This is the Old Wolf's journal. It's where I engrave the comings and goings and doings of my walk through this green earth. My goal in life is to serve those whose paths I cross and help them achieve their fondest dreams and reach their God-given potential. May what you read here please you.
 
May I become at all times, both now and forever
A protector for those without protection
A guide for those who have lost their way
A ship for those with oceans to cross
A bridge for those with rivers to cross
A sanctuary for those in danger
A lamp for those without light
A place of refuge for those who lack shelter
And a servant to all in need.

Here's a perfect example of something that rubs me the wrong way.

While installing AVG free edition, I'm presented with this little dialog:



Notice the options I was given, and how they are nested. First of all, I don't like opt-out installations. These boxes should be unchecked by default. Second, logic (and long experience with GUI's) would dictate that if you uncheck the top one, the bottom one will also be disabled. Not so:



So if you're not paying attention, Yahoo! becomes your default search engine, and you open yourself up for more spam.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love AVG, it's worked wonders keeping my system free from malware. Someday I may actually upgrade to the paid version just to show my gratitude. But rule No. 1 for me is "All installations must be opt-in and not opt-out." Checking crap on my behalf that I may not want, and might miss if I'm in a hurry, is underhanded and deceptive. AVG's a good enough product that they shouldn't stoop to this particular tactic.

*yarg snarl snap yarg*

I think I'd like to be able to play the piano well. I mean, really well. I had lessons as a kid. I love music. I love to play by ear. And, I wasn't willing to put in the exceptional effort to become an exceptional player. So, since you asked...

(Newser) – A Massachusetts principal has banned an unlikely word from school grounds: meep. The nonsensical word—it's from the character Beaker on The Muppet Show—has for inexplicable reasons gone viral. Meep was such an epidemic at Danvers High—where students were using Facebook to plan a mass meeping—that principal Thomas Murray sent out an automated call to parents warning of immediate suspension to any student who uttered it. "It has nothing to do with the word," Murray tells the Salem News. "It has to do with the conduct of the students. We wouldn't just ban a word just to ban a word."

There's hope yet. If I can just get "hqiz" on the national stage...

I have this cousin. He's about as ivory tower as you can get. Russian scholar, dabbles in painting, published playwright, ecclesiastical leader, university professor, patriarch, you name it. I'm surprised he condescends to watch TV at all. So what's his favorite show?

Law and Order. And I think that's a hoot.

I quote you a part of an email that he sent me the other day:

"What most engages us--a veritable addiction--is the TV series, "Law and Order." By now we relate to detectives Eliot and Olivia like our own kin. The series must help its various Manhattan based guest actors pay the rent, and all perform brilliantly. The realistic settings and directorial detail are unsparingly lavish in their variety. Unlike sci-fi and other fantasy plots, the scenarios come right out of the daily news, underscoring the latest controversies. Realistically, the good cops don't always win and justice doesn't always prevail. Talk about "right questions about human behavior"-- the series deserves the Olympic Gold. (I'm obviously applying for a p.r. job with its by now fabulously wealthy producer, Dick West.) There's even a Russian version with similar background music and effects, but neither it nor its actors come close."

So there you have it, L&O fans: a ringing endoresement from the rarified atmosphere of academia. It doesn't get any better than this...

Created by Auto Insurance.org

Tell that to the last 4 insensitive peace officers who ticketed me for insignificant things like doing 140 mph in a school zone, taking out 7 stop signs in a row, sending 5 doddering old crones to the emergency room and giving the Hawai'ian Good Luck sign to the Mayor's convoy.

Sheesh...

Huge hugs to r_caton who for no ruddy good reason gifted me with some wonderful old time radio CD's - Glums Take It From Here and Lines from Grandpa's Forehead

'Tis good to have friends...

That's right! It's time to post the 5 things that you are currently addicted to, in numerical order!

	5. TNG Good thing I have the DVD's...
	4. Diet Dr Pepper Just don't ask about my BP, Dr P...
	3. The Artwork of Brooke McEldowney
	2. Traveling Especially to make a difference in someone's life.
	1. The Internet All the knowledge in the world, at my fingertips. Of course, there are downsides...

Certainly there are others... I choose my addictions carefully.

This film was like riding Top Thrill Dragster for three hours straight. The CG effects were as good as I had expected them to be, and there was a pretty good story behind all the disaster scenes. Pretty good acting, too, for the most part. Glad I went to see it on the big screen.

Made a contribution to the One Million Giraffes project.

