, that, when the child dies, none of his officials want to tell him, probably for fear that he will commit suicide.

Finally, the courtiers admit to David that the child has died.  And David gets up, cleans up, changes his clothes, and has something to eat.

The courtiers are a bit bemused by this.  They didn't expect this kind of reaction and ask David about it.  David said that while the child was sick, he pleaded with God.  Possibly God would change his mind.  But now that the child has, in fact, died, what point is there in continuing?  The child is dead.  David will, eventually, go to the child, but the child will not return to life here on Earth.  Everybody grieves in their own way.  Believe me, I know.  But this seems to be a remarkably realistic and clear-eyed position to take.

And where is Bathsheba in all of this?  Well, we aren't really told much about her, or her reaction.  We are told that David comforts Bathsheba, and she becomes pregnant.  (You kids can ask your parents to explain that after the sermon.)  And a son is born, whose name is Solomon, and it is decided that it is this Solomon who is going to become king after David.

We aren't told an awful lot about Bathsheba.  We aren't told how eagerly she went along with the adultery, we aren't told how much comforting she needed after the death of the child.  We aren't really given an awful lot of detail about Bathsheba.  What kind of a person is she?  But we do get a few other mentions of Bathsheba.  And, once again by speculation, we can determine a bit about what Bathsheba was like.

To be quite honest, she was a bit of an airhead.  I mean, there's this whole business of adultery.  Yes, a lot of people make the point that, if the king brings you to the palace, and ask you to sleep with him, if you say no, there's a possibility you're going to get your head cut off.  But the thing is, this is David we're talking about. David was passionate yes, and a warlord yes, but he was also very passionate in his love of God.  If David calls you to the palace, and asks you to commit adultery with him, it probably wouldn't take too much brain power to figure out that all you had to do was mention that this is adultery, and that God has given a commandment specifically prohibiting it, and there's a very good chance that David is going to change his mind.  But, apparently, Bathsheba doesn't even go this far.

We get a few more mentions of Bathsheba.  King David gets old.  So old that he can't keep himself warm anymore.  The courtiers find a young girl to sleep with him.  Not for sexual purposes, just as a kind of a bed warmer.

I figure David should have stuck with Abigail.  The one time we meet her she demonstrates that she is kind, smart enough to take good advice, decisive, and resourceful.  *Her* son never got in trouble.  David probably isn't a great parent.  He doesn't seem to have much luck with his sons.  One commits rape, another one kills the first in retaliation, and then leads a coup (and dies as a result).  And then, when things are somewhat settled, and Solomon is promised as next in line for the throne, another of David's boys, Adonijah, tries the coup thing again.  And he sets up a coronation ceremony for himself.

And somebody else (Nathan, again) has to alert Bathsheba to the fact that this is probably not in her best interest.  The throne has been promised to Solomon, which would make Bathsheba Queen Mother.  If somebody else decides that he's going to become king, and take the throne, Bathsheba is not going to become Queen Mother.  So Nathan alerts Bathsheba, and Nathan alerts the king to what's happening, and King David puts together a hurry-up coronation ceremony, very quickly, and Solomon does, in fact, become king.

And after Solomon *does* become king, and after David dies, well, you remember that bed warmer that they had for David?  Well Adonijah, the same guy who decided that he should become King instead of Solomon, then goes to Bathsheba, and asks to be able to marry this bed warmer.  And Bathsheba takes this request to Solomon.

And Solomon, very correctly, points out, to his mother, that this is probably not a great idea.  After all, Adonijah was, in fact, older than Solomon, and, in the normal line of succession, would have had a greater claim on the throne.  And the bed warmer, despite the fact that we are told that David was never actually physically intimate with her, was still a royal concubine.  And taking over a dead Kings wives and concubines was one of the ways that you announced that you were the new king.  And so giving the bed warmer to this other son is giving this other son a definitely stronger claim to take over the kingdom at some point.  Solomon was no fool.  God, after Solomon was established as king, promised Solomon to give him whatever he wanted, and Solomon famously asked for wisdom.  We call him Solomon the wise.  There are tales in the Bible about his great wisdom.  Which he got from God, because he *obviously* didn't get it from his mum!

And this, inevitably, reminds us of the places, all through the Bible, where we are reminded that the wisdom of the world is foolishness to God.  Here is a woman who is not particularly smart.  Not particularly wise.  And she makes it into Jesus genealogy.  And she makes it in the same way we all make our relationships with God.  As it says over and over again, God does not choose his people because they are particularly wise, or strong, or even righteous.  God chooses us because God chooses us.  We do not deserve this.  We are not the chosen ones because we are better than everybody else.  We are beloved by God because God loves us.  It may be a bit humbling to have to realize that, but we all could probably stand a bit of humility.

Four Foreign Female Failures series

Sermon 63 - Four Foreign Female Failures 1 - Tamar

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/sermon-63-fff1-tamar.html

Sermon 64 - FFFF 2 - Rahab

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/sermon-64-ffff-2-rahab.html

Sermon 65 - FFFF3 - Ruth 1

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/sermon-65-ffff3-ruth-1.html

Sermons:

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

HCW - 3.06 - coding - opcodes

HCW - 3.06 - coding - opcodes

In the world of information technology in general, and particularly online, you will possibly see the saying that you should not worry about some issue or other: it's all just ones and zeros.  This is, of course, a truism that comes from the absolute fact that, inside a computer, it is, indeed, all just ones and zeros.

