For weeks, republicans have been pushing the idea that either a) the Cubans are drilling in Cuban waters off the coast of Florida; or b) that the Chinese are drilling for oil in Cuban waters off the coast of Florida.  The only problem of course is that this is demonstrably false.

More recently, republicans have started talking up the idea that off shore drilling is much safer than it used to be, and that during hurricanes Rita and Katrina, there were no oil spills.  Except, um, that’s not really true either.

And then yesterday, Bush lifted the executive coastal drilling ban put in place by his father.  According to the NY Times, he said:

“With this action, the executive branch’s restrictions on this exploration have been cleared away,” he said Monday. “This means that the only thing standing between the American people and these vast oil resources is action from the U.S. Congress.”

And, yeah, in case you were wondering, this is also not true:

1. Oil companies already have drilling rights and leases on large amounts of land that they are not currently drilling under.  Allowing them to drill off shore does not mean that they necessarily will
2. Development of the drilling sites is 10 years away.  So the soonest the oil would have an effect on supply is 2018.
3. The amount of oil that we are talking about is relatively small.  While there are a lot of estimates about the totals, the key is the daily amount.  Putting this into perspective, the world uses about 74 million barrels a day of oil (about 84 million barrels of oil plus oil equivalents).  The US uses a quarter of that - around 21 million barrels per day.  At it’s peak, most estimates I’ve seen are that off shore drilling plus drilling in the ANWR would generate about 250,000 barrels per day - a mere drop in the bucket.  If you consider the amount the US and the world are projected to use by 2018 (assuming unrestricted supply), you find that all of that drilling is estimated to reduce the price of oil by a few dollars per barrel.
4. Finally, over the next 20 to 40 years, the US is (or more to the point, should be) committed to using less oil.  The current G8 targets are to cut CO2 emissions by 50% over the next 40 years.  That seems to imply that we need to be using much less oil than we are now - starting very soon.  Far be it from me to suggest that the selection of CO2 targets was disingenuous, so taking these folks at their word, we should skip the drilling and start working on the alternatives.

I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised that discussing oil brings out the stupid.  It’s a very touchy subject in the US.  I came across one good reason for this in Kevin Phillips’s two recent books: “American Theocracy” and “Bad Money.”  Phillips notes that in the same way that knowledge and use of coal was the key to the British empire and knowledge and use of wind was the key to the Dutch empire before that,  the key to US power is the knowledge and use of oil.  So any discussion of using less oil or not having enough oil, strikes directly at the heart of US power.

However, oil is a finite resource.  If the US wants to retain its power in the second half of the 21st century, we need learn to use other, renewable sources of energy, and the continued focus on maintaining cheap oil supplies are not going to help.

July 4th, along with Thanksgiving, is one of my favourite holidays.  That may surprise some folks.  It’s not like the house is decorated in red, white and blue.  I’m not wearing a flag pin, the Pledge of Allegiance makes me uncomfortable and I’m not that into fireworks.  But external trappings aside, I consider myself to be a very patriotic person.  I just don’t define patriotism as being synonymous with “flag waving.”

Patriotism to me is not about loving your flag, or thinking that your country can do no wrong.  To me, patriotism is the love of the ideals that founded the country.  Thinking that your country can do no wrong or that you should love the flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance is no more than nationalism.  If you had been born in any other country, you would be equally “patriotic” to that nation.  The United States was not born from such nationalism, instead we were founded with a belief in 18th century enlightenment values.  The first paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence are filled with such ideals:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

As a country, we have not always lived up to these ideals, but it is the ideals themselves and not the trappings that are important.  This is the reason that the president is subject to the rule of law.  This is the reason that criticism of the government is a patriotic act and that refraining from such criticism when justified is an act of cowardice.  It is only when citizens criticize and elected officials act on such criticisms that the country can improve and come closer to the ideals that we were founded upon.

Have a happy 4th of July.

• Seeing a “Republicans for Obama” bumper sticker on the car in front of me
• Finding that 5th Season is starting to carry beer and wine making supplies
• Gardening (more or less)
• Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks”
• Receiving ~1.5″ of rain Sunday night… after taking the dogs on a walk
• Getting TurboGears to work through fastcgi
• Knowing that it’s only a four day work week coming up

Presumably there were other things, but these are the ones that come immediately to mind

Supporters of the bill say that it will promote critical thinking in science classrooms.  Well, hey, who couldn’t be against critical thinking?  Well, since the bill is supported by creationist Discovery Institute, I guess me.  But at least I’m in good company:

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington-based advocacy group, said the bill would promote teaching creationism in public schools and said some teachers might use supplemental materials produced by fundamentalist Christian organizations.