In a recent discussion on Facebook, one of my colleagues raised an interesting question which, although certainly not new, prompted me to craft a more detailed answer - for her, and for myself - than the size-limited FB comments permit.

The background: One of my friends sent me this picture to post:



and you can imagine that this prompted a bit of a discussion. Somewhere in the thread, I responded,

"Hey, I didn't write the sign, I just posted it for my friend who wasn't sure how. I have my own philosophy around theism and its antithesis, and it boils down to "Don't be a dick." In the end analysis,thinks I, God cares less about which Church you belong to, or don't, than how you're treating your fellow man."

To this my colleague wrote (hope you don't mind my quoting you here, Sonia):

"That would be the only worthy god, i think. Who could get behind the guy who demands one sing his glory every minute of the day, but who can still go and make Claire die giving birth to her 3rd little baby? if god exists, he better be powerless against the laws of nature, otherwise, he's gonna have a lot of angry people to answer to."

A fair question, and one that is asked by many people in a world where so much seems capricious and unfair.

In the mid 70's, I lived and worked in Austria for two years as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Amid the standard rebuffs of "Nix, nix, ka' Zeit und kein Interesse" and "Wir sind alle Katolisch hier, wieso gehen Sie nicht zu den Heiden?" I had many discussions about faith in general with a populace who was only one generation away from the depredations of World War II, and who had been, by choice or by chance, on the losing side. For all their traditional adherence to the Catholic faith of their fathers, many Austrians put no stock in religion - I can't count the number of times people vehemently protested the existence of a God who would allow such horrors as they had witnessed in their own lifetimes.

And the wars and the horrors go on...

For myself, I have to be able to be at peace with the world I see around me. I have chosen to do this with a strange mixture of faith and secular practicality.

In Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl wrote, "We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

As for reconciling myself with the existence of God in a world of unexplainable tragedies, my mind turns to Corrie Ten Boom, the author of The Hiding Place. When she was 10 years old, she once asked her father a piercing adult-themed question. She went on to relate,

"He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack over our heads, and set it on the floor. “Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?” he said. “It's too heavy,” I said. “Yes,” he said. “And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It's the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.” And I was satisfied. More than satisfied – wonderfully at peace. There were answers to this and all my hard questions. For now I was content to leave them in my father's keeping.

I do not believe in a God who causes or allows terrible things to happen and approaches his human family with the attitude, "Haha, life's a bitch, ain't it? Now kneel, suckers!" This kind of God is less believable than the pure secular causality of "hydrogen atoms evolved to consciousness."

My heart tells me that neither scenario is the case, that we're playing a on a far bigger stage than any one of us can possibly see. I see mortality is a school to which we are sent by a loving parent; the classes are harsh - life gives us the tests first, and the lessons afterwards - but when we graduate to the next phase of our existence, whatever that looks like, we will all see that life, with all its seeming vicious unfairness, had purpose, and that it was all for our good, growth and development.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter to me whether the humanists are right, and it's all a huge cosmic crapshoot, or whether what I belive about Divinity is spot-on or way off. Either way, my responsibility is to live life in such a way that I can go down to my grave content in having done all that I could do to raise the human condition.

That is how I find peace.

I believe firmly in the concept of the immortality of our intelligence, but I don't believe that the souls of the dead hang around with nothing better to do than torment the living.

So, yes, I would - and especially if I got to live there for free. Free is always good. If my neighbors warned me that it was haunted, I'd think twice about my neighbor's gullibility, but that's about all.

Paranormal phenomena? Bah, humbug.

A friend and colleague of mine, Claire Parker passed away on 10 November, 2009, of complications in childbirth. This is a great loss, and a great sadness, especially in our day and age, in the Western world, where we expect our doctors to be Gods and our hospitals to be places of miracles, not tragedies.

She leaves behind a husband and three children, to whom my thoughts and prayers go out in great abundance.

A beautiful poem to Claire's memory, written by Robert (Dr. Bobus) Paquin, a gifted member of our translator/interpreter family:

DEATH IN THE FAMILY
(Pour Claire)

Toi qui nous faisais rire, tu m'as fait pleurer.
A great grief steals my words and my screen is blurry.
We lost one of our own, and our laughter is gone.
Tu as donné la vie en cette fin d'automne.

And your last gift to us now after you have left
Est de nous réunir tous, malgré nos griefs,
Au-delà de la langue, en un deuil de famille,
Where we can at least share just how close we all feel.

