Concupiscence and OKCupidsense

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"How about trying out sex..."

In our inner life, concupiscence is the part that is always eager to try out some expected pleasure, common sense be damned. If our will agrees, sin is conceived, meaning “mistake”, “error”, “missing the goal”. When the sin is mature, it causes death – the removal of our link to eternity, so that our physical death becomes an end to the meaning of our life. Apart from the actual vocabulary, I think any serious religion or spiritual philosophy will recognize this. Not all have a word for it though.

I learned a new word! That’s not often. Actually, I had a kind of vague idea of what it meant and would not have fundamentally misunderstood the text; I have a talent for that, absorbing words from context. But in this case it was pretty specialized: “Concupiscence.” I am mildly surprised that my spell checker recognizes it, even.

The only places I have seen this word, that I can remember, is in Catholic theology (or psychology, I guess, since it is about the human soul; God has none of it). Concupiscence is our natural tendency to want the wrong things. The word is indeed related to “cupid” and sexual lust is one of the typical ways this manifests, but it is not so limited. The tendency to seek pleasure in this world in any form outside of God’s will falls under concupiscence.  So it is pretty nearly a description of my whole life up until now. 0_O

In the Christian Church at Brunstad, we called this “the sin in the flesh”. Unlike Protestants, we believed that it is not a sin that condemns, until we give in to it. Rather it is a tendency to sin, and because of this it is really hard to live a pure life. But some people become free from it, bit by bit, eventually. Not many, it seems, but some.

Strangely, it seems the Catholic view is more similar to ours (for I still hold this belief, though without the specific vocabulary, which is too saturated for modern man. Mention “sin” and an elaborate defense mechanism is triggered, ending any rational discourse; so I rarely use the word when explaining how we humans keep hurting ourselves. Like it or hate it, language changes over time. In Norway today, “sin” means “sex”, more or less, and I hear this is getting common in America as well.)

Speaking of which, a quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia: “Hence desires contrary to the real good and order of reason may, and often do, rise in it, previous to the attention of the mind, and once risen, dispose the bodily organs to the pursuit and solicit the will to consent, while they more or less hinder reason from considering their lawfulness or unlawfulness. This is concupiscence in its strict and specific sense.” Bodily organs to the pursuit! Oh, the stories one could tell.

***

The word became a lot easier to remember once I realized the “cupid” part. It reminded me of the American matching site OKCupid, of which I have been a member since before City of Heroes came out. I know this, because the reason I joined them was a City of Heroes quiz an online friend linked to, and it was based on the Alpha build of CoH. It was already changed when I took part in the closed beta, so it must have been around 8 years ago.

Anyway, that was how I came to OKCupid, and I am not sure it even was called that at the time. It started – as far as I knew, at least – as a collection of quizzes of all kinds. The idea was that people who had similar results on the quizzes would be interested in getting to know each other, I think. It has developed into a full-fledge dating site, including a mobile app that finds users near you (if they consent to being found). But it is still full of quizzes and questionnaires, so you can hang out there without outing yourself as a desperate loser. “I am just here for the quizzes.”  Actually, that’s more or less what I write in my bio. I certainly don’t need a puny human or its shallow interests. ^_^

But even so, I have plenty of concupiscence of various kinds. It is just that it doesn’t really lend itself well to dating sites. Computer games, on the other hand… I am still occasionally looking for that Fluffy Tails mod for Skyrim. They had one for the previous game, after all. No matter what your concupiscence, the Internet will deliver!

 

Sacred time & holy night

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White sun in blue sky

Relux and call it a deity, when the Light comes down from unchanging Heaven to unstable Earth – over and over again, in our heart.

This is something I didn’t think of first, but learned about from others. I have probably touched on it before – I am a bit of a blabbermouth with sacred secrets, I’m afraid, even if I have little actual experience. Think of it as a postcard from a strange land I am still exploring.

Anyone who engages in spiritual practice should be familiar with time having more than one dimension. There is the straight line of time, which we may call “horizontal time”, the one you measure with a clock. Then there is “eternal time”, to express it paradoxically. This is the constant, in most religions compared to the sky above us (“Heaven” originally means sky too). No matter how far you walk, the sky is still above you. Land changes to water and forest to mountain as you wander, but the sky above you is the same. In a similar way, there is a time above you when you pray or meditate that is endless and unchanging, clear and luminous. We can call this “vertical time”.

