Don't know much about economy...

Hey everybody. If you're like me, you probably get that glossy look in your eyes when people start talking about the current financial situation.  And I was an econ minor (although my education seemed to be largely relearning the same facts I learned in intro courses, except doing some calculus. Sweet.)

Anyway, here are some resources for you!

Paddy Hirsch's Marketplace Whiteboard series explains it all.  But their listed with the most recent ones at the top, so you'll want to start at the bottom, since the concepts often build on each other.

Also, Timothy Carney at Culture 11 posts a regular column, Heckonomics, (as in, what-the-heck-o-nomics) which will have you understanding things in no time.

Michael Lewis, in "The End of Wall Street's Boom," gives you a behind-the-scenes account of the housing bubble.

Happy reading.

At least the bank can't take your sense of humor

Time to laugh at the economy.  Or Adolf Hitler:

From Clusterstock.

Meanwhile, across the English Channel:

The Hiding Place, pt. 6

Others came to Bloemendaal, scarred body and soul by bombing raids or loss of family or any of the endless dislocations of war. In 1947 we began to receive Dutch people who had been prisoners of the Japanese in indonesia.

Though none of this was by design, it proved to be the best possible setting for those who had been imprisoned in Germany. Among themselves they tended to live and relive their special woes; in Bloemendaal they were reminded that they were not the only ones who had suffered. And for all these people alike, the key to healing turned out to be the same. Each had a hurt he had to forgive: the neighbor who had reported him, the brutal guard, the sadistic soldier.

Strangely enough, it was not the Germans or the Japanese that people had most trouble forgiving; it was their fellow Dutchmen who had sided with the enemy. I saw them frequently in the streets, NsBers with their shaved heads and furtive eyes. These former collaborators were now in pitiful condition, turned out of homes and apartments, unable to find jobs, hooted at in the streets.

At first it seemed to me that we should invite them, too, to Bloemendaal, to live side by side with those they had injured, to seek a new compassion on both sides. But it turned out to be too soon for people working their way back from such hurt: the two times I tried it, it ended in open fights. And so as soon as homes and schools for the feeble-minded opened again around the country, I turned the Beje over to these former NsBers.

This was how it went, those years after the war, experimenting, making mistakes, learning. The doctors, psychiatrists, and nutritionists who came free of charge to any place that cared for war victims, sometimes expressed surprise at our loose-run ways. At morning and evening worship, people drifted in and out, table manners were atrocious, one man took a walk into Haarlem every morning at 3:00 A.M. I could not bring myself to sound a whistle or to scold, or to consider gates or curfews.

And, sure enough, in their own time and their own way, people worked out the deep pain within them. It most often started, as Betsie had known it would, in the garden. As flowers bloomed or vegetables ripened, talk was less of the bitter past, more of tomorrow's weather. As their horizons broadened, I would tell them about the people living in the Beje, people who never had a visitor, never a piece of mail. When mention of the NsBers no longer brought a volley of self-righteous wrath, I knew the person's healing was not far away. And the day he said, “Those people you spoke of---I wonder if they'd care for some homegrown carrots,” then I knew the miracle had taken place. 

Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place, pp. 246-247.

Believers such as myself can easily fall into a saccharine view of forgiveness, seeing the joy of reconciliation but neglecting the hardship required to reach that point.  Forgiveness may hurt. Even if our hearts are filled with compassion for others, society-at-large may only harbor contempt.  Reaching out to the condemned may bring ostracism for ourselves, too.

Another point: it is easy to imagine loving the "deserving," those who suffer via some seemingly cruel twist of fate--a calamity that could befall anyone, including us.  Yet who imagines love for the unworthy, those who have brought calamity upon themselves, those who have committed or condoned atrocity?  And yet Christ commanded us not only to attend to the hungry, and the parched, and the naked, but the imprisoned, as well.  And he made no qualifications: he did not hedge with qualifiers such as the wrongfully incarcerated, or the minor offenders, or the well-behaved.  He calls us to love the damned--the rightfully damned.  

Caring for them, more likely than not, will be bittersweet.  We cannot approach them with naivete; tough love may be needed.  They are not monsters, though the temptation to call them that is strong.  Many have done monstrous things, and their bodies are scarred, their souls are disfigured.  This ugliness has been wrought by their own hands, sullied by blood.  But we know of the Fount of blood that washes, heals, renews.  When the ugliness is cleared away, we may find they were not monsters, but sons and brothers.

The Hiding Place, pt. 5

We lay back, struggling against the nausea that swept over us from the reeking straw. We could hear the women who had arrived with us finding their places. Suddenly I sat up, striking my head on the cross-slats above.

Something had pinched my leg.

“Fleas!” I cried. “Betsie, the place is swarming with them!” We scrambled across the intervening platforms, heads low to avoid another bump, dropped down to the aisle, and edged our way to a patch of light.

