Ted Walther's Private Diary

After a pleasant time in California and Mexico, I'm hopping on the train back to Canada tomorrow. Will be incommunicado for a few days. Once you are on the train, you can't really get off it until you reach your destination; the stops are so very short. I hope that going northbound will be faster than the southbound trip.

In the meantime, Jesus Monroy reminded me of the Luscher Color Test. A group of us tried it out a few months ago; it gave quite accurate results. You choose the colors in order of preference, and that reveals things about your mental state and personality. You can try it for yourself at the Color Quiz website. A google search will show other online versions of the Luscher test; they each give similar results, but with different details.

[Blog entry in progress. Not finished.]

According to legend, The Free Software movement began as a response to a number of companies closing their software for the purpose of making profits. [1] By closing, I am refering to the source code. Source code is to computer programmers what seed is to farmers. A farmer can turn seed into more seed. A programmer can turn source code into more programs. Back in the 1960's and 70's, companies started closing their software, hiding the source code. Programmers could no longer take programs and make new programs out of them. An idealistic young programmer named Richard Stallman realized what was happening and organized the Free Software Foundation to combat what he instinctively felt was a bad thing.

I believe it was not an accident that Richard Stallman led the way in the Free Software movement. I believe it goes back to his Jewish roots. Although he has been a firm and committed atheist since the age of twelve, the entire driving ethic behind the Free Software movement that he founded breathes the spirit of the Torah, the Law of Moses.

The Open Source movement also drinks from the same well, but partakes more of the Christian New Testament than the Jewish Old Testament.

Two different threads: public service, giving to charity, and the limits on property thread, can't prevent others from benefiting from your labor.

Be fruitful and multiply and become many. No castrated male shall enter the congregation. To give is better than to recieve. Let others benefit from your work; picking an apple tree, gleaning a harvest. Busy wisdom and sell it not. Do unto others. Recieved freely, give freely (gov't funding).

Catholic demographic. Jewish roots of Richard Stallman and many of open sources leading figures.

1. A Brief History of Free/Open Source Software Movement

Listening to Hebrew readers read the Bible, I've come to the conclusion that the Hebrew alphabet has at least four vowels. Why is it claimed in every Hebrew class that Hebrew only has consonants?

Reading through some vocabulary words today, I found two very interesting bits. First, the name of Aaron. It was originally pronounced "air-oon". It is from this that the modern day Arabs get the name Haroon, Haroun, or Harun. Harun al Rashid was made famous in the Thousand and One Nights collection of Arabian tall tales translated by Sir Richard Burton. When you see the name Harun, you can substitute in "Aaron". But maybe it would be more appropriate to correct "Aaron" to something that sounds closer to Haroon.

The second realization was that the name "Eve" was pronounced "hoo-wah". This makes it the original of the modern Latin and Spanish word "uva" or egg. Yes, the mother of us all was called "Egg". Perhaps it is from this that we get the feminine names Peggy and Agatha. Can you see how appropriate this is? All civilization came from from her loins, just as a tiny fish comes forth from the egg and grows into a mighty sturgeon, ruling the rivers of the Dnieper. Eve truly was the precious egg that hatched into all humanity.

In Hebrew, the name Moses is also correctly pronounced as "Musa", exactly the way the Arabs pronounce it.

The word for "he" or "she" is the same in Hebrew, and should be pronounced "hwee". Like a cross between the word "we" and "he".

Sabbath is coming up. I felt compelled to browse the Mishnah today for the first time in my life. Some of the things in it are very hard to understand, such as the dowry rules for a woman who had a tree fall on her. (Mishnah Ketubot 1:3) After some thought, I think it is referring to disabled women, but then why does it discuss her right to claim virginity? Given that in the Talmud, an "overturned table" refers to anal sex, I'll have to wait for an expert to clear up the mystery of the falling trees.

The edition I've found online at the WikiSource Mishnah is extremely incomplete. Maybe the parts they've left out are embarassing. The parts they have posted are generally good, and give a picture of a society that takes the Law literally. I found this, for example:

Mishnah Avot 4:2 Ben Azzai says: Run to do an easy mitzvah, and flee from sin; since one mitzvah leads to another mitzvah, and one sin leads to another sin; since the reward for a mitzvah is another mitzvah, and the reward for one sin is another sin.

This is the exact message I've been trying to get across for the past couple years; if a commandment (mitzvah) is easy to do, why not do it? Even if you think it is outdated, outmoded, and has no application today, why not do it just because at some point God said to do it, and you want to get closer to him and to understand his mind better?

I have been telling people that when you obey the commands (mitzvahs) that you are able to, God will give you the power and knowledge to obey even more mitzvahs. I have found this to be true; I cannot disagree with the sage Ben Azzai on this score.

But before I said it, and before Ben Azzai said it, long before the Mishnah was written down, Jesus said it:

Luke 16:10-12 He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?

So what do we do? What will you do with this information today? We should look at the law of Moses and start doing the bits of it that we can. Every time we do something during the day, we should think "Is this for or against God's law?" That is what it means to obey the law "meditate on the law day and night, and when you rise up and when you sit down." So first, you need to read the Laws, which are mostly found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. But the rest of the Bible is necessary to understand them correctly. Any one Law read out of context can sound quite barbarous and disgusting. It is when the parts are seen in the big picture, that they work together as a well oiled machine to produce a sweet purring sound of harmony and agreement, moving society along the path of peace and justice.

Noone can do all the law. At least, noone can start doing the whole law at once. The reason is, knowledge of God's Laws has been hidden from us, because for so many generations our nations and ancestors have rebelled against God. We have to actively seek God to find him, to find out what he wants us to do. So if we can't do part of the law, don't worry. Just do the parts that you can do, and meditate on how you can do the parts that you can't do. I myself do not fully understand the cleanliness, purity, and sacrificial laws, and am not currently obeying the sewage law. Repentance from sin is a process. If your muscles are weak, it will take time to make them strong. Just so, our conscience needs to be trained to be conscious of sin. It took me three years, starting with an extensive knowledge of the Bible, to arrive where I am. Do not fear; the hard part was being convinced that God has clearly outlined a plan for us to follow. After that it was a matter of researching, reading the research of others, to find out what it means to get an accurate knowledge of what God really wants us to do. The law itself is very simple; once the dust of centuries of false ideas is cleared away, it is very easy to teach, and easy to learn. Jesus taught his disciples for three years. That seems to be a standard period of discipleship. In the Catholic church, if you attend mass every morning for three years, you will hear the entire Bible read out loud.

Don't be depressed. God loves repentance. God is good; he does not expect the same things from a child as he does from an adult. When you are new to the Law, he will overlook your failings. A parent does not punish the baby when it stumbles while learning to walk. Neither does God look harshly on the failings of those new to the faith who are practicing and training themselves to walk in his ways. What he cares is that you keep trying, as best you can.