As I hope I have, by now, proved, everything that goes on inside a computer simply has to do with whether a given circuit is on or off.  And other circuits pick up the result of this circuit being on or off, and, themselves, turn on or off in order to make additional changes in other circuits, and so on, and so forth.  But all of those circuits are either on, or off, and we interpret that as being true, or false, and or as one or zero.  It's all just ones and zeros.

And the pattern of ones and zeros can store text for us, or add up numbers, or display a visual copy of George Seurat's Sunday afternoon on the island of la grande jatte.

But it's all just ones and zeros.  And the fact that, with the ones and zeros, we can create a pattern of activity to do an enormous variety of things with a single piece of hardware.

This is known as programming, or coding.

If you have researched it at all, you will have come up with an enormous variety of names of programming languages.  There are all kinds of computer programming languages, created to assist people who want to get computers to do something new, to create new functions in that basic computer hardware.  At its core, at its most basic, all of this boils down to machine language, which is, indeed, all just ones and zeros.  Most of these ones and zeros, in terms of programming in actual machine language are collected into groups of eight or sixteen, with additional groups of eight or sixteen that may provide data, usually memory addresses, where further data can be found, or further programming can be found, in order to allow us to proceed with the function that we want to create.  So, at its heart, programming is, as well, all just ones and zeros.

But, looking at tables of ones and zeros can get rather mind-numbing, very quickly, and so, for the discussion of how to create programs, I'm going to start at one step up, with something called assembly language.  Assembly language, or assembler, simply takes some abbreviations for these groups of ones and zeros, in order to remind you of what they do.  Generally speaking, when you look at the actual patterns of ones and zeros, the mnemonics that start out the same will also have very similar patterns of ones and zeros.  So using examples from assembler is not really cheating: it's just making it easier for you.

This a chart of the assembly language commands for one particular microprocessor.  Each different model of microprocessor will have a different set of commands.  Families of microprocessors that are related to each other will have very similar patterns of commands.  Some microprocessors for specialized purposes will have somewhat different lists of commands than this one, but most will be similar.

This isn't the full list, because I do not intend to teach you how to create your own programs with this.  For one thing, most of you will never want to actually do this.  If you do want to do this, once again, I am giving you enough information for you to go and research on the Internet and find lots of tutorials, and images, and even videos, that will teach you how to do it.  There are even programs that you can buy and download for your phone or computer that will simulate for you an older, and simpler, microprocessor, so that you can, in fact, do your own programming and create your own assembler programs for yourself, if you want to do so.  I am just going to mention a few of the assembly language commands, and tell you a little bit about what they do.  Hopefully this will be enough to prove to you what it is that computers actually do.

You will notice that there is quite a column of commands that all start out with ADD.  These, of course, have to do with addition.  The reason that there are so many of them is that there are many ways to make a computer add to numbers at this most basic level.  For example, we can ask the microprocessor, if it has multiple registers, to add the contents of one register, to another register.  Then there are even variations about what we want them to do with the answer.  Do we want the value in the first register to be increased by the value of the second register?  Do we want the second register to be increased by the value of the first register?  Do we want the values of both registers to be added together, and then stored in some particular place in memory?  All of these possibilities are actually different versions of addition, and so each of them, and a variety more, as you can see from the list, are separate opcodes: the operating codes.  The actual machine language.

Another one that I want you to notice in this list is one that is spelled DEC, which stands for decrement.  That may not sound like something that's particularly important.  Just simply subtracting one from a particular value.  However, in terms of programming a computer, very often we will want to repeat the same action a number of times.  For example, as I mentioned, sometimes in microprocessor will only have an addition circuit built into it.  If you want to do multiplication, you have to write a program that will do repeated addition with the addition circuit.  When we want to repeat an action a number of times, the number of times that we want it to happen can be stored in a special register.  Then, every time we repeat the function that we want to happen, we decrement that register.  And we stop it when we get to zero.  (How we stop it we will look at after another few commands.)

You also see, in this list, a command called HLT.  This stands for halt.  It's actually a fairly important command.  Having a command that says stop running, or stop processing commands at this point, is fairly important.  (There is also a joke that, built into pretty much every computer, there is an also a command that says Halt and Catch Fire.)

In this table, I want you to note a command labeled JMP.  This is the command jump.  The jump command will be followed by a value, that will be the address in memory where the computer is to jump to, and then start following the operating commands and codes at that point.  This is a very important command, which we can use in order to have a variety of different functions built into our computer program, and allow us to jump to those pieces of programming, and perform those functions.  Generally speaking, those functions, or sections of programming, will end with a return command (RET), which will jump us back to the command immediately following the jump command function that we encountered in the first place.

Then there are two labeled JNZ, or JZ.  I mentioned, earlier, the decrement command, and noted that when the register we were using for the decrement command reached zero, we wanted to stop what we have been repeatedly doing, and do something else.  That is what the JZ command will do.  Jump when this register reaches zero.  While the decrement register is still not zero we will JNZ or jump non-zero.  Generally speaking that will be going back to the beginning of the function that we want repeatedly done.  So, at this point, you should be starting to see how we get computers to decide which of the functions built into the program we should be operating.