“Here! And here’s another one!” I wailed. “Betsie, how can we live in such a place?”

“Show us. Show us how.” It was said so matter of factly it took me a second to realize she was praying. More and more the distinction between prayer and the rest of life seemed to be vanishing for Betsie.

“Corrie!” she said excitedly. “He's given us the answer! Before we asked, as He always does! In the Bible this morning. Where was it? Read that part again!” I glanced down the long dim aisle to make sure no guard was in sight, then drew the Bible from its pouch.

“It was in First Thessalonians,” I said. We were on our third complete reading of the New Testament since leaving Scheveningen. In the feeble light I turned the pages. “Here it is: 'Comfort the frightened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.'” It seemed written expressly to Ravensbruck.

“Go on,” said Betsie. “That wasn't all.”

“Oh yes: '. . . to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus-”'

“That's it, Corrie! That's His answer. 'Give thanks in all circumstances!' That's what we can do. We can start right now to thank God for every single thing about this new barracks!” I stared at her, then around me at the dark, foul-aired room.

“Such as?” I said.

“Such as being assigned here together.”

l bit my lip. “Oh yes, Lord Jesus!”

“Such as what you're holding in your hands.”

l looked down at the Bible. “Yes! Thank You, dear Lord, that there was no inspection when we entered here! Thank You for all the women, here in this room, who will meet You in these pages.”

“Yes,” said Betsie.

“Thank You for the very crowding here. Since we're packed so close, that many more will hear!” She looked at me expectantly. “Corrie!” she prodded.

“Oh, all right. Thank You for the jammed, crammed, stuffed, packed, suffocating crowds.”

“Thank you,” Betsie went on serenely, “for the fleas and for---“ The fleas! This was too much.

“Betsie, there's no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.”

“'Give thanks in all circumstances,”' she quoted. “It doesn't say, 'in pleasant circumstances Fleas are part of this place where God has put us.”

And so we stood between piers of bunks and gave thanks for fleas. But this time I was sure Betsie was wrong.

Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place, pp. 209-210.

You must read the book--the fleas, in the end, are a blessing.  But I can't give anymore away.

Housekeeping

Well, I'm gonna post a glut of new content. Some Hiding Place (remember that from July) that got lost inside my post manager and forgotten about. Some gallows humor for the economy. Other goodies.

Christmas and Fulfillment

Santa wants You to do your Duty. From Blake Huggins

Happy Christmastime, everybody! Now that Thanksgiving's over, you can put up your lights and listen to obnoxious music without drawing the ire of Holiday Celebration Time Period Purists like myself.

Good post by Rod Dreher this morning, "Media, Black Friday and the Last Shopper," in which he, besides detailing the media's complicity in creating a consumption free-for-all after Thanksgiving, relates this sad comment on the state of the American Shopper Psyche:

Carr's ending is a jolt, suggesting a consumerist version of Nietzsche's Last Man:

Even consumption may have limits. Mr. Cohen said that in his 32 years interviewing consumers in malls during the holiday season, he had never heard what he did this year. "People really have no idea what they want," he said.

They don't even want anything. They want to want. Our popular culture, driven by news and entertainment media, and advertising, has stimulated their appetites, such that all they know now is appetite. I don't know whether it's more pathetic or frightening. Maybe it's frightening because it's pathetic: the Last Shopper.

Is this what the Consumerist Experience has come down to? Originally, man could view his possessions as a blessing, a means towards seeing Someone greater, but then we elevated material goods as an end themselves.

The act of consumption has become an end itself.

Now, apparently, our alienation has increased by another order: the goods themselves are meaningless¹, and the act of consumption has become an end itself. The Urge to Appropriate has become so generalized and ingrained that it has become our prime motivation. All we know how to do is abate the need, at least temporarily. This bears striking similarity to my current course material in medical school.

Addiction.

Consider for contrast this video my church just played yesterday from the Advent Conspiracy:

Interesting opportunity and needed wake-up call. We would be wise to remember Paul's words in Phillippians:

I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.

How often does our culture do the opposite? Whether in want or wealth, we are consumed with bitterness and envy. and as the fading economy forces us to live with less materially, what will we do relationally?

A friend of mine had a blurb on her GChat away message asking if it was ok to start up a Christmas Countdown. I say yes. We have 25 days. A brief amount of time. What will we do to commemorate the season? What will we do to heal the wounds of the mad pursuit? Will we:

• call up friends we have neglected, whether due to indifference in the face of a crowded schedule, or avoidance in the wake of old conflict?
• show concern to those we'd otherwise ignore, as if one could merit our love (how often others have cared for us, when we were insolent or ignorant)?²
• give money, when we'd rather keep money?
• cleanse our hearts so we could love guests amidst their messy lives, rather than cleansing our homes for fear guests wouldn't love us amidst our messy lives?³
• look for ways to bear another's suffering?⁴

Ostentatious verbiage to "put Christ back in Christmas" does little.⁵ We, and those around us, are best served by putting Christ back in our hearts.

