Parsec Internals

April 22, 2013

I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking through the internals of Haskell’s Parsec monadic parser combinator library. This post is intended as a brain dump so what in six months when I’ve forgotten it all I can come back and remember what I’ve forgotten. This post is based on parsec-3.1.3 which is the current version as of April 22, 2013. Read more

Baseball

October 28, 2012

The San Francisco Giants have just won the World Series. They deserved it. What a final game! The Dodgers will be back next year. Some may wonder why, when I live 90 miles from San Francisco, I continue to root for the Dodgers. Here’s why: Read more

Sermon: The Debate

October 15, 2012

This is the text of a sermon I gave at All Saints Episcopal Church, Sacramento on October 7, 2012. It is based on the readings from the Revised Common Lectionary for Proper 22, year B. Please see my standard sermon disclaimer. Read more

Ford's Burgers Closes after ADA Suit Filed

October 01, 2012

Ford’s Burgers, a classic burger joint on Sutterville Rd. across from Land Park, closed yesterday after a more then half a century in business. The business had been struggling for a while but a lawsuit from a serial ADA litigant and quadriplegic, Carmichael attorney Scott N. Johnson was the straw the broke the camel’s back. (Coverage from New10) Read more

One Crazy Idea for the Political Season

September 25, 2012

I find modern politics frustrating. No, it is not that I don’t care about the issues. It is that the issues are not discussed. Politicians have learned that being vague and using feeling language it the way to win elections without tying themselves too closely to any unpopular positions. We elect black box politicians based on how their branding makes us feel. I read, for example, the Lincoln-Douglas debates and feel sad that such candor and actual debate of specific issues does not happen in contemporary politics. Read more

Issues of Translation: Pronouns, Gender and the Bible

September 21, 2012

Beginning in the mid 1960’s a new issue arose for biblical translation. Society became fare more aware of gender in language and with it both the overt and subtle forms of discrimination that gendered language embodied. Over the next decade the English language was pulled, sometimes gently, but often with much discord, towards a more gender neutral form. This article looks at the issues that caused fro translators.

Issues of Translation: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English and the Issue of the Virgin Birth

September 14, 2012

On the fourth Sunday of advent this year, we will hear a very strange thing in the reading of scripture. The bible will quote itself, and have a hard time doing so. The readings will be Isaiah 7:10-16 and Mathew 1:18-25. To understand why this happened and why it gives translators such headaches, I want to take you through the early history of biblical translation.

A Trip to Lassen

September 10, 2012

This past Saturday, we took a trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park. We had wanted to get away for a while and this was a good excuse. Read more

Issues of Translation: The Bible's Poetry

September 07, 2012

The biblical text has also been sung, prayed, and generally felt through the heart as well as the studied intellectually. The bible contains a great deal of poetry. In this article we examine those translations that attempt to transmit the linguistic feel of biblical verse.

A Response to "A Growing Church is a Dying Church"

September 06, 2012

A few facebook friends have been sharing a link to a blog post titled “A Growing Church is a Dying Church” by Pastor J. Barrett Lee who blogs at The Theological Wanderings of a Street Pastor. This is actually one of a number of different blog posts I seen recently from clergy who feel like their congregations expect too much from them. The thrust of this article is that clergy cannot grow the church, God does that. What they can and do try to do is to make changes to a church that will allow it to grow. These changes and the new people they might attract, necessarily lead to the dying (in the sence of Good Friday) of the original stuck congregation. Read more