Sacred time is where the two meet. The Jews have their Sabbath, a day outside of time. A long list of traditions sets this day apart, puts it outside of the full rush of modernity, and makes it more similar to the Sabbath of a thousand years ago or a thousand years in the future than it is similar to the day before or after.

But this is not the end of it. For the observant Jew – or so a couple of them have claimed, I have not been that – it is more than a tradition. It is holy time, which belongs with eternity. It is consecrated, belonging to the Most High, a time when man meets his Maker and (usually) survives. A time when eternity touches time, when the vertical time comes down and infuses the ordinary time, giving it that extra dimension that it otherwise lacks, the vertical dimension where we have the freedom to reach upward.

The Sabbath is not the only such institution, of course, although it is exceedingly well documented, Jews being notorious intellectuals and lovers of writing. But every religion has its holy days, and for the hardcore practitioner, there is also the regular prayer time. The Orthodox and Catholic churches have the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours, in which fixed prayers or Scripture are quoted at certain set times of the day. (They got this too from the Jews, but it has been adapted a great deal over the centuries.)

Islam has, of course, its daily prayers. Unlike Christianity, where lay people are not expected to keep fixed hours of prayer, the faithful of Islam will stop their work if at all possible to pray at the correct time. In addition, there are holy days throughout the years, as there is in every religion.

Eastern faiths also share these traits. The hours of dusk and dawn are frequently set aside for meditation, as a time when the energies of  the Other World are more palpably present.

In each case, the meeting of time and eternity causes an infusion of the holy into the mundane, adding another dimension to time. For those who wish to experience spiritual growth, this is quite necessary. “Timelessness takes time”, and this time spent with eternity causes what St Teresa calls a “dilation” inside.  The moment of Now is by default so brief that it is almost impossible to stay in it: We almost immediately jump into the past (memories) or future (plans, daydreams). But with time spent in sacred time, the Now grows larger, until we fit comfortably in it. (And then it becomes a kingdom inside, and a universe, but that’s how these things go.)

So Christmas, for instance, is not simply a day off from work, to relax. It is a day to relux, to get our spiritual bearings under the clear, open skies of eternity. This is why the Christmases past, present and future converge on this holy night.

For those unfamiliar with the structure of sacred time, the result may become a jumble and a nightmare: Psychologists say that Christmas is a time when childhood trauma resurfaces, causing many crises and a modest number of actual deaths each year. That was not how it was meant to be. Christmas was made for man, not man for Christmas. Read the instruction manual before applying high voltage to your holiday, please.

Christmas Evolution

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"There should not be a barrier between Buddhists and Christians"

“There should not be a barrier between Buddhists and Christians” says the Buddhist monk in a Santa Claus costume. Christmas has become a widely celebrated holiday in Japan, among other places,  far from its snowy home in Bethlehem… wait…

Here in Norway, Christmas Eve is the high point of the Yule holiday. Around 5 o’clock, more precisely, though it may perhaps be later now that both adults and children stay up longer in the evenings. But it used to be 5 PM, if my memory serves. Church bells would ring, Christmas songs would be played on the radio, and families would gather around the Christmas Tree. A long evening of heavy food, gifts (usually already placed under the tree) and sugary treats would follow.

(A large number of Norwegians also celebrate Christmas as if it was not about the miracle in Bethlehem but rather the miracle in Cana, where Jesus turned water to wine. My family never took part in any alcoholic celebration, and I personally am not influenced by alcohol on a personality level, only in a purely physical sense.)

Living alone, I don’t celebrate Christmas in any outward way, although I enjoy classic Christmas songs all through the month and more frequently turn my thought to the mystery of the Incarnation.

I have a running joke about Christmas Eve, going like this: “Why is everyone talking about Christmas Eve? What about Christmas Adam?” Of course, arguably Jesus Christ is the “Christmas Adam”, as the Bible says elsewhere, “The first Adam became a living soul; the second Adam became a lifegiving spirit.”

This year, however, the voices in my head had a little fun. I hope it is not too blasphemous.

“Why is everyone talking about Christmas Eve?”
“It is short for Evolution. Like in Adam and Evolution. That sounds too long, you have already forgotten Adam when you come to the end. So people use the nickname, Eve.”

(At the time of writing, I was unaware that generations ago, the story of Adam and Eve was in fact performed as a prelude to Christmas, and presumably is one of the roots, as it were, of the Christmas tree. Whoa.)