11 novembre 2009

Robert Paquin

My uncle Courtney Rogers Draper, the first son of Delbert Morley Draper and Frances Mary Rogers Draper, was born on 5 April 1913 in Salt Lake City. A former student reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune, Draper attended Stewart training and East high school and was graduated from the University of Utah and George Washington University, Washington, D. C., where he received his LLB degree.



An auditor for the U. S. accounting department while attending George Washington University, he was secretary to Gen. Hugh S. Johnson during N R A days.

A member of the Utah bar and junior bar, he practiced law in Washington, D. C. and Utah. He was a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity and Salt Lake City Junior Chamber of Commerce. A reserve officer in the U. S. army, he was called to active service July 1, 1941. Transferred to the Philippine Islands Aug. 1, 1941, he was stationed at Fort Stotsenberg and Clark field, and was present during the first bombing of the latter field. Transferred to Mindanao before the fall of Corregidor, he served there until ordered to surrender.

As a prisoner of the Japanese he was interned until June, 1944 and was then transferred to Cabanatuan, Bilibid. He was being transferred again aboard the Enoura Maru, one of the infamous Hell Ships, when the transport was severely damaged in Takao Harbor, Formosa (now Taiwan) by U.S. Navy aircraft from the USS Hornet. At the time, military officials were unaware that POW's were packed like sardines in these unmarked ships, and thousands lost their lives.





At the time of his death he had three sisters and a brother, as well as one sister who preceded him in death.

His remains were never recovered, but there is a memorial plaque honoring him in Memory Grove park, Salt Lake City, Utah.



Rest in Honored Peace.

I have numerous CD's that I come back to often.
All of Enya, Clannad or Banba
The Chieftains
Kitaro
Mind Movies by Jan Edward Vogels
Anything by Rondo' Veneziano
Beethoven's Symphonies and Piano Concertos
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir
Liszt: Les Préludes
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 1
Minamino Yōko
Dead Can Dance
Sounds of Nature

But listening to one CD for the rest of my life would be Hell. Unmitigated Hell.

Even the most beautiful music, repeated endlessly, begins to cloy, to grate on the nerves. If I had only one to choose from, I think I would choose silence.

John Allen Muhammad was executed tonight for the deaths of 10 people, bringing once again to the front of the nation's consciousness (at least until tomorrow's headlines appear) the debate over capital punishment.

Truly, there are no easy answers.

This issue has been argued back and forth in courts of law and the court of public opinion since the dawn of man. The pendulum has swung both ways during my own lifetime, and there is not a glimmering of consensus on the horizon.

I have no answers here, but since this is where I record my thoughts I felt I ought to put some down before life once again crowds the issue back to the lumber room.

Holy Writ is no help. The Bible and the Book of Mormon are both replete with instances of retribution and forgiveness. A hundred fools and a hundred scholars together will come up with two hundred interpretations between them. Even modern revelation sheds no significant light on the question.

Secular sociology is no help. Conflicting studies discuss deterrence and lack of deterrence, the cost to society of execution vs. incarceration, rehabilitation vs. warehousing and the prices and benefits to victims and their families. There are debates about how best to honor and respect human life - by extinguishing one which has violated the sanctity thereof, or to punish by lifetime incarceration.

The Constitution and our justice system are no help, because the 6th and 8th amendments have been eviscerated by attorneys paid by the fraction of an hour, and because court dockets are choked beyond all hope of recovery.

Societies need rules, and rules must be enforced, if the rights of people are to be protected. Yet mercy cannot rob justice, nor justice mercy - taking both concepts to their illogical conclusions by reductio ad absurdem, either all malefactors would be forgiven and allowed to go free, or litterbugs and jaywalkers would be summarily burnt at the stake

There is no help for the widow's son. All I have left to go on is my heart, which tells me to look to people whom I admire for guidance on how to find peace for myself.

I look to Christ, who begged forgiveness for those who were in the very act of murdering him.

I look to Gandhi, who taught a tormented Hindu who had killed a Muslim boy to atone by taking another orphaned child and raise him... as a Muslim.

I look to Azim Khamisa, who saw in the murder of his 19-year-old son at the hands of a young gang member not one lost life but two, and who, together with the guardian of the shooter, went on to create a foundation that teaches grade school children how to avoid child-on-child violence. Two more unmatched people you could never hope to find - a Sufi Muslim investment banker, and a black, born-again ex-Green Beret, who from the ashes of tragedy have raised a phoenix of hope and blessing for the lives of thousands of young people.