“It’s time for Louisiana to step into the 21st century and stop trying to teach religion in public schools,” Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of the organization, said in a statement. “Laws like this are an embarrassment.”

In essence, the bill allows science teachers to inflict their own opinions and beliefs on to students instead of teaching actual science.

Maybe I’ll start claiming to be from a more respectable state, like Mississippi. :-/

As a benchmark, I tend to think that a business organization will see about 15% turnover in a year. An academic institution, maybe 5%. The last 12 months at the old job has seen something close to a 20% turnover, prompting me to suggest to friends that there needs to be a web-based application to stream line the process. You could have work flow, automatic announcement letter generation, employee exit reviews, etc. Someone’s suggested name… iQuit.<org>.edu. Perfect

Ironically, several months before I left the organization, I started getting concerned with turnover and was probably thought a troublemaker. But again, the leadership course I took, the books I’ve read, etc. All suggest that when your best people are leaving, it’s a bad sign. Even if they are nominally leaving for personal reasons, their happiness in their current job was factored in and found wanting. Turnover means that the organization faces a loss of productivity as a replacement is found and trained. Skills and institutional knowledge are lost.  In my opinion, even a termination indicates a problem - i.e., what went wrong in the hiring process such that you hired a poor candidate? For a good explanation of why turnover in all its forms is a problem, read Peopleware - it focuses on software development, but can be applied to IT as well.

In contrast, I was reading Richard Clarke’s “Your Government Failed You: breaking the cycle of national security disasters” on the plane ride home from vacation. Near the end, he describes how to build an effective organization, borrowing from Admiral Hyman G. Rickover’s 1981 speech to Columbia titled “Doing a Job.” In the speech, Rickover describes the management (”leadership” wasn’t the in-fashion word at the time) style he used in building the first nuclear submarine. Clarke summarizes the Rickover’s points as follows:

• People, not organizations or management systems, get things done.
• Management is hard work.
• Subordinates must be given authority and responsibility early in their careers.
• Get rid of formal job descriptions and organizational charts. Define responsibilities, but define them in a general way so that people are not circumscribed.
• Complex jobs cannot be accomplished effectively with transients. Short rotations ensure inexperience and non-accountability.
• Don’t downplay problems to save face.
• Flatten management structures, but empower the remaining managers and hold them responsible.
• Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous impatience.
• The man in charge must concern himself with details. If he does not consider them important, neither will his subordinates.
• Develop simple and direct means for finding out what subordinates are doing and what the status of projects is.
• Don’t let your inbox set your priorities. Unimportant but interesting trivia pass through every day.
• Check all work through independent and impartial review. In engineering and manufacturing, industry spends large sums on quality control but the concept of impartial reviews and oversight is important in other areas also.
• Important issues should be presented in writing. Nothing sharpens the thought process like writing down one’s arguments.

Those seem like pretty good goals to me. I bet they reduce turnover too.

On Monday, I placed an order for a new computer.  Nothing fancy, but still a significant improvement.  Well, it showed up yesterday - 3 days later.  Apparently Dell built it at their new Winston-Salem plant and between a quick build and a 3-5 day shipping that turned around over night, I got it much sooner than I hoped.  Hrm, maybe the Dell incentives were worth my share of $250+ million dollars in taxes…  probably not.

So far, the new machine is great.  Mirrored 250 GB drives, fast DVD burner, 2 GB of RAM and actual USB 2.  The last meant that while it took 6+ hours to write our old files to a temporary hard drive, it only took 10 minutes to write ‘em to the new machine this morning.  Progress!

Sorry for the lack of posting for the past few weeks.  K and I were out in Yellowstone and just got back last night (or was it this morning?).  The advantage of Yellowstone is no news.  No television, no computer, no phone.  I suppose there was a newspaper, but we didn’t read it.  So what’s been going on while we’ve been away?  Has Clinton conceded yet?  Have gas prices dropped yet?  Is it still fashionable to conserve water in North Carolina?  I guess I already know the answer about Clinton and gasoline.  Since we’re on a well, I think water conservation is going to be a way of life for now on, so that doesn’t matter either.

