georges' blog

Two months ago now, a federal court found that Jamie Thomas-Rasset willfully infringed the copyright of 24 songs, and the ruled that she must pay the Recording Industry Association of America $80,000 per song for an amazing total of $1.92 million. I personally was outraged. Not that she was found guilty of copyright infringement–she was guilty–but buy the shear size of this judgment. Understand this was not a criminal trial, but a civil trial–a case brought by the RIAA against Thomas-Rasset.

Anyhow, I was angry that big business could use our laws and court system in this manner–that they could use our courts as a revenue stream–as a means of extorting money from ordinary individuals. I’m sure that current copyright law did not take its present form apart from the influence of the RIAA and others like it (the Motion Pictures Association of America, for example).

So, I thought I’d write my senators and congressman. I wanted to express my outrage. I hoped they’d share my outrage. And I hoped that they’d also recognize that our courts were being misused and our copyright laws–laws that senators and congressmen enacted and amended–were being applied in such outrageous ways.

Well, much to my surprise, I got a response from all three of them. I think I was equally surprised that not a single one of them shared my concerns. And to the man, more or less, said that there was nothing they could do. What?! Aren’t these guys legislators–from the latin for law–and they can’t do anything about laws that are screwed up?

It is hard for me to walk away from this experience thinking that my elected officials actually represent me–that they work for me–and not for lobbyists like the MPAA, the RIAA, and others. If this is the response I get with regard to copyright law, what can I expect with regard to health care reform? Will they care about my interests or will they be looking after the interests of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries–the guys who paid for their campaigns?

Should I also take offense with the subtle condescension as each one, to a greater or lesser degree, tried to educate me in how our government works and the roles of the judicial, legislative, and executive branches. If they think that the people they represent are idiots, then maybe there should be more talk on capitol hill about improving our ailing education system.

Anyhow, this experience hasn’t helped lessen my present cynicism. To be completely fair, at least Senator Inhofe said he would “keep my views in mind” when these kinds of issues come before the senate. However, in my present cynical state, I’m inclined to chalk that up as savvy–you don’t serve for 15 years without learning a thing or two about how to deal with boobs.

I’ve included the text of Congressman Cole and Senator Inhofe’s messages below. This post follows up an earlier post when I responded to Senator Coburn, here. Your feedback is appreciated.

From Congressman Cole:

Dear Mr. George:

Thank you for writing to Congressman Cole regarding Jamie Thomas—Rasset.

On behalf of his constituents, Congressman Cole makes inquiries to resolve issues pending before the executive branch of the United States Government for residents of the 4th District of the State of Oklahoma. Since Ms. Thomas-Rasset’s is a resident of Minnesota, this matter would be more appropriately brought to the attention of her Congressional office. Therefore, we have forwarded a copy of your email to Senator Amy Klobuchar for her review and consideration.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any personal concerns at the federal level of government.

Sincerely,

Debe Homer
Office Manager/Case Worker

From Sentor Inhofe:

Dear Mr. George:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the case of Jammie Thomas-Rasset. As your public servant in Washington, it is good to hear from you.

I appreciate your sharing with me your frustrations with the lawsuit initiated by the Recording Industry Association of America, but this is not a matter with which my office can offer assistance. I do not have the authority to interfere with litigation currently being handled in our judicial system.

However, I appreciate knowing your views regarding intellectual property. As you already know, intellectual property identifies a number of legal instruments – including copyrights, patents, and trademarks – that provide innovators with ownership of their creations. Specifically, copyright provides authors with exclusive rights in their writings, visual works and other works of authorship, patents protect inventors of products, processes and other useful inventions, and trademarks protect the symbols used by merchants to identify their goods and services.

Some observers believe that intellectual property rights encourage industry concentration and create barriers to market entry. Others assert that intellectual property law promotes ethical and efficient marketplace behavior, holding that one individual should not be allowed to profit from another’s labor.

As Congress addresses intellectual property rights, I will certainly keep your views in mind. Again, thank you for your correspondence. Your input is valuable to me as I serve you in the United States Senate.