There's another set of commands that start out MOV.  These stand for move.  Like the ADD, the move commands have a lot of variations.  We are using them to move data: move data from one register to another, move data from a register to the main memory of the computer, move memory from one place in memory to a different place in memory.  I told you that computer programs always and only do two things: they either do calculations, like addition, or they manage data.  The move commands is an example of managing data.

The move commands are actually slightly misnamed.  What they really are, are copy commands.  The data is not moved in that it doesn't disappear from the original location when it is copied into another location.  If we move data from a register to main memory, the data in that register is still there.  So, we always have to be very careful, when doing programming, to fully understand what it is that the operating code has done.  If we then want to use the register where the data that we moved to a memory location originally resided, then we have to decide, do we want to zero out that register, now that the data has been moved to main memory?  Do we want to have that data still there, and continue to do some processing on it?  Do we want to store a completely new data value in that register?  We have to always keep in mind that there is no DWIM  command in any microprocessor.  (That stands for Do What I Mean, and, I submit, we will never have true artificial intelligence unless somebody implements that particular opcode.)

And, I have to mention timing, again.  You might think that the timing cycles in the computer (which we have mentioned before) mean that one opcode gets processed every one clock tick.  Unfortunately, no.  some of the circuits are quit convoluted, and take more time to reach the end of the circuit.  And some circuits are complicated, and call *other* circuits.  (And sometimes those other circuits call other circuits ...)  So sometimes (actually, most of the time) a single opcode takes multiple clock cycles to complete.  Most of the time the processor itself takes care of the fact that nothing else takes place before the opcode cycle completes.  But sometimes (remember those multi-core CPUs?) you have to think about it yourself ...

This is why people think programming, or coding, is complicated.  It really isn't.  It is really amazingly simple.  But you have to force your mind into considering all of these tiny, simple, logical steps that go into building the functions, and the process, that you want the computer to perform for you.  And you have to make sure you get them all, and not miss any.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/hcw-304-coding-layers.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/12/how-computers-work-from-ground-up.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/hcw-310-coding-hll-logo.html

Sermon 65 - FFFF3 - Ruth 1

Sermon 65 - FFFF3 - Ruth 1

Matthew 1:3-6

Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar,

Perez the father of Hezron,

Hezron the father of Ram,

Ram the father of Amminadab,

Amminadab the father of Nahshon,

Nahshon the father of Salmon,

Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,

Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,

Obed the father of Jesse,

and Jesse the father of King David.

David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife

Ruth 1:16, 17

Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.  Your people will be my people and your God my God.  Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.  May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.

I love the book of Ruth.  It's probably my favorite book in the Bible.  I mean, I love Job, too, but Ruth is definitely my favorite.  I'm going to have to do a series of sermons on Ruth, and probably soon, covering the whole book.

For one thing, it's a love story.  I don't know why Hollywood hasn't done Ruth, as a movie, more often.  I mean, they've done Esther several times.  But Esther, while it's gaudy, and allows for lavish set creation, and possibly CGI, these days, and it's a decent action story and a bit of a thriller as well, but it doesn't get into the depth of character that Ruth does.  I mean, I'm a grieving widower, so I'm a sucker for a good love story.  I'm going to have to be careful to make sure that I don't burst into tears while I'm preaching this sermon.  I haven't quite sunk to the depths of reading Harlequin romances, but I watch way too many Hallmark movies.

For another thing, in this love story the old guy gets the girl.  Boaz himself mentions that he is old, and, given the fact that Boaz is Rahab's son, and Rahab is mentioned right at the beginning of the return to the promised land, and Boaz is David's great-grandfather, which doesn't come until after the end of the book of Judges, it's fairly reasonable to assume that, yes, Boaz is old.  So I love Ruth.

But there is, as I mentioned, the depth of character in the book of Ruth.  And the love extends not just to a simple romance, but to the love between Naomi and Ruth.  So let's jump right into the story.

Elimelek, Naomi's husband, takes his wife, and his two sons, and heads off to the land of Moab.  Moab and Israel tend to have a fraught relationship a lot of the time, but citizenship is kind of fluid in this period.  He's trying to avoid a famine in Israel.  And then he dies.  The sons get a couple of wives.  And then the two *sons* die.  So Naomi is left alone, in terms of support.  She's got no husband bringing in the bacon, and she's got no sons supporting her.  And she's got two daughters-in-law to take care of.

So she sets them free.  Go back to your parents she tells them: I have no more sons that you can marry.  And one of them does go back to her parents.

But Ruth stays with Naomi.  And notice, this is a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law.  In-laws are not natural allies.  We have all kinds of stories, and it's considered a truism, not just in our society, that there is a particular tension between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law.  In the New Testament, when Jesus is trying to make a point that following him is going to mean that you are sometimes divided from your friends and even your family, a mother-in-law fighting with a daughter-in-law is one of the examples that he uses.  And I've always considered, in regard to that particular example, that it wasn't going to be hard to set up a fight between those two.