Quick recap of the trip, more later:

Saturday night, we made it into Bozeman.  The rental car company had given away our midsized care and wanted to put us in a mini-van.  Lovely.  After pitching a small fit, they told me to come back in the morning.  We did that and they gave us a Prius - score!  We wound up driving about 1300 miles over two weeks and the Prius must have saved us ~$200 over the car we had last year and maybe $300 over the mini-van.  BTW - a Prius in the mountains is like a Prius in the city, but instead of stopping and starting you go up and down mountains.  We were averaging over 57 mpg.

It was cold in Yellowstone.  Really cold.  The first few days we were there it snowed 15″.  In fact, it had snowed so much recently that the cabin owners had to put us in a different cabin since the first was flooded (we’re not certain if the cabin flooded or the sceptic system, either way, those cabins didn’t open by the time we left - two weeks later).

The cold altered the timing of a lot of the animals in the park.  Raptors (hawks, eagles and owls) were several weeks late in building their nests.  There were more wolves and bears lower in the Lamar valley.  The advantage of going to the same place at the same time of year is that you get a sense of that place.  You know what’s normal, what’s abnormal.  What belongs and what has changed.  It lets us spot wildlife more quickly than the casual tourist, and in this case it helped us to know that this was an unusual year.  Of course, K says that the reason you go back year over year is that it gets into your soul.  I’m not too inclined to be metaphysical so you have my understanding of the advantages described above. If we are going to be metaphysical about it, I would say that the place does not get into your soul, instead, you leave a piece of your soul in the place and the only way to feel whole again is to go back to the place and find the missing part of your soul.

The first Thursday was our aniversary - 15 years if you can believe it.  We couldn’t go out to dinner because none of the area restaurants were open for the season yet.  Instead, we went out Friday which was the start of Memorial Day weekend and the official opening of the summer (did I mention it snowed/hailed almost every day we were there?) Yellowstone season.

We didn’t do too many hikes because of the weather.  We did our first on that first Friday.  When we got back to the cabin, it was empty with a note on the door saying that they had moved us to (yet another) cabin.  Excuse me?  I was really not happy with being moved, but you make the best of things.  The new cabin was quieter and by the river.  Unfortunately, it was also smaller, colder and less comfortable.

We continued with the occasional hiking and wildlife viewing (finally seeing and photographing the otter at Trout Lake).  Saturday my Sony Reader stopped working.  That hurt since I had only brought one other book and while the “Notes on the Constitutional Convention” by Madison is interesting, it’s a bit rough as your only book for week.  So we bought some books at Tower Falls and Mammoth - what can I say, I read a lot.  As an addendum on the Reader issue, Borders book store (where I bought the reader) was great.  I called ‘em this afternoon and they said that they were happy to replace the Reader so long as I had the receipt.  That just made my day - I can’t tell you how used to the Reader I’ve gotten in just the past month (minus the week it was broken).

The next week we goofed off for a bit.  Thursday we went to look at a different cabin rented by some friends of ours in Cooke City (three miles up the road).  Their cabin was gorgeous.  They’ve just added a kitchen which makes it perfect.  We’ll probably be reserving a spot next year.  We also visited Dan who has been having a bit of a hard time this spring.  All of the birds he wanted to photograph are either late or gone.  He invited us on a hike to try to find a great grey owl in the area.  We met at 5pm, drove to the site and must have hiked for two hours off trail through some beautiful meadows without seeing any more than pellets, whitewash and a single great grey feather - stupid bird.  It was still a good time.

Friday we watched the wolves for a bit (they had made two kills the night before with a grizzley taking one).  We watched the few birds we knew of, including nesting sand-hill cranes, bald eagles and an osprey nest.

Saturday, we took off for home, spent about 14 hours traveling, finally making it in an hour late.  These days, I would call that a win.

I’ll post some pictures later, but that was the trip in a nutshell.  Now to readjust to the “real” world.