Footnotes:

1. You want meaningless? Check this out. Wrong on so many levels. Kids do not need to make numerous copies of their artwork--even if it looks like a Jackson Pollock, it doesn't mean you can sell the prints for decor. Plus, why are we giving kids "adult"-like toys? Why are we accelerating childhood into miniature adulthood, replete with office supplies to match? Next they'll be wanting cell phones. Oh, wait... I had to use cups and string.

2. Matt 18:21-35

3. Luke 10:38-42

4. Mother Teresa said:

Once they came to a door and no one answered. The woman had been dead for 5 days and no one knew - except the odor in the hallway. So many people are known for the number on their door. The worst disease today is not leprosy; it is being unwanted, being left out, being forgotten. The greatest scourge is to forget the next person, to be so sufficated with the that we have no time for the lonely Jesus - even a person in our own family that needs us. Maybe if I had not picked up that one dying person on the street, I would not have picked up the thousands. We must think ONE, ONE. That is the way to begin.

5. I appreciate their sentiment, but no one else does, and that is precisely the reason institutionalized drives like this fail. In other words, there is a diseconomy of scale to cultural change: the bigger an entity, the less effective it is, primarily because "sentiment" is the first thing expunged from a petition. Emotion, care, and concern cannot be communicated via an organization, and an intimate and living interpersonal connection is absolutely necessary if hearts and minds will ever be changed. This is not to say that individual people cannot create that connection as members of a group, but the focus should be on the organization's resources reinforcing the message of love already communicated through the person. (Organizational resources are why larger organizations may have economies of scale (bigger equals better) in regards to financial concerns, but cultural change must be local). Too often, the member becomes subservient to the group, a nameless, faceless amoeba of mission statements and donation requests.

Searching for Meaning in Obama's Election

Hi everybody! Here's a link round-up for you on commentary on the election of Senator Obama as it pertains to race in America. A diversity of opinions, for your reading enjoyment.

Thomas Chatterton Williams, in Black Man, White House:

That is the real change Obama offers—all of a sudden the world young black kids imagine themselves inhabiting would seem a richer place to live, one without an upper limit. To Biggie Smalls' dismal list of career options afforded young black males—"You either slang crack rock / Or you got a wicked jump shot"—we could add the office of president. And in response to what Jay-Z cynically defined as the black man's lot in life—"All we got is sports and entertainment/ Until we even, thievin"—we could say, No, not anymore.

Shelby Steele, Obama's Post-Racial Promise:

But there is an inherent contradiction in all this. When whites -- especially today's younger generation -- proudly support Obama for his post-racialism, they unwittingly embrace race as their primary motivation. They think and act racially, not post-racially. The point is that a post-racial society is a bargainer's ploy: It seduces whites with a vision of their racial innocence precisely to coerce them into acting out of a racial motivation. A real post-racialist could not be bargained with and would not care about displaying or documenting his racial innocence. Such a person would evaluate Obama politically rather than culturally.

Stanley Crouch, Obama vs Farrakhan:

The deepest element of this new maturity means a fresh perspective: Now an ethnic criminal or abuser of anything at all is seen in terms of being a crook first, a member of a given ethnic or religious group second. That is why O.J. Simpson got some attention, but not much, when he was not long ago convicted for committing a dumb robbery in Las Vegas. Simpson is no longer though to symbolize "the fate of black men" on any level. The same was true of Michael Vick or any other dashingly handsome man who is beyond a fool in his private entertainment choices. Then there are the Lil’ Kims and Foxy Browns who have shown themselves to be as repulsively willing to pimp themselves as Madonna. They are who they are, and Tiger Woods or Gwen Ifill or Barack Obama all happen to be who they are. Individuals first. The nation has noticed this.

Joshua Mattern, Pins on a Map: West Virginia:

Don’t misunderstand me—none of this is leading toward an excuse for racism. I abhor it when today’s West Virginians exhibit prejudice toward minorities. But my sense, having lived among them, isn’t that they are bigoted against blacks per se, the way that Nazis were bigoted against Jews. In a state where 98 percent of the population is white, African Americans—and all other minorities—seem like unfamiliar outsiders, and many West Virginians have a deep-seeded distrust, and even fear, of things and people that are unfamiliar.