But Ruth loves Naomi.  Ruth is going to stick with Naomi.  And right away, in chapter one, we get this absolutely breathtakingly beautiful statement about the commitment that Ruth has for Naomi.  She will leave the place where she was born, and probably the only place she has ever known.  She will leave her people, and her family, and even her parents.  She will go where Naomi goes.  She will leave her community, and culture, and she will leave her religion, and follow Naomi's God.  She will support and encourage and take care of Naomi until Naomi dies, and that is where Ruth is going to stay.

This is a gorgeous statement about love.  We frequently use it as a reading at weddings.  But this is not a marriage.  This is a very deep commitment to another person who our society doesn't think you are supposed to love all that much.  This is a statement about the kind of love that the Greeks called agape, and that we attribute to God.

I'm really tempted to just stop there.  But, it's not the end of the story of Ruth, and it's not yet coming to the point where, as I promised you all four of these women would, we get an indication that Ruth is no better than she ought to be.  Okay, going on with the story kind of takes away the big reveal, and sets up some spoilers for when I try to use this sermon as the first in a series covering all of the book of Ruth, but we're going to have to go on with the rest of the story.  Even if we only do it briefly here.

So, they set off, and they go back to Israel.  To Bethlehem.  And Naomi tells her woeful tale.  And they set up whatever kind of household that they can set up, in a society where the men are the breadwinners, and, even though Naomi does technically own the land that belonged to Elimelek, apparently they can't really get into the farming thing.  Everybody in their community knows about their plight, and they just have to make the best that they can of a very sad situation.

Even at this time (probably around 1600 BC), God has had the Israelites set up a sort of a social safety net for women who really had no place in the business of the community.  Widows like Naomi are allowed to go into the fields, following along behind the harvesting, and pick up individual stalks of wheat or barley that have been left behind after the harvesters have gone through and cut down the grain, and the women of the household have bundled it up.  Having to run back and forth over the field picking up individual stalks of grain and carrying them with you.  It must have been a lot of work in order to get the subsistence grain that you needed to survive.

And here we meet Boaz (who happens to be Rahab's son).  Boaz seems to be pretty wealthy.  He has harvesters working for him, and he has women working for him bundling up the sheaves of grain, after the harvesters have gone through.  And Boaz seems to be a pretty decent guy.  He has heard the story of Naomi and Ruth.  And when he identifies this lone woman who is picking up individual stocks of grain following along behind his harvesters and binders, he makes sure that she has some lunch, he orders his men not to mistreat her (and that must have been a real risk), and even to surreptitiously help her by dropping extra stalks of grain.

Ruth takes home, to Naomi, probably an awful lot more grain than anybody would expect in such a situation.  Naomi when she finds out about it the details tells Ruth to stick with Boaz.  She also gives Ruth some instructions that we would consider to be extremely questionable.  Basically, she tells Ruth to seduce Boaz.

Like I say, this is pretty risque advice.  Ruth could get a bad reputation, and could be at even greater risk of being abused in the fields.  But, by this time, Naomi knows that Ruth is going to stick by her, through thick or thin, and getting a husband is probably going to be easier on Ruth than trying to support the two of them with this single stalk of grain at a time type of work.

Ruth goes along with the suggestion.   And, once again, as with both Tamar and Rahab, she probably has some pretty decent reasons for doing so.  Ruth loves Naomi.  Ruth is committed to supporting Naomi.  It is going to be very hard for her to follow through on her commitment, in the situation that they are in.  If she seduces Boaz, he's probably going to marry her (we've seen he's a decent guy), and that will make the job of taking care of Naomi an awful lot easier.  So she does it.

But when she does it, Boaz, once again, demonstrates that he's a decent guy, and arranges for the marriage to be done properly.  That's another example of real love, right there.  And, as far as we can tell, they all live happily ever after.  Ruth ends up as the great grandmother of David, and gets listed in Jesus genealogy. 

I really love Ruth.

Four Foreign Female Failures series

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/sermon-63-fff1-tamar.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/sermon-64-ffff-2-rahab.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/sermon-66-ffff4-bathsheba.html

Ruth series

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/sermon-67-ruth-2.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/sermon-68-ruth-3.html

Sermons

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

HCW - 3.04 - coding - layers

HCW - 3.04 - coding - layers

When you are talking about software, and programming, it's often useful to talk about layers of software.  This really doesn't help in terms of how the computers operate, because the software doesn't always, cleanly, work in layers.  Sometimes it does.  Actually, there are an awful lot of things, particularly in data communications, that operate in layers.  But frequently it is useful, for your own understanding of how computers work, and how they can go wrong, to think about the software in layers because that helps you identify where a problem might be happening.

The first logical layer is not, in fact, software.  It is the hardware.  Knowing what usually happens in the hardware, and what usually happens in the software, is very useful in terms of trying to figure out why what you thought should happen, didn't happen.

But, of course, we generally try to mess things up, rather than make it clearer.  So, when you are talking about the hardware, you are generally talking about the platform that you are running.  The platform is the hardware that you bought, or hardware that is functionally identical to the hardware that you bought.  For example, if you bought an iPhone, this is a different platform then if you bought an Android cell phone.  It has a different central processor, it has a different camera, and even though it makes phone calls in pretty much the same way, the icons that you use to call up the phone are going to be different.  The programs that you are able to run on your smartphone are going to be different.