Christmas certainly has evolved! The first centuries of Christian history has no sign of celebration of Jesus’ birthday. Although the relevant parts of the gospel were in place already in the earliest known manuscripts, nobody made an attempt to celebrate it or even set a date until the Age of Martyrs came to an end. When Christianity was accepted by the Roman emperors, Jesus’ birthday was quietly aligned with the celebration of Sol Invictus. Christianity has after that gradually absorbed various pagan Solstice rituals, and this evolution has continued into my own lifetime.

The Christmas tree appears as late as the 15th century, and did not become widespread until a century later. Christmas trees in homes appear a couple hundred years ago.

Santa Claus is named for the bishop Nicholas of Myra, who was famous for his timely gifts. However, the modern character is merged with Nordic mythical creatures who protected the farms, often thought to be the spirits of the farm’s founder, or underground gnomes. Santa Claus has only gained his current form very recently, in my lifetime, and is taking over Christmas from Jesus to some extent, being less controversial. (Not that this says much.)

But while Christmas itself has evolved, it has also played an important role in the evolution of our society. For the celebration of a helpless child as God has year by year, generation by generation, increased our respect for children. It still has a long way to go for many people, but you will hardly believe the callous disregard for children that was common by the onset of the Christian Era. Both the Greeks and the Vikings allowed a man to kill his infants at his own whim, with no repercussions of any kind. (One theory of the Viking expansion is that it stemmed from a search for wives, as too many girl babies were killed by their fathers as useless in war.)

The bonding of babies and parents that is universally accepted as a good thing was often deliberately avoided in the past, something that may have made sense on a practical level with the high infant mortality. But the importance of this early bonding for healthy emotional and intellectual development is a major part of modern psychology. In a manner of speaking, the relative humanism of modern western civilization can trace its evolution back to the little child in the crib.

 

“continually with thee”

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"Everyone feels that evenings alone are lonely times"

“Everyone feels that evenings alone are lonely times” says the teacher. But wait, there is one who does not feel like that, and that is I. For I am continually with thee…

“So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee. Nevertheless I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand.” -Psalm 73, verses 22-23.

This paradox is the heart of my life. I am not all heart, I have many other sides as well. But when we come right down to it, this is the mystery that sets me apart from the average person and changes everything. The “thee” in this text is presumably God. At least it is someone in Heaven. And that’s so for me too. If this Presence is not God personally, it certainly seems to represent Heaven.

The strange thing is that even though I have been as foolish and ignorant as a beast, if not more so, nevertheless I am continually with this Presence. It is beyond obvious that it is not something I have deserved or achieved.

And this more than anything else is what creeps me out about the teachings of St John of the Cross and various other highly respected saints. I can live with not eating tasty snacks or playing computer games; most of the world probably still has other priorities than that. I can live without a lot of things, if it is necessary. But I am not sure I can live, even literally, for long without the Presence.

The few times the Presence has been hid from me, typically for a quarter of an hour or so, I felt an anguish unto death. It felt like the core of my being was ripped out, and I felt physically weak, icy cold from the inside out, stunned by unspeakable fear, and the world had lost a dimension much like if you woke up and could only see in black and white. Everything seemed to be reduced to mere matter, as if the life and beauty and presence that fills everything had retreated to Heaven and closed the door behind it.

Now you may reasonably say that this is how people see the world, but I doubt it. I don’t think even hardcore atheists see the world dead and bare like that. They just are not able to realize that the life and beauty and presence all around them is not an automatic part of matter. Or they think it is just added by their own mind. And I guess that is correct, in a manner of speaking. But it is not automatic. It is not something the mind just can choose to add, or simply add by habit. It is something that can be taken away. But that intrinsic quality of the material world is not all of it, although it is striking. There is also a presence as if someone always watches over me with warm eyes, as if I were a small child playing in the presence of its parents.

“Continually with thee” is the best description I have ever seen of this. And even if I knew that something amazing was on the other side, I would not have the courage to let go of that hand.

I believe this Presence may have been there all my life. When I was four, my mother took me to a hospital in the city where I would spend several days being checked for various things about my asthma. She could not stay there with me, and could not afford to stay in the city even. She had to return to the farm, a night’s travel away, and it probably broke her heart. I did notice, but not much more. I had a most excellent time, except the nurses forced me to eat meat and fish. I put up a ferocious battle, and that was how my mother located me when she came some days later to pick me up. I was screaming – not for my mother, but rather, I was screaming: “I want just dessert! I want just dessert!” – because the main course was all full of dead bodies.

