Back of the Envelope

And once again, I avoid seriously posting on a Saturday and instead bring you a webcomic review.

Sluggy Freelance -- Zoe's thinks it's time for the others to start paying their way around there. If only they could be paid for fighting vampires, ghosts, demons, and evil corporations. It's not like they don't pull their weight when the going gets tough, they're just not paid for the things they do.

Day by Day -- Air America gets the majority of the mocking this week.

It's Walky! -- Premarital hanky panky for Walky and Joyce?! Time to end the comic and kill everyone off, according to Willis's advertisement.

College Roomies from Hell! -- The guys have been divided, which is unfortunate, since they work better when they combine their superpowers. But now Dave's lost at sea, Mike's under the sea, and Roger's chatting up centaurs and unicorns.

General Protection Fault -- Fred coaches Dexter on the fine art of speed dating.

Schlock Mercenary -- Tagon manages to raise some money by selling off some excess cargo: Jeevee and Xinchub.

Apparently Mike Nelson from Mystery Science Theater 3000 is a devoted Christian. And here I thought Christians weren't allowed to be funny...

Old Post: My last post on my revising progress was here.

The above is the tentative title of my short story in progress, at which I arrived after much brainstorming that produced twenty-five rejected titles (not including the half-a-dozen or so working titles the story has had during its initial writing). Some of them were variations on this theme, some of them variations on other themes, but there were a lot of them before I came up with something that sounded not just good but appropriate. (One of the rejected titles sounded really good to me, an intriguing title that would definitely get me to look at a story. Unfortunately, it just wasn't right for this story. It might work for another story idea with which I've been playing, though, one inspired by a post on this blog, in fact.) I've just about decided that this story is worth the time I've put into it so far, which means I'll have to devote yet more time to it to make it presentable. I haven't yet started on the second revision, both because I've been busy this week, and because I didn't want to rush into it before I gave the first revision time to settle. I should start on it this weekend.

I don't want to talk too much about the story, but I will say that it's in the same world as Fire, and takes place in the time period between the events of "A Stranger in the Library" and of Fire. (Go here for more.) That's all I'll say for now.

New Post: It took a while, but I've made some progress, discussed above.

...to Spirit of America yet?

I'm not going to do the whole Dean Esmay bribe and threaten thing. You should just realize that it's a good cause. The situation in Iraq is about winning the hearts and minds of average Iraqis. There's a lot working against this, including terrorists, the nations who openly support them (Iran and Syria), the nations who may not directly support terrorism but who have an interest in seeing democracy fail in Iraq, propaganda outlets like Al Jazeera (who, even in their English language webpage have a section titled Conspiracy Theories, right up there with Sports and Weather--if they had Sports and Weather sections), etc. However, the single biggest force working for our side is the American military. They are doing not just what they're trained to do (killing the bad guys), but also what they're not trained for, though it comes naturally to them--helping people. They are the best ambassadors America has, and they're doing more to change the attitudes of Iraqis about the US than any propaganda machine the US is capable of running. If you want to see them succeed, if you want to see democracy flourish in the Mideast, then you should contribute to this cause. Click on the link below.

Update: While the fundraiser is now over, you can still contribute to Spirit of America here.

I don't know that this will be a series. To answer the question in full would take a long series of posts, and likely several years, but when I was discussing it with my small group on Monday, I explained how God kept surprising me with his "fittingness" (I checked: it's a real word). As I learn more about God, as I glimpse more and more of His mystery, the better everything fits in place, and the more I can say, "Of course, that's exactly as it should be." In some ways, it's like a scientific theory. A good theory should not only explain what we've observed, it should predict what we haven't observed yet, and new, even unexpected discoveries, should follow the theory, sometimes leading us to say, "Of course. We should have expected that." Here's one example, from my youth (I was probably 12 at the time):

I was pondering the question of why we call God "God." "God" isn't a name--it's not even a title--it's a classification. It's a hazy one, to be sure, having been applied to a wide range of immortal (and semi-immortal) beings with authority and influence over mortal events. Of course, I don't believe in any of those gods: Zeus, Odin, Moloch, or the like. And that, I suppose, is the reason why we simply call God "God." If there are lots of gods, you need names to tell them apart, just like we need names to distinguish us. But if there's only one god, he doesn't need a name, because there's no one to distinguish him from. Oh, that's no reason not to give him descriptive titles, which are peppered all through the Bible, titles such as the Lord of Hosts, the God who sees. All descriptive, none necessary to distinguish him. How cool, I thought. Of course God doesn't need a name.

