Paulitics of Moral Celery

This is relatively big, encouraging news for us.

pH Raising Test Results

After finding out how much of a roughly 10% Potassium Hydroxide (KOH) solution is necessary to add to our water to raise the pH to 11.0 – a 250:1 proportion was about right – we ran it through the RO system. It took a while to tune the little EZ-Flo injection tank to work with such a low flow (less than 3 gallons per minute)… but eventually we got it such that the waste water pH was around 11.7, which hopefully would mean the inlet water was somewhere around 11.0.

After running it a bit longer, we took samples and sent them to the lab. The lab’s equipment had trouble so it took a bit of time before we got the results… but the results were encouraging! Finally

Inlet water boron level: 47.1
Outlet water boron level: 6.7

We are still waiting for test results to see how much potassium we ended up adding to the outlet water, and also waiting for the membrane manufacturer to reply with whether or not a pH of 11.0 will severely deteriorate the membrane life.

An additional thing we can do is make the waste water to product water ratio higher. The RO system uses a 2:1 ratio (2 parts waste water for every 1 part product water; i.e., it takes 3 gallons of water total to make 1 gallon of RO water – 2 gallons contains waste, 1 gallon is filtered). Increasing this to 3:1 (which is easy) will increase the flow of waste which means the contaminants have less time to sneak through the membrane. When we tested our under-sink RO (which is 3:1 by default and we chose not to put in a 2:1 part) system, we got somewhere between 45% and 50% boron removal at our normal inlet water pH; when we tested the irrigation/1000-gallon-per-day system, which is 2:1, we got about 30%.

Basically, the removal rate increased by about 15% by increasing the wast ratio. If we assume that would hold true, we could get as low as 90% to 95% removal rate… which would mean that even at the end of summer, when the boron concentrations are highest in our well water, we’d end up with somewhere around 2ppm or 4ppm, and possibly as low as somewhere around 1.5ppm to 3ppm at the beginning of summer (when the boron concentration was around 30 to 32ppm).

Costs

In case anyone is interested, here’s an estimate of our initial costs and running costs:
RO system and pressure pump: ~$1300
EZ-Flo injection equipment: $80 (may switch to using a better injection system, such as an actual holding tank + injection pump, but not sure yet).
RO membrane replacements: ~$300… possibly per year and possibly per 6 months, not entirely sure yet.
Misc other filter replacements for irrigation RO: ~$50/year
Potassium Hydroxide costs: ~$2/lb for 75% purity KOH flakes. At our current mixing level (2:1 waste:product ratio, roughly a 10% injection solution), we used approximately 2.5lbs to make 3 gallons of injection solution. It would take approximately 750 gallons of flow to use all 3 gallons of solution. Since we end up getting approximately 1/3 of the actual flow as product water (the 2:1 ratio), we would end up getting approximately 250 gallons of water. Assuming we irrigate with an average of 500 gallons per week (that would be close to peak usage), we need 2000 gallons per month of irrigation water, which means we would be using approximately 20 pounds of KOH, so about $40. That would significantly fluctuate, of course, because we aren’t going to be watering much at all during the rainy season; assuming an 8 month “irrigation” season and a 4 month non-irrigation system, that means approximately $320/year for KOH.
Holding tank, pressure tank, pressure pump: ~$700 combined.
Total initial costs: ~$2000
Total annual costs: Probably around $700/year for approximately 16,000 gallons of water.
Cost per gallon (not including initial equipment costs): $.04

For comparison, it costs approximately $200 to $240 to have 3800 gallons of water brought in, which equates to approximately $.05 to $.06 per gallon. It’s about $92/hr for the truck, $30 for the water, and $25 for fuel… and takes approximately 1 to 2 hours, depending on distance/access/etc. I have no clue about the irrigation suitability of that water, nor what contaminants would be in it.

Other Options

There are commercial systems available for removal of boron (typically coupled with desalination). The problem is the membranes usually require 150 to 200+ psi… which would mean a relatively large pressure pump (electricity costs + upkeep costs + initial equipment costs). The membranes themselves can be quite expensive ($500 to $1000+). They may not require a secondary storage tank, as their output flows are much higher, and they also may not require pH modification. It would likely require a two stage membrane process, system design and whatnot, etc. I’m really not sure what the estimated cost would be to implement, but I would guess it’d be more than $2000, and have no clue how much the annual costs would be.