Sincerely,

James M. Inhofe

United States Senator

About three weeks ago I was so shocked and dismayed by the $1.92 million judgement against Jamie Thomas-Rasset that I wrote my two senators and my congressman about it. I didn’t save a copy of those messages–though I now wish I had. I didn’t really expect that to go anywhere any way. Essentially what I recall writing was that there is something wrong with our laws and our courts when something like this can happen. I also hoped that my representatives were equally outraged. Well, today, the unexpected happened and I got an actual letter–you know, on paper in an envelope delivered to my mailbox–from Senator Tom Coburn. The delight at receiving the letter from my Senator quickly wore off when I read the contents. Here is the letter in its entirety:

Dear Mr. George,

Thank you for contacting my office regarding the federal trial of Jamie Thomas-
Rasset.

Unfortunately, the difficulties you described in your e-mail regarding Ms.
Thomas-Rasset are legal in nature. Therefore, her situation would fall under the judicial
branch of the federal government, not the legislative branch. The U.S. Constitution
requires a separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches
of government, which means that as U.S. Senator I am not in a position to offer legal
advise[sic] to my constituents, to intervene in matters that involve the judicial branch of the
federal government, or interfere with matters or decisions that are rendered through our
judiciary system. Ms. Thomas-Rasset has been well represented by competent counsel.

I regret that my office was unable to be of more assistance. In the future, should
you require assistance with another matter, please feel free to contact my office.

Sincerely,
Tom Coburn
United States Senator

My opinion of the senator would have been better had he not replied to my initial message at all. Here was my response in its entirety:

Dear Senator Coburn,

First I want to thank you for responding to my initial message regarding the trail of Jamie Thomas-Rasset.

However, I must confess that I am disappointed with the contents of that response. I understand that her case is essentially in the hands of the courts at this point and you have no power to influence the judicial system in that particular case. However, the larger point of my letter to you was that there is something horribly wrong with copyright law as it stands today. When powerful media companies can employ our court system to bring an ordinary citizen to financial ruin and place upon her a life sentence of poverty for something as trivial as file sharing, something is horribly wrong.

It is not my intention to justify the actions of Thomas-Rasset or others like her. Nor do I deny the recording industry’s legitimate claim of infringement and damages. What bothers me about this case is the severity of the judgement. It is completely out of proportion and offends common sense and decency. This woman will be unable to rise above poverty for the remainder of her natural life. The RIAA will have a lien on her earnings until they receive their $1.92 million judgement. This is an amount she will likely never accrue in her entire working life.

The matter which I bring to your attention is that the courts were ruling on copyright law. I should not have to instruct you in these matters, but copyright law was enacted by legislators like you. And it was amended on numerous occasions by legislators like you. And I assure you that I know, without a doubt, that present copyright law did not take its present form free from the influence of lobbies like the RIAA. It is a system the recording industry has helped to create and now uses as a revenue stream.

You are right that the judiciary is responsible for interpreting and applying the law. And I am not arguing that they were wrong in their application of the law in the case of Thomas-Rasset. What I am saying is that there is a problem with the law–a problem that must be addressed–a problem that can and must be corrected by legislators like you.

I cannot agree with your letter and conclude that you are unable to do something about this, about copyright law, that is. I do not want to conclude that you are unwilling to do something about this. That would mean that you are content with a system that favors big business at the expense of ordinary citizens. I understand we are a nation with significant challenges at home and abroad. However, in the midst of these larger issues we should not be willing to neglect justice for individuals like Jamie Thomas-Rasset. I understand the complexity of this issue. I understand the complexity of our times. I would ask you to reconsider your position that you are unable to do anything. It is not beyond the scope of the legislative branch to amend copyright law, the US legislature has done it many times, it is time for you to do it again.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Kendall George
resident of Norman, OK

What do you think? Do I have a point? Am I overreacting? Your feedback on this little interaction with my elected representative is greatly appreciated.

One thing I could hardly wait to get my hands on while living abroad was the Apple iPhone. I saw quite a few people using unlocked phones in the Middle East, but I was willing to wait until it was available in the Middle East or until I moved back to the US. It turns out that the latter happened first. In any case. The 3G iPhone hit the market just a couple of months before I moved back the US. I picked one up the second day I got back and have been using it since. I pride myself a bit on being non-partisan when it comes to technology–I am utilitarian. Nowadays, there are generally may tools available to get a job done and there are compelling reasons to use one over another in various situations. In my work I need to use Windows, Linux, Solaris, and Apple’s OSX. I am not an Apple fan-boy. But…

I have been using Windows Mobile-based smart phones for a few years now. These provided what I needed in a smart phone. I used both HP’s iPac and iMate’s Jammin. Besides a mobile phone–duh–and sync-able contacts, I needed Arabic language support, an Arabic-English dictionary, a Bible program, a web browser and some tech tools, like ssh, telnet, and remote desktop. Some of these features were great, like Olive Tree’s Bible program. Others were merely adequate. And some were present but painful to use like web browsing and remote desktop.