But, of course, I immediately have to retract this.  iPhone is the hardware that is made by Apple Corporation.  Android is the operating system that runs on most of the other smartphones in the world.  But, of course, an operating system is software.  Android is software.  The hardware that you actually bought, that runs the Android software, is possibly made by Samsung.  A number of different hardware manufacturers, manufacturers of smartphone hardware, will all use the Android operating system in order to provide a user interface for the hardware that they have sold you.  iPhone is hardware made by Apple corporation.  The operating system that the iPhone runs is called iOS.

And, just to make things even more confusing, the operating system also tends to be called a platform.  So we have a hardware platform, and a software platform.

Apple Corporation also makes computer hardware.  Generally speaking, this will be called a Mac.  It runs an operating system called MacOS.

Microsoft corporation hardly makes any computers at all, except for a skinny, and rather underpowered, thin laptop called Surface.  It is extremely unlikely that you have ever seen a Surface.  However, all kinds of companies, all around the world, make computers that will run the software (operating system) platform that Microsoft corporation makes, called Windows.

Just to make things even more confusing, you can buy software that will allow you to run Windows software on Mac hardware.  And you can also buy software that allows you to run MacOS on a computer that would normally run Windows.

(And you can do yourself a favour, and get yourself a free copy of an operating system called Linux, that will run on either Macs or Windows machines.)

So, we have (possibly confusingly but I can't help that) covered two different types of platforms: the hardware of the computer, and the operating system of the computer.

If you even understand what an operating system is, you will probably think of it as the interface with the computer.  How the computer looks, even when you started up and it has worked its way through its boot up process, whether you need to type in specific words as commands, whether you are presented with icons in order to call up the programs that you want, and all that sort of thing.

That is, in general, true.  Actually, it is much truer today than it was, say, forty years ago.  The interface for how you would use each program was basically up to the program.  Nowadays, programmers, when developing a program, do not need to make as many decisions about how the program looks, and what the interface looks like.  An awful lot of that is now built into the operating system, and the individual programs, or applications, simply call the functions dealing with the interface.  That is why so many programs look almost identical.  They appear in rectangular boxes on the screen, with a strip at or near the top which gives different areas of functions that you might want to use, such as file, or view, or help, and each of those subjects drops down a list of specific functions that you might want.  This is what everybody thinks that computers work like, or present as an interface, but it doesn't need to be.  Forty years ago, programs would present you with quite a variety of different interfaces, and so learning a new program meant learning a new interface, as well.  This current appearance and interface, used by pretty much all computers, started to appear more frequently in various types of computers, all based on a system called CUA, or common user access, that was invented by IBM.

But the thing is, while a lot of the parts of the user interface these days are supplied by the operating system, the operating system does an awful lot more for you than simply allow you a common interface display.

Much more important is the fact that the operating system provides a set of functions that pretty much all of your applications are going to want to use.  For example, if you want to read or write a file, the program that you were using, when you ask it to save a file, or to read some information from the disc, is going to me making what is known as a system call to the operating system.  Therefore, not every program is going to have to have the functions for accessing the disc, or sending information to the printer, or turning on the webcam, or sending some sound to the speakers, for itself and in its own programming.  All of these are handled by system calls to the operating system.

The operating system itself may make calls to other system utilities.  For example, while disc drives may be fairly standard, printers definitely aren't.  Printers will have different functions and capabilities.  And so, when you install a printer, the operating system is (generally these days automatically) going to go out and look for what is known as driver software.  It will find a driver for that particular printer, and therefore we'll have a separate piece of software which knows what that particular printer is capable of, and how to call on its specific capabilities.

But all of this starts to get pretty complicated pretty quickly.  At this point, probably the most important thing that you need to know is that the platform of the operating system has layers within its own layer.

So, now we are down to programs, or applications, or apps.  Some people will make distinctions between these terms.  Some people will say that apps are small programs.  Some people will say that programs, or applications, are made up of a number of different apps, with the different apps performing various specific functions.  This is, in my opinion, making things much too complicated.  In reality, a program, or an application, or an app, may be developed in a variety of ways.  They may be made up of a number of individual program files, or they may be amalgamated into one large application file.  In reality, as far as you are concerned, this is a distinction that makes no difference.  You can program in a variety of ways, and you can use one file, or many.  In operation, if you make an application with many files, you will be using the interface to call the various parts or functions of the overall program.  From the user's perspective, it doesn't make any difference.  And, in fact, from the computer hardware's perspective it doesn't make any difference, either.  Operating codes will be given to the central processor, and the central processor will execute those operating codes.  The central processor doesn't particularly care whether the operating codes come from one file or many.

The programming, coding, or development of the application may be done in a variety of ways.  The tools that the programmer will use may prefer to output one monolithic file, or a variety of small ones.  Again, it doesn't particularly matter to the computer, or to the end user, when all the development is done.  The user sees an interface, and the computer just sees a series of operating codes.  The operating system itself may have to take more actions if the program is in a variety of small files, rather than one large one, but that's the operating systems problem.  (And maybe that's why we have the layer of the operating system in the first place.)