As a child, I was a talkative fellow, but I also spent hours on end alone by the river or in the forest or the mountain. All the while I was speaking out loud (it took quite some effort to stop it when I grew up), as if I took for granted that there was always someone there with me. I did not really think about it until much later, who or what my invisible friend was who was listening to me. When I learned to pray and later, in my teens, learned to stop praying and just listen, I could sense the Presence there, its aura as real as I myself if not more so.

And, except for those brief glimpses of Hell – or that was how it felt to me – I have been continually with my invisible friend. But it is not merely a silent presence. It has definite opinions on many things. It approves and disapproves, warns, comforts, gives me advice. It cannot be forced to “say” anything at all, and not to keep to any particular topic. It will supply information that it deems useful, for the most part, and often practical in nature, while my own thoughts often wander to obscure scientific topics it refuses to discuss.

So that is how it is. Sin is said to separate us from God, and it certainly makes things awkward, but even though I have been as a beast, I have been continually with Thee. It never caused a complete separation, a closing of the door. Well, actually I am not sure that one or two of those glimpses of Hell did not start with me sinning, but I know not all did. It seemed more like a biological thing, as if my God-sense was blinded. In a sense, it may have been more like my spirit had left together with God and the me that was left was “meat”. Although I am not entirely sure. I am in no hurry to test it again. Never is soon enough.

“Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.” -verse 24.

The Presence has guided me with its counsel, exactly, probably before I even read this verse (although that is hard to say, I may have read it in the old Danish Bible I found on the top shelf when I was 10 or so). I am a lot more worried about the reception into glory though, because I did not always (or was that “not very often”?) follow that counsel if it seemed less fun or more bothersome than my own alternative. Only when things went wrong did I have to take the next counsel.

“Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.” -verse 25

This was the verse I was actually looking for when I returned to this psalm today. In Norwegian it says “I have lust for nothing on Earth”, which unfortunately is not an accurate description of me AT ALL. But “none” is an entirely different matter. I mean, I am glad there are humans, I would not be able to live long without them, I even like some of them, they are decorative and sometimes interesting. But there is no ONE of them that I “desire beside thee”, no particular person that fills a hole in my life. I have never been in love, even though I tried when I was young. But there is no keyhole to which anyone on Earth is the key. There is no human-shaped hole in my life (or dog-shaped or whatever). There is only one hole in my life, in my heart, and it is continually filled, except during the glimpses of Hell (luckily long in the past right now, long may that last).

I know from experience that if I pray earnestly for something to be taken away from me, it can happen. I made that mistake once! I was young and too eager for my own good, and had noticed that when I did something good for someone, I felt a kind of reward inside, a warm glow of happiness like that of a dog being praised. Having read some hagiography, I prayed to God to take away this feeling, as it was pleasing to the ego. And from then on, it disappeared. I feel bad when I do the opposite, but I feel no pleasure in doing good. Which worked nice for the saint I had been reading about (Madame Guyon, I think), but not for me. I haven’t really done much good since then, because I am a big bag of ego and when I don’t get praised by the Presence, I don’t really care. I mean, sure, I can help, but I don’t look for opportunities or go out of my way.

So I am not going to ask for the “Thee” to leave me. No ifs and buts about it. No way. As far as I am concerned, I would be happy to stay like this forever. And ever, amen.

Fire within?

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Holy love!

Holy love! I am not sure most people even believe holy love is possible, much less that it can and should exist in our world today. I believe… in theory. I even read books about it. I just don’t practice it myself.

I have for some time been reading a Catholic book, Fire Within by Fr. Thomas Dubay. I typically read it in the morning on the bus to work, and in the afternoon on my way home (unless I am too sleepy then). It is part hagiography, about the lives of the saints Teresa of Avila (also known as Teresa of Jesus, although that seems an extreme title to monopolize) and John of the Cross (likewise, although the competition here seems less fierce). But it is also, and mostly, an explanation of the teachings they lived and shared with others.

