Category Archives: Arts & culture

Computers suck up time

Last night, Carol said that suddenly her laptop shut down, and then told her to restart. My gut clenched — that’s exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago when the logic board died on my laptop. Sure enough, she couldn’t restart her laptop. Today, she drove it up to the Apple store in Cambridge, where I’m sure they’ll tell her to send it in for major repairs.

Of course this had to happen just when she is nearing the deadline for her book. Fortunately, she had been backing up her files pretty regularly. Unfortunately, she lost a day or so of work because she hadn’t backed up at all yesterday. Her bad experience reminded me to back up my own computer — it had been over a week since I last backed up.

Then today, my sister Abby called to talk about her blog. She’s been experiencing a flood of comment spam, and wanted help in controlling it. I thought it would take us ten or twelve minutes. We chatted on the phone while I installed various spam controls. Then I saw that WordPress had come out with a major security upgrade yesterday, so I started to install that. Upgrading proved to be a time-consuming process, mostly because I did not read all the directions ahead of time, which meant I had to repeat several steps. While I waited for files to upload I got to chat with Abby, so the whole process was actually kind of fun. Finally, after an hour and a quarter, we were done.

Now I have to go and upgrade the four other blogs I administer — this one, and three others. And I had better go and back up my desktop computer at work.

Even though they’re supposed to be time-savers, computers sure seem to suck up a lot of my time.

How did I miss this?

Pamela Wood Browne, the administrator at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Long Beach, California, has a blog she calls “Finding my UU Soul.” I found some pretty good posts on church administration, one of my passions — such as this post about using automated phone answering systems in a church office: link. She’s also got a pretty cool office chair: link.

And of all the Unitarian Universalist blogs I have checked on Technorati, she has the second highest “authority” ranking, with over 200 blogs linking to her in the past 180 days. (In first place is a home schooling blog written by a Unitarian Universalist, with some 567 links from other blogs in the past 180 days, but you won’t find much mention of Unitarian Universalism on it.)

As Philocrites continues to cut back on his publication schedule — with a resulting dip in his Technorati rating — I’ve been waiting to see who will take his place as the most authoritative Unitarian Universalist blog. How appropriate that a church administrator would move upwards into the top blogging spot….

Hey, doesn’t that guy on TV look familiar…

Yeah, I was on TV tonight — for about two seconds, on channel 10 news in Providence, in a story about how First Unitarian is transferring ownership of a late 19th C. painting to a local museum. The painting, by Edward Emerson Simmons, son of a Unitarian minister, depicts the boy Jesus, so there I am on TV talking about Jesus. They also show me moving a refrigerator. I kid you not. Link.

More about the painting at the First Unitarian Web site: link.

Scams and dishonesty

In the most recent newsletter here at First Unitarian, I included a warning about scams and dishonest practices. I just heard from another minister who has been seeing similar scams, and is running a similar warning in his congregation’s newsletter. So I thought I’d share the warning, slightly modified, with the readership of this blog….

*****

There are a number of scams and dishonest practices going around right now of which you should be aware.

First, some Sunday morning scams. I have noticed that on a number of Sundays over the past few months, we have had people showing up just as our worship service ends and asking for money. In each case, the story is almost exactly the same: the person or the couple has been traveling from one place to another place, and their car happened to break down in New Bedford that morning, or the night before, and they are hoping that the good people of First Unitarian will give them some money. (The cover stories change over time. Six months ago, we were hearing a different story, with people came saying they needed eleven dollars to buy a bus ticket to Boston. But eight years ago, when I was at the Lexington, Mass., congregation, we were hearing the “we-were-traveling-and-broke-down” scam.)

While it is possible that one or more of these people are honest, this is in fact a common scam run by people who go to places of worship, a scam which I have seen over and over during my years working in urban and suburban congregations. I have instructed the staff of First Unitarian to say that we give no money out to anyone, and that we keep no cash on hand anywhere in the building. If anyone approaches you during coffee hour asking for money, refer them to the minister, or tell them that they should come to the office first thing Monday morning and ask for the minister.

Second, email scams. I have been seeing a huge number of email scams coming into both the office email address and my own email address. My current advice is simple. Do not respond to any request for money that you receive via email. Do not click on any Web site address that appears in any email message — retype the Web address yourself into your Web browser. And never, never, never give out any personal information via email. Even if the email message seems to be a legitimate charity, do not send money or personal information via email.

Third, when you are in any house of worship, remember that houses of worship are public buildings. Hold on to your personal belongings at all times, especially purses and wallets and anything valuable. There are thieves who specifically target houses of worship, both during worship services and the rest of the week, because these thieves know that some people let down their guard in a house of worship. Suburban churches are probably more vulnerable to this kind of theft, but last January a thief stole a laptop computer and digital camera during a worship service from the organ loft here. So guard your personal belongings.

