If you are both a gadget and technology geek as well as a history buff (as I am), you might be keenly interested in THIS item currently for sale at eBay.

It is a (supposedly) authentic German WWII enigma machine, which was used to create ciphers and unbreakables codes for radio transmissions during the war. One of the best kept secrets of the war (so well kept that the information only became public within the last 10 or 20 years) was that with the help of the brilliant mathematician Alan Turing, the Brits at Bletchley Park were actually able to crack some of the enigma codes.

If you have an interest in ciphers and codebreaking, I would highly recommend two books I have read. The first is a novel, Crytonomicon, by Neil Stephenson and the second is a wonderful histor of ciphers, codes and codebreaking by Simon Singh called The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography.

Both books give a lot of information about Bletchley Park, Alan Turing and the Enigma machines.

Scott

Click here for an interview with Nobel Prize laureate Ronald Coase in Reason Magazine. Coase was one of the heroes of my friend Hugh that I eulogized last year on Fat Triplets.  Coase’s work has led to tremendous insights into how private property rights could provide efficient solutions to environmental problems such as pollution.  For a summary of the Coase Theorem click here.  For a more in depth, and more interesting IMO, explanation click here.

Steve

I have been out of town for work this week (actually I am in the Rogers/Bentonville area of Arkansas, the Worldwide Headquarters of Walmart). Although I am not overly fond of Walmart, it is amazing to see the impact that Walmart has had on this region. It is the fastest growing area in the country.

Anyway, I havent been able to blog and I just noticed that Charlie over at AnotherThink gave a hearty endorsement of our blog. What a week for us to be lame bloggers. There’s been nothing posted since since Saturday. Well anyway, I if any of you readers clicked over here from AnotherThink. Howdy!!

Scott

There is a group blog over at Together For the Gospel and its has been wonderful reading how Ligon Duncan, Mark Dever, Al Mohler and C.J. Mahaney have been discussing and interacting with their unity in the gospel and the reformed faith, even though they come from very different church backgrounds (SBC, PCA and reformed charismatic).

C.J. Mahaney has posted a wonderful reflection on raising boys and sports and how to use it for the glory of God and not let it become an idol.

Here is an excerpt

I will do my best to provide some answers to your excellent questions about fathers and sons and sports. It is certainly an area I have given some thought and attention to, because of my love for sports and my son Chad’s participation in sports. My son is not only familiar with my love for sports, he is also aware of my idolatrous devotion to sports prior to my conversion. For me, participation in sports growing up was a means of self-exaltation. But I want my son to glorify God and not himself when he plays. So from a young age I have sought to protect him from emulating my past sinful example while building into his soul an appreciation for playing sports as a gift from God. I attempted to address this topic in chapter twelve of Humility: True Greatness.

Playing sports holds great potential for growth in godliness for our sons, but only if we as fathers lead our sons theologically and strategically. I fear that all too often our sons devote significant time to playing sports with little growth in godliness. Here is where the example and leadership of a father can make all the difference. It is our responsibility as fathers to teach and prepare our sons with biblical priorities prior to a game (or practice) and not to assume that we have fulfilled our fatherly responsibility simply by attending the game. And after the game, we should encourage and celebrate evidences of godliness and not primarily our sons’ athletic ability or achievements. Our priorities for our sons’ participation in sports must be theologically informed priorities rather than culturally celebrated priorities. Fathers who aren’t theologically informed are more impressed with athletic ability, statistics and final scores than they are biblical masculinity and godly character.

The whole post is outstanding, I encourage you to read it. Click here.

Scott

The email below was in my fattriplets inbox yesterday. I can’t believe my good fortune.
I promise I won’t quit my day job until I have called Mr Cloud.

from:naomi_graham@virgilio.it

Hello,
My name is Mrs.Naomi Graham I am a dying woman who had decided
to donate what I have to you. I am 59 years old and was diagnosed for
cancer about 2 years ago,immediately after the death of my husband, who
had left me everything he worked for.
I have been touched by God to
donate from what I have inherited from my late husband to the you for
the good work of God,rather than allow my relatives to use my husband’s
hard earned funds ungodly.I have asked God to forgive me all my sins
and i believe he has because He is a merciful God. I will be going in
for an operation,and i pray that i survive the operation.
I have
decided to WILL/donate the sum of $1,500,000(One million five hundred
thousand dollars) to you for the good work of the lord, and to help the
motherless,less privileged and also for the assistance of the widows.
At the moment I cannot take any telephone calls, due to the fact that
my relatives are around me and i have been restricted by my doctor from
taking telephone calls because i deserve all thee rest i can get.
Presently,I have informed my lawyer about my decision in WILLING this
fund to you.
I wish you all the best and may the good Lord bless you
abundantly, and please use the funds well and always extend the good
work to others.Kindly Contact my lawyer through this email address
(steven200@tangana.com)if you are interested in carrying out this task,
so that he can arrange the release of the funds ($1,500,000.00) to you.
My lawyer’s name is Richard Cloud.
I know I have never met you but my
mind tells me to do this,and i hope you act sincerely.
NB: I will
appreciate your utmost confidentiality in this matter until the task is
accomplished,as I don’t want anything that will Jeopardize my last
wish, due to the fact that i do not want relatives or family members
standing in the way of my last wish.
Love,
Naomi Graham