Imagine my disappointment when I discovered God did have a name. Not a title or an appellation, but a formal name that he's claimed for himself. We know it by it's Latinized form, Jehovah, but the Hebrew, which was by the first century never pronounced aloud, is YHWH, also called the Tetragrammaton. The pronunciation would be something like Yahweh. If you have a King James Version Bible, everyplace you see LORD (in all caps), it's substituted for the Tetragrammaton (similar to what the Jews would do whenever they encountered the name while reading the scripture aloud). That discovery was disheartening to me. I suppose no one else will appreciate this, but in my mind it may God less, closer to the hundreds of national gods worshipped by the peoples appearing in the Old Testament.

That is, until I learned what YHWH meant. The name appears very early in the Bible, and is commonly used for God in Genesis, but it isn't until Moses asks God what he is called that we get an explanation:

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
(Exodus 3:14)

God's name means I AM. And suddenly I found my logic trumped. Not only does God not need a name, he doesn't even need a classification. It is enough that he exists, as he is the only thing which exists independently, self-subsistently. He is the origin of all other existence. God is, and the simple declaration of that fact is name enough for him.

I've found that most people are mightily unimpressed with this story: it doesn't prove anything. There are, in fact, other, less profound interpretations of what YHWH means. For me, though, it was an "Aha!" moment, one that showed me that God was greater than my expectations, greater than my philosophy predicted. But if God is real, if he is what I think he is, then isn't he greater than my imagination can predict? Only when the truth is revealed to me can I recognize its appropriateness. Going back to my scientific theory analogy, it's one more piece of evidence, unexpected but congruent with the theory: God is, and he has spoken to us.

Update: (4/26) I changed the name of this post from "Why I believe in God -- A small part of it, anyway" to "Why I believe in God: His Name." I figured a better name was worthwhile.

Old Post: My last post on this was here.

The Gerard Alexander talk was tonight at 8 pm. I took notes during the talk, of which these are a copy. Since they were taken as I listened, there may be some typos and such:

I can't speak for the audience as a whole, but the people directly in front of me are definitely hostile to the speaker. One guy says: "They’re not racist--they’re homophobic and racist...I’m here for a laugh. Maybe some of the individuals aren’t racist, but the party as a whole..." One girl says she's writing a paper about how the Republican party is inherently racist, and this is part of her research. I wonder if she has a clue what the talk is about. It doesn't sound like any of the people here have read the article.

I do intend to ask Ramesh's question if I get a chance. It's possible someone will beat me to it.

They're running late... it's already ten after and it hasn't started. Of course, I'm pretty sure Ralph Nader started late as well.

Okay, the MC is speaking--Noah, the chairman of CR.

Gerard Alexander is starting. He feels the need to defend himself against racism. He grew up in the US Virgin Islands, which is only 5-10% white. He found the way mainlanders dealt with race to be very different. While in the US, he and his friends from the Virgin Islands did their best to ignore race entirely.

He was surprised to find himself considered racist by association.

There is a strain of thought that the Republicans came to power by winning over the South, and they won it by becoming party of white solidarity, by pandering to white racists. The thinking is that the Republicans are defined by racism.

Many Republicans fear that there is some truth to this belief.

Dr. Alexander thinks the evidence for this is very poor. He thinks it relies on two kinds of evidence: the voting history of the South, and Republican policies on race issues.

The elections in the South. Basic history: South is not the only region with a history of racism, but it does have the strongest history of it, from slavery to segregation. For all of that time, voted solidly Democrat, including for progressive Democrats, who turned a blind eye to the racism of the Southern Democrats. During that time, Republicans most solidly supported civil rights, and had no voice in the South. After WW2, national Democrats broke with segregation, and Southern racists broke with Democrat party, looked for someone else. Voted for Thurmond, Goldwater, and Wallace. Thurmond and Wallace ran on states' rights, a codeword for segregation, and Goldwater did pander to Deep South, using the states' rights codeword. Winning the South is not chump change, and in the story, this is the sort of thing worth selling your soul for.