Two items that are relatively easy to start with are the dietary laws, and some of the cleanliness laws. I wrote about the dietary laws in my earlier article God's Food Laws in Todays World. And the cleanliness law says that after having sex, a man or woman must wash themselves and any clothes or blankets they came in contact with. (Leviticus 15:18) It doesn't matter whether a male ejaculated because of a wet dream, masturbation, or normal sex with a woman, he, and if there was a woman, she, must bathe themselves. Even after bathing, both parties are considered "unclean" for the rest of the day, until evening. For this reason, sex in the late afternoon or early evening seems to be the most convenient and easy, because it involves the least amount of time separated from the rest of society. If you have sex in the morning, it will be like a honeymoon; you will be in each others company, without anyone else, for the rest of the day.

One thing I am still researching is the full ramifications of being "unclean". It seems to involve staying away from other people, as in a quarantine. But it is a bit more flexible than our modern idea of quarantine; you aren't limited in where you can go, but just in what you can touch. If an unclean person sits in a chair, the chair must be washed and noone else can sit on that chair for the rest of the day. I may be wrong in this; again, the purity and cleanliness laws can be a bit sparse at times.

Eventually I hope to have a list of all 613 laws set up in a checklist format. Many laws do not apply directly to peoples lives, but they are still important to know, because they serve as examples that you have to think about. When you think about them, then you can understand the right way to act in situations that don't seem to be covered anywhere in the Law. As an example of this, read my earlier article on What does the Torah say about child brides?.

It is a good idea to read through the entire Bible at least once. Don't worry if you don't understand it; the important thing is to know the main names, and stories, and to have an idea of what is in it. Once you have that foundation, it will be easy to teach you the meaning, and how the pieces fit together.

If you have any Bible or Torah questions, email ted AT reactor-core DOT org.

Why is it, in the Bible, that a maiden who loses her virginity is always considered a harlot? Is it because maidens cannot be seduced except by the offer of money? Is it possible that, in those olden times, women were a lot tougher than now, and they only had sex for practical reasons, like financial self-interest? When Rebekkah married Isaac, sight unseen, she knew he had a lot of money and could take good care of her, because his fathers slave had put a very expensive gold bracelet on her wrist. (Genesis 24:22)

Maybe the problem is with our understanding of the word harlot. Maybe what harlotry really means is the putting of your own short-term desires above the needs and welfare of your family, your folk, and above the desires of God. Harlotry cannot be merely paid sexual relations, because husbands are expected to give their wives a regular allowance in exchange for their sexual allegiance. In fact, such a paid relationship is held in higher esteem than concubinage, where the relationship is almost purely sexual, with no exchange of money or other valuable considerations. A husband shows his deepest love and trust for his wife when he gives her his paycheck. (Exodus 21:10)

On a whim I opened a spam today. The text caught my eye. I cut and pasted a sentences of it into Google, "the members of the family and household of the Oblonskys.". It turned out to be Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. Now I am on chapter 9; it is a riveting book. Great read. I've had it on my bookshelf for years; funny how a single page of it could catch my attention. Maybe a person has to be at a certain stage in life to appreciate it. It is about family, and love. It shows how twisted up our natural emotions become when we bind ourselves to a harsh and limiting moral system.

Many spams are now dropping in chunks of text from various books and novels. Sometimes they mangle random sentences from various sources, other times they drop in whole cloth from the classics. I don't know if that tactic is getting their spams through the filters, but if I discover a great new work of classic literature once a year through such spamming tactics, then maybe spam isn't so bad after all.

People sometimes ask why I wear tassels. The answer is that God said to wear them. The tassels can be any size or color, but they must have a "ribband of blue", and they must be on your main garment, the one that is most visible to other people. When the Book talks about putting the tassels on the "quarters" or "four corners" of the garment, it is not talking about literal corners, but indicating that the tassels should be visible no matter what angle you look at the person from. My daughter wears pink yellow and green ones on the hem of her skirt; I wear white and blue ones on them of my untucked t-shirts. I made pastel and navy blue ones for a friend. Others wear them in their belt loops or attach them to their shoulders. This is all fine; the intent is that the tassels be visible. If they are visible, you are doing it correctly. Jewish style tzitziyot tend to be long, skinny, and quite ugly looking. Maybe that is why most Jews refuse to wear them. I've developed some small tassels that look nicer. The Jewish tzitziyot do have one advantage, which is that it is easy to securely attach them through a belt loop or buttonhole.

There is an important caveat to wearing tzitziyot, based on Jesus words here:

Matthew 23:1-5 Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: All therefore whatsoever he bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,

Tassels (tzitzis) are NOT meant to be used as a marker of social status. They served quite a different function which would be made powerless if people made them into fashion statements and markers of status. Therefore Jesus recommends that the tassels be small and discrete, although still visible. I feel that the Jewish tzitziyot of today are the very "enlarged borders" that Jesus condemned. Jewish tzitziyot are certainly impractical for any sort of physical labor, whereas small tassels are very practical. The tassels I use are about an inch long; Pharisee (Rabbinic Judaism) tassels are often at least ten inches long. Use your own judgement in the matter.

Numbers 15:37-40 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue: And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the LORD, and do them; and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring: That ye may remember, and do all my commandments, and be holy unto your God.

Deuteronomy 22:12 Thou shalt make thee fringes upon the four quarters of thy vesture, wherewith thou coverest thyself.

This isn't good enough for most people though; they say "Jesus did away with all those ancient commandments. We are modern now, and we have televisions and flush toilets. God's commandments are no good today, because we can do better!"

Did you know that Jesus wore the tassels? In fact, a widow was healed of her sickness by touching Jesus tassels, as was prophesied. Now, in English, it is hard to see this. I will quote the verses for you. If you use your Strong's Concordance to study all the verses presented in this article today, or if you are blessed enough to know Hebrew, you will see the truth clearly. Look especially at the words for "borders", "wings", "hem", and "quarters". They are all the same word in Hebrew.

Malachi 4:2 But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of justice arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.

Matthew 9:20-22 And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment: For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole. But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.

Matthew 14:35,36 And when the men of that place had knowledge of him, they sent out into all that country round about, and brought unto him all that were diseased; And besought him that they might only touch the hem of his garment: and as many as touched were made perfectly whole.

Mark 5:25-34 And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing. But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.

Mark 6:55,56 And ran through that whole region round about, and began to carry about in beds those that were sick, where they heard he was. And whithersoever he entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment: and as many as touched him were made whole.

Luke 8:43-48 And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, Came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched. And Jesus said, Who touched me? When all denied, Peter and they that were with him said, Master, the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me. And when the woman saw that she was not hid, she came trembling, and falling down before him, she declared unto him before all the people for what cause she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately. And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.

Why should you wear the tassels today? As God said, so we can be holy, and remember to do all his commandments. There is also a secondary purpose; you should wear the tassels because Jesus wore them. A third purpose is to remember that miracles that Jesus performed; when you wear the tassels you are reminding yourself and others that Jesus has the power to heal all evil.