I don’t know what I am gonna do with 1 and half million smackers. I am making my wishlist now.

Scott

I have an interest in the deployment of technology in the developing world, especially Africa. I posted about it months ago when I wrote about the Hundred Dollar Laptop program (now called the One Laptop Per Child Program or OLPC). One of the unique features of the OLPC laptops is that they auto-magically create a wireless grid network with all the OLPC laptops in the vicinity when you boot them up. Imagine a bunch of kids cranking up (literally) their laptops together under the Jacaranda tree and collaborating on their schoolwork (and passing eNotes and eSpitballs).

I remember thinking when I first read about that feature that its too bad so many of these kids would not have access to the Internet. That would open up a whole new world of ideas and information to them that has always been largely inaccessible to children in the developing world.

Enter inveneo -

They provide Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to villages and locations without a power grid using alternatives such as bicycle power and solar power. Inveneo’s Vision is “Connecting Villages Around the World” . The potential advantages to villagers in remote locations and developing nations are myriad (this is copied from the inveneo website):

• The difference between life and death (telehealth services)
• The ability for villagers to earn more for their crops (economic development)
• A better future for rural children (education)
• Faster and better help in crises (humanitarian and emergency assistance)
• Generating income by providing communications services (entrepreneurial applications)
• The ability to communicate with neighbors and the world

Inveneo systems have been deployed twice (temporarily in the American southeast after Katrina hit and currently in Uganda). You can see the status and location of their systems HERE.

Maybe those OLPC laptops will be connecting to the internet after all.

Scott

We lost. Not even an honorable mention. Bummer. In case you have no idea what I am talk about, read this earlier post.

The cakes that did win were all amazing though. Check ‘em out.

Scott

Christians have rightly been criticized for failing to act in defense of the helpless and powerless in Nazi Germany. Of course, we all know the story of Corrie Ten Boom and Detreich Bonhoffer. There were too few stories like those. Christianity Today Movies has posted a review of one of the Foreign Language Oscar nominees, Sophie Scholl. I had never heard her story before. Motivated by Christian faith, Sophie, along with her brother Hans and 3 others, began the anti-Nazi White Rose resistance movement. She was arrested for pamphleteering against Hitler and six days later, at the age of 21, was executed by beheading for treason. The script was based on recently released transcripts of her interrogation by the Gestapo. Here are a few highlights from the CT review:

…the filmmakers don’t rely on exaggerating the wickedness of the villain in order to make us root for Scholl’s survival. Instead, they portray her bravery as so audacious, so intelligent, and so spirited that we cannot help but stand in awe.

…she relied on God, not herself, for strength, and Rothemund (the director of the film), a professing atheist, portrays her prayers without flinching…The filmmakers’ work is an honorable tribute, in that they did not edit this aspect of her life in order to provide something more palatable for mainstream audiences.

…But Scholl is not the only highlight of the film. Held’s portrayal of Mohr is also award-worthy. Moviegoers have become accustomed to soulless big-screen Nazis, but Held gives us a Gestapo agent with a mind like an engine, and we can see the gears in his brain grinding as he analyzes Scholl’s impassioned defense. He starts out looking to ensnare her. But as he sifts her words, his face takes on a haunted pall—he realizes, on some level, that he cannot win this fight even if he kills her. She has the moral high ground, and he knows it.

This is a movie I intend to watch.

Steve

One of my favorite christian blogs is AnotherThink. He loves Christ and is staunchly pro-life but otherwise doesn’t tow the party line in terms of conservative and Republican politics.

He has a good post on abortion here.

His post this morning is on a student in Virginia who has memorized PI to 8,784 digits. Charlie at AnotherThink says,

When I was young Gaurav’s age, I was busy memorizing the words to Louie Louie, and every so often I’d crack open my trigonometry textbook and pretend to be fascinated, just to give my teacher a thrill.