A couple of problems with that story. If the GOP did sell itself as party of white solidarity, should be able to make four predictions:
1. GOP should have made biggest inroads when and where the racial issue was strongest.
2. GOP should have a different voter profile in the South than its usual profile (educated, upper middle class), instead the Southern GOP profile should be that of the Wallace voters: lower middle class, less educated.
3. GOP should have been more popular among native Southerners than those who moved South.
4. GOP should, over time, have an older voter population, among those who were raised in more racist times.

None of these are true.

1. This is not the case. Republican party grew faster in Outer South rather than Deep South. Republican party started making progress in the South during Eisenhower’s time, when Republicans were the main supporters of civil rights laws. Eisenhower won the Outer South. The story looks much the same with Congressional elections. Goldwater is the exception, not the rule. [It looks like he answered Ramesh's question by conceding it.]
2. The Electoral Demographic of Republican voters in the South during this time are middle class, suburban, educated, the same as elsewhere.
3. Native Southerners vs. Immigrants -- In '60s, '70s, and '80s, the migrants self-identify as Republicans more than the native Southerners.
4. Into the 90s, the younger generations of Southerners identify themselves as Republicans more than the older ones.

Still, didn’t George Wallace's younger voters vote for Ronald Reagan? Does the fact that some of FDR's younger voters later vote for Wallace mean that FDR, and his policies, were racist?

They voted for Wallace in '68, and they didn't get anything. Nixon won without the segregationists in '68, by getting the Outer South--the Republicans demonstrated that they didn't need them. The segregationists had to settle, the same way the Naderites might have to settle for Kerry. Republicans didn't have to offer them much to get it.

The Emerging Republican Majority Kevin Phillips says that Republicans don't need to appeal to segregationists.

What about Republican Party's policies today? Does their policy use codewords? Goldwater used codewords. A policy is only a codeword if there's a legitimate position it also represents. If you think someone's using a code word, you have to discern between the legitimate and illegitimate.

If you don’t think opposing affirmative action is legitimate, then it's not a codeword--it's not hiding anything.

There's a difference between opposing a result (Blacks in good jobs), and between opposing the means (affirmative action). Difference between opposing Jews, and opposing Israel's policies.

Anti-welfare vs. anti-poor. We got welfare reform, didn't we? Many Democrats came around to the conservative view, that welfare was more harmful than not.

Anti-death penalty vs. pro-crime. Have to separate means from results

Questions:
1. Were the whites who moved to the South from the North more racists than those who stayed behind?
No evidence of that.

2. Is there so much accusation of Republicans for being racist?
Read The New York Times.

3. Now the Deep South is more Republican than the Outer South.
Now that it’s less segregationist, they’re more Republican. Why is this a problem?

4. Industrial-prison complex is racist.
Don’t know enough.

5. Republicans may look racist because they tend to go for upper middle class vote, not where Blacks are. So they tend not to be responsive to the Black vote. Need an alternative to affirmative action rather than just getting rid of it.
True enough. [At a later point he says that's what's necessary to improve the lot of Blacks--the alternative of Affirmative Action--is (1) Improving K-12 schools, (2) Making it possible for them to go to college, etc. There was more, but I don't remember the specifics.]

6. Why did Reagan start in South? Why do Republicans still use the codewords, if they’re not racist? Have the segregationists had an influence on Republicans, like they did on FDR in the New Deal?
Had to take the South, from Jimmy Carter. Because they are good words. Yes, racists have had an influence on the Republicans, and on the Democrats.

7. Why did Blacks move toward the Democratic party? Why do southerners locally vote for Democrats and nationally for Republicans?
Democrats spoke better for civil rights, but more than that, spoke better for the economic desires of Blacks. Many Blacks voted for Wallace when he dropped his segregationist platform. Southern Democrats are more conservative than national Democrats, so Southern voters are more promiscuous with their votes.

8. Why is there still racism? How does popular culture foster racism?
Don't think it's indigenous to human beings. Reflect on human history and realize how far we’ve come. Slavery and racism have a really long history. Look after September 11th, and how little violence happened. Popular culture has done more to lessen racism than to increase it.

9. But there’s still racism. Those who don’t grow up around Blacks are more racist, so the Northerners are really more racist than the Southerners.
[This sounds more like an argument that the Democrats are the racists.]

10. Republican policies are not intentionally racist, but are they that way in effect?
Certainly possible, but need to discuss specifics.

11. Why did George Bush speak at Bob Jones University?
He shouldn’t have. Many politicians flirt with people they shouldn’t. Democrats and anti-Semitism [Farrakhan?].