Rainwater/natural spring water catching is also an option, and one that we could even do as a supplement. We have a seasonal underground spring that comes out on our property that we could collect (pump into a storage tank). However, estimating that we need approximately 15,000 gallons of water for the dry season, the water tank costs alone, including freight but not including any grading/concrete pads necessary, would be approximately $6500.

On the other hand, the tanks would likely last for 25-30 years and the only upkeep would be a few sediment filters and a sump pump of some sort… but it would be a pretty steep initial cost – closer to $10,000. Ouch.

Next Steps

Since it appears that our current setup will potentially work, the next steps are:

• Figure out a reliable way to inject the KOH solution, and make it such that we would not have to mix the solution once or twice a week.
• Get the 500 gallon storage tank as a buffer between the RO (~.7gpm/~1000gpd flow).
• Replace our delapidated water “shed” with a better one, re-locate the equipment there, re-do the necessary plumbing for the new locations of the pressure pump, pressure tank, etc.

Whisper something to Ferdinand

Part of the reason I am putting this is up is that it is interesting.

The other reason is that there may be people out there with a similar problem (boron) that search the internet (like me) for solutions. I could find basically nothing that a small homeowner (or really, any person in a residential situation as opposed to commercial) could easily implement; it was all in either the context of large scale agricultural irrigation or ocean water desalination places with water shortages.

It started out with noticing that something was not right in the garden. Plants were too light of a green, died, burned on the edges, very stunted/slow-growing, didn’t come up at all, etc. Amazingly, we actually got edible stuff from our garden! The process to discovering what the problem is – the discovery of which is mostly done by now, though not the solution entirely – was a long one.

At this point, we were buying drinking water, as we knew we needed to do more testing before we were comfortable drinking the water.

First, we tested the pH. It was very high (with paper strips, approximately 9). After looking online, it looked like acid injection would fix that pretty easily. Well, “acid injection” isn’t one of those common homeowner things. Eventually, after looking at sulfuric, nitric, phosphoric, and citric, we went with citric acid because it’s much less dangerous.

So, we bought it in bulk, got a cheap $15 siphon injector (approximately a 16:1 ratio), and through trial and error, figured out approximately how much citric acid to add to a 5 gallon bucket of water such that, when siphoned, it would lower our irrigation water’s pH to between 6 and 7. Then we watered with it.

Well, it helped a little – and some plants grew – but still didn’t look too good. Specifically, they looked burned at the edges. Turns out this could be two things: salt and boron burns. At this point, we decide there’s something more significantly wrong, so we have an agricultural suitability test run on the water. It comes back with some surprising results:
pH: 8.8
TDS: 516ppm
Sodium: 180ppm (should be less than 70 for irrigation)
Chloride: 80ppm (should be less than 70 for irrigation)
Alkalinity: 253pm CaCO3 (sould be less than 250)
Boron: 34ppm (should be less than 1)
Adjusted Sodium Absorption Ratio (SAR): 17.2 (should be less than 6)

Yikes! Salt, alkalinity, pH, etc., all is something that can’t be filtered out with something like a carbon filter, pretty much. The lab analyst actually asked if the sample he got (which was from a hose bib) was softened, because it looked like it (due to the salt content and alkalinity, I suppose). Nope! Just from a 980′ well!

So, we go on quite a hunt from here. Reverse osmosis systems can get most of the TDS out – salt, CaCO3, etc. The problem is boron. There are basically three methods for boron removal: distillation, specific ion exchange resins, and reverse osmosis. Distillation is cost prohibitive (and slow) on a large scale. Ion exchange resins are costly for irrigation, and either must be replaced or washed with first an acid (e.g., fairly concentrated HCl) and then a caustic solution (e.g., sodium hydroxide or caustic soda). The expense and continual acid + caustic washing didn’t sound so great.

So, reverse osmosis sounded the best. Claims of removal efficiency ranged from 30% to 80%. Eventually we settled with a company based in Santa Cruz, Hydro Logic. The owner suggested, instead of treating *all* the water, doing point-of-use systems; e.g., one under the sink for drinking water, and one for irrigation. Everything else (dishes, laundry, showers) could use the normal water (and, in fact, boron is a cleaning agent – you may have heard of borax…). Well, that sounded good. His company happens to manufacture a roughly 1000 to 1300 gallon per day (dependent on inlet pressure) RO system, the Evolution RO 1000, with a 3:1 or 2:1 (optional) ratio of waste:product water. That sounded pretty good. We don’t seem to be short of water with our well… just the quality is a bit lacking.