The iPhone is not without its own problems. But generally speaking, and I am not exaggerating, the iPhone is simply the coolest thing ever. Ok, I am exaggerating, but it is pretty cool. Thanks to AT&T’s 3G network and adequate memory and processing power on the phone web browsing is not something I do as a last resort. Sure it would be better on a full-sized monitor, but when I am out and about I do not hesitate to check something out on the web with my iPhone. Resizing and moving around pages with the touch screen and gesturing quickly becomes second nature. Also, many sites have developed iPhone formated version of their sites. But there are also iPhone apps developed for many activities that would otherwise be browser-based. I’ve got the WordPress, Facebook, MySpace, and Amazon apps installed so there is no need to navigate to these sites to do these things. I could use some better games, with longer playability… But generally speaking gaming is fun and certainly no worse than with a Windows Mobile handheld. Many games make good use of the accelerometer. The camera takes surprisingly good pictures. Phanfare’s Photon app makes uploading pictures from your iPhone to your Phanfare gallery trivial.

The complaints I have heard about the phone are first related to the phone itself and the operating system–that it drops calls or the quality of calls is poor. I can’t comment on that–I’ve not had any problems in this regard. Secondly, battery life. I have found that the battery life leaves a bit to be desired. But only in comparison to ordinary cell phones. Sure you can get days of battery life with a cell phone, but i pretty much got used to having to charge my phone everyday. That is pretty much what you need to do with the iPhone, plug it in every night. If you do a lot of gaming on your phone, it might not make it all day. The third main complaint is that there is no way to tether your phone such that you can use the modem with your laptop. This is simply untrue. But in the interest of full disclosure, it is not trivial. For what ever reason (meaning AT&T wouldn’t allow it) this application is not available at the App Store. You will need to jailbreak your phone. If you use the QuickPwn app this is a snap. Then you will need to use the Cydia app store to install IPhoneModem. There are confusingly two applications named iPhoneModem–one is free and one cost $10. I had no success with the free version, but the one by Addition seems to work pretty fine, particularly version 2. I am online now, while driving down I-40 on our family road trip from Oklahoma to California. We’re about an hour from Albuquerque.

Anyhow, I’m still lacking full Arabic support. There is a product by Islam4iPhone or some such company. I tried installing it, but so far without success. Also, their site is only in Arabic, which slows me down. But I’m confident this will be coming soon. Arabic support is essentially no different than Hebrew support and there appears to be a pretty strong Israeli community lobbying for Hebrew support. On the Arabic-English dictionary side, Google’s online translator is pretty good. It is free. And it does a lot of other languages too. But without native Arabic support, the words don’t look right, because the letters are not connected.

Anyhow, I don’t intend to be comprehensive here, just want to say, love my iPhone. I highly recommend it. It is getting better everyday. It is about time someone made a smart phone that was fun to use. I will probably try to do some individual app reviews in the days ahead.

The occasion of our family’s first grand car trip–we’re driving from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles–reacquainted me with the They Might Be Giant’s Friday Night Video Podcast. This is one of the most awesome podcasts by any measure. And I am not exaggerating. It features John and John of TMBG as sock puppets. They enjoy some amusing banter as you would expect in any talk or variety show and then they introduce video clips from their children’s albums Here Come the 1, 2, 3′s and Here Come the A, B, C’s. Our children love the podcasts. And unlike some children’s programs their offbeat sense of humor and lyrics as well as their catchy tunes are very appealing to adults–at least Claudia and me.

If you are a fan of TMBG, Cake, or Bare Naked Ladies, you will enjoy the music. Your kids will too. And they’ll learn about the letters of the alphabet, numbers, and other things like conifers and Davy Crocket–well, maybe not too much about Davy Crocket. The biggest bummer of the podcast is that they took a vacation in the summer of 2008 and apparently haven’t come back. We look forward to their return. In the mean time we will probably have to pick up one or more of their CD/DVD collections.

Check them out on iTunes. Or you will get a sample of their some 813 Mile Car Trip in our road trip galley to be posted soon.