How do the tassels remind us to be holy? Quite simply. In a society where everyone obeys God, you will very quickly notice if a person refuses to wear the tassels. A principle of the Torah, highlighted by Jesus, is that "he who is faithful in little, is faithful in much". (Luke 16:10) If you refuse to wear the tassels, you are probably going to break even more important commands. Failure to wear the tassels in a Godly society is an instant warning sign to others that you are no longer playing by the rules. An ungodly stranger will be immediately identified by his failure to wear tassels. What about todays society where noone is obeying God's Laws? Isn't the Law only relevant when everyone is obeying it? Definitely NOT! The tassels benefit you even when you live in ungodly surroundings. For the simple reason, when you do see someone wearing a tassel, you know immediately you have met a fellow believer. It is a simple, direct way of finding out who your allies are without any spoken communication, without any introduction. The tassels are a sign of your covenant status with God. Wear them always.

If you have any Torah questions, feel free to write in to ted AT reactor-core DOT org.

Yesterday was a good software day. I upgraded to my weblogging software to nanoblogger 3.3RC4, and my email client from mutt to mutt-ng.

mutt-ng I have some very large mailboxes. My spam folder has almost 200,000 messages. For a long time I haven't dared open the spam folder with mutt. It just takes too long. I stopped reading many mailing lists because the mailboxes got too large. mutt-ng takes care of that. It adds header caching. The first time mutt-ng opens a folder it may be slow, but the next time it is really fast. My spam folder now opens in 40 seconds instead of 5 minutes. The other nice feature of mutt-ng is the sidebar. The sidebar shows all your mailboxes, and if there is new mail in them or not. I configured mutt-ng to use vi style keys for navigating the mailbox. Bad. mutt-ng has not fixed the problem of binding special keys inside macros. In fact, binding special keys even outside of macros is touch and go. Special keys are keys that you can't type in directly so you have to type in their symbolic name, surrounded by angle brackets. Here are some examples: <space> <enter> <pageup>

Tobacco. After dealing with mutt-ng it was lunchtime; John and I sat in his shaded veranda and puffed away on some fine cigars from a country currently at war with the USA. They say to walk a mile in someones shoes to understand them. After puffing on the second cigar in my whole life, I still don't know what people see in it. Maybe it looks cool, and tobacco does have a subtle taste, but the smoke tends to get up the nose, and then it really hurts, like smelling bleach. The taste of tobacco tends to bite the tongue, like swallowing a wasp, or sticking your tongue across the terminals of an electric battery. If cocaine is acid and eats away your insides, what about tobacco?

nanoblogger. nanoblogger was designed in the true Unix spirit; it is one tool that does things well. It leverages existing software to the maximum. nanoblogger is a giant shell script that interprets templates. The template language is the shell script language itself. nanoblogger allows you to include output from plugins written in any language. Pretty impressive for a shell script. Good. I upgraded because until version 3.3 nanoblogger was missing an important feature that was in my original diary software. That feature is the forward and previous links, so you can always check out the next and last blog posts from the one you are reading. As advertised, the feature works. Bad. The CSS (cascading style sheets) were changed, so the entire look of my blog changed. I had to spend a couple hours with an editor figuring out what had changed in the stylesheets to make my blog look like it used to. Another gotcha to watch out for is that the mime style message separator at the bottom of each raw post (found in the data/ directory) has changed. If you don't go through each blog post from your old blog and modify it, you will get an ugly series of dashes at the end of each post. The old mime separator was "-----", 5 dashes. Now it is "END-----", the word END and 5 dashes. Simple change, easy to fix with vim's macro facility.

Andreas saw this blog and wrote in with some very insightful comments. I also recommend reading his blog. Andreas has a lot of good insight, and seems to be following a similar path to enlightenment, accepting God's Word, but fully versed and informed in all the scientific and mathematical wisdom of the day.

Dear Ted

I followed a /. link and found your blog. A blog entry on the torah caught my eye.

In my opinion, the torah (just like the commandments of Christ) are like a communication protocol; the commandments enable man process information in a more efficient way. Through that way, man is helped to get a knowledge about God and creation.

So, the following of the commandments has to do with man's buses getting as noise-free as possible and enable the re-arrangement of the buses so that man's processors process information of high existential value.

In your view, however, the commandments regarding prostitution, adultery and fornication have to do with manpower and other social elements.

Do you think that the Law can have a dual character, or do you think that it's only about how the society works and, thus, I'm mistaken in seeing it as a way that leads to knowledge?

Yours

Andreas

Short reply. Your analysis of the Law is quite accurate and I agree with it. Not only does the Law have a dual character, it has a multi-dimensional character that is very unique; no other book or law code has it. Imagine a puzzle where each piece connects up to all of the other pieces.

Long reply. I agree with you that the Torah acts as a communications protocol. It is a way for man to signal to God "here I am, I am willing to obey you and do things your way." Once we are in that frame of mind, God will use us to run his errands, and reward us richly for doing so. A business man may give to charity, but he gives much more to his own employees. As for the Torah being a way to knowledge, again I completely agree. King Solomon said "The fear of יהוה is the beginning of knowledge." Wisdom, insight, and knowledge come from taking off our blinders and just watching. We are often blinded by our own desires. When we want something, we see things in a way that supports our desires. Our desires are wicked and evil when they blind us to relevant truth. When we obey God, we don't practice evil. Without practicing evil, we don't have the mental impetus to blind ourselves to essential truth, so we keep growing in knowledge.

What information is of high existential value? Why, the information about how to live a good life. A good life is one that increases the sustainable amount of life in existence. A bad life is one that decreases the sustainable net amount of life in existence. To be "as useless as tits on a boar" is almost as evil as being a thief.

I do believe that the commandments and laws have very physical, very immediate consequences. But it is spiritual through and through. Everything physical has a spiritual genesis. The law not to steal is spiritual; the consequences are also spiritual; peace among men. But at a lower level, the consequences are directly physical; when you put your spanner down on the ledge, you know that an hour later when you come back to use it, it will still be there. The wind blows, and the windmill turns. The visible has invisible causes, and the physical is a three dimensional projection of multidimensional spirits. Even scientists follow this viewpoint when they invent "superstring" theories, invisible little strings vibrating at various wavelengths to form the particles that form the atoms that form the molecules that form our world. At some point, all matter is spiritual. When you take a single straw, would you imagine that someone could press it into bales and make a sturdy house? The best translation of spirit from Greek and Hebrew is probably "invisible cause", as well as "breath, air, wind, thought, meme, state of mind".

Only by having faith in the spiritual laws and practicing them do we come to understand their physical consequences. The physical consequences are always good, because the Laws come from a good spirit, the Father of us all, the Creator, who his own Word says "is spirit". Scientists say matter can be made from energy. Energy too is spiritual, mostly conceptual, yet it is real and we use it, whether as heat or electricity, to enjoy the many things our civilization provides.