We decide first to do an under-sink one. We get one of their Stealth RO100 systems, along with a storage tank, a carbon filter (for taste), and a boron selective mixed bed resin cartridge that the owner was able to order directly (it uses a Purolite S-108 resin, which I had researched before in looking at that method of removal). We had the water tested: current water boron levels, post-RO agricultural suitability test, and post-boron-resin boron level.

The good news:
Unfiltered well water boron level: 43ppm (up from June levels)
Post-RO water boron level: 25ppm (~40% removal rate)
Post-boron-resin boron level: .4ppm (woohoo! WHO recommends .5 or less)

The bad news: the agricultural test was still high in boron (25ppm), not terribly low in sodium (60, only 60% removal), and still had a pH of 8.4.

The problem? Well, it turns out our pressure pump was set to kick-in at 30 and kick-out at 50… but our pressure tank was pre-charged to 38. Our pump *should* have been set to 40 and 60. So, after more research, we find out we need to turn a nut a bunch of turns (each full turn is approximately 2.5psi, as I recall… so 4 full turns). We do that and our pressure goes up to 40-60 rather than what it was doing, which was much lower – getting down at times to 20 to 25 even. By this time, we purchase a little TDS tester. We measure the well water (~380ppm on the handheld) and post-RO water (~20ppm). That’s better! We assume that this should also increase the boron removal rate, and go ahead and get the Evolution RO 1000 and booster pump (to raise inlet pressure to ~60psi).

We get it, set it up, run it for a hundred gallons or so, and send the water in for testing. We are mostly concerned with boron; everything else on the ag suitability test looked basically good (sodium was less than 10ppm, chloride less than 10ppm, alkalinity was down to 32.5ppm CaCO3; some necessary nutrients were also non-detectable, but we can always remineralize using calcite or something like that).

Well water boron level: 46ppm (again, up from August levels)
Post-RO water boron level: 32ppm (~30% removal rate).

Big letdown. We had hoped the boron level would be 6-8ppm (approximately 80% removal, assuming our level was still ~43ppm naturally). Having it so high was very, very discouraging.

At this point, we start looking at other options as well. I called the well driller, having learned about something called a packer or inflatable packer… basically, you stick these things down the well to isolate off sections of the well that you don’t want to get water from. Being 980′ deep, I figure maybe most of the boron comes from way down there. Well, the well casing is surrounded by gravel, so even if a packer was put in, cross-contamination would still occur. Basically, no well adjustments appear to be a solution. The driller does give the name of someone who has dealt with boron before and understands both sides (the well side, being a driller himself, and the filtration side, being a pump type stuff supplier). I am still waiting to talk to him, but that sounded possible.

Along with this, we take a look at rainwater (and our natural seasonal underwater spring, which we figure produces between 40,000 and 100,000 gallons per year… it runs pretty quickly and solidly during the rainy season). Storing 15,000 gallons of rainwater (since we would need enough, without having good quality supplemental water, to last all the dry season for irrigation) is expensive; 3x 5000 gallon above-ground tanks are approximately $6000 total, plus freight. Grading for a pad or digging if underground would be an extra cost, plus the necessary piping. An option, sure, but probably a $10,000+ option. Not something we want to spend right now; $1500-$2000 sounds nicer (if we can do it with reverse osmosis + some other extra equipment, we’d be looking at approximately $2000 total of equipment, including the extra 500 gallon storage tank as a buffer for the filtered water).

There was still one other option. Reverse osmosis is pretty good at getting rid of one form of boron – borate – but not so good at removing boric acid. Boric acid is prevalent as a percentage of total boron content at lower pH levels, whereas borate is prevalent at higher pH levels. At our pH, approximately 8.8, the borate level is supposed to be approximately 30%; almost exactly the removal rate we were getting! At about 9.24, the percentage of borate reaches 50%, and by a pH of 10, it’s at 90%… and 95% at 10.5. See the graph on this page from Lenntech.