In a very real sense, capital punishment is about revenge, and revenge is always a lose-lose proposition. My suspicion is that even for families of victims who ardently hope for the ultimate penalty, such penalty brings no true closure, and no true peace.

I feel better about working to improve our justice system so that punishment is swift and sure, yet leaving the ultimate destiny of a human life in the hands of Him who gave it. I hope that I would have the moral conviction to feel the same way if the question ever - God forbid - became an intimately personal one in my life. Only in this way can I hope to find peace for myself.

Back on May 20, 2009 I posted an open letter to the relevant authorities of New York about an unpleasant encounter with one of their toll booth agents. The hard copy was finally dispatched on August 16th. On 9/19/2009 I received a response indicating that my comments had been forwarded to the correct department for review. Today, the matter has been resolved. Brilliantly.

I received a letter from a Mr. Frank Pascual, director of the Special Projects Unit for the MTA Bridges and Tunnels Special Operations Division. His letter was forthright and professional, addressed my concerns instead of blowing them off, and assured me that steps had been taken to provide their personnel with additional training. You can't ask for better than that.

I was especially gratified to learn that:

1. Paying a toll for those behind is a common occurrence, in such events as weddings, funerals, etc. They do have a policy about accepting things to pass out, which I mentioned in my earlier post would not have been surprising, and I understand their policy completely. Despite this, I was given to understand that the agent handled the situation poorly, which was my feeling in the first place.
   
2. The officer involved made a bad judgment call about my automotive signage, ostensibly assuming that my car was illegally operating as a commercial vehicle - which are prohibited on the parkway.
   

The letter ended with a sincere apology and an expression that such incidents are not the standard that they expect from their personnel.

That is the New York that I grew up in, and that I still cherish - rough and gritty in spots, but with a good heart.

Abundant kudos to Mr. Pascual and his department - he'll also get a hard copy of this, or a reasonable facsimile, expressing my gratitude.

Every now and then you find a company that has a soul as well as a bottom line. I reported another Nigerian Spammer to the relevant ISP, and today got this back from Outblaze:

Thank you for contacting the outblaze.com abuse desk.

The account you reported is now terminated, along with today's quota of sundry other Nigerian generals, bankers, engineers, attorneys and relatives of dead dictators.

Outblaze is one of the largest providers of webmail services in the world. As a responsible ISP, we hate spam, and we do not allow our network to be abused by spammers.

There is only one thing that we hate more than spammers - 419 (nigerian) scam artists abusing our systems.

I love it. These guys get a huge thumbs up from me.

Looks like Ben's going to make his move, after having discovered whatever it was he was so frantically and surreptitiously hunting for.

Go Ben!

Meanwhile, Kenneth has some real gaps in his Social Skills inventory. Like in the "clueless" and "tactless" departments. Sheesh.

Hope we get to find out what's going on, as well as Dani.

♬ This was a triumph
I'm making a note here, huge success.
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction...
Pemmican Meat Loaf
We do what we must, because we can.
For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are fat
But there's no sense crying over every mistake
We just keep on eating til we get to the cake
And the dieting is done
But the eating is so fun
For the people who are still alive... ♬

Ingredients

1 lb. Ground Bison
1 Medium Onion, chopped
2/3 C Finely chopped parsely
1 can Organic, unsalted diced tomatoes, drained
1 ½ C Acorn Meal ¹
2 Eggs, slightly beaten
Salt
Pepper

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350°. Mix all ingredients together, adding salt and pepper to taste. Place in a loaf pan and bake 1 hour, or until an instant-read thermometer measures 160° at the center.

---

¹ For Acorn Meal, use acorns which have been properly prepared to leach out the tannins. This can be accomplished in many different ways. The fastest is to boil shelled acorns for 3 hours, changing the water every 15 minutes, or until the water stops turning heavily brown. You’ll be able to tell when you’ve gotten most of the tannin out. The acorns can then be dried in a 200° oven and ground in a blender, food processor, or grain mill.

For this recipe, I actually used 6 biscuits which had been prepared according to a standard buttermilk biscuit recipe with the addition of 1/4 cup gluten flour. These were ground in a blender to form a meal.

A good acorn reference book with many recipes is here. The author, Suellen Ocean, uses a slower, cold process for leaching the acorns.

Mogg's teeth! This was one of the best things I've ever cooked up from this and that...
 

Fifteen titles
Gacked from dragonet2

Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you, for whatever reasons. This isn't your top 15 canon or even books you'd necessarily recommend, just books that have made their mark on you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

( Mine are below the cut )