I need to set the record straight. After taking pains to migrate my photo gallery to SmugMug, I contacted customer service at Phanfare to cancel my account. They did so quickly and painlessly but included this bit of information in the message:

I know you have likely moved your site, but I did want to tell you that as of June 1st, there will be an additional option in 2.0 to allow you to share your albums publicly (with everyone at your URL) without requiring a login or registration. Based on all the feedback, we decided to allow this change to make the system more useful for people who really did want an open URL. There is still a Phanfare header on the pages, but other than that, the pages are unchanged.

Just wanted to pass that along…

A few comments:

1. I had moved my galleries–to smugmug. And it was not a painless process. I tried out both Migratr and Smugglr. And neither worked effortlessly. In the end I had two copies of every photo, so I had to manually delete the duplicates. Also, all the galleries were private. So I had to manually set each one to public. At least all the captions and album descriptions were imported.
2. “Thank you, for finally listening and catching a clue!” I was pretty upset with the changes that came with 2.0, specifically that users could not share their galleries without registration. Based on the reactions on their forum and the few comments I received to my post, there were a lot of unhappy (and some down right angry) users out there. I knew I wasn’t alone. I was glad that they had come to their senses and responded favorably to the public outcry.
3. “Could you have figured this out sooner and let me know sooner?” Apparently, I acted just days ahead of this going out to all Phanfare users.

So… what does that all mean?

I’ve already swallowed the pill of moving my galleries to SmugMug. I am still feeling burned by the whole thing.

Why would I even consider going back to Phanfare?

Here’s the deal…

On the positive side: Yes, I’ve moved my galleries to SmugMug. That’s a realatively done deal. Also, in the meantime, SmugMug upgraded the feature set for “power user.” This is the package that has the same annual price as Phanfare. They now offer custom URLs for their power user. Awesome. So, feature-wise, did I lose anything by moving to SmugMug?

On the negative side: SmugMug does not support sub-galleries. This made the migration and organization of my galleries clunky. Also, SmugMug’s uploader is simply primitive. Phanfare simply has the coolest upload and organization utility out there. Also, Phanfare offers a lifetime membership–pay for five years up front and you are good for life. That is a pretty good deal. With SmugMug you’ll be paying that annual membership until you die.

On balance, as I see it, Phanfare is simply better.

So, the question is, was I able to put my hurt behind me and trust Phanfare again?

I decided that I could give them another chance. But I wouldn’t make it easy for them. Let’s not forget, so far I’ve paid the price for Phanfare’s mistakes. I moved my stuff to SmugMug and I was beyond the two week money back guaranty window. I was out time and money. Phanfare would have to meet me half-way at least. I extended the olive branch. I wrote Phanfare customer support and said they could have me back as a customer if they’d reinstate my lifetime membership less the $59.99 I paid to SmugMug. They accepted. So, Phanfare got me back. They admitted they were wrong. They paid a small penalty for their mistakes. I was out some time, but not any money. And I got back on with a service that is nearly everything I am looking for in a photo host. I’ll give them a chance. I will trust again.

I’m not going to say yet that I’m addicted to renting movies at iTunes, but we’ve done it three times in about a week and I just have to say, “I like it.” I’m sure we’ll slow down, like immediately, but it really is a convenient way to rent quality films just as soon as they are out and you don’t even have to leave the house. As I said in an earlier post, being able to watch while it is downloading is choice. My experience is that after about a hour of lead time, the remainder downloads concurrently with watching. But, also, I was able to just grab a flick that I knew I wanted to watch though I didn’t know how soon. You have a month to watch, so you can load up a couple of flicks no problem.

So, I’m not a junkie, but am converted and a satisfied customer.

I guess it was at MacWord 2008 that Steve Jobs announced that Apple would start renting movies through iTunes. Well, a few nights ago, Claudia and I rented our first film through the iTunes store. We rented Michael Clayton. It was a decent film, but not one we would necessarily want in our personal library. So, it was a perfect occasion for renting. However, our local video stores are a bit slow to acquire new releases. So, iTunes came to our rescue and overall, it was a good renting and viewing experience. We live halfway around the world, but the download was still only about two and a half hours–1.5 GB. iTunes let’s you start watching while it’s still downloading. So, after about two-thirds was downloaded, we started watching and the download finished before the movie did, so our viewing was not interrupted. We’ve done the same with LOST which we purchase through the iTunes store as well so we’re used to this routine. We aren’t used to broadband performance in the States, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some people stateside are able to purchase and start viewing immediately or nearly immediately. But I would expect that just about anyone could purchase a movie rental before dinner and by the time the kid’s are tucked in, enough or all of the movie would be downloaded and mom and dad could settle in for a little home theater. Anyhow, Apple gets my thumbs up for putting together an on-demand video paradigm that just works.