12. Covert racism better than overt. As long as we aren't acting it out, is it really better?
Deal with problems individually. We’re underestimating how far we’ve come, most of it not by state regulation, but by cultural development. Of course there's more to do, but we need to take a hard look at the best way to do it.

13. When Democrats supported civil rights, did segregationists go Republican?
First went for the segregationist party. In '64, went for Goldwater, who was more segregationist than the Republicans as a whole (one of only 2? Republicans to vote against the civil rights act). Threw in the towel by '72, and went for Nixon.

I've added an image at the top of the page, something I think is appropriate to this blog's title. The equation shown, by the way, is the energy of a simple harmonic oscillator, where n is an integer from 0 and infinity, indicating the energy level. I'd also like to add an icon, but I'm having trouble creating it.

Update: The icon should be working now.

Don't forget to contribute to Spirit of America. Click the link below.

Update: While the fundraiser is now over, you can still contribute to Spirit of America here.

Old Post: My post about Gerard Alexander's talk at Rochester is below.

Dean Esmay has picked up on Gerard Alexander's essay. Of course, I've been blogging about it since it was first mentioned on the Corner. I'll be attending a talk given by him at the University of Rochester tomorrow night.

New Post: My blogging of Gerard Alexander's talk is above.

The blogwar, that is. At least three blog alliances have formed in a contest to see who can raise the most money for Spirit of America, an organization which raises money to support charitable projects run by our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. I've joined the Liberty Alliance, run by Dean Esmay of Dean's World. If you'd like to contribute, supporting our troops (and, incidentally, the Liberty Alliance), please click on the link that will be appearing at the bottom of every post for the next ten days.

Update: While the fundraiser is now over (and I've removed the link at the bottom of every post), you can still contribute to Spirit of America here.

I first read about holographic storage around 1990. The idea is that you can store information in three-dimensions in a crystalline material which you can both write to and read from by crossing two laser beams and writing with their interference pattern. The two beams are a reference beam and a data beam, patterned by a 2-D mask, and storing that image in a light sensitive material. The reference beam can then read the data by projecting the data image on a photosensitive array. By changing the frequency or angle of incidence of the reference beam, you can store multiple 2-D data masks in the same block of material, multiplexing the images together and reading them out individually, vastly increasing the amount you can store.

Back in 1990, I was looking forward to when holographic storage was available on every desktop. Of course, that day's still not here, and I was wondering what had happened to it. Well, it hasn't gone away entirely, and there are companies still working on it. Via MIT's Technology Review (not available without a subscription, I'm afraid):

You could store a whole lot of stuff on a one-terabyte computer disc--say a million novels, 250,000 MP3 song files, or hundreds of full-length movies. A Lucent Technologies spin-off is hoping to bring you that kind of capacity using a long-talked-about technology: holographic storage, in which a laser records data in three dimensions on a polymer medium. The technology can store up to 300 times as much data as traditional optical drives of the same physical size, and the startup, Longmont, CO-based InPhase Technologies, says it will start selling the holographic drives next year.

Unfortunately, it's not yet rewritable, although InPhase hopes it will be in a couple of years. And even then commercial availability looks to be four years away, and these estimates tend to be optimistic. InPhase Technology has a website, and the explanation of how holographic storage works is here.

Doc Rampage has this to say about one-time pads:

The problem with one-time pads is that the pad contains as much information as the message and it requires a fully secure channel because if anyone can intercept the pad, he can easily decrypt the message. If you have a fully secure channel with enough bandwidth for the pad, why not use it to send the message? One-time pads are really only useful when you have two channels, one secure and one insecure, and you don't always have the secure channel available. Usually the non-secure channel is a wide-area network and the secure channel is some guy on a plane carrying a CD. In these cases, you can use the secure channel to send the pads whenever you can and you use the non-secure but faster, more reliable, or more widely available channel to send the messages.

This seems like the perfect time to talk about quantum cryptography, or as it's more accurately known, quantum key distribution, which proves once again that there's an exception to every rule, and it's quantum mechanics. The idea is to distribute some amount of data which will be used as the key to encrypt the message you want to send. So this data you exchange, the key, is the equivalent of a one-time pad, distributed securely. Why not just send the message this way? Well, as we'll see, QKD is very inefficient, and only a quarter of the data gets through, which would be pretty useless if you were sending message data. It's also vulnerable to eavesdropping; the trick is that you can tell when it's being eavesdropped.