God is not limited as humans are; his Word is extremely compressed. Each part ties in with the other parts, in ways that are invisible until you start living it. This is another way to identify God's Word; it is so tightly connected and compressed, it is beyond the ability of a human. Take the commandment that says you have a right to go onto anyones land, and pick an apple from their tree and eat it if you feel like it. The same commandment says that you may not put apples from that same tree in a container and take it away with you. From this, and a couple other commandments, one can understand the fundamental injustice which inspired the whole Open Source movement. Without knowledge of Torah, the Free Software people have erred in some ways, but their initial impulse to correct an injustice is a good one. Should it surprise us that the man who forced Free Software as an ideology had a background in the Torah, even though he rejected it at the age of 12? God's standards of justice have a deep impact on children; Richard Stallman may be an atheist, but the true ethics of the Law of Moses are indeed in him, perhaps moreso than in the Jewish and Christian religions which he so correctly rejected.

One spooky coincidence; On Sunday May 21 Andreas wrote about the future transformation of mankind. Without any knowledge of Andreas blog or blog post, John Sokol and I discussed the future of mankind, and whether it will disappear or be transformed. When people get onto a good carrier wave they start to think and act in synchronization. Pretty wild stuff. יהוה's sword and Gideon's!

Ted Walther with Anthony Towns

A Debian Pope is born. Tonight was Debians formal night. Fabio drove John Sokol, Hilda, and myself to the auditorium where the dinner was being held. Fabio is a major force in Mexico's VOIP industry, and owns the local internet cafe that provides the internet connection to Debconf. Hilda is a local businesswoman, providing administrative services to the dental profession. Very nice people; a real slice of the real Mexico. Hospitable, friendly, and helpful. We arrived just after the buses arrived and people chose their seats. As a formal diner, I had to wear my official costume, the crown and the clue bat. If anyone wants a genuine replica of the clue bat, the price is $50. If you don't buy it for your office, buy it for your kids; the foam is four inches thick and cannot bruise, cut, or hurt anyone. As soon as I entered the auditorium where the dinner was set up, Juan Diaz from Argentina took the crown from my head and raced away. I chased him with the clue bat. Then I saw that his intention was to put the crown on AJ, Debians newly elected project leader. He did it hastily, illegitimately, and backwards. Reaching AJ, I put down my clue bat and told him to hold still. To the cheers and applause of the entire auditorium, I lifted up the crown, and then placed it on AJ's head correctly, in a style befitting a pope crowning an emperor. Immediately after, we hugged and waved to the happy crowd. By the act of crowning, I am now the Debian Pope. This isn't the cushy job it might seem; some members of Debian really hate popes of any sort.

Ted and Hilda

Mariachi rain dance. Soon after the crowning, the food and drink started arriving. The mariachi band started playing their trumpets and guitars, starting off with the Mexican national anthem, which is a fun song to sing but I didn't understand a word of it. The newly crowned AJ came along the tables and organized "the wave" like at a football game. We all stood up and sat down as the wave came around, and made the low moaning WHOOOP sound as it came by us. A few minutes after this the food was set on buffet tables, so everyone got into line to get their meals. The meals were simple. Some meat, some rice and bread, and some salad. A nice meal after a week of rich eating. Beer flowed freely, and toward the end some wine was passed around too. The mariachis must have been a signal, because the rainy season started right after they started playing. First the rain bounced off the tin roof so we could hardly hear the band. As dinner went on the clattering of rain got louder, then flashes of lighting showed through the windows. The roof leaked onto many peoples dinner plates and heads, so we all got cozy with each other, finding places out of the rain. At one end of the hall the rain gushed out of the roof so strongly that the entire wall became a waterfall. Finally the lights went out. Cell phones and cigarette lighters quickly waved around, lighting up the place. Strobe lights from digital cameras gave the place a disco atmosphere. Slowly the emergency backup lights came on, then a few minutes later full power was restored. The rain did stop after that, but many people chose to leave shortly after, including yours truly.

Ted and Hilda

The Pope is assaulted. Several acts of rudeness and aggression were committed against myself and my guest, Hilda. I'm going to wait to see how Debian responds to this inappropriate behavior. If it is resolved to my satisfaction, I'll see no need to name names or post the details in public.

Day trip. Six buses full of Debian developers, maintainers, and supporters toured the area around Oaxtepec today. We clambered over several Mexican pyramids and a ruined mountain-top city. Walking in the main entrance I immediately felt that it was very familiar. I identified the pool where they purified themselves before entering the complex, and several altars. Some of the things the archaelogists called "altars" looked more like bed platforms. I told the guide maybe they were both; ancient religions were known for their homosexual sex rites. Then we saw the palace of Cortes in the city of Cuernavaca. It is a very swank city, fun to walk around and shop. We got back at 10pm, tired but satisfied. Bought a t-shirt that says "100% GUAPO". The Hispanic contingent at Debconf went wild. They may give me some photos to post soon.

Lisp redux. Kevin Mark read my summary of Peter van Eyndes presentation yesterday, and sent in this email:

Hi Ted,

you seem to be having fun at Debconf! Saw your post about a book by Peter Seibel. Strangely enough I attended a meeting at lispnyc with him this week. They shot video which hopefully you can see. Checkout http://www.lispnyc.org/home.clp

cheers,

Kev

Well, thanks Kev! At lunch yesterday, a fellow developer, whose name I forget, told me that OCAML is far superior to Haskell in terms of performance because it is "statically typed at compile time" or something. I thought that was a characteristic of Haskell as well. I mentioned the benchmarks that Haskell is currently winning, and he brushed this aside. Which may be appropriate; optimizing for benchmarks isn't the same as optimizing for the general case.

Food. We had lunch yesterday at a restaurant. I hate zucchini, but their zuchini stuffed with quesa (cheese) was delicious. I haven't found birria (shredded goat meat) in the market here yet, but the restaurant had some. At the end of the meal a vendor came into the restaurant with some crisp, deep fried confection called "churros", coiled like a big hose. Its cross section looks like a five point star. For P10 the vendor broke off four pieces, 5 inches long. Knut shared his with me; it was like a donut, only crunchy.

John Sokol. John Sokol, part of the original 386BSD team, arrived late Tuesday night. Carrying 80 pounds of luggage, he not only took the Metro, but he walked up the mile long hill from the resort entrance to the conference. The Metro is nice, but it has a lot of stairs. I was tired after traversing it; I could not have walked up the hill if I tried afterward. He brought a VOIP phone with him, but it gives an error saying his account has been compromised. It is probably looking at his Mexican IP address and blocking it. So John and I have no way of phoning the outside world.

On the long bus ride back from the Mexican pyramids, I got to think about a long standing problem. If Israel's laws forbade prostitution, why didn't Israel's greatest judge enforce those laws?