The world is mostly filled with good people, but unfortunately just a few bad people can make things miserable for all the good people. Please be careful.

Oo, oo, I get one of those…

I don’t usually post images on this blog (I’m trying to keep my bandwidth down because I’m a cheapskate), but I can’t resist this one. Thanks to Boing Boing, I found the Order of Science Scouts, who are dedicated to “an ideal where science communicators can meet firstly, for drinks; secondly, for communicating; and ultimately, for networking.” They are issuing merit badges. I actually qualify for one of the merit badges.

Waitaminute, you ask, how can Dan (who is after all a minister) consider himself a Science Scout? Well, campers, I started out my academic career as a physics major, switching to philosophy as an undergrad under the impression that I would be able to answer deeper questions about cosmology as a philosopher than as a physicist, and because I mistakenly thought I’d meet more women. And I figure I actually do communicate about science just like a real Science Scout, since I have asserted on this blog that the current president of the United States is anti-science; and I sometimes identify birds, mammals, invertebrates, and plants that I mention on this blog in binomial nomenclature (e.g., Carol and I saw a Phoca vitulina on our walk today). Admittedly, my use of binomial nomenclature is pretty sad, but I do feel that calling George Bush anti-science should get me enough points to call myself a Science Scout.

So here’s the merit badge I qualify for: The “I left the respectable sciences to pursue humanistic studies of the sciences” badge, in which the recipient is now probably having a lot more fun than he/she did before….

science merit badge

I would also qualify for the “Experienced with electrical shock” badge (Level III), except I got shocked when working as a carpenter, not in the physics lab. I won’t admit to qualifying for the “setting things on fire” (Level III) badge. Or the “freezing things” badge.

Bon mots on reading and writing

On Friday and Saturday, I attended Boskone 44, the 44th annual convention of the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA). This was not one of those conventions filled with people dressed up like Star Trek characters — NESFA conventions tend to focus on books, and the people who attend tend to love readings and writing, and you’re more likely to hear about decoding and deconstructionism than about Klingons. Herewith my notes from some of the panel discussion I attended:

Religion in Fantasy

Authors Judith Berman, Debra Doyle, Walter H. Hunt, and Jane Yolen began by discussing the question, “Is it too simplistic to say that C. S. Lewis’s and J. R. R. Tolkein’s fantasy promotes Christianity, while Philip Pullman’s subverts it?” The panel questioned whether Tolkien’s books can even be considered Christian. Jane Yolen, who is Jewish, summed it up when she asked, “Tell me what’s Christian about them.” The overall arc of the story is perhaps more reminiscent of Norse mythology.

As for Philip Pullman, the panel could not agree on what religious viewpoint he might have, if any. Only half joking, Judith Berman said, “Maybe he’s a crypto-Swendenborgian.” All four authors agreed that C. S. Lewis used more non-Christian elements (fauns, talking animals, etc.), than explicitly Christian elements. Berman, who first read Lewis’s “Narnia” books at age 13, talked about the “anger” she felt when she first realized that the books were supposed to be Christian apology in disguise. Debra Doyle, however, said that her 4th-grade self was fascinated to realize that an author could use such allegory in a book — it was the first time she had gotten an allegory in a book.

The best remark of the hour came from Jane Yolen. Yolen brought up the fact that as a Jew, she has written Christmas books. She said that when she was on a book tour, a child once said to her, “I thought you were Jewish. How could you write Christmas books?” To which Yolen replied: “Well, I’ve written murder mysteries, too.”

What Can’t You Read?

The question behind this panel discussion was simple: what classic books do you feel you should read, but every time you sit down to read them, you’re gravely disappointed? Fred Lerner, a librarian and bibliographer, admitted that for years he was unable to get through Joyce’s Ulysses. Patrick Nielsen-Hayden, who’s an editor at Tor Books and who said that he cultivates a short attention span to get through slush piles, remarked of the best-selling book Dune, “I can’t get more than three chapters into it before my brain turns to concrete.” (Personally, that’s the way I feel about Ulysses.)

Nielsen-Hayden also asserted that “reading is like a trance state, neurologically, physically, mentally,” and that anything that an author does to break that trance state can make a book unreadable for a particular reader. Then Lerner took the discussion off into a fascinating tangent on decoding — a reader has to be sufficiently adept at decoding in order to get into a trance state. Lerner quoted critic and author Samuel Delaney, who has said that reading science fiction requires a very specific subset of decoding skills. The panelists speculated that those who enjoy reading science fiction have to be introduced to the genre by their early teens to become adept at that subset of decoding skills. (This prompts me to speculate that this phenomenon might apply to other genres of writing.)