Let's say you have a public channel, which can be eavesdropped. One party, Alice, wants to send a message to another party, Bob, but is worried that it could be eavesdropped by a third party, Eve. (These are the standard names used in the quantum key distribution literature.) However, this channel is capable of carrying not just regular bits, but also qubits. This is simple enough to imagine, since sending individual photons in essence sends qubits down the channel. Photons also make it easier to explain how the process works, so we'll stick with that. Alice's photons are linearly polarized, in 4 different directions, 0 degrees, 90 degrees, 45 degrees, and 135 degrees. If you use a polarizing filter, then orthogonal light can't get through the filter. If your filter is at 0 degrees, then the photon doesn't get through if it's at 90 degrees. However, due to the magic of quantum mechanics, a photon polarized at 45 or 135 degrees has a fifty percent change of getting through since you can decompose it into a 0 degree and a 90 degree component. Similarly, a 45 degree filter will block 135 degree polarized photons, but pass 50% of the 0 and 90 degree photons. There's no way to tell what the original polarization was. If you have a 0 degree polarizing filter, and a photon gets through to your detector on the other side, then it may have been polarized at 0 degrees, or it could have been polarized at 45 or 135. If the photon is blocked, then it may have been polarized at 90 degrees, or at 45 or 135. So we have two sets of two polarizations which are orthogonal to one another (0-90 and 45-135) but not orthogonal to the other set.

Alice takes a string of random bits, a, and decides on the polarization from a equal-length string of random bits b. For the kth bit in each string, if a(k)b(k) is 00, then she sends a photon polarized at 90 degrees. If a(k)b(k)=10, she sends a photon polarized at 0 degrees. Using a 0 degree polarizing filter with a photodetector on the other side, measuring a photon indicates that a(k) is 1 and measuring no photon indicates that a(k) is 0. If a(k)b(k) is 01, the photon Alice sends is at 135 degrees, and if a(k)b(k) is 11, the photon is at 45 degrees. So if b(k) is 0, the photon should be measured with the 0 degree filter, if b(k) is 1, it should be measured with the 45 degree filter. However, neither Bob nor Eve have any way of knowing this. Instead, Bob randomly chooses the filter with which to measure, using random string b'. The results of the measurement gives a string of a'. If there's an eavesdropper, Eve, she can also try to measure it, but there's no way to measure a photon and then send it to Bob. It's also not possible to copy a photon exactly and measure the copy. Eve could try measuring the photon by guessing at the correct polarization, then send a new photon to Bob based on her guess. If she guessed that the photon would be either 0 or 90 degrees and used a 0 degree filter, she could send Bob a new photon at either 0 or 90 degrees based on her measurement, and if she had guessed correctly, the photon would be at the correct angle. However, if she guessed incorrectly, it would be at the wrong angle. If Bob also measures with the 0 degree filter, it won't make much difference, so if Alice, Bob, and Eve all used the same polarization (a 1 in 4 chance), Eve would have successfully eavesdropped. If Bob measures with a 45 degree filter and the original photon was in the 45-135 set, while Eve measured and resent at 0 degrees, then there's only a 50% chance he'll get the correct value.

Once Bob tells Alice he's gotten the message, the two compare their b and b' strings. This is done publically, so Eve can hear what's being said. They then toss out all the bits where b and b' disagree, where Bob measured at a different polarization than Alice sent, since for each of those bits a(j)=a'(j) only 50% of the time. All the remaining bits should agree. So next they randomly choose about half the remaining bits to compare. There'll probably be some errors just due to the difficulty of sending single photons over long distances, but if the error rate exceeds a certain threshold, then they can know that someone's been eavesdropping on their communication. In that case, they can scratch the attempt and try again. (However, if Eve was smart, she may have eavesdropped only a small number bits, thus settling for a partial key while keeping below the threshold error rate.) If they decide they weren't eavesdropped, they need to correct for errors in the transmission by information reconciliation. Information reconciliation is a form of error correction, doing parity checking on random subsets of the shared string (a and a'), discarding the last bit each time so that Eve gains no new information (a parity check of a set of bits sums all the 1s and determines whether the result is odd or even; any single bit in a set can change its parity, so if you discard a bit without disclosing its value, you reveal no new information by revealing a set's parity). The subsets are chosen to be small enough so that each is unlikely to contain more than one error, and if an error is found, the subset is bissected and the parities checked again until the error is located. This is done repeatedly, with different, randomly chosen subsets, to negate mistakes caused by selecting subsets where an even number of errors may have given a false parity check. Let's say this is done, but Eve still has some information about the key--not a lot, else they would have detected her. Information reconciliation neither increases nor decreases the amount of information Eve has, since if you discard a bit she knew, she then learns what the parity of the remainder of the subset is. Privacy amplification reduces the information available to Eve, even if she's intercepted some information, while reducing the total number of bits in the key. One way of doing this would be to publically select a permutation of the remaining bits in a=a' (without sharing any of the values), then divide it into blocks of a certain size, and using the parity of each block to form the new key. This is a pretty inefficient way of doing it, where the total number of bits in the new key, r, equals the original number of bits divided by the block size. However, it drastically reduces the amount of information that Eve has, since Eve only knows the parity of a block when she has all the bits in it. There are more efficient functions, but the smaller the final key is compared to its original length, the less information available to Eve, even if she managed to get some information from eavesdropping.