Another service to keep your eye on is hulu.com. These guys are offering commercial TV for free on-demand. There are commercials, but you’ll get fewer commercial-minutes than broadcast television. Unfortunately, these guys aren’t allowing viewing from overseas, but we’ll see if I can’t figure out a way around that!

I said on-demand video was the way of the future and I’m sure there is more to come.

I like the freedom to edit my blog, basically any where I am by jumping on any computer with an Internet connection and logging into the admin interface at georges.nu/blog. This is particularly nice on any Mac machine which spell checks for you in any browser by default. However, on my own machines, I’ve gotten into the habit of using desktop blogging software. I like the convenience. It’s faster. You’ve got spell check. You’ve got other admin features. You can save local copies to work offline. Anyhow, I just like it. It feels right. On my Windows machines, for this purpose, I use (this may come as a surprise) Microsoft Word 2007. The blogging features work nicely. And since we all have spent a lot of time in Word, it is comfortable. You’ve got all the language tools you need: spell check, grammar check, and thesaurus. I need all the help I can get. At one point (before Office 2007 came out) it seemed like I often found myself editing in Word and then copying over to the browser interface anyhow. Now to be able to simply post when I’m finished is a great little time saver. The thing is, I just got a new MacBook Air, which has become my main portable. I’ve got both Office 2008 and iWork. But Word 2008 for Mac doesn’t have the blogging facilities of Word 2007 for Windows. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would see here a deliberate effort by Microsoft to cripple their Mac offering to undermine their competitor, Apple. It is rather inexplicable. I generally find that the Mac products from Microsoft are classier and “funner” than their Windows counterparts. Anyhow, since Word 2008 doesn’t have the blogging facility, where does that leave me for a desktop blogging app for Mac? Well, there are a lot of voices out there. It is hard to tell who is out front, but I’m placing my bets on ecto. It has a feature rich editor. All the admin functions you need. And it is priced better than its main competition. I’ve drafted this post using ecto. We’ll se how it goes.

The information in this post is no longer accurate. Phanfare has back-peddled on many of the lame changes they had made. I for one am very pleased about that and say as much in a follow-on post here.

I got this email today saying “Congratulations! Your Phanfare account has been upgraded.” Phanfare is guilty of misusing both the words “congratulations” and “upgraded.” Instead it should have said, “Aha! We got you. You thought we were friends. You didn’t see this coming, but we just [expletive removed] you royal! Ha, ha, ha, ha!”

Just wanted to go public on this one. Phanfare sucks. They’ve turned their backs on their loyal (and very happy) customers in order to try to grab a slice of the social networking and photo printing pie. I was one of those very happy Phanfare customers. Their ease of use was truly second to none. This was a choice feature. I wanted something that Claudia could use easily. It is important that managing your galleries is easy, so you keep them up to date. Phanfare’s client was a pleasure to use. It allowed you to edit galleries, descriptions, captions, everything while the pictures upload in the background. If you made changes on the fly. No problem, the client kept track of it. If you disconnected. It finished next time you’re connected. I wanted my galleries to be ad-free and require no login. They had it. I wanted unlimited storage and user access to my hi-res, full-sized originals. Check. If I wanted to use a custom URL, like photos.georges.nu, I could. Their only weaknesses were that their themes were a bit limited and thumbnails were cropped to a square. Other than that I was really content. I was also committed. I bought the $300 lifetime membership. Pricey, but it was supposed to be a lifetime. Little did know they’d pull the rug off from under me in less than a year.

Now they are requiring that your visitors also get free Phanfare accounts. They’ll need to sign in in order to view your galleries. You’ll be able to see their pictures as well, and keep up-to-date with any activity in their accounts. But this is not how I use my account. This is not how I ever intend to use my account. I’m not interested in trying to get all my friends and family on this service! I just want them to view my pictures!