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/hcw-302-coding-two-things.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/12/how-computers-work-from-ground-up.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/hcw-306-coding-opcodes.html

Sermon 64 - FFFF 2 - Rahab

Sermon 64 - Four Foreign Female Failures 2 - Rahab

Matthew 1:3-6

Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar,

Perez the father of Hezron,

Hezron the father of Ram,

Ram the father of Amminadab,

Amminadab the father of Nahshon,

Nahshon the father of Salmon,

Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,

Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,

Obed the father of Jesse,

and Jesse the father of King David.

David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife

Joshua 2:1

Then Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim.  "Go, look over the land," he said, "especially Jericho."  So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.

Joshua 6:25

But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho—and she lives among the Israelites to this day.

So, on to the second of the four foreign, female, failed ancestors in Jesus' genealogy.

Tamar may have played the part of a prostitute, even though some would probably want to argue that she never got paid, so she wasn't, technically, a prostitute.  There is no such ambiguity with regard to Rahab.  Rahab was a prostitute.  We are told that clearly, repeatedly, and, in referring to her, generally we speak of "Rahab the Harlot."

Her name might not, in fact, be Rahab.  Rahab, when used in other places in the Bible, seems to refer to Egypt.  Therefore, Rahab may be a nickname.  It might be a nickname referring to beauty, with regard to the splendor of Egypt, or possibly be a reference to gold and decoration.

The reference to Egypt might also be a reference to power or status of some sort.  In the previous sermon, about Tamar, we noted the reference to a shrine prostitute.  As discussed previously, this was common in the Canaanite religion.  It probably had to do with a practice for fertility rights.  It's possible that the Asherah poles that are frequently referred to in the Old Testament, are a reference to a fertility goddess.  So Rahab may have been an important prostitute, in that she might have been a fairly central character in a large temple or shrine that was part of the Canaanite religion.

Once again, referring to Tamar's story, there were probably shrine prostitutes who practiced their trade along the road, or out in the countryside.  But Rahab lived in Jericho.  Jericho was a substantial and large city, fortified with a wall.  A fairly significant wall, since Rahab's house was built into it.

The reference to Rahab's house was also is also an indication of status and power.  The Bible refers to Rahab's household.  She is, quite obviously, seen as the head of the household.  If she was an important temple prostitute, in an important temple, she was probably fairly wealthy, fairly powerful in the community, and also the breadwinner for the household, even if the household was just her family.  But having a house built into the city's wall would also seem to convey status.  You probably weren't allowed to have one of the houses built into the city wall unless you were fairly trustworthy.

All of this is, of course, speculation.  We are having to infer any of these points from the accounts and facts that we are told in the Bible.

What we are told in the Bible is that, in preparation for the invasion of the promised land, and the destruction of Jericho as a first step in this process, two spies go to reconnoiter Jericho's defenses.  Somehow, they meet up with Rahab.  Probably this would not be as unusual as it might sound, since a shrine prostitute might also be the sort of household where you could find a bed, even if you weren't known to the family.  So, approaching a prostitute, as a spy, when you were trying to prepare to invade the city, and asking the prostitute to hide you, might not be as strange as it sounds.

Once again, we have to infer some of this, since we really aren't given too many details of the story.

Rahab hides the spies.  She lies to the local authorities, and misleads them in a futile pursuit of the spies, in a place where she knows they are not.

And then she makes a deal with the spies.  And it's obvious that she has been thinking about this.  She tells the spies that the people of Canaan are afraid of the people of Israel.  More specifically, she says that the power of God, in supporting the people of Israel in their invasion of the land, is known.  Probably well known.  And she wants to make a deal.  She is willing to betray her own people, in order to save her life, and the lives of her family members.

Stated like that, it sounds pretty bad.  But consider the actual situation.

As I say, the inference that Rahab is relatively wealthy, and relatively well regarded in the community, is speculation.  But it is not completely unreasonable speculation.  Furthermore, she is not only an important member of the community, and likely wealthy, but she is probably an important person in the Canaanite religious belief and practice.  She is a prostitute, and, again somewhat by speculation, it's likely that she is a shrine or temple prostitute, and, given the major center in which she practices, probably a fairly important one.

So she is not just taking sides with Israel against her city or region.  She is taking sides with God, as opposed to Baal and Asherah.

Rahab is betting it all on God.  It is not overstating the case to claim that this is a leap of faith.

Rehab and the spies make a deal.  The spies add a couple of caveats, mostly with regard to ensuring that Rahab's house is identified when they attack the city.  The spies leave, the Israelites muster, they do the marching around, blowing trumpets, and shouting thing, the walls come a-tumblin' down, and the Israelites take the city, and destroy everything except Rahab's family.

Joshua honors the deal.  Rahab and her family survive the attack.  (The fact that they survived probably means that God honoured the deal as well.  Given that the city wall collapsed, there must have been some divine protection involved.)  We are told first that Rahab and her family live outside the camp, but then there is a mention that Rahab lives among them.  Rahab then drops out of the story.  We aren't told anything more about her.  (I got the idea from somewhere that she married one of the spies, but I now find that I can't find any support, from the Bible, that that ever happened.)  We do find in the second chapter of the first book of Chronicles that she must have married a guy named Salmon.  Not until we get to the New Testament, and the genealogy of Jesus, do we learn that not only is Rahab an ancestor of both David and Jesus, but that she is the mother of Boaz.  And Boaz is quite important in the next sermon in the series.  Rahab is David's great-great-grandmother.