The remaining bits form the key, which can then be used to encrypt the message Alice wants to send. Depending on degree of privacy amplification (how much you're willing to reduce the key size) and the error threshold (how many errors you'll accept before concluding that someone's eavesdropping), the distributed key can be made arbitrarily secure.

One thing you'll notice right away is that QKD is very inefficient. Even before information reconciliation and privacy amplification, you're down to about one-fourth the number of bits you started with. However, you can't expect any provably secure communication over a public channel to be efficient. This form of quantum cryptography (there are others, different in details but similar in concept) has been demonstrated in a lab environment, and at distances of up to 100 km. This particular application of quantum information is in the early stages of commercial application.

I didn't write all of this from memory, although I have studied it before. I needed to look up the details, so I used Nielsen and Chuang's Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, and this useful website.

Update: Doc Rampage gives a... uh, simpler explanation. Also, I edited for clarity.

Dean Esmay reports that the blogwar to start collecting money for Spirit of America starts tomorrow. I'm not listed on the Alliance blogroll, but I did receive the e-mail. Until Dean confirms that I'm part of the Alliance, I'll be unable to mobilize my vast Internet audience--all three of them--to contribute to the effort.

I haven't blogged much today. Aside from my church small group earlier tonight, I was in the lab all day at work. I've been learning how to do laser trapping and cooling, or more accurately, how to get a laser up and running at the right wavelength so you can use it for laser cooling. I've never done much work with laser optics before (I'm a superconducting Electrical Engineering guy), so it was fun and informative. I suspect that once I've been doing it for a while, it'll become pretty tedious. I'll probably be in the lab most of the day tomorrow as well, so I don't know how much blogging I'll be doing.

I've been adding to the blogroll, and I thought I'd point out the new entries. The first, Mostly Cajun, is the view of the world from Southwest Louisiana. The writer's probably to the right of me, and his language is rough at times, but an entertaining read nonetheless. Intolerant Elle writes a lot about abortion, but also covers a wide range of topics from a Christian perspective. Finally, Dean's World is one of the bigger blogs (he gets links from Instapundit all the time), and he's writing in what he calls the "Liberal Tradition." From his perspective, though, liberal means free, not leftist.

Update: Oops, I forgot to add Parablemania. Jeremy Pierce is a Christian philosophy student from Syracuse, and his blog shows tight logic.

I've finished the first revision of the story, which means it's time for the second revision, which generally takes even longer.

The way I write, the first draft is like a rough sketch, containing the basic outline of the story, but hazy on the details. I place all sorts of little notes in the story, along the lines of [NOTE: Describe this room in more detail.], [NOTE: Look up details on ancient Roman construction techniques.], [NOTE: I need to clarify the logical connection to show why the detective would suspect this guy.], or [NOTE: Place scene here.] It's messy, but I'm in a hurry to give the story its skeleton. The first revision has the big job of filling in all these little details. If I do it right, there's no more need for the notes when I'm done. Then comes the second revision, where I print out the whole story and read through it out loud, making changes to how it sounds and flows. I find this helps a lot, especially when it comes to spotting things that sound good in my head but really stupid when said out loud. It also helps me to make sure each character's style of speaking is consistent and just fits. Anyway, I mark up the hard copy of the story a lot when I do this, and the next step is to go back to the word processor and make the revisions there. Once this is done, the story is ready to share--with my close friends who can advise me of whether the story makes sense and is any good. Once I've gotten their input, I make the corrections they've suggested (if I agree with them, anyway), then read through it one more time, fixing any errors that have cropped up due to all the revising.