I have also read a couple desalination plant papers that included successful boron removal from seawater down to drinkable levels (definitely below .5ppm). Most of them had a two-pass RO system and used crazy membranes that required operating pressures of 800psi … but that was partially because of the extreme salt content (sea water has a TDS content of around 35,000ppm!). They usually used a second-pass RO system mostly to get the boron out… what they did was *raise* the pH to 10+ before the second RO pass in order maximize the percentage of boron in the form of borate.

Putting two and two together, as the saying goes … we are currently hoping that by injecting a caustic solution (potassium hydroxide, preferably, as it would have a smaller chance of precipitating out and causing scaling on the membrane, and potassium is something plants need anyways – as opposed to the sodium in sodium hydroxide) into the inlet water to the Evolution RO 1000. This in turn, providing the pH is high enough, will hopefully reach to somewhere around a 90% removal rate… especially if we can get the pH above 10.

So, the next steps are acquiring an offered sample of sodium or potassium hydroxide (rather than purchasing in bulk for just this small test) and generating a “titration curve” – basically, figuring out the amount of a 10% solution of sodium or potassium hydroxide necessary to raise our water pH level to 10.5. Once we have that – e.g., let’s say it required 3ml of the 10% solution to raise 100ml of our water to a pH of 10.5 – we can figure out what strength of solution we would need for an injection system with a rate of 100:1, which is fairly typical for fertilizer injection equipment. I have already checked with EZ-Flo, who said their fertilizer injectors should be able to handle sodium hydroxide.

If it is still feasible, and doesn’t require working with totally dangerous caustic solutions that cause your skin to fall off by just looking at it… then we would perform an actual test with injection equipment, the 100:1 solution, and the RO system. Run it for a while, then get a sample and have the boron level tested. We will also test the pH level ourselves to determine if we’ll need a post-RO acid injection to lower the pH to somewhere around 7.

Included in the necessary equipment for the titration curve, in case you are wondering, is:
* 100mg of sodium or potassium hydroxide; hopefully picking up tomorrow afternoon.
* Jewelry scale to measure grams of sodium or potassium hydroxide in order to create a 10% solution. * Shipping tomorrow
* Nitrile gloves for chemical resistance and safety. No caustic burns! * Received
* Chemical splash guard goggles. No eye replacements! * Received
* pH tester and pH calibration fluid. * Received

We are somewhat hopeful, as our water seems to like remaining at a high pH; in fact, even after the RO, it was still approximately 8.1; after the RO + boron exchange resin, it actually went back up to 8.9. Since it has apparently a fairly stable *high* pH, we are hoping it will be relatively easy to coax it higher.

Probably more than you ever wanted to know about our water escapades, but there you go. I have learned way more than I wanted to about water filtration, even getting into chemistry things like molarity and normality.

Whisper something to Ferdinand

This is part of a series on what we’ve been doing and learning with our house. We’ve had a number of interesting experiences, and a lot of learning around water treatment specifically.

Warning: this particular post may be a bit unsettling to your stomach.

We have a 5000 gallon water tank for a buffer for our well.

So, one of the things we knew we needed to do was clean it. While the house was bank owned, it sat stagnant for about 6 months. Smelled like a pond, quite slimy, and came back positive for coliform (though not e.coli).

So, we turned off the pump and regularly checked the tank to see when it was low enough to scrape/spray the sides down. When it got low enough, we would open the fire hose drain at the bottom and let the lovely sludge all out. We borrowed my dad’s pool leaf cleaner things to help get some of the sludge out as well.

Well, it was going pretty well. The manhole at the top is kinda small and we didn’t smell too good after using the pool cleaner bag thingy in it – it would come up full of sludge, but in order to dump it out you’d have to hold it rather close to you … so we kinda ended up covered in gray sludge and smelling like a walking stagnant pond.

We ended up finding about six dead and mostly decomposed mice… some were skeletons, some were skeletons and fur, and some were in that half decomposed stage where the skin isn’t gone yet but the inside is just a mush. So it was a mouse shaped bag of decomposed who-knows-what.

We almost finish draining… except for the last few inches, because the fire hose pipe isn’t quite at the very bottom of the tank. So we decide to use a sump pump. It works somewhat well, and then dies (it was quite old and was almost buried in the ground when we got the house; used to be used to pump water out of a little drain thing at the back of the house that routinely flooded). So we get a new one and use that; works pretty well.