Rahab's life must have changed quite a bit.  Possibly not as much as her previous neighbors, who all died, but still, it must have been a big change.  As I noted before, we are having to infer, without much evidence, and certainly with no direct supporting statements, but it isn't unreasonable to assume that her life in Jericho was one of social, and possibly even political, status, and likely wealth.  She was important in the religious life and practice of the community.

But she gives all of that up.  She gives up her community, her city, her people, her religion, her job, her wealth.  She throws in her lot with Israel.  She gives up Baal and Asherah to follow God.  Again making some assumptions, but not unreasonable ones, she probably does okay, because her son is a fairly wealthy individual when we meet him later on.  But that isn't necessarily a guaranteed thing, and it wasn't part of the deal that she made with the spies.  She just asked for her life and the life of her family, and was willing to give up everything else.

I'm having some difficulty in keeping these sermons separate, and speaking of the individual women, individually.  And particularly here, because Ruth, whom we are going to look at next, has an amazingly beautiful statement about this very thing.  Where are you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge.  Your people will be my people and your God my God.

That is, as I said, quite a leap of faith, to give up everything in order to follow God.

Four Foreign Female Failures series

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/sermon-63-fff1-tamar.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/sermon-65-ffff3-ruth-1.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/sermon-66-ffff4-bathsheba.html

Sermons

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

HCW - 3.02 - coding - two things

We have covered how to build computer circuits in order to perform certain functions.  That's the hardware side.  But you are well aware that in order to make computers do certain things you have to run software.  There is software to run the hardware, and there is software to make the computers do certain things.  The software that runs the hardware is known as the operating system.  The software to make the computer do specific things for you is generally known as programs, or sometimes apps.  So, how do we make programs or apps?

Computer programs do two things.  Now that is going to sound very strange, since computer programs do all kinds of things.  There are all kinds of computer programs.  There are office productivity programs, there are programs to make use of information and functions on the Internet, there are programs to allow us to make phone calls, there are huge numbers of programs that provide you with games.  There are all kinds of programs.  How is it possible to say that computers do only two things?

Well, by and large, all of these different programs can be divided into two categories.  One category of programs involves calculation.  The other type of programs do various forms of database management.  (Well, there is one other type of program, and that is a weird hybrid mix of both calculation and database management, and that has to do with data communications.  But we'll talk about that later, and, in fact, one of the sections or chapters of this course has to do with data communications.  But let's talk about the two basic types first.)

In the set of programs that have to do with arithmetic calculations, probably the first and most obvious class involves programs that present you with a calculator.  You probably have a calculator on your phone, you probably have a calculator buried somewhere on your computer, or iPad, or tablet.  Even if you don't use it very much.

The other category of calculation programs that you might think of would be spreadsheets.  Now, of course, spreadsheets do have a lot of involvement with calculations.  You want spreadsheets, or accounting programs, to add up columns of numbers, in order to get you a total of how much you spent on a certain category of thing.  But, actually, most of what goes on in a spreadsheet really belongs within the domain of database management.  It's relatively seldom that you actually get the spreadsheet to add up a column, or multiply the rent by the twelve months in a year, or some other actual arithmetic calculation.  Most of the time you are asking the spreadsheet to store the data that you enter into it as you spend money on certain things.  So, once again, it's a bit of a hybrid, but it mostly belongs in the database management area.  As a matter of fact, most people only use spreadsheets for database management.  Most people don't use database programs to store their information.  I regularly get a spreadsheet from an organization in town, and there is absolutely nothing on that spreadsheet that can be added up or multiplied.  They use the spreadsheet to keep their contact and phone list for the organization.  An awful lot of people do the same thing.

Then there's a field that you probably don't think has to do with calculations: artificial intelligence.  When I say artificial intelligence, these days, you are probably thinking of the generative artificial intelligence that relates to large language models.  Since most people see generative artificial intelligence in terms of chatbots, and therefore text and words, you may be surprised to learn that what is going on in the large language models is the building of an extremely complicated statistical model.  In other words, it's all calculations.  It's all about the calculations, in terms of probabilities of one word following another word, that goes into the building of a large language model.  And when we want to use the large language model to generate a response in a chat bot, once again there's an awful lot of calculation that goes into the probabilities that place one word after another in terms of the probabilities that one word will follow another in normal conversational text.  When you are interacting with the chatbot, you think it's all about words and meaning.  It's not.  The chatbot doesn't understand anything.  It doesn't know what the words it is putting in place actually mean.  It is only using they complicated statistical model to do the calculation about what word should come next.

But there's another factor when we talk about artificial intelligence.  Artificial intelligence, despite the fact that everybody thinks about large language models these days, isn't actually a thing, in terms of a single thing.  Artificial intelligence is a collection of different types of approaches, and another of those approaches also does a sort of calculation.  This is the field of expert systems.  Expert systems are a much older field of artificial intelligence than the recent large language models.  Expert systems don't actually use calculations as much as logic.  It uses logic in a way that is similar to the way we used logic to build electronic circuitry to form the hardware of our computer.  So, expert systems probably belong in this category of calculation, since logic is a form of calculation.