Will Wilkinson, One Night of Romance:

The government of the state is profoundly important. And I think American voters picked a competent, decent, and sober executive officer. But this is not, headline writers, Barack Obama’s America. He is not your leader, any more than the mayor of your town is your leader. We are free people. We lead ourselves. He is set to be a high-ranking public administrator. Sure, there is romance in fame. But romance in politics is dangerous, misplaced, and beneath intelligent people. Were we more fully civilized, we would tolerate the yearnings projected on our leaders. Our tribal nature is not so easily escaped, after all. But we would try to escape it. We would discourage and condemn as irresponsible a romantic politics that tells us that if we all come together and want it hard enough, we’ll get it. We would spot the dangerous fallacy in condemning as “cynicism” all serious attempts to critically evaluate the content of political hopes.

Rod Dreher, Nationalist bigotry among Latino US immigrants:

On a related note, at the Dallas Ideas Festival this weekend, I heard Marcos Ronquillo, a Mexican-American lawyer who had voted for Obama, talk about how thrilled he was that Obama had won, but how also it needs to be acknowledged openly that there is a stark black-brown (that is, black-Latino) divide in this country. These things tend to get glossed over or dismissed by black and Latino politicians, who don't want to do anything to undermine ethnic solidarity in progressive causes. On the Dallas County school board, blacks and Hispanics are at each other's throats (whites are minor players). It will be rather interesting to see how ethnic politics in the US develops in the Age of Obama.

You should read all of those articles, if you have the time. Especially the comments on the Dreher blog psot. In any case, I think the Obama Presidency may make inroads as a role model or an aspirational figure for African-Americans and heal some of the tragic cultural pathologies that too often have crushed ambition. Hatred, however, is endemic to the broken human soul, and I pray that God may grant us the grace to forgive and to love. Wilkinson's right, though: this transformation is inherently personal. The emotions may be uplifted by campaign speeches, but the soul cannot be healed by Executive Order.

The New Look

I've finally completed the new look for the blog, and I think I just might owe myself a pat on the back. Maybe even a tall cold one. But of course, I couldn't have done it without the help of numerous people on the internet, writing graphics design and xhtml tutorials out of the goodness of their own hearts, and others posting up Creative-Commons licensed artwork for me to borrow. And one guy who drew birds a couple centuries ago, but whose work has, alas, slipped into the public domain.

So, without further ado, here's the acknowledgments.

For the header graphics:

I decided the header graphic ought to feature the eponymous birds, but I wanted something a bit older than stills from, say, Marty Stouffer's Wild America. I was thinking maybe something by Audubon, but when searching my favorite internet repository of old-fashioned imagery, BibliOdyssey, I came upon the work of Francois Nicolas Martinet. Plate 127 from his "Ornithologie" is the wood sparrow seen at left above, and plate 26 features a Chinese goldfinch, seen in the background at right.

For the typeface, I was thinking of something from a Victorian-era book's title page. The images are combined with a freeware typeface, Oklahoma, by Harold Lohner. This typeface was manipulated in Adobe Illustrator to create the wave-like effect, as well as the linear gradient using the tuturial from GoMediaZine. I added a parchment texture layer, available here from Flicker User DevonTT, over the paper of the book. The book itself is a "Robin Hood and His Adventures," a retelling from 1903 by Paul Cheswick that one of my grandparents had and has been passed down, along with a bunch of other old books. I photographed it and cloned out the text in Photoshop, which I also used to make the seamless paper background for the body of the blog. Originally, I wanted to the bottom edge of the book at the bottom of the blog, but I don't believe it is possible to dynamically force the background to tile a rounded integer number of times, so I can't add the bottom of the book seamlessly. (In other words, you'd see a weird line in between the background of the blog body and the bottom of the book image, and it would look awkward. Sorry.)

For the wooden background, I wanted to create something that looked like an old table, so I used a photograph of the wooden floor from my apartment, shifted some planks around so it would tile seamlessly, and adjusted the color so it would be just so.

The epigraph is from Ezekiel. I will be writing more on the content later, hopefully. The typeface is Ohlo de Boi, by Billy Argel, who was inspired by "the first Brazilian postage stamp."

Coding assistance was largely from the tutorials by Small Potato at wpdesigner.com. Other coding help for the CSS design was from Dan Cederholm and these guys. Image caption help from Bryan Harris, and pull quote help from Chris Pearson.

The typeface for the blog test is Constantia, chosen because it is an old-fashioned serif font with hanging numerals.

That's about it.

Oh, and thanks to my roommate John who was going to help me transfer my site to WordPress, until I decided to just renovate it on BlogSpot instead.

Featured Link: Pursuing a World of Dreams

Excellent work from Paul Spears, and a reminder for us all.

Humanity has become trapped in a culture that cannot rest, because most of us do not have a destination. They are always chasing a moving target, and cannot find satisfaction. This moving target is great for manufacturers and advertising agencies, but horrible on human souls. This frenetic pursuit ultimately will lead to exhaustion, depression and disillusionment, because we cannot stop looking for fulfillment of purpose even when it is misdirected.

Read the rest.

