(Re)nomination

I can't imagine what it would be like to grow up in a home (or should I say, two homes) where my parents were divorced. I consider myself very blessed that my parents never took that road when things got rough. While I've never experienced it, I recall several times in my life having dreams that explored the "what-ifs" of divorce. The dreams themselves were intensely difficult to handle and I vividly recall feelings of despair and abandonment. How could I call two places home? Why couldn't I be with my entire family? Was anyone thinking about what this would do to me?

But fortunately for me, it was just a dream that I could wake up from. This is certainly not the case for many, including several teens in my youth group. They seem to take it in stride, but I doubt that such can be taken lightly.

This talk of divorce is really brought on by the ongoing state of our catholic church. By "catholic", I'm implying the phrase "universal" as it has been applied to the church. It's much of the idea of "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" that we all share, as declared by the apostle Paul (Ephesians 4:5). Protestants might argue this case, but do they really believe in this unity among denominations?

Last month, I read a great article on Jonathan Brink's blog called Children of Divorce. Here's a snippet that sums up the article:

I’m a child of divorce. My parents split when I was nine. And over the weekend, I realized that I am also a child of divorce in my church. It was rather poignant that I read Tony Jones’ blog this morning. He shared a conversation he had with a Catholic priest about the Catholicism vs. Protestantism.

(The priest’s) closing argument: “All you Protestants,” he said, “are children of divorce, and, as such, you’ll just keep divorcing.”

It's true; we keep severing ties with one another as disagreements arise. Why? ReligiousTolerance.org lists some reasons in an objective manner. But that's not enough for me. I've studied scripture in an academic setting before. I get the factual reasons. But the child in me that wants a stable home doesn't get it at all. He gets hurt when he sees the arguing and when one of the "parents" walks out the door.

To the outside world, we look like a bunch of hypocrites. We preach against divorce, yet the makeup of our churches are defined by it. The number of Christian divorces are sky high. Denominations are formed when many differences could be reconciled. Most importantly, denominations seem to be a permanent thing. Like divorce, there seems to be no turning back. Failing the urge to resist sounding like a hippie, I must ask, "Where's the love, man?" How can one church "shake the dust off their feet" as they walk away from another? We spend so much time cursing one another, rather than praying with one another, or for one another.

What does this mean to me? It means that I can sit in a Wesleyan church and not feel at home. I could sit in a Baptist church and feel the same. I probably would do the same in a Catholic or Orthodox church (though the symbols and icons might quell my spirits for a while). As denominations, we hardly ever talk with one another on a corporate basis. There's a strange "elephant in the room" feeling whenever two churches of differing denominations come together. We develop tunnel vision and don't look out for our brother or sister churches as they sink in crisis; rather, we scoop up the abandoned congregants -- if they don't drown before we get to them.

What about the needy? What about missions and service? We could do so much more if we were united in purpose.

In my hopes for restoration, I call for a "renomination." Churches that still follow the "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" mantra need to reconcile their differences to the point that they can work together. Maybe they can't remarry, but they don't have to be on the offensive all the time.

I've witnessed several different attitudes by divorcees:

1. The divorcees cut ties completely and abandon one another. The children live two separate lives when they go from one house to another.
2. The divorcees live in proximity, but are always in conflict. The children are trapped in the quarrel and suffer.
3. The divorcees come to terms with one another and work together for the children. The parents work together to raise the children. The children continue to feel loved and nurtured.

Let's come to terms and begin ministering together once again. This world is crying for wholeness.

Cats and Vomit

One thing I'm learning about cats is that they like to vomit. A lot. Let me tell you a story.

I have a cat. Her name is Allie. We adopted her in October, 2007. It's been a happy time. Except for when she vomits. And she seems to do it on a fairly regular basis.

Allie is the sweetest cat that has ever existed. As my first cat, I was a bit leery, but quickly warmed up to her cuddling and purring. And the fact that she's never intentionally scratched me. Speaking of which, let me tell you a story.

There was this cat named Chloe. Chloe is a man cat. Actually, she-he is Jenn's family's cat. I say she-he, because young Jennifer was a little confused when she first met baby Chloe and decided to give him a feminine name. It turned out that Chloe wasn't as feminine as she thought. Little Chloe was too little to easily tell. Luckily, the Chloe incident has served as good practice for the distant future, when we decide to have kids. Oh, stop it, I'm just joking.