We've all heard the story of King Solomon and the two harlot's, where he finds the real mother by threatening to chop the baby in two. Since the laws of Israel carried a death penalty for adultery, why didn't Solomon enforce it? People today equate prostitution with adultery, but the Bible does not. Not always. As the wisest man who ever lived, a walking embodiment of true justice, Solomons judgement deserves a deeper look. Here is the text of the whole incident:

1 Kings 3:16-28 Then came there two women, that were harlots, unto the king, and stood before him. And the one woman said, O my lord, I and this woman dwell in one house; and I was delivered of a child with her in the house. And it came to pass the third day after that I was delivered, that this woman was delivered also: and we were together; there was no stranger with us in the house, save we two in the house. And this woman's child died in the night; because she overlaid it. And she arose at midnight, and took my son from beside me, while thine handmaid slept, and laid it in her bosom, and laid her dead child in my bosom. And when I rose in the morning to give my child suck, behold, it was dead: but when I had considered it in the morning, behold, it was not my son, which I did bear. And the other woman said, Nay; but the living is my son, and the dead is thy son. And this said, No; but the dead is thy son, and the living is my son. Thus they spake before the king. Then said the king, The one saith, This is my son that liveth, and thy son is the dead: and the other saith, Nay; but thy son is the dead, and my son is the living. And the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before the king. And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other. Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it. Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof. And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had judged; and they feared the king: for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him, to do judgment.

Whoredom, harlotry, prostitution; they defile the land. When Judah thought his daughter-in-law Tamar had become a harlot, he ordered her to be burnt. The problem was not with the sex for pay, but with violation of Judah's property rights. Tamar had been bought and paid for, and belonged to his family for the purpose of increasing their manpower. Biblically, sex for pay is fine. A ketubah (marriage contract) guarantees a woman a certain financial allowance in return for performing her sexual duties. The problem is that prostitution lowers the birthrate of the population, thus reducing its manpower, thus reducing its brainpower, thus reducing its ability to protect and defend itself. The connection between prostitution and lower birth rates isn't obvious to the layman, so just take it for granted right now.

Leviticus 18:20,28 Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour's wife, to defile thyself with her. That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you.

Leviticus 19:29 Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.

Prostitution can fall into two categories; the woman is still the property of her father, or she belongs to a husband. Widows, divorced, and single women fall into the category of belonging to their fathers; they have a right to return to the family home and be supported there. How would a father prostitute his daughter? If he treats her harshly, refuses to marry her off to a suitable husband, does not feed or clothe her, train her or discipline her, she may well turn to whoredom to support herself.

Look closely at the story of the two harlots. They say they have no man. They fall into the category of single women. Sex with a single woman is not adultery. Adultery carries the death penalty, but as single women, their prostitution was to be regulated by different laws.

If a girl took up the prostitution trade, and then got married under false pretenses, pretending to be a virgin, the penalty was death. However no death penalty is indicated for the circumstance where the woman and her family were up front about her past. A man taking a wife needs to be able to accurately assess the risks of disease and future infidelity.

Deuteronomy 22:13-21 If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: And the damsel's father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him; And they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

Suppose a single woman was to work as a whore. What is the penalty? For the girl, no penalty at all. If she is a virgin turning her first trick, the man has to pay a hefty fine of fifty shekels to her father, who has the choice of giving her in marriage or not.

Exodus 22:16,17 And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife. If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins.

Deuteronomy 22:28,29 If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.

When she is no longer a virgin, her father either allows her to be a prostitute, violating the law at Leviticus 19:29, or he doesn't allow her. If her father allows her, then he becomes liable for her behavior and she is not punished, as described in Hosea 4:13,14 quoted below. If her father doesn't allow her, she is again subject to the death penalty, as set forth in the next set of verses:

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

In the case of Solomon's two harlots, there is no evidence at all that their father disciplined or otherwise acted to prevent them from their trade. Perhaps their father was dead, but in that case his responsibility to his daughters would have fallen on his next of kin. It really is a matter of family responsibility, not of persecuting individuals.

There is one remaining corner case; what of the married woman who becomes a prostitute? What if the two harlots had been married after all? It is a principle of the Torah that it must be applied equally. You cannot hit one party with the full penalty then let another get off free for the same crime. It is better to err on the side of mercy, so if you do not convict one, you should not convict another. This is violated daily by un-Godly governments who selectively enforce their laws to "make examples" of people. Such selective enforcement is neither fair or just. In Solomon's case, assuming the women were married, the other parties to the crime of adultery were missing. Without them, there was no way to proceed. This is why Jesus was able to say "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." The two witnesses rule also comes into it; before a person can be put to death two witnesses to the crime are required. Solomon's two harlots had no witnesses against them.

When people engage in false worship, and use the services of whores, God will not punish the women who turn to adultery and infidelity. He will punish those who are responsible; the men, who failed to take their patriarchal prerogative in setting a good example of just, fair, respectful, and temperate behavior.

Hosea 4:13,14 They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and elms, because the shadow thereof is good: therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom, and your spouses shall commit adultery. I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery: for themselves are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots: therefore the people that doth not understand shall fall.

If you have any Torah questions, feel free to write in to ted AT reactor-core DOT org.

X Window security. Wandered outside the hack lab to sip a drink and cool down. There I saw Keith Packard and Bdale Garbee. Quickly introduced myself to them both, then asked Keith what his take was on the recent OpenBSD complaints that X11 is insecure by design [1] [2]. Keith said he wasn't going to respond to those complaints, because DRI/DRM already provides what Theo de Raadt says he wants in the way of kernel control over dma and register access on video cards. Many X11 video drivers are not yet converted over to doing things the DRI/DRM way, and so Theo is correct that X11 has huge security holes. But they are not permanent; the future is already arriving. Although DRI/DRM is positioned as a 3d technology, it is intended that even 2d drivers in the future will conform themselves to its API. Keith also said that OpenBSD's representative on the X11 team is easy to work with and cooperates well with the team, so there is hope that if OpenBSD turns its attention to X11 support, everyone will soon benefit from the comprehensive security audit. Although the DRI/DRM design solves the security problems, it is a bitch to implement. Mode switching alone is so finicky and is so tied into both the video hardware and x11 server optimizations, that it has never successfully been implemented in the kernel. Keith said he supported the idea of isolating the mode switching code out into a small, privilege separated userland utility. There were many other things said, which sounded positive, but without the aid of a tape recorder, I can't remember them.

Putting packages out of main. Learnt a trick today, courtesy of Phil Hands and Ralph Amissah. If you want to upload a package into a part of the distribution other than main, you alter the Section: field of the debian/control file in your package. Suppose your package fits into the text section, because you use it to process text. Maybe you reimplemented awk. If you put Section: text the package will go into the text portion of the main repository. If your version of awk depends on a library that is in the non-free section, you would put it in the contrib section. So you would put this in your debian/control file: Section: contrib/text and Bob's your uncle.

Politics. I find myself doing vastly more politics at this conference than coding, although I am getting some of that done too. When people are deep inside their own worlds, it takes a lot of work to bridge between the worlds. So far it seems like time well invested.

Embedded. If anyone needs any embedded work done, Wookey is your guy. Send him an email with a proposal.

1. 2006-05-11 22:00:04 Re: security bug in x86 hardware (thanks to X WIndows)
2. 2006-05-13 20:07:35 Re: security bug in x86 hardware (thanks to X WIndows)

Laundry day. New roommate Thaddeus Black is really on the ball; today is the first laundry day we've had at the conference, and he was prepared for it, and reminded the rest of us when we woke up. I think I'll wait until the Thursday laundry day. To get your laundry done here, you put it in a plastic bag, and mark it somehow. Then the bags go into a pile, and some company hired by the hotel comes and washes them, and returns the bags of clean clothes to you the same or next day. You can even choose between regular drying and sun drying the clothes.