The Religious Life of Techies

…where “techies” are those who work in some high technology field, e.g., computer science. A couple of bon mots during this panel discussion from Brother Guy Consolmagno, a Jesuit who is also an astronomer employed by the Vatican:

A techie working in Silicon Valley supposedly said to Consolmagno, “You know, with religion, you’re not selling truth, you’re selling tech support.”

When asked by a member of the audience how he could reconcile his work in astronomy with having to accept the creation story in Genesis, Consolmagno replied that taking Genesis literally was a “Protestant heresy.” To which another member of the audience added, “These people say that God is omnipotent and all-powerful — except when it comes to knowing how to use allegory and metaphor.”

Fashion faux-pas

Peacebang, the minister who writes the blog Beauty Tips for Ministers, sent an email message to me yesterday. Apparently she is being interviewed by a Major Daily Newspaper, and she gently and politely asked me if I’d mind if she held me up as an example of How Not To Dress. They might even include a photograph of me as a Bad Example. I told her I wouldn’t mind a bit, under the condition that they mention that I’m the minister at First Unitarian in New Bedford — as the great Universalist P. T. Barnum once said, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

The only down side is that Peacebang is going to point out exactly those things that Carol has been trying to get me to change for years now, so this article could make things a little difficult on the home front (I have visions of Carol doing the I-Told-You-So dance). But it will be worth it. We will post it on the First Unitarian Web site: “Come to First Unitarian and see Dan Harper, the minister criticized for his poor personal appearance in a Major Daily Newspaper! You will marvel at the fashion atrocities you will see!”

If the story actually gets published, I’ll provide a link to it. In the mean time, to demonstrate my geekiness I’m off to Boskone, the annual convention of the New England Science Fiction Association. I doubt I’ll have a chance to post tomorrow, so see you on Sunday.

An independent bookstore

I love Central Square in Cambridge: the co-op supermarket, the street life, the Cantab Lounge, and especially the independent bookstores: Seven Stars with its excellent selection of scriptures of the world’s religions (used and new), Rodney’s with its remainders and its used poetry books, and Pandemonium with the most comprehensive selection of science fiction and fantasy in the Boston area….

…and as it happens, Pandemonium is in financial trouble. They moved from Harvard Square to Central Square — 4 Pleasant Street, to be exact, around the corner from the Cantab — but the move took much longer than expected, and they have cash-flow problems. But you can help….

…Tyler, who owns the store, is selling t-shirts. You can pre-order a very cool t-shirt here: link. And so what if you don’t live in the Boston area! — here’s your chance to buy a cool t-shirt and save an independent bookstore. I already ordered mine. Buy a t-shirt, save an independent bookstore!

Tyler is posting updates on the store situation on his LiveJournal page: link. If you want to place your t-shirt order in person, visit the store or you can see Tyler at Boskone this weekend. Even though his predicament has been posted on BoingBoing, he’s still facing an uphill battle — help out if you can.

A day in the life

There I was this afternoon, typing away on my laptop, when suddenly everything froze. I tried all the usual things — nothing worked. So I drove up to the Apple Store in Cambridge where, to make a long story short, the techs determined that my laptop had to be sent off the be repaired. Fortunately, I have back-ups of my most important data here on my office computer, as well as hidden away on my unlimited stoage space on AOL’s server.

The Apple store is in the Cambridgeside Galleria Mall, not someplace I’d ordinarily go. So as long as I was there, I firgured I’d look around and see what it was like. I wasn’t particularly interested in any of the stores or restaurants, but the people were fascinating: families with children, a few pre-adolescents on their own, teenagers in small groups, young adults, and even a few middle-aged people like me. I seemed to notice that everyone was surprisingly well dressed. Then I figured out that many of the young people were playing the mating game when I heard some young men behind me talking about pretty girls they had an eye on — the crowds were so thick I couldn’t tell which pack of young women they were looking at, but that helped me realize why so many of the young people looked like they took such care in dressing. I did not fit in — not that I was badly dressed, but I was sensibly dressed for the cold weather and slushy sidewalks, as opposed to being fashionably dressed.

After I left the mall, I walked over to the MIT Press Bookstore. I fit in better there. Some geeky-looking young women browsed the cognitive science books; had I been twenty years younger, I would have been fascinated by them (I mean, cognitive science, wow). One man was sitting in the corner with the computer science books and I don’t think he moved the entire half hour I was in the store. I browsed their selection of books on ecology and the environment, but wound up buying a book called On Physics and Philosophy. I’ve lost my interest in malls, but bookstores still do it for me.