• The electronic paper is very readable.  On my plane trip, I must have read for several hours straight with no more eye strain than if I had been reading a paper book.  The legibility is good regardless of font size.  You might still want to increase the font size if your eyes are tired, but otherwise, there is no need.
• The menus and button layouts are pretty reasonable.  You can page forward or back.  There’s a up-down-left-right cursor that is used to move around on a page.  Using the number buttons on the right, you can jump to an arbitrary page in the book.  These buttons double as a quick jump to a menu item on the Reader’s standard menus.  One gripe, you can only move to different links using up/down on the cursor, left/right don’t do anything.  At GB, paideka mentioned that it would be interesting to see what Apple did with the layout and look and feel of a reader.  Agreed
• Battery life appears to be as advertised: 7,500 page turns per charge.  Keep in mind that a page on the reader contains only about half the content of a standard paper back (depending on page layout and font size).  Still, around 3,500 pages of paper back text is still pretty good.
• Updating the screen is slow.  It takes about .5 - .75 seconds to update the screen.  A few ramifications:  1) this is almost un-noticeable while reading text; and 2) using the cursor keys is painful, you deal with the update time for each cursor pressed - where ever possible I use the numeric shortcuts.
• A third ramification of the slow update time is that the Reader, and almost certainly any other reader using this generation of e-paper, is unusable as a reference book.  When I use a reference book, I flip around quite a bit.  Forward to the index, back to the text, forward many pages to the next topic, etc.  I suppose if the reference book had a really good index, it might be better, but for the most part, this is still not a good tool for referencing which is a real shame.
• The bookmarking system is good.  Each book keeps your place in the book.  The top level of the reader keeps up with the last book you’ve read and your place in that book.  You can set any number of bookmarks in each book and then access the bookmarks on a global or a per book basis.  It would be nice if the reader also kept a list of most recently read, rather than just the single most recently read book; but that’s a small issue.  Typically, I’ll just set a bookmark when I pause in reading, then delete it when I pick the book back up.
• PDF conversion still leaves something to be desired.  I’ve looked into this a bit.  The converter I’m using converts PDF -> HTML -> LRF.  The PDF -> HTML conversion uses pdftohtml (surprised?) which is good in some ways, but still leaves off certain things (like images!), at least as used by the reader’s converter.  Part of this is due to conceptual differences between PDF and HTML.  HTML marks up text, flagging paragraphs, noting images, etc.  Ideally, all of this is passed to the browser which handles the layout.  PDF will have none of that.  PDF consists of a set of primitives that indicate what text (in which font and size) should go in which location on the page.  There is no markup of paragraphs, instead, each line of text is described individually.  There is no easy way to reconstruct paragraphs from a PDF file (as a research note, I wonder if you could use a partially observable markov decision process?). That said, minus the missing images, the LRF result is definitely readable.

So overall, I’m pretty happy with the reader.  The biggest issue is the refresh time on the electronic paper and I hope that will improve over the next couple of years.

p.s. If you’re curious, so far I’ve read: Free for All (a history of open source),  The Authoritarians (a sociologist’s take on a personality type and how it affects politics) and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (which I haven’t read in over 20 years).  I’m currently reading Nietzsche’s The Anti-Christ and Bruce Sterling’s Hacker Crackdown. 

• the first 6 pictures were taken in August 2007 when she was about 16 grams
• the second 9 were taken in January 2008 when she was 25g and we were trying to tempt her into eating by giving her meal worms
• the next 6 were taken yesterday before the release - 125g and big enough to defend herself
• the last 3 were taken at the release in Jordan Lake

Good luck little turtle

The Sony Reader hasn’t gotten quite the notoriety of Amazon’s Kindle, even though they both have the same display and the Sony came out a month earlier.  I suspect that’s because Amazon hyped the Kindle and after all, it was tied to the largest (or is it second largest?) book seller in the world.

So, why did I go with the Sony and not the Kindle?  A handful of reasons:

• Price - the Sony is $100 cheaper.  I’m hoping that this isn’t the last version of electronic paper to come out and that things will continue to improve.  That being the case, why should I spend the extra money.
• Linux use - okay, technically, the Kindle doesn’t require any computer to use it, but I suspect that I would want to attach it to a computer anyway.  If for no other reason than to save the transfer cost for anything I send to the device that isn’t purchased from Amazon.  Beyond that, libprs500 is very nice software.  It handles file conversions, can download RSS feeds and convert them to the reader’s format, etc.
• Books - I almost certainly won’t buy electronic books for the reader.  Not that it’s not a good device for reading, but I’ve got two concerns:  1) I don’t want the books I buy (or music for that matter) to be locked up by DRM software, things change quickly and I want my books to follow; and 2) the price point for electronic books isn’t right.  Why would I pay the paperback price for an electronic version that has essentially 0 duplication and distribution costs?  Instead, I’ll probably start piping the newspaper to the reader and will catch up on a lot of the content of Project Gutenberg that I’ve been meaning to read.

Last night, I added about 100 books and short stories to the reader.  I think that’ll be enough to keep me for a while. 

Happy reading

1. How does the world see me?

Lightnin’ Hopkins - No Education

Ouch. Apparently the world sees me as an academic poseur. I guess I can live with that, but it’s a bit rough to see.