I can relate.

Scott

A friend emailed me a link to a juggler named Chris Bliss who juggles to the Beatles. That video is below and is amazing.

But while I was looking for that video at Google video after I clicked away I find this video of another guy, James Garfield, who majorly one-ups Chris Bliss. He juggles FIVE BALLS to The Beatles. Amazing.

Engadget is having a Happy Birthday contest since they are 2 years old. Make them a gadget-themed cake and if yours is judged the best you winner a killer PC.

So here are the pics of Our STYLISH BLACK IPOD CAKE, COMPLETE WITH METALLIC SIDES.

Heres the real thing ours was modeled after.

The Final result

My 13 and 11 year old mixing and pouring.

A Bunch morePICS

The Middle School Geeks I volunteer to teach web development to EATING THE IPOD

My favorite Technology company, Google, has acquired one of my favorite web 2.0* startups, Writely. At writely, you can can create documents on the web and access them from there for easy editing and collaboration.

Scott

*You are all probably wondering what web 2.0 is. Well, one definition is

Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. Ultimately Web 2.0 services are expected to replace desktop computing applications for many purposes.

Check out the link above to get a long definition at Wikipedia.

In other Words - I crack myself up. All the time. Probably I’m just crazy. I also talk to myself.

But I digress. Discovery news has an interesting article on why we CAN’T tickle ourselves. Check it out.

Anyways, I tickle myself all the time. So there.

Scott

I kid you not. Check it out. Funny take on it at Engadget. Heres the story at Catholic News Service.

This may be my first post tagged with both Christianity and Christian Living and Gadgets and Geek Stuff.

Scott

My wife and I spent 5 days at a missions conference in New York where we were able to meet some of the most amazing people. We learned a lot about ministry in Africa and I am going to write several posts about some of the people we met and things we learned.

We were totally blown away by one couple, Keith and Kelly, who are doing ministry in a closed muslim country in Africa. Here’s their story.

In the late 90s and while they had no children, they decided to go on a 2 year mission to Africa. They worked with one of the many unreached people groups in Africa and felt that they were called to a lifetime of frontline missions. Their mission agency requires them to obtain a Bible degree so they spent 2 years in Europe getting a degree while they sought the Lord’s calling to their next assignment. As it turns out their next assignment was to go to a Center of Culture and Learning in the heart of Islamic Africa. They were to go as “tentmakers” so they began working in their country of assignment with “real” jobs since it is illegal to be a Christian missionary in this country. They worked hard. They made friends with their muslim neighbors and began to live life like they do, walking to the market every day and embracing much of the culture they were in. They lived lives of compassion and found many opportunities to talk about God and Jesus with the friends and neighbors. They shared traditional meals and went on picnics with the friends. Kelly became pregnant.

I was talking to Kelly in a conversation when I confessed to her that all my patience with Islam was gone. After the rioting, bombing and murders that took place worldwide over some cartoons, I had had enough. I had entered a stage in my heart where I was willing to proclaim openly that “I HATE ISLAM”. The idea that Islam is a religion of peace is simply bull. I told her that. And she agreed. Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is a heinous religion. But then she said to me

But for me, Islam has a face. It is my friends and neighbors back in my country in Africa.

I didn’t know what to say.

But here is the rest of their story. Kelly went into premature labor and then had complications and ultimately had to have a C-Section in her city hospital in Africa. She had a healthy baby boy. At the same time in the world news, the Muslim world was up in arms over news that had come out of Iraq. As a result when Kelly was recovering from her C-Section in the hospital, the nurses refused to give her any pain killer. They threw the prescription in the trash. They told her she was a weak American. She thought she was going to die. How would you respond in the face of such evil?

A few months later, Keith and Kelly came home for scheduled Home Assignment and they discovered that Kelly has cancer, a serious and often deadly form of it. God has been good and Kelly is recovering. They are waiting for the all-clear so they can go back and rekindle friendships, taking Christ to their Muslim friends in Africa.

In an earlier post about Africa I said we need more feet on the ground. How will that happen? Well , sometimes I think our biggest problems as christians in the U.S. is we don’t REALLY believe the gospel. It is so much easier and more comfortable to believe that problems; like abortion, homosexuality, creeping secularism, terrorism or Islam are going to be solved by politics, judges, presidents or armies. But I love it when I meet people like Keith and Kelly whose love for Jesus gives them faith and hope and love that causes them to love the seemingly unlovable and to take greats risks for Christ’s sake. If only I could have such a faith.

Scott