Anyway, since Chloe has grown up with gender identity issues, he has also developed a chronic case of paranoid schizophrenia. Perhaps it's because Chloe was declawed. At any rate, the cat is insecure and quick to let you know if you are the problem. One time, Chloe and I had sort of a bonding moment. I was laying in the recliner and Chloe decided to hop up and curl into peaceful sleep. As did I. It was a swell experience, except for that I involuntarily stirred in my sleep, causing Chloe to spring up and proceed to maim my arm. Since Chloe didn't have claws, he decided to grab my arm and gnaw at it with his teeth. Every time I look at the tooth scratch scar on my arm, I remember that Chloe and I aren't friends.

Allie's different, however. She doesn't attempt to maim me. It's quite nice, actually. She's little and cute. Except for when she vomits.

Unfortunately, this past summer, Jenn and I had experienced a lot of vomiting. For some reason, Allie decided that she wasn't going to hold her food down anymore. For weeks, she would throw up after every meal. It was frustrating, but we knew something was wrong. We decided to take her to the vet, where she was pronounced as dehydrated and was admitted for two days. Unfortunately, they didn't find any problems, so they sent her home with a big vet bill.

Everything was looking fine until a month later, we returned home from a trip to see our cat regressing into her vomiting behavior; except this time, Allie decided to stop eating altogether. We tried everything for two weeks, but she would hardly eat more than a bite of food. We took her to the vet again, who kept her for over a week. They couldn't find anything wrong with her and we were beginning to fear cancer. After the second x-ray, they found a mass in her small intestine.

Luckily after an expensive surgery, Allie made a full recovery. Well, I shouldn't say full. She still vomits occasionally. Well, at least she's sweet. I think I need a cat whisperer to tell my cat to stop vomiting.

They know what I'm thinking

I love artificial intelligence. Over the past year or so, I have had a growing interest in a field of study under the Computer Science umbrella called "natural language processing," or NLP for short. I love the idea that with a good understanding of mathematics and linguistics that a programmer can design systems that can read lots of text and begin to retrieve and understand the actual context of the sentence, as well as to translate the sentence as a whole, not just word-by-word.

Which brings me to two websites I've stumbled across in my research on advances in NLP. The first one is this really cool program called Jodange Top of Mind. Designed and co-founded by Dr. Claire Cardie, Professor at Cornell University's Department of Computer Science. This program can extract opinionated comments from news articles and presents them as a means to summarize the article. Simply amazing. I recommend signing up for a trial.

Today I also just stumbled across Nice Translator, which is a cool language translation program that uses the Google Translate API to translate entire sentences into multiple languages. It's really smart and uses AJAX to correct the translation as you type. It does a great job. I did find one boo-boo between English and Spanish. I was trying out the subjunctive to see how it would render in Spanish and entered the following sentence:

I doubt that you are going to Peru in December.

I expected to get back:

Dudo que usted vaya al Perú en diciembre.

but instead I got:

me cabe duda de que va a Perú en diciembre.

I'm pretty sure that ir is conjugated incorrectly here. However, if you reverse translate the expected sentence to English, you get the correct result. It looks like the program understands subjunctive, but might have an issue with using it. Spanish experts, please correct me if I'm wrong.

I hope someday to have the opportunity to study NLP. I think that it will make a great impact on our future.

Alien vs Predator Requiem

First of all, I must say, that I saw Alien vs Predator Requiem about this time last year with my friends Josh and Tim, and let me tell you, that movie was TERRIBLE. There are few times that I have seen such bad acting and just an overall bad movie. I was actually happy when the Predator killed the stereotypical-horror-movie-sleezy-girl character with a hyper-advanced-looking giant ninja star. Excuse my technical verbiage.

At any rate, I bring this horrible movie back into recollection, as I was looking up ideas online for games for my youth group. One game that I saw was called Alien vs Predator. Here are the rules:

This game works best in large buildings with many hiding spots!!
This game is a variation of Hide and go seek. At the beginning explain that everyone is going to go hide. You need two volunteers to be Aliens, and one volunteer to be a Predator. Everyone else are unwitting humans that will be captured. The premise is that the humans hide. The aliens need to find the humans and take them to their nest (prison, holding place whatever), The Predators Job is to hunt the Aliens and to rescue the humans.