2. Will I have a happy life?

R.E.M. - Exhuming McCarthy

Hrm. I guess this means that I will be persecuted for my perceived communism by a raving lunatic. I’m not a big fan of persecution, but I suppose that being harassed by an idiot like McCarthy might be fun for a while. Of course, the downside is that I’ll be professionally ruined.

3. What do my friends really think of me?

Barenaked Ladies - Just a Toy

Is this fortune done yet? I’m guessing this suggests a clown. That’s very sad.

4. Do people secretly lust after me?

Steppenwolf - For Ladies Only

I think I’m going to take that as a “yes” and move on.

5. How can I make myself happy?

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes - All My Lovin

I guess that means to stay married, but with a punk beat. I can do that.

6. What should I do with my life?

John Lee Hooker - I Cover the Waterfront

Is this saying that I should go to sea? Maybe I can work with rdc at MOTE

7. Why must life be so full of pain?

The Pogues - Dirty Old Town

I think this says that life is full of pain because of the breakdown of community and the social safety net. We all have it in our capability to make other people happier and we choose not to.

8. How can I maximize my pleasure during sex?

They Might Be Giants - Which Describes How You’re Feeling All the Time

Bahahaaa! In Chasing Amy, there was a discussion of “constant information” during sex. I think we’ll go with that and move on.

9. Will I ever have children?

Men Without Hats - Intro: Eloise

Yes - and at least the first will be a girl named Eloise, poor girl.

10. Will I die happy?

XTC - Miniature Sun

Interpreting this involves knowing a little family history or maybe it’s family legend - those things are hard to keep straight. Shortly after the Civil War, the Union wanted someone to retrieve a load of dynamite from Pennsylvania in the winter. Since dynamite is unstable at cold temperatures, it would take an idiot. Enter a some of my great-uncles (or maybe great-great-uncles) who managed to get themselves blown up in the attempt. I take this to mean that I too will die in a ball of fire. So, does that mean happy? Probably, after all, I am an engineer

11. What is some good advice for me?

Blues Traveler - Gotta Get Mean

Boo. Hiss. I demand a new fortune that’s less cynical.

12. What is happiness?

Blues Traveler - Lost me there

Ha - that sounds about right. I’m really better with contentment than happiness and after all, I’m entering that time in my life when people are supposed to be less happy. Check back in 15 years or so and I’m supposed to be on the upswing of that one.

13. What’s my favourite fetish?

Steppenwolf - Don’t Step on the Grass, Sam

Okay, so not a pot smoker. Never been a drug taker. If I had to guess, it’s a reference to the promotion of civil liberties which is something of a fetish for me.

14. How will I be remembered?

Squirrel Nut Zippers - Low Down Man

Ouch. And we end the fortune the same way we began it with - insults to my character. I think I need a better (or maybe worse) random song selector, or maybe better music.

The case stems from Lilly Ledbetter who was a manager at Goodyear.  She was paid significantly less than her male counterparts for the same job.  Everyone agrees that she was discriminated against on the basis of her gender.  She was awarded $3.5 million in back pay and punitive damages.  Goodyear appealed and the supreme court ruled that congress had written the law so that you had to file suit within 180 days from the first discriminatory paycheck not the most recent.  Ledbetter, who didn’t know her colleagues’ salaries until years later was SOL.

The bill seems pretty simple, clarify that the clock resets with each discriminatory paycheck.  But unfortunately, that didn’t work for the republicans who filibustered it on Wednesday.  It was pretty much a straight party line vote.  Both of the democratic candidates for president voted for the bill, most of the republicans voted to uphold the filibuster.  One exception, that mavericky maverick John McCain.  McCain believes that women should be paid equitably, but doesn’t want to encourage lawsuits, so rather than take a stand and vote for or against the bill… he dodged and didn’t vote at all.  Way to take a stand!

The republicans claim that they too want to see equal pay for equal work, but that they don’t want to encourage lawsuits.  Well, guess what - that’s just tough.  There are two ways to deal with corporate bad behavior: regulations (where the executive branch can fine a company) and the your-on-your-own approach of allowing lawsuits.  For as long as I can remember, republicans have been campaigning against both of these means to rein in bad business behavior.  They campaign against regulations (”they make our businesses less competitive”) and they campaign to limit your ability to sue when they break the law (”tort reform to keep money out of the hands of trial lawyers!”).  So apparently it’s the official position of the republican party that companies should be able to do what they want and if you don’t like it, you can go to Canada.