Debian. Yesterday someone filed a bug against my expect package; today Alec Berryman sent in a patch that fixed it. Thank you Alec! The fixed package is now uploaded and should be available to everyone tomorrow.

Food. Ville Vuorela brought a big bag of candies from Finland for Simon Richter, who shared them with the table here in the hack lab. They were salty and sweet, with mild licorice flavor. They were quite good. My friend Jesus Monroy, a food columnist in the San Francisco Bay Area, had a few comments on my food adventures yesterday, which I will quote here:

Pancita is Spanish for stomach. Most likely you had a type of menudo, or soup dish. This is a very common and popular dish. Usually used for hangovers.

Check the chicken vendor's spices when you can. With some hope he did not use MSG. MSG, as you may know, can be toxic in large amounts. It's not unheard of in Mexico, but they don't know that MSG can be toxic. My mother has refused to eat at some friends houses because they use so much the chicken tastes extremely over-salted.

MSG toxic effects are lathargy, nausea, headaches, all the way to death (very extreme). Then again too much salt, or just water, can be toxic.

As for the church, they have not changed much in 500+ years in Mexico. Most likely what you saw was what was built.

Ted Walther with Peter van Eynde

Conference. Today I attended the one presentation that motivated me to attend Debconf; Peter van Eyndes Common Lisp presentation. Common Lisp, of course, is the best programming language ever, in terms of developer time. Haskell is similar, but is designed more for machines to run fast, than for developers to develop fast. The LISP community has almost universally switched to using darcs for their revision control system, which is not only the easiest to use I have ever found, but is also written in Haskell. Nine people attended Peters presentation. He showed us how to drive the Lisp compiler from inside emacs using slime, with its advanced auto-completion features. He demonstrated the common lisp controller which has advanced dramatically in the past five years. It is now simple and intuitive to load libraries into your Lisp program. He showed us how to package lisp libraries using asdf, which has long been an opaque mystery to me. Luca Capello fom Switzerland, the maintainer of the stumpwm window manager was present, and he promised to demonstrate stumpwm later tonight. stumpwm is not yet as advanced as ratpoison, but it could become far more advanced and whiz-bang than ratpoison could ever be. It has potential. I also met Erick Lopez of Mexico, who wants to package cl-wiki, but is looking for a sponsor. As a Lisp developer, he will be an asset to Debian. After the presentation Peter opened the floor, and every question I'd had about Lisp for the past few years was answered very satisfactorily. At the end, Peter showed us a book called Practical Common Lisp, by Peter Seibel, which he praised highly for those who want to use Lisp for "real" things. Such as a streaming MP3 server. I'm sold! But if you are poor (povre), you can read it for free at Gigamonkeys.

Photography. My roommate Aigars is quite a photographer, he came with his digital SLR and several lenses, an item I've lusted after for some time. Large apertures and manual controls are what every real photographer demands, and digital SLR's deliver. I told him my idea for a small sky recording station so that people could make movies of the paths that the stars take, and how it changes over the year. Ultimately I want a network of these stations, all uploading their pictures so I can examine them for anamolies. This is a hard problem, because stars are so faint. Aigars said to take a picture of the whole sky, a 1000 millimeter lense and a $50 computer scanner with some modifications should be able to do the job.

Ted Walther with Andreas Schuldei

Programming. Finally made progress in programming, now that I know where everything is in Oaxtepec. My IRC bot didn't handle things gracefully when the server refused to let it log in, but that is fixed now. Tomorrow I hope to add multi-channel support. Reading through the new IRC RFC, I have the information I need to make a proper configuration file for the software. The design is sketched out and feels right, finally.

Weekend vs. Weekday. Oaxtepec is much quieter today. Saturday and Sunday there were far more vendors on the street, and they stayed open much later. Today everything closed down around 6pm when the church bell tolled the summons to mass. I couldn't find the coconut man; maybe he only comes on weekends. Half the stalls at the mercado were empty. During the weekend, the resort was full of vacationers swimming, barbecuing, picnicing, playing soccer, or just sunbathing while the kids ran around. Everyone, young and old, but mostly young adult men and women, were running around in bathing trunks and bikinis. The happy noises were great to wake up to. This morning the sounds were quieter, but still present. The swimming pools here get a lot of use. During the weekend, there was a large tent where some ladies were giving body massages for $10. I didn't see them today. Probably they will be here again next weekend.

Food. Tried a dish called "pancita" today. I saw people eating noodles and assumed pancita was a noodle dish, like the Filipino pancit. But no. It is a type of tomato soup filled with chopped up beef rind and chunks of fat. For only P31, I bought a small chicken. It was perfectly marinated and roasted, better than Kentucky Fried Chicken. I paid the money, and the shopkeeper brought out a pair of scissors and cut the chicken into all the appropriate pieces for easy eating, just like they do in Korea (viz the use of scissors)

Church. Attended mass tonight, since the church was so close. The church is magnificent. It really is a cathedral inside; to see the ceiling you have to crane your neck. And when you do, you see paintings of angels playing instruments. I went into the nave to pray, and saw a giant depiction of the ark of the covenant. It was very realistic, with the cherubim covering it with their wings. And above it, was a painting of the wine and bread offering, which were offered on the altar daily. The priest was a black man from Illinois; after a bit of attempting to speak to each other in Spanish, we realized we both spoke English, and got on famously from then on. The cathedral opens at 10am, closes for lunch from 2pm-4pm, and then is open until mass is finished. This must be what the church was like in the beginning; a place where believers could drop in any time to be with others of their kind, to meet, eat, drink, discuss, and elevate each other to a higher plane. I am sad that we don't have this in Canada.

Debian. There were some Debian talks and presentations, but nothing too interesting. Finally met Mark Shuttleworth, Anthony Towns, Manoj Srivastava, and Roblimo Miller. Clifford Beshers of Linspire almost convinced me to look into the Haskell computer language. I couldn't quite tell what Haskell has that LISP doesn't, apart from forcing strong types on you and being very fast and efficient in benchmarks tests. Marga didn't give me meal tickets before, so Graham printed some up for me today. By pure serendipity, I sat at dinner with the only other Canadian developers at the conference; Simon Law and Eric Dorland from Montreal. The drinking started at 11pm and is still going strong; the atmosphere is very convivial right now, but half of us are still tapping away at our keyboards.

The journey to Mexico must have taken a lot of psychic energy. After arriving, I slept 13 hours the first morning, and 11 the next. Last night I asked Aigars to set the alarm clock for me, which he did. But despite going to sleep at 3am, my eyes popped open after 6 and a half hours, as normal. I'm back, baby! Watch the code fly from my fingers.

