Python Liberation Front

Pardon me while I Focus...

Things have gone more slowly than I had hoped here on this Blog and web site lately. When I returned from China, I had a particularly bad case of jet lag that was exacerbated by a sinus infection and a heavy work and travel schedule. Believe it or not, I am working away in the background, but lack finalized results to show for it.

One issue I have always faced is that I perhaps tend to scatter my efforts over too many areas and too many projects. In the tradition of a life long effort to focus better, I am now going to focus this web site on four (4) areas or topics:

1. It must be obvious from this Blog that I have an interest in creative writing (primarily essays, articles and poetry) about philosophy and religion. I don't see myself ever giving this up. I define these subjects broadly, but mostly I tend to be interested in the future of religion and philosophy, and how these affect the future of the human race, our cultures , technology, planet and universe. This broadly defined topic area is probably my primary area of interest.

2. My life long interest in technology is being focused now on programming using the Python language, and the associated technologies necessary to publish this web site in the manner in which I envision (but have not yet achieved). These associated technologies include HTML, JavaScript, various Python tools including FireDrop, various command line Unix tools (the site is run on a Linux web server, I create content on a Mac OS X box, several files are served from an old Suse box on which I have running various cron scripts (Python of course).

I am far from being a true Python programmer. While an experienced programmer can learn the core Python language in a day or two, I have taken three plus years to "learn" the core Python language in my "spare" time. Still, to me, it is no mean feat that I now have internalized the core language pretty well, and I have dabbled enough with a few libraries to get the gist of how they work. I can't see myself giving up this tool as long as the Lord allows me to use it.

This is an area I am working on in the background. I finally have pyGoogle working properly and will someday (soon I hope) have my former web-scraper script askMerlin converted to using the Google API, so that it doesn't constantly break. Then I will put a really improved version of this script online here using a cgi script. This will be a fun program, trust me. It will basically answer any question you ask, by searching the web and using a few simple algorithms. The command line version was fun, but it kept breaking. I have ideas to improve the algorithms to make it better, and to use the Google API's to keep it from breaking, and as a CGI script it will be acessible online. Real Soon Now... really ;-)))

I also will continue to play around with Firedrop2. I am curious if any one else is using FireDrop and how you are doing? Any other Firedrop Blogs out there? At this point, I must give a plug for the creator of FireDrop's own personal blog, Hans Nowak's Efectos Especiales it is well worthwhile.

3. I am going to put up a page or section covering my professional specialty, frequency control devices using quartz crystal oscillators. I started out almost 30 years ago as an engineer in this field, with my academic background in physics and math, and have now spent almost 30 somewhat successful years in the business side of this field. These devices are used in every computer, electronic communication device or network, and many other applications. I have seen alot in my career, including the dot com craze that drove demand for our components and subsystems sky high, to the subsequent bust; both of which far exceeded anything in the previous 20 years of my experience. Someday, after I "retire" from this field, if I ever do, I may have a Great American Novel in me about it.

4. My family. Pictures to come. There may be a novel here also someday ;-)))
Four children, a wife, two dogs, and the ghost of our old cat, Pebbles.

Seriously, these 4 areas are what I feel a need to focus on. The only thing that may seem to tie them all together may be this web site.

So be it.

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Creating God

It has taken me a long time to clarify my thinking on a topic that has occupied me for some 51 years. I am in this assuming that my thinking is based somewhat on concepts or connections made beginning in my first year on earth. Forgive me if what I say below seems too simple and too obvious to have required so long a cogitation; but with me sometimes the most obvious of things is the hardest to discern since it does not stand out from the background so distinctly.

The most important thing is that we must strive to bring into existence something beyond ourselves, beyond everything we know; that we bring about something greater and better than ourselves.

It is not wrong that we include base elements within ourselves and our societies that are from that which came before us; that from which we have evolved; for this is true of necessity, and to deny it would be pathological. However, it is right that we seek to reduce our reliance on baser things, and elevate aspects of ourselves that are more noble.

Now, it may be that we cannot create, nor help create, anything which is beyond ourselves, greater than ourselves, more complex than ourselves, but I do not consider this proven. If we, the human species and all our societies and cultures and creations, are a result of evolution from one celled biological beings, and those themselves the result of chemical and physical evolution; then perhaps lesser can evolve into greater.

Or perhaps a greater power existed from time immemorial and fostered that evolution in its growing complexity and circumstances. I do not claim to intuit any answers to these kinds of questions. But regardless of the answers to them, I do intuit that we should strive to progress.

Whether God exists or not, religions have added immensely to our situation. For religions have always focused us on that which transcends ourselves and our circumstances. By the very act of focusing on such possibilities, religions have helped to bring about the possibilities. For nothing can be created by humans unless first we imagine the creative possibilities. Then may we strive to create.

So, we should strive without fear but with reverence, awe and circumspection; not in a heedless manner. For in creating something beyond ourselves, we are taking chances.

Religions here also give us guidance. For, it is not enough to evolve in complexity and power; we should also evolve in morality, loftiness of thought and action, and whatever we may call spirituality. If up until now evolution has proceeded red in tooth and claw, nonetheless I submit that we should seek a higher level of values going forward. Therefore, even if there were not a God, religions have shown us the way we must go.

But we must now go forward, for the first time, as adults. If God exists, It may not be what we think.

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