My hope is that the democrats use the republican’s opposition to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to beat the snot out of the republicans in the general election.

Since the new version of Wordpress has a gallery feature, I thought I would take some pictures at the most recent feeding and see how the gallery worked.

The only trouble I had with the upgrade is that there’s some new SQL instructions in the code of the form “SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT foo)…”  That syntax was bombing on my ISP which was causing the AJAX updates to not happen properly.  It turned out that the sqlite3 driver uses this syntax and the sqlite2 driver has a fallback syntax since count-distinct isn’t supported.  Unfortunately, Dreamhost’s sqlite3 is about three years old and also doesn’t support count-distinct.  The solution was easy enough - copy the sqlite2 driver’s syntax into the sqlite3 driver.  Once that was done, everything worked great.

I suppose a better solution would be to get Dreamhost to upgrade sqlite, but somehow that seems like more effort.

So far, the email to the pastor is from just one person. A woman, about my age who seems to work at the church. Even though I’ve let her know that she’s got the wrong person, I’m still getting emails from her. They aren’t personal, they seem to be generic inspirational messages, perhaps sent out one email at a time to a distribution list. The one I received Friday took me back to junior high church youth groups with it’s pop religious sentiment and included the following story:

A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed.

As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation.

They talked about so many things and various subjects.

When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said:

“I don’t believe that God exists.”

“Why do you say that?” asked the customer.

“Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn’t exist. Well me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children?

If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can’t imagine a loving God who would allow all of these things.”

The customer thought for a moment, but didn’t respond because he didn’t want to start an argument.

The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop.

Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed beard.

He looked dirty and unkept. The customer turned back and entered the barber shop again and he said to the barber:

“You know what? Barbers do not exist.”

“How can you say that?” asked the surprised barber. “I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!”

“No!” the customer exclaimed. “Barbers don’t exist because if they did, there would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside.”

“Ah, but barbers DO exist! That’s what happens when people do not come to me.”

“Exactly!” affirmed the customer. “That’s the point! God, too, DOES exist! That’s what happens when people do not go to Him and don’t look to Him for help.

That’s why there’s so much pain and suffering in the world.”

Now, I don’t want to tar everyone with the same brush, but this is just silly. It’s the kind of argument that you would fool a 5 year old with. Normally, I would just ignore it, but it hits a bit of a nerve for me. The first part is the problem of evil, inelegantly expressed.

The problem of evil has interested me for about 20 years now. In fact, it has interested me since before I even knew what it was called. The typical formulation is how can an all knowing, all powerful and all good god allow evil to exist in the world (or more harshly, how could evil exist without having been created by god)? The fact that there is evil is proof that either god does not exist or that he is not all knowing, all powerful and all good - which essentially amounts to non-existence. There are several standard answers to the problem of evil, none of which are particularly convincing.

One answer is to suggest that the evil we perceive is not really evil at all, but is in fact a good that we can not perceive. This strikes me as a giant cop-out. It asks us to deny the evidence of our own minds as to the evil of some acts. Moreover, a plain reading of the Book of Job suggests that god did allow the devil to torment Job as a test. Job’s family and children were killed for no other reason than to see if Job would be true to god. That sounds more like some sort of bad, co-dependent relationship than a good deed in disguise.

The second answer is to suggest that a world without evil is impossible, even for an omnipotent god. This is also a cop-out in that it sets limits on the power of a being defined by his omnipotence.

Another answer was put forth by the Jesuits: evil is exists because of a) original sin; and b) free will. This is clever and at least has the advantage of not trying to suggest that there is no evil. There are some problems. Original sin is the sin committed by the first man and woman and pass on to all of their descendants. This bothers me in part because Adam and Eve are clearly allegorical and were not actual people. So in essence, eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and falling from grace is a metaphor for giving up the innocence of being an unthinking animal and becoming consciously aware of the world, our place in it and how we have a choice over our behaviors. As an allegory, it’s a good one. But it also means that original sin was not the sin of Adam and Eve as passed on to their descendants, but that original sin is a term given to the basic nature of mankind. As such, you can easily ask why did god create mankind with a sinful nature. The answer to that is typically free will. But that’s really no answer at all. Leave aside that I don’t think that free will can be proved to exist (another topic for another time), giving free will to a creature with a sinful nature ensures evil. Free will to a creature without a sinful nature would not guarantee evil.

I could go on a lot more here, but suffice to say that the problem of evil is a rather interesting theological and philosophical question, so seeing it expressed in the first half of the email above interested me. And then I read th