Then disaster strikes! There are two float switches in the water tank; one controls the pressure pump so that it will not turn on if there is too little water in the tank (to prevent the pressure pump from running dry). The other controls the deep well pump, preventing the tank from overfilling. Well, after we were done cleaning the tank, it’s Saturday night and we decide we want to quit, go to bed, and have enough water for showers. I lowered one of the floatswitches in (the tank is basically empty at this point). All fine. The next floatswitch is meant to stay underwater, so it has a weight on it. I started lowering that one in and it slips from my hands, hits the other one, and knocks that one off it’s cable. Doh! The floatswitch is now at the bottom of the 5000 gallon tank, which has no internal ladder, smells horrible, and is around 12 feet tall… and it’s rather dark out. We decide we’ll work on it tomorrow.

We look online and decide we should try to fish it out. Back we go with the leaf-catchers. Eventually, we do get the float switch up. It was dark, and if we turned the pressure pump on, it would end up kinda plugging the outlet at the bottom of the tank. Well, we get it up the next day…. and it’s missing a little plastic teeth piece that holds it on to the cable. That little piece is just a relatively thin plastic piece, maybe a couple inches wide and 1/4 inch thick. Can’t buy them separately. Katharyn begins looking with the leaf catcher.

Disaster strikes again; our leaf catcher thing has an extension pole on it. The extension pole part comes loose, and the bottom half falls into the tank and lays flat on the bottom. Eventually, we fish that out with a hose that has a spray nozzle – and thus a handle, acting like a hook – on the end.

Well, Eventually, Katharyn is actually able to find it after an hour or two of looking for it with the leaf catcher. I put the float switch back together and VERY carefully put it back in the water. Then we put our ozone generator thingy in there, connect everything up, turn the well pump back on.

We took really, really long showers with a lot of soap after these episodes. It’s really hard to get the slimy smell off!

Whisper something to Ferdinand

It is interesting that tax rates tend to go up in wars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#1930_-_1980

Taxes pay for things. The “we will not consider anything that would potentially raise the tax rate for any group at all” position does not seem to be a very rational/thought-out idea.

Figuring out what we actually want to pay for is a good idea. We HAVE been paying for two wars. Wars are expensive. Taxes tend to go up during wars to pay for expenses.

Arguing for a tax increase? No. Closing tax loopholes? Perhaps. But an absolute “we won’t discuss taxes unless you’re cutting” stance seems irrational.

I would rather have a decent compromise – some tax loopholes closed, simplifications, etc., combined with better and actual, real, right-now cuts to budgets – than a fake compromise that doesn’t raise taxes but doesn’t really do much for cuts, either… while looking good on paper.

Whisper something to Ferdinand

Two topics in one post! Wheee.

Politics

Three particular points regarding politics.

Firstly, we cannot judge a Christian based on their political affiliation. Ok, maybe certain ones are more obvious; say, some sort of white supremacy Aryan group. That’s pretty blatantly antithetical to Christ. But let’s take the big ones: Democrat, Republican, Libertarian. There are a few moral issues that I can think of that, I think, that would require greater discussion – e.g., abortion. Can we infer much, though, from the way someone votes or based on a party affiliation? I could choose a representative from, say, Libertarian, who is greedy, adulterous, and perhaps pro-choice. Does that mean everyone who votes for a Libertarian believes that? I could choose a gun-rights-supporting pro-life fiscal conservative Democrat. Are all Democrats that way? I could choose a slimeball Republican who accepted bribes. Are all Republicans like that? The list goes on…

Secondly, and far more strongly, we cannot judge a Christian based on their supported fiscal policy. Is one shown historically or logically to be better for a country in the short or long run? Maybe. But that’s not a Biblical issue and I’m not sure how much bearing it has on my relationship with Christ.

Thirdly, again pretty strongly, we cannot judge a Christian based on their supported social policy (e.g., social programs). I’m socially conservative, but have noticed that at the very least, a lack of compassionate rhetoric exists amongst prominent conservatives, whereas socially liberal folks tend to frequently talk about helping the poor, etc. I’m not talking about end results, I’m just talking about the way the view is presented. The degree of social programs you believe a country should have is not at all a measure of your love of Christ, His church, etc. Interestingly, Christ talked about the poor (and the rich) a whole lot. In some ways, what He talks about seems to parallel more what a socially liberal person would say, rather than a socially conservative. Christ really didn’t seem to like the greedy rich people who took advantage of the poor.