I said yesterday that the fried grasshoppers (chapulines) tasted like bagoong, shrimp paste. And they do taste salty. But they also taste a lot like rose hips. Go figure. Must be their healthy vegetarian diets. The mamey fruit, with its firm, bright orange flesh, does taste sweet, and somewhat like papaya. But even more, mamey tastes almost identical to the Canadian dessert known as "date squares".

Tuesday night I slept two hours and spent the rest of the time preparing for my three week absence. Put the beer in the bottles and clothes in the trunk. Forgot several things, but nothing showstopping. The Amtrak bus from Vancouver to Seattle was uneventful. Boarding the train was great. Amtrak costs as much as Greyhound, but it is more relaxed, and you get a different crowd taking it, much nicer than the Greyhound crowd. Amtrak stations are works of art, with high ceilings, lots of windows and clean bathrooms.

For two days I stayed on the train. The first day went well. Toward evening on Wednesday we were high in the mountains between California and Oregon, approaching Klamath Falls. And the train went slower and slower. That is when I found out that Amtrak is friendly and pleasant, but you cannot plan anything around them. They are often late. So, late that night, I pulled out my harmonica and jammed with Eddie in the lounge car for a while. An old Irish guy from Atlanta tried to sing along with us but he'd had too much to drink. I said "Behave yourself, or I'll pinch you." And I did, and he did. The Amtrak can't be beat for giving you legroom, and hot meals, a splendid view of America, and lots of lounge space to sit and converse and get to know your fellow passengers. Many nice people came up to me and asked about my crown; when I explained the spiritual reasons for it, they seemed pleased. As we entered San Francisco, three young ladies on a high school trip asked to have their picture taken with me, so I obliged. Immediately, a bunch of Asian guys lined up with their cameras to take a photo too. So far noone has sent me a copy. I met a young boxer who wanted to go pro, but couldn't because he lacked a birth certificate. We spoke a bit about the Bible's inheritance laws, then we went and spoke to an Amish father and son team who were travelling with us.

Because the Amtrak was so late, it bussed us from Santa Barbara to LA instead of going the whole way. Something about tunnels being closed for renovation after 10pm, and freight trains getting priority on the rails. My friend who was expecting a 9pm arrival was standing at the bus station until 1:30am waiting to pick me up. Next morning he drove me to Tijuana, and we went into the airport. Everything went well. In America, people asked me about the crown. In Mexico people ask me about the clue bat. Arriving in Mexico City on time, I did not see the smog that everyone says it has. It certainly wasn't any worse than LA in the summer. Flying over Mexico it seemed mostly uninhabited. Many mountains and trees, but the settled areas are still a small fraction of the area that Mexico could develope profitably. With so much land at home, why do they want to come to America? As a visitor to Mexico I could be arrested if I speculate, but it may have something to do with how the land is distributed. Mexico is a rich, good land.

Took the Mexican Metro to Tasquena, and from there to the Debconf resort in Oaxtepec. Took a couple hours, but it was worth it. The whole trip from the airport to Oaxtepec cost P87, or $9. The Metro is similar to the one in Seoul Korea, but the signs are much easier to read, because they are in the latin alphabet. P2 gets you unlimited travel on big, clean, trains that run frequently and far. Vendors sometimes get on the train to hawk their cdroms. Vancouver, BC could learn a lot from the Metro in Mexico City; it shows how dinky our Skytrain is. Everywhere on the Metro, the young men were interested in the clue bat, and wanted ones of their own. Young couples, and some not so young, were walking around hand in hand, embracing, kissing, some even kissing with open mouths and tongue on the train platforms. The first train I entered had a large advertisement on the ceiling, "Sexo Show! 100 Pesos!". The advertisment right next to it was in a similar vein, possibly for a pornography modeling agency. Yes, love is definitely in the air in Mexico. People are passionate, and not ashamed to show it.

The bus ride to Oaxtepec took an hour and a half, at 11:30pm. The roads were smooth and nice, and busy, although not congested. The bus stopped several times to pay a toll, because Mexico has quality toll roads, and not so good free roads. The toll was never more than P85 that I saw. For an entire bus full of people that doesn't seem too bad. Small cars seemed to pay P24 or less. The Tasquena station staff were very nice, giving me a seat at the front of the bus, close to the television where they played the movie "Sky High" for the passengers, with Spanish subtitles but original English audio. Many Debian Developers were still awake when I got here. So here I am, in a place where so many people share my sleeping habits. Wow!

More later. Manana!

Keyboard troubles. I woke up today at 2pm and missed the keynote talk, but was just in time for lunch. I have an excuse though; I was up until 4am fighting with this laptop. Since I've been here the laptop has been an agony. Some letters didn't want to be typd at all, others woulld often ddouble themselves, and sometimes do a sksip-doduble. Panic requests on the Debconf wiki yielded no joy. Noone knew where to get a keyboard, until Gunnar said the Internet Cafe would have one. So I went there, Fabio the owner, a local Debian enthusiast, greeted me and sold me a PS/2 keyboard to plug into the laptop. Finally I can type. Yesterdays blog entry took eight hours to type. It should have taken an hour or so. The agony was profound. People looked up from their laptops as I pounded the table and shouted my frustration every hour or so. The new keyboard has solved everything. It took getting used to because it has the Mexican layout. I have to reach farther than normal to reach the left-shift and enter keys, and the angle brackets are in a different spot, but it is heaven to type at full speed again, even with the network lag.

New foods. Today I broke my fast, because I found the grasshopers, at the Mercado Oaxtepec. The grasshoppers are small, and fried with salt. They taste delicious, identical to bagoong, a Filipino delicacy made from shrimp. The saltiness in the chapulines (grasshoppers) was less intense than in bagoong, and the chapulines were also sweet and sour, making the perfect crunchy snack. I hope to find out where they prepare the chapulines so I can get some fresh live ones to boil and butter, like shrimp. I have a theory that they will taste identical to shrimp. Bought a "mamey" from a street vendor for P5. It is like a cross between an avacado and a papaya. The flesh is bright orange and sweet, firm, not juicy. In size and shape, it is like an avacado. The skin peels and feels like an avacado. The seed is the same size as an avacado seed, but is very pointy, and glossy black. It tastes very nice. Update on the mango situation; I found mangos at the Mercado Oaxtepec. Judy Wilson from Belize explained that the mango season is only twelve weeks long. Gunnar said that the reason I couldn't find any ripe mangos at the hotel is because the hotel staff harvest the trees every morning. There were a lot of different types of mango at the market, large, small, yellow, rainbow, green, etc. I stopped to watch some women scraping the needles off some cactus leaves. Later on, a Debian member helped me buy some prepared. You don't eat the cactus leaf directly; you boil or fry it. I had a preparation of cactus leaf, which tastes just like pickled string beans, on some tortillas. Many tortillas at the mercado were green. The Mexicans say the green corn flour is more highly refined, and therefore of a better quality than the plain colored tortillas. I also saw some green kidney beans of enormous size, almost as large as my thumb. They tasted good.