The Anti-prosperity Gospel

Hello all.

New blog is coming, so don't fret!

But in the mean time, I just had to post a quick comment (which I hope to elaborate further) on the financial mess we're in.

Without speaking too much on economic, political, and social factors, I would like so second these comments from Pope Benedict:

He who builds only on visible and tangible things like success, career and money builds the house of his life on sand....we are now seeing, in the collapse of major banks, that money vanishes, it is nothing. All these things that appear to be real are in fact secondary. Only God's words are a solid reality.

What we do, what we earn, will never save us, and we must be people of sufficient faith, wisdom, and understanding to know what is Rock and what is not. As hard as economic volatility and decline may be on us (and especially on those poorer than us in strictly material terms) we must realize that our culture, from top to bottom, is based largely on the relentless pursuit of wealth and status. The Church, the Body of Christ, must speak the truth boldly and consistently--with deeds to match. I believe that among my generation's most important tasks is to confront the confront the worldview of decaying confidence and reach out to those despairing in the love of Christ that surpasses all hardship. We cannot promise possessions or comforts, but in the end, these must be counted for little. We can promise things of far greater value: hope, dignity, and love. It may be the Anti-prosperity Gospel, but it is the only News we can truly call Good.

Financial Meltdown

Sorry for light posting-busy lately, but blog redesign is still in the works.

Here is the most succinct explanation for the financial goings-on of the last week by Jim Manzi at the American Scene.

Welcome to History

It's in layman's terms! Enjoy.

I think.

Make My Life a Miracle

This is good. And challenging.

"A little . . ., a little . . ., a little . . . ." Proverbs 24:33

"Your danger and mine is not that we become criminals, but rather that we become respectable, decent, commonplace, mediocre Christians. No rewards at the end, no glory. The twenty-first-century temptations that really sap our spiritual power are the television, banana cream pie, the easy chair and the credit card. Christian, you will win or lose in those seemingly innocent little moments of decision. Lord, make my life a miracle!"

Ray Ortlund Sr., Lord, Make My Life A Miracle, pages 130-131.

Check out more at his blog. And read the comment here.

Drink of the Week - Ramos Gin Fizz

If any of you have been over to my apartment lately, you may have noticed I have a big box of cocktail recipes I bought from a thrift shop in somewhere near Show Low, Arizona. However, this box was from the 70's, and I've been doubting its bona fides for some time. (Ever since I read a recipe that involved beef bouillon.) After trying one too many atrocities from its pages, I pitched the thing and decided to try only the classics. So, without further ado, here is the first Cocktail of the Week, the Ramos Gin Fizz.
Ramos Gin Fizz.

1.5 oz gin
0.5 oz lemon j.
0.5 oz lime j.
1 oz simple syrup
dash vanilla extract
dash orange flower water
2 oz cream
egg white
seltzer

Combine all of the above except seltzer in shaker. Shake without ice to emulsify egg white. Then shake with ice. Pour in tall Collins glass without ice. Top with seltzer water for the fizz.

The drink is a New Orleans specialty dating back to the Ramos Brothers, who began mizing drinks in the 1880's, and continued until Prohibition in the 20's. In the aftermath, the Ramos Brothers released the formerly-secret recipe to the public, so the drink would not fade from memory. After Prohibition, the larger-than-life Senator Huey Long of Louisiana had New Orleans bartenders dispatched to Washington to teach Yankee barkeeps how to mix the drink properly.

I give the drink an A. A little bit tart, a little bit sweet, and quite a bit of creamy, the Ramos Gin Fizz does well. Vanilla adds a nice touch. Sure, it's complicated, but it's worth it. Plus, if you normally hate gin, this might be ok for you, since the gin's taste is muted. By the way, orange flower water is flavoring often used in Middle Eastern dishes. You can probably omit it; I used rose flower water instead that I had on hand (ingredient for another thing I am going to make later on).

See: New Orleans' Best Cocktails
Photo by: Michael Dietsch and distributed via Creative Commons License.

News Rundown August 8th, 2008

Here's the News Rundown:

The Olympics

Rod Dreher has mixed feelings:

When I'm thinking with my head, I believe that it's in the world's interest for China to have a good Olympics. China's is one of the world's great cultures. Its rise cannot be stopped, only accomodated, and it's better for peace and stability that the Chinese people, given their nationalism, have reason to feel proud on the world stage, and not have their noses rubbed in their failings.

When I'm thinking with my heart, though, my thoughts run along the lines of, "You ChiComs deserve to have the world see that you're a bunch of environment-fouling, Christians-repressing, Falun Gong-beating, Tibet-crushing goons who have earned only the world's fear, not its decent respect, given your record on human rights and the environment."

I suspect the truth is somewhere in between.

Tom Gibson remembers Chariots of Fire.

