Entries in Life

$14m might sound like enough money to run a popular website, but for comparison, I work as a sysadmin at a tiny, tiny publishing company with more money and staff just in our department than that to do *almost nothing* compared to what WMF achieves. WMF is an INCREDIBLY efficient organisation.

Heard on WikiTech-l in a thread about better wiki editors. Just something to keep in mind when you’re getting annoyed with the fundraiser. (UPDATE: More interesting discussion on Non-Profits (especially free culture ones like the WMF and FSF) and compensation.)

Last night in Choir we sang some traditional Orthodox Christmas Hymns along with the more typical Western hymns. Since I’m in the choir, I had to pay more attention to the words. The one that I really liked was this one that revealed the awesome presence of God in the plain setting of the Christmas Event:

“I behold a strange but very glorious mystery: Heaven — the cave;
The throne of the Cherubim — the Virgin.
The manger — the receptacle in which Christ our God,
Whom nothing can contain, is lying”.

Other than that, it has been a quiet Christmas day. My wife grew up a devout Catholic immigrant and she and I have been working to preserve “peasant traditions” (as she calls them) of a humble Christmas. Our Christmas remains (largely because of her efforts) a religious holy-day. In that vein, I am amused by the “War on Christmas” folks. While ranting about people’s season greetings, they continue to participate heavily in the consumer aspects of how Christmas is celebrated in the States. Which is not to say that I am offended by any of this: people are welcome to celebrate their holidays however they wish. God knows (and those who have even a passing acquaintance with me know) that I’ve had and will have my share of rants. I’m just a little bemused that people are offended that other people want to celebrate at the same time they do without sharing their faith. There is some special irony in the hoopla over the greetings. After all, is there any special religiosity in the phrase “Merry Christmas” (which we hear often enough here in the States from the Coca-Cola Santa) versus the Orthodox Christian greetings of “Christ is Born! Glorify Him!”

People inflate their own importance. I am no exception to this trend, but I was reminded (again) that this is how people operate when I listened to America Abroad’s Remembering the Cole and one of the soldiers interviewed voiced his frustration that some Americans don’t remember the bombing of the USS Cole where some of his shipmates and friends were killed. This is a pattern that has repeated itself over and over. Of course, our pain is important to us, but, because we’re generally myopic and self-centered, we are easily frustrated when our pain isn’t important to everyone else. In reality this is just our inner 2-year-old showing up. Young children are just developing a sense of their selves as separate from others. After we’ve developed enough “self”, though, there is still some sense that we identify the larger tribe or nation as a part of our self. We share so many traits with our immediate family, for instance, that it can be difficult when they grow to be dramatically different than our selves. It is this sense of betrayal that I see so many parents struggling with when their children embrace a different religion, or when their children reject God entirely … when those you love — people who you’ve thought of as that larger self, part of the “us” in “us versus them” — don’t assimilate parts of your identity that you think of as fundamental, you’re in for some pain. And it is that pain that I heard in the words of the Cole survivor — “My buddies and I were out there defending America, and Americans can’t even remember and honor my friend’s death.” I can’t blame the veterans for feeling this way. After all, we’re reminded every day how much the military deserves our respect for, we’re told, the willingness to fight to the death for our freedom. And it is safe to say that most people in the military have adopted this mindset — that there is something more noble about armed service. Which is all fine, except that this point of view, embracing the nobility of service, identifying with it enough to be in the service, means that whenever you encounter someone who doesn’t share your paradigm (which happens pretty regularly when your friend has been killed), you experience a some real psychic pain.