Cigars and rum. As you leave the entrance of the resort, the prices drop very quickly. At the Mercado Oaxtepec I bought a chella (355ml) for P6, and a quart of beer for P12. There was a bottle deposit which seemed sane and reasonable to me, the same as I charge my beer customers; half the price of the beer in the bottle. Beer bottles aren't cheap. If they gave away $0.50 cents per glass beer bottle in Canada, you'd never see a broken beer bottle anywhere. In Tijuana I learned to enjoy a refreshing drink called "agua de aros", or "rice water". At the mercado noone knew what I was asking for. I ran into some Mexican Debian members, and they said it is called "horchata" in most of Mexico. I asked about buying loose pipe tobacco, and Cuban cigars. I'm amazed; I've seen no Mexicans smoking in this area, although the stores do carry cigarettes. Everything seems clean and bright. The nearest cigar shop is in Mexico city. Cigars are considered "high-brow" in Mexico, and few people smoke a "pipa" (pipe). The hard liquor, like tequilla and rum is about half the price you would pay in Canada. Not as cheap as I hoped, but not terrible.

Visiting the convent. Today I walked into the convent, which has been converted into a museum. It is a beautiful place, built on classic and medieval lines. I felt a profound peace walking around the cloister, the rooms, and the trees and flowers of the peristylium. The convent was built to last, and even to defend. Most of all, it was built to be lived in. It had windows with pleasant seats everywhere. If I was ever a nun, I would want it to be in a calm place like that. The view from the roof was great. The rain spouts were broad, and they ended in thick metal pipes which looked like cannons from the ground. I have not yet been in the cathedral itself.

Some things I cannot write about; there are many Intel representatives here, and some delicate politics are in play. Hasta manana!

The Oaxtepec resort is a large complex of hotels, restaurants, lawns, gardens, meeting rooms, and swimming pools. Debconf6, the sixth annual Debian conference is being held here. I arrived last night.

Rum tasting. Hector Colina from Venezuela brought a bottle of special edition, very high quality rum with him, and held a rum tasting session just now. It was a very special edition. I didn't catch the name but the label said this: Diplomatico, Ron Anejo, Reserva Exclusiva, Ron de Venezuela. On the other side it said Ron Anejo Venezolano. Con ogullo presentamos este exquisito Blend, que exhibe nuesto conocimiento en el arte de saber seleccionar y combinar las mejores reservas exclusivas de Ron Venezolano alguno. Elaborado por: Destilerias Unidas, S.A.

Shortly thereafter a group went into town to purchase the inexpensive Mexican beer. Now at midnight everyone is standing around the hack lab drinking beer and mellowing out.

Flora and Fauna. At the resort, there is a lot of animal life, which keeps itself discretely out of the way of us humans. Kittens make themselves seen every now and then. They are a part of the hotel staff, cleaning up fallen food from the grounds when the picnicers and other holiday-makers have left in the evening. The birds make interesting calls not heard in Canada, but not harsh or unpleasing. They are active during the day, making a nice wakeup. There are mango trees everywhere. The mangos must grow year round. Harvesting the mangos must be a real art. All the mangos on the ground were ripe, but had fermented and had worms crawling through them. The mangos on the tree were all green and unripe. There must be some special method to tell when a mango is good to harvest; many of the ripe tasty mangos on the ground still had green skin. I didn't find any mangos at the grocery stores (mercados) in Oaxtepec and can only assume that is because the mango trees are so common. The resort has an ecological garden so I took a walk around it. It looked like a former mango orchard. At the bottom of the trail were stands of giant bamboo, their brown leaves carpeting the ground. Finally I reached the greenhouses. Outside the greenhouses I found two types of unusual lemon tree. The fruit of the first was very sweet, as well as sour. It was green like a lime, but in size it was half way between a lime and a lemon. The second lemon was again green, but normal size. It wasn't sweet. It wasn't sour. It was dry. The skin was very thick, and when it was off, the lemon stayed together in segments, just like an orange. The segments were dry, very dry. I could not extract any juice from them.

Cathedral and Fireworks. This afternoon I went to see the town of Oaxtepec outside the resort. I first came to a large stone Catholic convent which is now a beautiful church. A wedding was in progress, the bride wearing the traditional white dress. Watching the cars driving by, and the pedestrians, I didn't see anyone wearing sombreros. Just a baseball caps. Next to the chuch I met an old man with cart full of fresh young coconuts. We traded. I gave him P13, and he hacked off the ends of the coconut. On the one end he carved a tiny hole and stuck a straw in it. I guess he hacked off the other end so it would be flat, turning the coconut shell into a very heavy, stable cup. The shell held two pints of delicious young coconut juice (buko juice). I returned to the convent an hour later, because it has a very nice, shady lawn garden. Following the stone walkways I found a large tree, a child's dream. Its trunk was fifteen feet around, and it had lots of convenient branches to climb and hollows to sit. It looks at least a hundred years old, and could be as old as the coming of the Spaniards. I did some Bible reading for a while and heard a tremendous bang. A few seconds later I heard another. And another. The first few times I ducked; it sounded like a cannon had gone off less than a hundred feet away. Maybe another Mexican revolution had started! I walked back to the resort. The cannon shots went on for several minutes. The guards at the gates didn't seem to be panicing. Later, Antonio explained that the cannon fire was actually fireworks. But I can see fireworks in the sky Antonio! They explode and send out a lot of smoke and pretty colors! No, my Mexican friend explained. Some fireworks just make a loud sound. We call them palomas.

Hope for the Germans. And Andreas. Meeting Andreas Schuldei was a surprise. As I walked up to the hotel checkin, he and his friends stiffened. They looked horrified. I thought his mouth was going to fall open. As my competitor in previous Debian leadership elections, I hadn't expected him to look as he did. I didn't recognize him until an hour later when someone pointed him out. He is tall, almost 6 and a half feet tall. He is skinny, very very skinny. And he wears rainbow colored shorts and t-shirts that emphasize his height and thin, shaved legs. I am confident that his wife does not choose his clothes. Our first conversation revealed a lot about Andreas, and about Germans in general. Andreas complained that I was sticking out like a sore thumb with my clue bat and crown costume. He stopped just short of saying that I was ruinning the conference. He said that Debconf was about "building community". I think he meant that everyone should look, act, and think the same. He wanted people to deliver serious, formal papers to formally dressed audiences. He would probably die if he ever attended a hispanic carnival or negro mardi gra. Andreas is not an unusual case. While eating dinner with Simon Richter, a Munich German, he told me about life in Germany. He said that in Germany it is impolite to stand out, much like in Japan. In North America, the highest compliment you can pay someone is to say they stand out, by calling them "outstanding!" As the communist Germans have overwhelmed Debian demogaphically, the free spirited English speakers have been crowded out. The process is not yet complete, but it seems I am the last of the hold-outs from Debians early, fun-loving, tolerant, inclusive, free-wheeling days. Simon said that a Germans idea of a carnival is to hold a meeting of eleven people who dress up in formal clothes and give speeches to each other. At the end of our first and only discussion, I thought Andreas was going to cry. I told him, "If you want to build community, then start right here. Give me a hug." And he did. If he could unbend that much, there may be hope. He asked the