Who knows how the Chariots of Fire story is likely to go down in communist China, but we are about to find out. Eric Liddell, or Li Airui as he was known in the Far East, was considered a godly, heroic figure in non-communist China, and now the modern-day Chinese authorities have agreed to let his story of Christian humanity and sporting excellence be told.

John Keddie’s acclaimed Running the Race, a biography that places Liddell’s sporting life in the religious context in which it was lived, has been published in Mandarin and will be launched in China next month - the land where the 1924 Olympic 400 yards champion was born, worked as a missionary and died in a Japanese internment camp.

I personally lack enthusiasm for the Olympics. Part of it is due to the abuses in China, but part of it is due to the idealism surrounding the Olympics itself. Actually, even that isn't true. Lofty ideals can be a good thing, and we often need them more than we'd care to admit. What bothers me is the tremendous discord between the lofty ideals and the ulterior motives surrounding the Olympics in real life--it reeks of duplicity. NBC has promos for the Olympics, raving how the Olympics creates moments "shared by the entire world," complete with shots of athletic competition interspersed with shots of people watching from all around the world--South American Latinos, East Asians, etc. The implication is, "Watch the Olympics, and you'll be doing you're part to foster global harmony!" The reality is, "Watch the Olympics, and GE's advertising revenue will increase!" To make brothers of aliens, it will take more than a mutual interest in the Men's 400 Meters. Moreover, does sharing a viewing experience really bring people closer together? Viewers of the last two College Football National Championships will attest that relations between fans of the Big Ten and SEC have soured quite a bit. Maybe in January President Obama can establish a inter-regional diplomatic envoy as part of our national healing. (Oh, that was mean--I'm sorry. Here, I'll even it out: President McCain will station troops in Gainesville, Florida, for as long as it takes--even 100 years--to create a functional society free from extremism and violence. There. Making fun of politicians is dangerous, but making fun of Florida Gators is always the right move.)

In any case, back to the Olympics. It's not just an athletic event, it's a free-for-all for corporate advertisers to sell more product, especially into the emerging Chinese market, and for China to tout its national glories. Not that companies and countries can't do these things, but to do them in the context of a putatively-neutral celebration of humanity and its physical achievements is at best crass and at worst manipulative.

The Election

McCain's in serious credit card debt.

"Senators John McCain and Barack Obama released their Senate financial disclosure statements on Friday, revealing that Mr. McCain and his wife had at least $225,000 in credit card debt....

The bulk of the McCains’ obligations stemmed from a pair of American Express credit cards that are held in Cindy McCain’s name. According to the disclosure reports, which present information on debts in a range rather than providing a precise figure, Mrs. McCain owed $100,000 to $250,000 on each card.

Another charge card, held by what was described as a “dependent child,” had also accumulated debts of $15,000 to $50,000. In addition, a credit card held jointly by the couple was carrying $10,000 to $15,000 in debt, the filing indicated, at a stiff 25.99 percent interest rate. "

Al Gore still wastes electricity.

After the Tennessee Center for Policy Research exposed Gore’s massive home energy use, the former Vice President scurried to make his home more energy-efficient. Despite adding solar panels, installing a geothermal system, replacing existing light bulbs with more efficient models, and overhauling the home’s windows and ductwork, Gore now consumes more electricity than before the “green” overhaul.

Peggy Noonan calls Obama a glowworm.

Mr. Obama consistently shows that he doesn't know what he doesn't know. It's a theme with his talented, confident staff. They don't know what they don't know either. Because they're young and they've never been in power and it takes time to know what you don't know. The presidential-type seal with OBAMA on it, the sometimes over-the-top rhetoric about healing the earth and parting the seas. They pick the biggest, showiest venue for the Berlin speech, the Brandenburg Gate, just like a president, not realizing people would think: Ya gotta earn that one, kid. Going to Europe was fine, but they should have gone in modestly, with a modest venue, quietly spread word that his speech was open to the public, and then left the watching world awed by the hordes that showed up. For they would have. "We couldn't help it, they love him!" It would have looked as if Europe was coming to him, and let that sink in back home.

Anyone can carp like this in retrospect, but when you know what you don't know, you can plan like this in advance.

* * *

Two weeks ago a journalist, a moderate liberal, spoke to me of what he called Mr. Obama's arrogance. I said I didn't think it was arrogance but high self-regard. He said there's no difference. I said no, arrogance has an air about it of pushing people around, insisting on your way. Mr. Obama doesn't seem like that. He took down a machine without raising his voice. Extremely high self-regard, though, can itself be a problem.

"What's wrong with that?" my friend said. "You want a self-confident president."