And the main point: isolating, deriding, demeaning, or offending someone, let alone a fellow believer in Christ, on the basis of the above three things is … well, I would not think it particularly Christlike. How does one deride, isolate, demean, or offend? Well, there are lots of ways. Deriding a candidate or elected official that someone else may have voted for. Making jokes about the other “party” in general. Expounding on how logically ridiculous the other side’s fiscal policy is [to you]. Talking about it as though any person with their head screwed on right would not think that way. Perhaps it is good to remember the Bible’s definition of a person’s head being screwed on right – it doesn’t have to do with governmental fiscal policy…

Patriotism

This is a bit unrelated but somewhat related as well… the church is a universal entity. It is not “multi-cultural,” it is transcendent of culture. It’s above it. Christ didn’t die for multiple cultures; he died for people, regardless of ethnic or cultural background.

Also, if a country does well, offers freedoms, does good in the world, etc., it is God who should receive praise, glory, and thanks (of course, thanking people who serve is appropriate, regardless of how they serve – government, church, home, community…).

So. What should we do in churches when July 4th comes around? Especially musically? I’ve been thinking about this and discussing with Katharyn for a while. Here’s some thoughts. I’ll start with negative ones.

Negative: Glorifying America is not appropriate.

Here’s part of My Country, ‘Tis of Thee:

My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From every mountainside
Let freedom ring!

The “thee” here is America, not God. Going on to verse two:

My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture thrills,
Like that above.

You love the name? You love the ground? Your heart with rapture thrills “like that above.”?? I’m not even sure what that last part means exactly, but it sounds like a sort of “this is heaven on earth” … only enveloped in song and contextualized by love of a country.

How about America, the Beautiful. I’m not exactly sure what some of the phrases mean, such as “and crown thy [America's] good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.” However, when the last verse says this:

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.

… I’m inclined not to give the song the benefit of the doubt, as it seems to be coming from a post-millennial viewpoint, at least, and seems to be somehow implying that an American patriot dream is to see America with white cities undimmed by human tears. The only place I can think of that does not have human tears is Heaven. America is NOT going to be heaven, and American patriotism is not going to bring Heaven.

Negative: Singing to America in a church service is not appropriate.

I go to church to worship God, not America.

Positive (hooray!): Praising and thanking God for good things IS appropriate.

Unfortunately, I cannot find songs that do this that are patriotic. If you know of one that does not go into other areas, please let me know; all of the traditional patriotic songs I have found are not centered around thanking God. At best, they petition, or mix in America = Israel theology. Singing to God, praising Him and thanking Him for the good things He has allowed us to enjoy – freedom, a beautiful land, plentiful food, peace in our land in our time – totally appropriate. And commanded.

Positive: thanking God and honoring those who have served.

I think it is appropriate to acknowledge those who have served our country and risked their lives. I do recognize that freedom has been bought and is protected with a price. I think that is deserving of honor, and I think the Bible does make it clear that we ought to honor those who deserve it. Giving thanks to those who have served and who have been used by God to bless this country is appropriate. Also, praying for protection, I think, would be appropriate.

Positive: Praying for those in authority.

In Romans 13, Paul certainly makes it clear that we are to obey those in authority; in addition, respect and honor. Paul does not mention agreeing with them when respecting or honoring. A simple reading of Romans 13:7 would lead me to think that I’m supposed to respect and honor those in authority, regardless of whether or not I voted for them or agree with their policies. Paul did not vote for Nero, nor agreed with his policies, yet said that Christians should respect and honor.

Positive: Praying for our country.

Paul specifically tells Timothy to pray for all people, including “kings and all those in authority,” saying that that is good and that it pleases God. Which God? Why, the God who “desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.” I don’t think it was on accident that in the same breath, so to speak, Paul tells Timothy to pray for all people (including kings/authorities) AND tells Timothy what God’s desire for all people is. Interestingly, Paul didn’t say to pray for Rome, pray for a government, etc., but to pray for the people – in and under the government. And He didn’t tell them to pray for a leadership change, necessarily. That’s certainly not wrong to do, of course, as long as we remain submissive to God’s will, which may not be leadership change.

Whisper something to Ferdinand

Like all self-respecting blog posts, I will start with a non-backed-up pithy quote.