How it works:
Let all the humans go hide, give them a few minutes then you let the aliens go "hunt" them. If a person is found by the Alien, the alien takes them to the nest where they are stuck until they are rescued.
Give the Aliens a minute or two, then release the Predator. The predator's job is to catch the aliens. Once the predator has tracked down and tagged the alien, the alien has to sit out. The Predator also has to free all the humans. To do this the predator goes to the nest and can only take one person at a time to a different designated spot.

How to win:
- If all the humans are caught and are in the nest aliens win
- If both aliens are caught the Predator wins

Depending on the size of the group you may need more aliens and predators, but the minimum is two Aliens and one Predator, otherwise it is too easy.
Games very in length, but usually last 20 min.

But if anyone has really seen the AvP movies, they'd know well that predators aren't necessarily the good guys. I saw another "Alien" game on the website that had some good ideas, as well.

This is great for a church with a lot of hiding places. First pick two (about one per 10 kids) "ray guns". The ray guns are given five minutes to hide anywhere in the church. We usually explain the game and the rules during this time. Next, pick out two "aliens". The aliens are released to hide themselves too. The object of the game is to find a "ray gun" so that you can zap the "alien". The aliens try to tag all of the players. If a player is tagged then they have to go back to the common area for a full minute. An untagged player can free a tagged player at any time. This game is great in the dark. We usually play it once a month for the whole night.

I like the zapper idea, as well as having humans, aliens, and predators together. So I decided to try to integrate the two ideas to construct the new game: "Alien vs Predator Requiem." This is a work in progress as I am not a master of game theory, so I'm going to need your help in completing the game idea.

Here's what I have so far:

Equipment:

• Laser tag vests for all players
• Laser tag guns for humans (about 2 per 10 humans)
• Pool noodle/rolled up newspaper/soft bludgeoning device for predators
• A Bible, because the humans don't have a prayer! *rofl*

Player Ratio:

• 10 humans (life points: 2)
• 2 aliens (life points: 2)
• 1 predator (life points: 10)

Object of the game:

• Aliens: Capture all living humans and make into alien spawn!
• Predator: Kill all aliens and humans!
• Humans: Kill all aliens and the predator!

Gameplay:

Similar to the rules in the "Alien" game, the guns will be hidden throughout the playing field. The aliens are then released to hide. After the aliens are hidden, the humans will go in search of the guns. The aliens will try to capture the humans by tagging them. If a human is tagged, they are to go to the "brooding ground," where they must stay for 1 minute. If a human remains in the brooding ground for the entire time, they are "devoured" and become an alien. The new alien is released to hunt for humans. Any human may free captured humans by entering the brooding ground and tagging the captured human before their incubation time ends.

Once finding a gun, humans may shoot at the aliens; in the meantime, aliens can still tag and capture humans. After 3-5 minutes of gameplay, the predator is released. The predator cannot be killed by aliens, but can be shot by humans. Predators will "kill" their prey by whacking them with their Soft Bludgeoning Device (SBD).

This is where it gets tricky. If any player is shot or hit by the SBD, they lose one life point. Once a player runs out of life points, they are killed. Shots from the laser gun only count if they make the laser vest light up.

By the way, neither aliens nor predators can use the guns. Aliens don't have opposable thumbs, and predators are just in it for the hunt!

So that's about it. I'm not sure if the game is fair yet, as I haven't tested it out. Feel free to add your comments about revisions to this game!

Our Child, Draw Nearer

I had a lot of thoughts on my mind this morning, so I decided to spend 15 minutes in writing a short Advent poem.

"Our Child, Draw Nearer"

Christ-child,
Spirit of Truth,
Heavenly Savior,
My desire today is you.

Peace-bringer,
Soul-singer,
Christ, Redeemer,
My hope lies in you.

My fears grow deeper;
Lord, please draw nearer.
My God, come clearer:
My rest lies in you.

I am broken,
But Lord you have spoken:
In you I am whole again,
My strength lies in you.

Lord, I am blind
To the hurts of mankind,
Show me your mind,
I desire to see like you.

Holy Immanuel,
Prince of Peace,
Savior, Redeemer,
My freedom lies in you.

Christ-child, be born in me,
Set my soul free;
For you are the key:
My life is in you.