I said yes, but it brings up the Churchill question. Churchill had been scored by an acquaintance for his own very high self-regard, and responded with what was for him a certain sheepishness. "We're all worms," he said, "but I do believe I am a glowworm." He believed he was great, and he was. Is Mr. Obama a glowworm? Does he have real greatness in him? Or is he, say, a product of the self-esteem campaign, that movement within the schools and homes of our country the past 25 years that says the way to get a winner is to tell the kid he's a winner every day? You can get some true people of achievement that way, because some people need a lot of reinforcement to rise. But you can also get, not to put too fine a point of it, empty suits that take on a normal shape only because they're so puffed up with ego.

Is Mr. Obama's self-conception in line with his gifts, depth, wisdom and character? That's the big question, I suspect, on a number of minds.

The Culture

David Brooks says out culture is focused on the medium, not the message. Buzz and faddishness overrules meaning.

But on or about June 29, 2007, human character changed. That, of course, was the release date of the first iPhone.

On that date, media displaced culture. As commenters on The American Scene blog have pointed out, the means of transmission replaced the content of culture as the center of historical excitement and as the marker of social status.

Now the global thought-leader is defined less by what culture he enjoys than by the smartphone, social bookmarking site, social network and e-mail provider he uses to store and transmit it. (In this era, MySpace is the new leisure suit and an AOL e-mail address is a scarlet letter of techno-shame.)

Today, Kindle can change the world, but nobody expects much from a mere novel. The brain overshadows the mind. Design overshadows art.

This transition has produced some new status rules. In the first place, prestige has shifted from the producer of art to the aggregator and the appraiser. Inventors, artists and writers come and go, but buzz is forever. Maximum status goes to the Gladwellian heroes who occupy the convergence points of the Internet infosystem — Web sites like Pitchfork for music, Gizmodo for gadgets, Bookforum for ideas, etc.

These tastemakers surf the obscure niches of the culture market bringing back fashion-forward nuggets of coolness for their throngs of grateful disciples.

Second, in order to cement your status in the cultural elite, you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of.

Dan Larison says David Brooks overstates things.

No, human character did not change. One thing that has been consistent and recognizable throughout every stage of competing for status and gadget-collecting is the enduring human temptation to fall prey to the latest fad....

The beauty of these silly fads today is that they pass so much more quickly than they once did, if only to be replaced by yet another fad....

The most reassuring thing about all of this is that none of this status competition of obtaining and using gadgets really matters, and by its very transitory nature it confirms for us that it doesn’t matter.

Matt Conner says people get too worked up over nude art.

This country is going to hell. I don’t mean literal hell, as I am leaving spirituality out of this for a second. I just mean that we are shooting ourselves in the foot. A parent in Georgia is calling for a ban of Harry Potter. An art teacher is fired for going to an art museum on a principal-endorsed, parental-permission given trip. The teacher has been teaching for 28 years! She is almost 60! But some kids came back and apparently told mom and/or dad that there were breasts exposed in 3-D form, and then chaos ensued.

When you and I refuse to be challenged or shaped by different political viewpoints, we become closed-minded, dogmatic and really no good to anyone. Does this have consequences in the art world as well? When you and I refuse to listen to the talents of others, to view something that is different, to take in beauty in all its forms, do we miss out on what true beauty really is? I would answer that we do.

Commenter Nates says, not so fast.

I think there are a bunch of people like me, young men, especially middle and high school age who, in a culture that is already preaching a very loud and false gospel about sex, it doesn’t help to see breasts or the naked female form. In our lust and our fallenness, we can easily use these to begin to objectionalize women...

We need a holistic teaching of beauty and sexuality in the church and we need to allow our Christian biblical worldviews to erupt (not just ooze, but erupt) out of our private lives into everything we do.

Drug Addictions

Theodore Dalrymple says common understanding of heroin addiction may be skewed.

WORLD: Then how have addicts come to be considered blameless patients, creatures without choice?

DALRYMPLE: This is the result of a long historical process, which I date back to the English Romantics of the first quarter of the 19th century, particularly Thomas De Quincey and his very influential Confessions of an English Opium Eater. This book (the two editions published in his lifetime are very different, and the differences themselves expose the untruthfulness of De Quincey) contains all the misconceptions that have been faithfully handed down by authors ever since, including the odious Burroughs. Every fictional and cinematographic representation of heroin addiction has repeated uncritically De Quincey's equivocations, falsifications, and exaggerations.

WORLD: So why do we hear that withdrawal from heroin is physically dangerous when so many people beat their addictions without medical assistance?

DALRYMPLE: This is an interesting cultural phenomenon. People are often very surprised to learn that withdrawal from opiates (unless combined with other drugs, and with the single rare exception of withdrawal in pregnancy) is a trivial medical condition, unlike withdrawal from alcohol when it results in Delirium Tremens. The misconception arises because of the repeated misrepresentations in books and films. Of course, the myth of the horrors of withdrawal serves the interests of addicts who do not want to stop, and the professionals who want to "treat" addicts.