The church (i.e., believers) was not called to change or create a culture; it was called to change people and make disciples.

I was thinking about this and started wondering (dangerous!) – it seems like my focus should not be on what in my culture is bad and thus needs to be avoided or separated from, etc… rather, it should be on what in me is bad and thus needs to be “avoided” … or repented of.

I’ll illustrate: it’s easy to get caught up in looking around at the culture we live in and proclaiming this or that is bad. Examples: divorce, sexual immorality/infidelity/adultery/pornography, cursing God, bad movies, bad music, rebellion, immodesty, drugs. Those are all pretty external, generally, sins; or at least, that’s what we actually see and react to.

What seems to be less prevalently, ah, scrutinized are the more internal sins that perhaps hit a bit closer to home: greed, lust (well, that one is talked about), anger, prejudice, pride, racism, haughtiness, not truly worshiping/loving God, condescension, strife, impatience, grudges… you know, the things that James talks about, heh.

I know for me, it’s a lot easier to compare myself to the “world” and culture and somehow subtly excuse myself and see culture as the enemy, not my own sin. Here’s a more to the point example: we get surprised or saddened or whatever when a politician (we are saddened if it’s in “our” party and maddened if it’s the “other” party, heh) is caught in some adulterous or immoral behavior. Clearly a sin; but then, assuming the world is made up mostly of unbelievers, it shouldn’t be surprising. However, how many are similarly outraged about… well, since I’m fairly conservative politically, I’ll use an example that hits close to home; am I similarly outraged by greed? It’s just as much a sin, but for some reason, I view an immoral senator a lot lower than a greedy banker. If I have kids, I think I would be much more quick to tell them of how immoral behavior is wrong, sinful, and they shouldn’t do it (and it seems we typically talk about how the culture doesn’t agree with us, etc).

Let’s take greed as the “other” side. Do I point out how greed is a sin and should be avoided (with statements like how our culture “accepts” greed)? Do I talk about how the Bible tells us that it’s hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Do I talk about the rich young ruler and how he was more interested in his money than his God? Or do I tell my kids that they need to go to college so they can get a good job (and make money… for themselves? …). Definitely not wrong to go to college and get a good job, of course; but it seems that there are certain sins that we just don’t talk about; maybe because they aren’t externally visible in our culture.

Annnd there’s my point. It seems that the sins that we are most concerned about are those that we can see in other people, and specifically, that we can see in our cultures. This seems to most often get followed with wanting to change culture (legislation, etc.), rather than repenting ourselves of sins that maybe we don’t see, and trying to change people. Which begins with repentance of one’s own sin and following Christ, not repentance from one’s culture’s sins and following a new culture.

Random musings.

Whisper something to Ferdinand

I don’t get the sudden influx of race-related news.

So I’m white. You’re black. So-and-so is “yellow” or “brown.” Someone might be feeling green at the moment.

If post-racial means you can’t ever even REFER to race, we have problems… because that’s just trying to ignore something that is real. I have white skin, and I know it. You can joke about it, describe me by it, etc, I don’t care. I have brown hair, too. I guess I could change that, and I can’t change my skin … but both of them are things I was born with, are external, etc.

It seems the really tricky part comes from when you ascribe certain traits because of the color of their skin … based on previous experience or “education.” We don’t just do it with race though. We do it with hair style, clothing styles, how many teeth you have and if they are white or not, the kind of car you drive, the kind of house you live in… basically, anything that becomes common amongst a group of people can be used to “judge” them. And those judgments may or may not be correct.

So when a group of white people start dressing in a certain way and act in a certain way, other people that dress in that way may get “caught up” in the stereotype. This appears to be the same thing with race… certain stereotypes exist because of pockets of similar-races that act the same way – usually bad, in the “bad judging” cases – and sorta “give a bad name” to those that don’t actually fit that stereotype but share a similar trait – their skin color.

I guess it’s kinda the same with Christians, too. Not all Christians want to go have crusades in Arab/Islamic countries, but some people who had similar traits to current Christians did want to, and did it in the past.

So, what’s the solution with this stereotyping that happens in particular with skin color? Hm. I don’t think the solution is to stop referencing skin color (“hey, look at that guy over there!” “which one?” “the white guy with ear-length hair”). I don’t think the solution is to make it insensitive to refer to skin color (“black” or “brown” or “white”). It seems to me that the solution is to stop thinking certain races – and skin colors, usually – are somehow inherently inferior in some way.