At that point, the story is "done," at least in the sense that it's ready to share with the public. This doesn't necessarily stop me from going back and revising it again, but I'm pretty reluctant to do that once it's been published, even in the web format.

New Post: I finally have a tentative name for the story, above.

I've been leading a group which gets together to study Philip Yancey's The Jesus I Never Knew. I thought I'd share a passage from it (p. 219):

One detail in the Easter stories always intrigued me: Why did Jesus keep the scars from his crucifixion? Presumably he could have any resurrected body he wanted, and yet he chose one identifiable mainly by scars that could be seen and touched. Why?

I believe the story of Easter would be incomplete without those scars on the hands, the feet, the side of Jesus. When human beings fantasize, we dream of pearly straight teeth and wrinkle-free skin and sexy ideal shapes. We dream of an unnatural state: the perfect body. But for Jesus, being confined in a skeleton and human skin was the unnatural state. The scars are, to him, and emblem of life on our planet, a permanent reminder of those days of confinement and suffering.

I take hope in Jesus' scars. From the perspective of heaven, they represent the most horrible event that has ever happened in the history of the universe. Even that event, though--the crucifixion--Easter turned into a memory. Because of Easter, I can hope that the tears we shed, the blows we receive, all these will become memories, like Jesus' scars. Scars never completely go away, but neither do they hurt any longer. We will have re-created bodies, a re-created heaven and earth. We will have a new start, an Easter start.

This is a great book, and I highly recommend it.

Not to be alarmist, but someone ought to be alarmed (via Instapundit):

Jordan's King Abdullah revealed on Saturday that vehicles reportedly containing chemical weapons and poison gas that were part of a deadly al-Qaida bomb plot came from Syria, the country named by U.S. weapons inspector David Kay last year as a likely repository for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the nightmare scenario? The one where the terrorists get hold of WMDs and use them against the US and its allies? If these are the missing Iraqi WMDs, this shows that we should have moved sooner, ignored the UN and invaded a year earlier, before Saddam had a chance to send the WMDs off to where they could be used by the terrorists. Whether they are or not, this shows we need to do something about Syria. I thought we could wait. I was pretty sure that Assad would come around, that he might already be negotiating, and King Abdullah at least believes that Assad had no knowledge of this attack, but is he willing and able to deal with the terrorists and their supporters in his own country? Or is he one of those supporters himself? I think that unless he starts showing Libyan-style cooperation, we may have to move against Syria, without the luxury of waiting for Iraq to settle down and the resolution of the November election.

Update: At Letters from Babylon, Jeremy Frank notes that while plenty of other news sources talk about the chemical nature of the planned attack, CNN does not. It's always possible that the chemical part is based on bad intelligence--there have been plenty of other scares that proved false, and I hope this is one--but with a source as high as King Abdullah, you'd think it would be worth reporting.

New Post: Apparently the attempts to break up this plot are still in progress, as discussed above.

Here are my major posts from the previous week.

The Harmony of the Gospels -- I quote from all four Resurrection accounts. Don't miss the follow-up post on the similarities and differences.

Galileo: Other sources -- A follow up on an earlier post, I quote from another source to confirm some of the details about Galileo's difficulties with the Catholic Church.

Ted Kennedy's Vietnam -- I explain why Iraq won't be George Bush's Vietnam, but why it could be John Kerry's.

The Progressive Church -- The first in a series of posts about liberal Christianity, its good points and its bad.

Democratic Advertising -- I point out that the ad which called for Rumsfeld's execution (figuratively, at least) was, aside from inflammatory, also poorly researched. This post appeared in Right Wing News's sidebar for a couple of days.

Blogging Bush's Press Conference -- I live-blog Bush's press conference.

Gerard Alexander at Rochester -- Gerard Alexander, the author of "The Myth of Republican Racism," is giving a talk at Rochester. I'll be attending, and if you have any questions you think I should ask, please pass them along.

Spirit of America -- I offer to join the blogwar between Michelle Catalano and Dean Esmay -- for a price to be named later.

The Shroud of Turin -- My sparse thoughts on the Shroud of Turin.