These saints are truly superheroes of religion, in the sense that their lives and teachings seem incomprehensible and impossible to the ordinary Christian. Their self-denial goes far beyond abstaining from even venial sin. They would neither eat nor drink unless it was solely for the glory of God and brought their mind closer to the Holy One. Basically all the worries of the ordinary mortal are entirely irrelevant to such a person, and unfortunately this also applies the other way around. They truly live in a different world.

Yet Fr. Dubay insists that this is not only possible, but the natural life of a Christian, and finds it truly saddening that any serious theist could think otherwise. Yes, he uses the word “theist” repeatedly, implying that in essence, this life would be the natural conclusion also for observant Jews, Muslims and even Hindus if they seriously believed in their gods. In contrast, he sharply differentiates it from the Eastern meditation practices: The purpose of emptying oneself of everything human is not to become empty, to cease to exist or cease to feel, but to become filled with God.

The author draws parallels to the Bible, both the Old Testament and the New, and to the lives of other saints, to show that the Saints Teresa and John were not outliers, but on the contrary expressed precisely the heart of the Christian religion, and it is everyone who thinks differently who has misunderstood. Now in all fairness, he does not exalt himself – pretty much the only reference to his person is the occasional mention of his experiences as a spiritual director – but there certainly isn’t much timidity either. While Fr. Dubay has not so far come right out and said “This is how I live my life as well”, that had better be the case or he will have something to worry about come his final life review. Of course, so have I. Oh yes, so have I.

Reading about the radical self-denial and heroic love of these saints, I recognize the lives of the saints who instructed me when I was young, in the Christian Church at Brunstad. I guess saints will be saints, even if they did not have all that much respect for the Catholic Church in general. (Unlike some sects, however, the Brunstad Church did not have a theory that people who belonged to other denominations were automatically bound for Hell. Rather the view was that other churches had a mixture of right and wrong teaching, and this made it hard for people to pick the good parts and leave out the bad, but it certainly could happen if they had the heart for it. Conversely if they didn’t, being in the Church would not save them.)

Anyway, back when I was young, I tried to understand all this but I couldn’t. I think that may be because I was driven mostly by fear of Hell rather than love of the Light. I understand it better now, but I wonder if I have the heart for it. It doesn’t look like it, when I look at my life. But as of the time of writing, I am not dead yet. Living completely for the Light does look more and more attractive as time passes, that’s true. But then it looked just plain scary from the start…

The irony is that most people can’t even see this. It is completely meaningless to them. It does not entice them and it doesn’t even scare them, because it is beyond their imagination. But it is not beyond mine. It is a kind of “reverse temptation”, if you can imagine that.

When I read about it now, it makes so much sense. It is even familiar, in a way. I already know the beginning of it. I have seen some of the continuation of it. But that which is far ahead, what I cannot see, sounds kind of creepy. Yet I wonder. Who I am now, is probably “creepy” to a lot of people already. To not need or want status, approval, even earthly love. To be undisturbed by the weather, the lack of promotions, the stupidity of random people, things that keep up the blood pressure of my peers. To have nearly forgotten loneliness, because of the inexplicable, undeserved Presence that is watching over me.

But that is all things the Light does for me, not I for the Light. When the time comes for me to make sacrifices, there isn’t much sign of fire within. It’s like a one-sided love, and I’m the one being loved by the Light. You can’t imagine how disturbing that image is. I have a hard time imagining it myself. It is like one of those comedy movies where a superstar falls in love with an average guy and he just doesn’t get it, no matter how far she goes. Except, well, this is a much more extreme difference in status.

Am I really this fireproof within?

How not to eat the rich

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Boy sucking girl's finger, from the anime Amagami SS

Eating the rich, one finger at a time!

There is something absurd about the Left’s fantasies about taxing the “super rich” to fix the broken economy. It is not specifically that it is evil – that is a matter of different opinions – but that it is impossible.

As I have mentioned before, the real super rich are not like Disney’s Scrooge McDuck, who has his money in a silo full of coins and bank notes he can bathe in. Rather, their wealth takes two basic forms: Stocks and bonds. Stocks are part-ownership, mostly in running businesses. Bonds are money lent to other. There are also various derivatives of these, such as the option to buy a stock or a bond at a certain price at some future time. But it really boils down to these two types.

Now say you decide your economy is so messed up that you need to grab 10% of the wealth of the super rich. It is not really sad for them, they still have more than they need for a thousand years of comfortable living, which the Light is unlikely to grant them in any case. But let’s look at what happens when they try to pay their taxes.