Well, I’m done with Phanfare. I used to love ‘em. Now I hate ‘em. They betrayed me. I’m going to have to spend who knows how many hours getting my pictures moved over to a new service. I didn’t want any of my regular visitors to get sucked into Phanfare’s new scam, so I tried to move quickly. I got my smugmug account set up and a couple of my most recent galleries moved over. And I got my links at my website updated. All in less than 24 hours after receiving the bad news. Unfortunately, I wasn’t faster than my mom. She tried to check out our gallery today and was greeted with the “You must sign in to view this gallery” notice. So, she’s one of the new Phanfare 2.0 users. So Phanfare’s user stats are skyrocketing, but I predict it will amount to nothing. They’ll have 99% inactive accounts. What good is that?

Anyhow about smugmug. It has most of the features I want. And the price is essentially the same as Phanfare, only they don’t offer a lifetime membership. They have more themes and more customization. That’s good. But their user interface is not as great as Phanfare. Also you don’t get the custom URL unless you buy the $149 per year pro account. I’m not willing to pay $80 per year for that feature. You get a lot more features with the pro account, of course, but that’s really the only one I’m interested in.

Other disgruntled Phanfare users out there? You might also give zoto.com a look. They have a lot of the same basic features as Phanfare, but the price is a lot more affordable–$19.95 per year. Again, like smugmug, their client is not anywhere as cool as Phanfare, but what can you do?

J. P. Moreland, Kingdom Triangle, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007. 237pp. Hardcover.

I just finished reading Kingdom Triangle and though the book was at times a difficult read—Moreland doesn’t dumb-down the material in the least—the critically important message of the book was not lost. Moreland exposes the two primary ideologies that compete with and undermine the Christian worldview in the West: naturalism and post-modernism. He then develops a three pronged strategy—the Kingdom triangle—for defending and reclaiming New Testament Christianity. Moreland is quoted as saying that this is the most important book he has written yet. I significant statement since he has written numerous books. And several are hugely popular. I would add to his personal evaluation that this book is among the most important books for the Western church in this century and should be read and headed by every pastor in the Western world. I know I said something similar about Greg Boyd’s book, Myth of a Christian Nation, but really both books are fantastic and important reads especially for American Christians.

In the first half of the book, Moreland gives a modest survey of both naturalism and post-modernism. He concludes and I think correctly, that these are the main enemies of the Christian worldview in the Western world. Though many Christians would reject both ideologies outright, Moreland demonstrates how naturalistic and post-modern thinking has infiltrated the church.

Naturalism, in short, is the view that everything has its beginning and end in the physical world; there is nothing outside of the physical world. Unless something can be measured or experienced with the five senses then it is at best unimportant and at worst does not exist. This has tremendous bearing on the subject of knowledge. Essentially, to the naturalist, what can be known is limited to scientific knowledge. Or at least, that scientific knowledge is an “immeasurably superior kind of knowledge.” All other kinds of knowledge are relegated, at best to a second-class form of knowledge—and along with it all associated “non-scientific” academic endeavors. Spiritual or metaphysical knowledge is even worse off. For this reason, when experts are needed, Christian theologians and pastors are not consulted. Presumably pastors and Christian theologians have nothing of importance to add to any substantive discussion. What they could contribute is at best speculation and at worst fantasy. Naturalism is, at its heart, atheistic and possesses an agenda to characterize Christianity as irrelevant and Christians as lunatics. Though this agenda is the same for all things spiritual, Christianity seems to take the hardest shots.

The postmodernist, on the other hand, is not so quick to dismiss the metaphysical. Postmodernism attempts to navigate the middle ground by affirming spiritual realities. However, it does so uncritically. Postmodernism at its heart is universalist. It makes no effort to evaluate competing and often conflicting ideologies. It basically says, “What’s true for you is true for you and what is true for me is true for me.” Scientific knowledge is certain but other “truths” are relative. Postmodernism attempts to affirm spiritual truth but in the end diminishes it. The net result is not all that different than naturalism—scientific knowledge is king and spiritual truth is less important or simply unimportant. “What is important to you, well that is fine for you, but I can take it or leave it.”

Moorland proposes three strategies for not just defending a Biblical worldview, but attacking competing worldviews head on. We must reclaim the Christian mind, soul, and spirit. This is the Kingdom Triangle.