For a Christian “Creationist”, that should be pretty basic. They were created a human beings. We don’t know what color Adam was For a Christian “evolutionist” or non-Christian, that may be a bit harder, because how do WE know which one evolved later and thus is actually superior? Hm.

Random musings.

Whisper something to Ferdinand

I am just trying out Igelle, a fairly new Linux distribution (it is only at version 1.0).  It seems to have a very clean interface that is custom (i.e., it’s not KDE, Gnome, IceWM, XFCE, etc).  It is also fairly lightweight and you can use it as a live CD.  I don’t know how robust it is if you are trying to do recovery or something like that with it.  I’m also having trouble installing it on an old PC I have sitting next to me (complete with an AGP Radeon 9800 video card!).  It installed fine into a VirtualBox VM though.  If you want to give a new distro a try, you mean try it

Nobody paid me to say this.  Just thought I’d mention that.  Of course, I wouldn’t mind if they did…

Whisper something to Ferdinand

So, I’m trying to find a decent OS for an old Dell Inspiron 1200 laptop.  It’s got 256mb RAM, and an old 801.11b PCMCIA wireless card (Cabletron RoamAbout I believe)… and normal stuff like audio, probably onboard video of some sort, internal ethernet, etc.  I know PuppyLinux works (and various Pups), but it’s not the most user-friendly or prettiest… and I have 256mb of RAM, so I don’t need something that only needs 64mb.

I also tried a mini Ubuntu installer and choose my own, but had some difficulties with writing GRUB or LILO to the MBR/root partition.

I also tried Debian, but the net installer didn’t recognize the network hardware.  I tried VectorLinux but had some difficulty with the wireless card (I believe).  Xubuntu worked but was too big, apparently, and ended up running very slowly and jerkily. 

I also tried TinyME, which was cool, but it had some problems … although I can’t exactly remember what they were.  I believe TinyME is also MEPIS based.

I ended up trying last (because it was a larger iso and I had was working with 256mb/512mb usb drives at the moment, and the 1gb drive was really slow) the distro mentioned in the title, antiX.  This distro is MEPIS based and recommends 128mb.  It uses IceWM by default, which I actually think looks pretty decent.  It includes IceWeasel, which I was also impressed with… far, far lighter weight than Firefox and actually ran pretty well on this old hardware.  It’s a bit heavy on the installed apps, but it booted fine, installed fine, detected all the network hardware, etc. 

Lastly, in case you are wondering how you can make a bootable USB drive, I have found this to be invaluable: unetbootin tutorial on pendrivelinux.com.  The link is to a tutorial, but it has a link to the binary (Windows)… the program itself is very simple and pretty self explanatory.  If you want to create a bootable live Linux version or just don’t want to bother with making a bunch of CDs to try out various distros, I’d highly recommend it.

Whisper something to Ferdinand

I searched for a long time to try to find how to do this.  I couldn’t find anyone that did a simple text watermark on the first page of an existing PDF using PDF::API2.  Just in case someone is able to find this blog post searching for the same thing I did, here’s my code for how I eventually did it.  Note that this just does a horizontal watermark; I couldn’t easily figure out how to make it diagonal. 

Note that I called this script from a PHP page and passed, as argument 0, the PDF file.  The paths “../pdf” and “../preview/” are relative to the PHP page.

use strict;
my $originalPDF = $ARGV[0];
use PDF::API2;
use constant mm => 25.4 / 72;
use constant in => 1 / 72;
use constant pt => 1;
my $pdf = PDF::API2->new;
my $realPDF = PDF::API2->open("../pdf/$originalPDF");
my $pageOne = $pdf->importPageIntoForm($realPDF,1);

my $fnt = $pdf->corefont('Helvetica');
my $page = $pdf->page;
$page->mediabox('letter');
my $gfx = $page->gfx;
my $txt = $page->text;
$txt->fillcolor('#666666');
$gfx->formimage($pageOne,0,0,1);
$txt->charspace(5);
$txt->font($fnt, 72);

$txt->translate(300,300);
$txt->text_center('    C   O   P   Y    ');
$txt->translate(300,500);
$txt->text_center('S  A  M  P  L  E');
$pdf->saveas("../pdf/preview/preview_$originalPDF");

Whisper something to Ferdinand