Alternative one: They try sell enough stock to finance their extraordinary tax. This is done on the stock exchange, as the name implies. Suddenly there is a glut of sellers and a lack of buyers. This is what we usually call a “stock market crash”. We had one in 1929, heralding the Great Depression. We had another heralding the current troubles, which are the troubles that motivate the Left to want to eat the rich in the first place. So the solution is another stock market crash?

Well, this may seem harmless enough if you are 25 and unemployed. Seeing Wall Street crash and burn, figuratively at least, will probably be satisfying. Not so for your parents: All pension funds are heavily invested on the stock exchange, and everyone’s future pensions will start to unravel before their eyes. This is not a good idea to sign into law for a President who plans on a cushy retreat position as, say, anything other than a panhandler.

Well, how about the bonds? Some of these will mature – the loans fall due – over the course of the year, so these at least should be easy. Just take the money and don’t lend it out again, pay your taxes instead. Fine. But credit has become a bit of a cornerstone in society. Factories or shops that don’t get their credit extended  have to close their doors, even if they otherwise run a profit. In fact, the infamous “financial crisis” that threw the rich world into recession recently was caused by a lack of credit, rather than anything else.

Let us quickly mention the fact that states also depend on credit these days, and a credit panic would cause them to be unable to pay civil servants, state pensions, food stamps etc. Of course, they could just compensate by taxing the rich more…

It is not that it is impossible to tax the rich without the world going down the drain. Many countries tax their rich more than the USA (and a few tax them less). That is not the problem. The problem is the time scale. You can’t confiscate 10% of their wealth one year, or the economy will start spiraling toward death and destruction. You could grab 0.5% each year for 20 years and get the same money with no measurable disruption. But the problem with this is that it won’t solve your problem right here, right now. Even shooting every one of America’s super rich and taking all their money – provided you magically could do this without causing a panic – would only be enough to keep the US debt at its current level for a year, rather than the usual skyrocketing increase. Stealing a measly percent or less simply has no noticeable effect, but it will insult the corporate overlords that wines and dines the politician class. Not worth it, in other words.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. It’s the same with eating the rich. You have to start doing it a generation before you are going to spectacularly mess up your economy. With the current scarcity of time machines, I don’t see a great past for this in America. (Of course, we did it in Norway. We do everything right in Norway. We are simply the best. We were created in God’s image, and then we evolved. Just ask any of my fellow Norwegians.)

Divine intervention, it seems

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Who on earth am I?

Who on Earth am I? I seem to be the guy who, instead of a normal conscience like most people, have a Guardian Angel or something mess up my electronics until I stop making excuses for my greed.

See yesterday’s entry for context. Today I took my 1 day old Galaxy Note back to the shop where I bought it. They fiddled with it for half an hour or so, trying various settings, then trying the SIM card in another phone, then the other card in the Note. Conclusion: This particular Galaxy Note was faulty and had to be sent for repair. Be sure to bring everything that came in the box.

Now, me having bought this at that same shop 1 day ago, I reasonably proposed they simply replace it with another. I even reset it to factory settings, erasing everything I had downloaded or written to it. Unfortunately, they could not do that. They claimed to not have any left, although I wonder if that would have been the case if I were there to buy one instead. Possibly – the overwhelming majority of Norwegians have more money than I, and it is close to Christmas, and the model is brand new.

With the Galaxy Tab, it took weeks to even be allowed to buy it, and even to the day I got it there were mysterious delays. So I don’t hold it unlikely that it will disappear for weeks, or months, or forever (I better get some kind of written statement as to having handed it in).  Or I suppose I could just keep the defective unit and use Opera Mini, which for some obscure reason worked when I tried it this afternoon.

It is a pretty tiny tribulation compared to poor Batsheba and King David, who lost their first son even though David (at least) regretted his sin, fasted and slept on the floor. Of course, my lust was not anywhere near King David level, and I didn’t have anyone killed to get my hands on their Galaxy Note. Although it does seem that I, unintentionally, have deprived some poor guy of his Christmas present (if they really did sell out).

Oh, and for those who wonder why God would punish an innocent baby for his parents’ adultery, the answer is probably that God didn’t. The baby has not yet formed attachments to this world. When its spirit returns to Heaven, angels receive it and welcomes it home. That is what I believe. If you have any doubt that babies come from Heaven and belong there, just look into their eyes.