In order to reclaim the Christian mind, we must not capitulate to those who would argue that Christian knowledge is of a lesser substance than scientific knowledge. Historical truth is valid. The methods by which we establish what happened in the past are well established. The Christian faith is a historical faith. Our faith is based on facts. Our spiritual knowledge is real knowledge. We should not be bashful about that. Moreover, spiritual people can actually know more than naturalists because in addition to spiritual knowledge all of the scientific fields are open to us. We can know about the world and the universe. We need not be threatened by scientific inquiry. Science, in fact, has its beginning with God. Moreover, we can know God and know about God. We can know things through revelation. This is the difference between what Moreland describes as a thick view of reality and a thin view of reality. Naturalism is thin. What can be known is limited to just scientific knowledge. Similarly post-modernism is thin. There are non-scientific truths, but what is true for you may not be true for everyone—it may not be true for anyone but you. So again, non-scientific knowledge is inferior to scientific knowledge, because truth is not absolute. According to postmodernism, what can really be known is also essentially limited to scientific knowledge. Christians can know more than what can be observed with the telescope and the microscope.

The second side of the Kingdom Triangle is the renovation of the Christian soul. By this Moreland means that we must reconnect with God on an emotional level. Moreland observes that Christians have bought the world’s view of what it means to be happy. Happiness is a “pleasurable satisfaction that depends on external circumstances going well for you.” However, Christian happiness is a “life well lived, a life of virtue and character that manifests wisdom, kindness, and goodness. It is the abundant life that Jesus talks about in John 10:10. It does require a sense of well-being, but that is distinct from a sense of pleasurable satisfaction. Moreland offers two approaches to entering into the life of virtue. First is to kill bad habits and develop good habits. Habits, good and bad, reside in our flesh. We must exercise our flesh through discipline in order to train ourselves to walk in virtue. We exercise abstinence disciplines like fasting, frugality, solitude, and sacrifice and we exercise engagement disciplines like prayer, study, worship, and fellowship. There is more to it than that, though. If there weren’t then Christianity would be mere asceticism. We need to train our hearts to discern the Spirit of God. Toward this end, Moreland offers a spiritual exercise. Step 1: Focus your attention on your physical heart muscle. Moreland asserts that when the Bible talks about the heart, it is more than merely symbolic—there is some focus somehow with the soul and emotion that is felt in that part of the body. Sure we know from science that emotion is actually in different parts of the brain, but I would agree with Moreland, that you will not likely make a connection with your emotions by trying to concentrate on your emotional centers of your brain—you feel in your heart, in your chest. Step 2: Using the acrostic CFAN, recall a memory emotion associated with the relevant memory and let that emotion dwell and dominate the heart area. CFAN stands for compassion, forgiveness, appreciation, and nonjudgementalism. Recall an instance when you either gave or received love, forgiveness, joy, or acceptance. The important thing is not just to remember the experience, but to feel it. This exercise will help you be more in tune with God’s emotions toward you and through you.

The third side of the Kingdom Triangle requires us to restore God’s Kingdom’s miraculous power. Moreland seasons this chapter with several testimonies of miraculous or supernatural events in recent years. His intention is not to chronicle and support with concrete empirical evidence miracle stories. However, his assertion is that there are more and more such testimonies being reported every day. Rumors and false stories have been always been circulated. However, he asserts that these are increasingly coming from credible witnesses not known for exaggeration. He does not assert that all the stories circulating today can be verified, but where there is smoke there is fire. And there is more smoke than ever before. He make a couple of statements in this chapter that I found mind-blowing. First, he states that “Fewer and fewer Christian scholars hold to cessationism, and it may fairly be called an increasingly marginalized viewpoint.” This he does not say is sure evidence that cessationism is wrong, but he states that one must seriously consider why this viewpoint is losing acceptance among Christian scholars. Secondly he makes reference to a book edited by Daniel Wallace and M. James Sawyer titled Who’s Afraid of the Holy Spirit? Remarkably these cessationist authors criticize the view or at least practice of most cessationists as reactionary against Pentecostals and Charismatics. These authors argue that there is way for cessationists to cultivate a supernatural lifestyle that is biblical and consistent with their Theology. Moreland’s conclusion in this chapter is that all evangelical Christians, regardless of their particular theological persuasion must reconnect with God’s miraculous power and cultivate a greater expectation for the supernatural to occur. He suggests that we need to become naturally supernatural, by which he means that we need to look for ways for God to work through us miraculously as we go about our daily lives.

Again, I was very impressed with this book on a variety of levels. I think Moreland’s case against naturalism and post-modernism and its influence on the church is substantive. I like his recipe for taking these challenges head on. If you are not impressed with his practical steps toward reclaiming a Christian heart, mind, and spirit, come up with your own, but do not take this threat lightly.