But we will also see that there are additional forms of artificial intelligence that belong in the database management category.

This also happens with regard to graphics.  There is one type of graphics, called vector graphics, where how to display a graphic depends on giving the computer instructions about what the picture is to look like.  These instructions tend to have to do with where you start, what direction you head, how far you go, or making a circle, starting with the center point, and creating a circle of a specific diameter.  All of these have to do with mathematical calculations.  So anything to do with vector graphics has to do with calculations.  We will talk a little bit later about the other type of graphics.

Most of the graphics that you see on web browsers, other than specific individual photographs, gets generated by vector graphics.  So web browsers fall into this category of programs that deal with calculations.  It's not just lines and circles that get calculated: it's also how do you arrange text on the screen so that it can all be seen and doesn't disappear behind something else.

But, once again, web browsers are one of those programs that fall into both camps.  And we'll deal with that a little later on as well.

In terms of programs that manage databases, pretty much everything else goes into that category.  The very first really formal course that I ever took in computer science was on database management, and from that day to this, it has provided me with an structure that has allowed me to effectively understand and diagnose problems (and provide solutions for) an astounding range of computer programs and systems.  For anyone going in to any field of information technology I recommend that database management be one of the courses that you take, and the sooner the better.  A word processor is a kind of a database.  We have text, and you can think about it just as a string of text, but we also have non-text things that we have to deal with.  Are there commands embedded in the text that tell us to do something with the formatting?  Is there a command to change the size of the font?  Is there a command to change the size of a page?  We have to understand these things, and the database as to what those commands are giving instructions to the computer in terms of how you display the text that goes into the file.  Even just the fact that there is a file, and that different documents are stored in different files, has to do with database management.  It may seem strange to think of a document as being managed in a database when the document itself is only one entry, but understanding it as a database helps you to understand how it works.  And that is, after all, what we are doing here: telling you how computers actually work.

We mentioned spreadsheets, and the fact that doing calculations is really only a minor part of what people use them for.  As I suggested in the example of the phone list, most people, when setting up a database, actually use a spreadsheet to create that database.  So, once again, here is an example of a program that will operate in both realms, and understanding whether you are doing calculations, or whether you are just organizing data, helps a lot in understanding what the computer is doing and how.

I mentioned that artificial intelligence comes in a variety of forms.  As mentioned, some of those fields of artificial intelligence do a lot of calculations, but some use approaches that deal primarily with text, and at least partially with actual meaning.  There is an extremely old, and actually really quite simple, program called either ELIZA or doctor.  It was intended as an approach to try and get computers to understand how people talk, and to operate as a kind of a psychological therapist.  It uses a specific psychological approach which really just reflects back, to the patient, issues that they raise as problems in their lives, in order to get the patient to clarify what the problem is, and, in large measure, to get them to solve their own problems.  It did this simply by identifying which parts of speech were structural, and which parts were meaningful.  It didn't have to understand the actual meaning of the words that were meaningful, just identifying them, taking them out of a sentence that the patient typed into the computer, and then reflecting it back to the patient as an appropriate question.  For example, if the patient complained about problems with their family, the computer would type back a question such as tell me more about your family.  As I say, this program is very old, and extremely simplistic in terms of the programming involved, but was extremely effective.  A lot of people felt that this very simple program was in fact a kind of person: they tended to identify the program as having a personality, and some became quite fond of it.

I promised to talk about the other form of graphics.  This is called raster graphics, and it is the way that photographs, if taken with an electronic camera, are stored.  The term raster graphics refers to the fact that they are simply stored as a map of dots.  The graphics file stores the information, and then, when needed, the file is called up and presented as a pattern of dots on the screen. Therefore, this basically just refers to a database of the files of the pictures.

Of course Web browsers use an awful lot of photographs as well, and so they use the same type of database management in terms of calling up images.  Not only that, but we can consider the entire World Wide Web as an enormous database.  We are using the links, and search engines, to find the information we want, in a database that spans the entire globe.  So, once again, Web browsers sometimes use calculations to create certain of their graphical outlines, but also used database management in order to get the information that they need.

And, of course, when we are dealing with social media, all social media platforms, regardless of how they supposedly differ; whether they handle text, or audio podcasts, or videos of movies, or short form videos, or supposed chat between the different users of the social media platform; are all databases.  They are databases with slightly different types of information stored, and different ways to store, and to access, the records that are stored on the social media platform.

And, as promised, data communications.  As I noted, data communications is a hybrid.  There are a lot of calculations that go on with regard to things like timing of the signals that are sent, and the analysis of the signals, and modulating data into signals, and demodulating the signals back into information.

But the enormous number of protocols that are involved in getting computers of different types to talk to each other, and effectively present information that one person has created on one side of the world, and another person is reading on the far side of the globe, mean that there are enormous databases of how these protocols work.  But the details of that we will get to later when we cover data communications as a subject in and of itself.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/hcw-106-logic-cpu.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/12/how-computers-work-from-ground-up.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/01/hcw-304-coding-layers.html