But for a parent, the loss of a child is more or less like the loss of one’s own life, except it goes on for a long time. Poor Batsheba. But that’s another long story which is not mine to tell. Probably. I should probably not preach about religion, but lie low for a while and lick my wounded pride, if any.

On the other hand, the instruction booklet reminds me to not bite or suck on the Note’s battery. It also warned me to not destroy my nails when taking off the back case. I wonder if I really am the target group for this one… And evidently, Heaven is not convinced either. But then Heaven rarely is when I do impulse shopping of electronics. I should be used to that by now.

Galaxy Note: Cute when it works

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Samsung Galaxy Note, lock screen

I don’t think the quill picture was meant to imply primitive. And generally it isn’t – apart from the browser. And it is just mine, or so say the rest of the world.

I bought a Samsung Galaxy Note datapad (large mobile phone / small tablet).  After all, it is the kind of invention I wish the future to have. I am known to happily lose money to support something that fits in my vision of the future, such as e-books (before they became popular),  speech recognition (before it became good) and neural activator control (which never became popular, I’m afraid). Oh, and SSD-only netbook. Android smartphone. And now this, a thing that is half smartphone and half pad/tablet.

I don’t have extreme qualms over losing money on it, in that perspective. But I’d like something in that price range to work. Or if not, I’d like to know why. I am not that fortunate. But as with so many things in my life, it just might be a message from the Author. That’s what happens when you’re a … well, not exactly Main Character I hope, but a viewpoint character at least.  Like the weird clockwise dying light bulbs I recently wrote about. Not quite a miracle, but kind of suspicious. And of course there were the long, long string of strange coincidences when I bought the original Galaxy Tab. In comparison, this is very simple.

The browser does not work on 3G. It works like a charm on Wi-Fi, even if the Wi-Fi is actually another tablet running in hotspot mode. Conversely, when I use the Note as a hotspot, it happily provides my desktop with all the bandwidth it needs to power two simultaneous browsers working simultaneously. But it cannot keep its own browser from timing out. That is a bit absurd.

In all fairness, once in a while I get a page up, but it can take half an hour. And it is not specific to the internal browser (which gets high praise by reviewers, who evidently don’t have the same problem). I tried with Opera and it was, hard as it is to imagine, even worse. Once again, it was very happy to work on Wi-Fi.

Other Internet-based applications work well enough: Google+, Twitter, Facebook, even YouTube in high quality. There may be a slight delay in startup, but no denial of service. Only the browsers are left broken and bloodied. And only on wireless broadband. (It uses 2G, 3G etc seamlessly.)

I have seen no mention of this in any review. It may be particular to my machine, although that seems strange, given that other applications work fine. It may be a problem with the ISP (NetCom, a Nordic Telecoms company). Or it may be divine intervention, given that I am evidently now a Very Important Person. At least as far as electric things go. Let’s hope this doesn’t spread to the rest of my computers.

Oh, and I have not lost a tooth this time. Just a filling. Dentist appointment tomorrow at 10:30.

 

More LED bulbs

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Lamp with 5 light bulbs, one of them dark

Two of these are different.

Now for the reason why I was in the electronics supermarket in the first place. You see, the last few weeks the light bulbs in this house have started dying off at an alarming rate. See the picture above? In it, there is only one of the original light bulbs left, the one to the right of the dead one, the one with the yellower light. You know what? Between me taking that picture earlier this week and now, it went out too. On the other hand, I have replaced the one that is lacking in the picture.

What is even more disturbing than them going out merely days apart, is that they did so one after another with the clock, always the one to the side  of the newest bulb, always the same side. It is like a conspiracy.  Is it a mysterious message from beyond the universe? If so, I don’t understand it, so I’ll just ignore it. Write clearer messages if it is important, Beyond The Universe!

Lamps like these are actually ideal for the new LED age. You see, one big difference between LED and incandescent bulbs is how they handle high output. This is more or less the default for the old type of bulbs, although technology has made available small, weak bulbs for flashlights etc eventually. The first ones, however, were big. With LED (light emitting diodes) it is the other way around. The first were the tiny on/off lights on electronic equipment, barely visible in daylight. New technology has increased the output, as well as the energy consumption.

The largest direct replacement LED bulbs I could find were 7W, which corresponds roughly to 40W incandescent. There will probably be stronger ones eventually, but it won’t be easy. Basically you make stronger bulbs by cramming in more diodes and using blue light, which is converted to white by the coating.  But weaker lights are cheaper to make and more energy efficient. You can retain the higher efficiency, but at the cost of changing the shape of the bulb to get more diodes, for instance in a long rod in the middle of the bulb. But if you want to keep the same shape and size, there are limits currently to how strong they can be.

That’s where lamps with multiple weak bulbs come in handy. They put out plenty of light, but they don’t do so all at one point. 3W LED bulbs easily replace a 25W bulb of similar size and shape, shave almost nine tenths of the electricity cost, and last for 30 years. Or that’s what they say – the technology has not actually been around for that long. Actually there is no reason why they should not last for a century, but unfortunately I am unlikely to find out.

You may have heard about how incandescent bulbs were made with planned obsolescence through a conspiracy among bulb makers. There is a long and seemingly reasonable video freely available on the Net revealing the conspiracy, which stretches decades back. Reality is slightly different. Not that there wasn’t a conspiracy, but it was a conspiracy of standardization rather than simply exploitation.

You see, with incandescent bulbs, longevity comes at a cost. Two costs, actually. For bulbs to last longer, you need a slightly thicker filament (the glowing wire part). The thinner it is, the more fragile. But the thicker it is, the less efficient. You get less light per watt with a thicker, sturdier filament. This isn’t rocket science: The copper wire that leads to your lamp does not shine in the dark and does not melt off the plastic insulation. Because it is much thicker and offers less resistance, it does not even grow hot. The thinner and the more resistance, the hotter and brighter. So you can have incandescent bulbs with longer life, but a higher utility bill or less brightness. The companies standardized on a certain proportion, the 1000 hours bulb. It may not have been incidental that it also got them more sales, but why would they have less sales when the utility companies reaped the difference?

In any case, with LED bulbs having a lifespan of 15, 20 or even 30 years, there is no economic incentive to planned obsolescence at all. By then, the current leadership of the company is likely to be gone, the shareholders will also have changed, even many of the employees. There is simply no point in adding the electronics to keep track of the age of the bulb and make it go poof after 20 years. So it is more likely it will still shine brightly when you and I, dear reader, have both gone to our eternal home and moss covers our headstone, if any.

But if, as I sincerely hope, my eternal home waits until well after I have left this particular house, I’ll probably bring my LED bulbs along, or at least as many as there are lamps in the next domicile. Not that I have any in the sight right now. It’s up to the landlord now – the rent is up for revision at the turn of the year, and if he is too greedy, I’m out. With my LED bulbs, Light willing.

 

Gadget lust

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Samsung Galaxy Note - Marketing photo

Infatuation is the illusion that something outside ourselves will make us happier. In this case, a Samsung Galaxy Note.

The other day as I was at the cheap electronics chain to buy yet another LED bulb, I passed by the shop of Netcom, in this case the Nordic mobile telecom company. They not only sell subscriptions, but also phones, and any combination thereof. And they had the Galaxy Note!

If you have not heard of Samsung Galaxy Note, that may be because it has just recently arrived. According to Wikipedia it has not yet come to the US, but it could be Wikipedia is not updated yet. It has come here to Norway, and it has caused quite a stir.

Galaxy Note is either the largest smartphone or the smallest tablet running the rapidly spreading Android operating system. As for its hardware specifications, those are fit for a tablet, going at the throat of the iPad. Or perhaps it goes for the eyes.  The physical size is 5.3 inches, but the screen resolution is 1280×800, more than iPad 2 has on its 10 inch screen! For another comparison, on a TV it would qualify as “HD ready”. In other words, that’s an extremely detailed display, and the vivid colors that Samsung pack into its displays don’t hurt either.

This is the closest thing yet to the “datapad” that I have predicted as the upcoming all-purpose entertainment and communication device.

Normally this would just give me a case of mild curiosity, but then I came home and found that I had used up my fast download quota on the mobile phone in the exact middle of the month. I also have the old Galaxy Tab, which I now use for my Internet use. But even if I pace myself – and I generally do – it will probably run out sometime between Christmas and New Year’s. If I were to add a third mobile broadband, I would be able to watch as much YouTube and listen to as much Spotify as I wanted. Conveniently that could go along with a brand new Galaxy Note…

Or I could, you know, watch less YouTube and spend the time in prayer and fasting, or whatever people do who don’t have three mobile gadgets at any one time.