WORLD: What's the key evidence that heroin addiction is a spiritual or moral condition?

DALRYMPLE: There is lots of evidence. First, there are historical examples of thousands and indeed millions of opiate addicts giving up their addiction because of motivation to do so. Mao Tse Tung took a very dim view of opium addicts and threatened in the end to shoot them. When Mao threatened to shoot you, you took it seriously. Millions of people gave it up. It would not have made sense for Mao to say to people with rheumatoid arthritis, "I will shoot you if your joints don't become normal." It did make sense, even if it was wrong, to threaten to shoot addicts. There is therefore a conceptual difference between the two conditions.

NFL Hall of Fame Inductions

Art Monk depends on Christ and Christ alone:

“[E]ven now as a Hall of Famer, the one thing I want to make very clear is that my identity and my security is found in the Lord. And what defines me and my validation comes in having accepted his son Jesus Christ as my personal savior. And what defines me is the Word of God, and it’s the Word of God that will continue to shape and mold me into the person that I know he’s called me to be.

“So I’ve learned a long time ago never to put my faith or trust in man, for man will always fail you. Man will always disappoint you. But the Word of God says that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. And He will never fail you..."

Have a good day, readers.

Thought for the Day Vol. 1

Thought for the Day

"Where there is weakness, my power is shown the more completely." 2 Corinthians 12:9, Phillips

"The power of Christ manifests to the full its irresistible energy and attains its highest results by performing works of power with powerless instruments."

Geoffrey Wilson, quoted in D. A. Carson, From Triumphalism to Maturity, pages 150-151.

From Christ is Deeper Still

"For the sake of Christ . . . ." 2 Corinthians 12:10

"Let us look at our lives in the light of this experience and see whether we gladly glory in weakness, whether we take pleasure, as Paul did, in injuries, in necessities, in distresses. Yes, let us ask whether we have learnt to regard a reproof, just or unjust, a reproach from friend or enemy, an injury or trouble or difficulty into which others bring us, as above all an opportunity of proving how Jesus is all to us, how our own pleasure or honor are nothing and how humiliation is in very truth what we take pleasure in. It is indeed blessed, the deep happiness of heaven, to be so free from self that whatever is said of us or done to us is lost and swallowed up in the thought that Jesus is all."

Andrew Murray, Humility, page 83.

From Christ is Deeper Still

The Hiding Place, part 4

“Ja! Herrein!” called a man's voice.

The guard pushed open the door, gave a straight-armed salute and marched smartly off. The man wore a gun in a leather holster and a beribboned uniform. He removed his hat and I was stark staring into the face of the gentle-mannered man who had visited me in my cell.

“I am Lieutenant Rahms,” he said, stepping to the door to close it behind me. “You're shivering! Here, let me get a fire going.”

He filled a pot-bellied stove from a small coal scuttle, for all the world a kindly German householder entertaining a guest. What if this were all a subtle trap? This kind, human manner-perhaps he had simply found it more effective than brutality in tricking the l truth from affection-starved people. Oh Lord, let no weak gullibility on my part endanger another's life.

“I hope,” the officer was saying, “we won't have many more days this spring as cold as this one.” He drew out a chair for me to sit on.

Warily I accepted it. How strange after three months, to feel chair-back behind me, chair-arms for my hands! The heat from the stove was quickly warming the little room. In spite of myself, I began to relax. I ventured a timid comment about the tulips: “So tall, they must have been beautiful.”

“Oh they were!” he seemed ridiculously pleased. “The best I've ever grown. At home we always have Dutch bulbs.”

We talked about flowers for a while and then he said, “I would like to help you, Miss ten Boom. But you must tell me everything. I may be able to do something, but only if you do not hide anything from me.”

So there it was already. All the friendliness, the kindly concern that I had half-believed in-all a device to elicit information. Well, why not? This man was a professional with a job to do. But I, too, in a small way, was a professional.

For an hour he questioned me, using every psychological trick that the young men of our group had drilled me in. In fact, I felt like a student who has crammed for a difficult exam and then is tested on only the most elementary material. It soon became clear that they believed the Beje had been a headquarters for raids on food ration offices around the country. Of all the illegal activities I had on my conscience this was probably the one I knew least about. Other than receiving the stolen cards each month and passing them on, I knew no details of the operation. Apparently my real ignorance began to show after a while Lieutenant Rahms stopped making notes of my hopelessly stupid answers.

“Your other activities, Miss ten Boom. What would you like to tell me about them?” “Other activities? Oh, you mean-you want to know about my church for mentally retarded people!” And I plunged into an eager account of my efforts at preaching to the feeble-minded.

The lieutenant's eyebrows rose higher and higher. “What a waste of time and energy!” he exploded at last. “If you want converts, surely one normal person is worth all the half-wits in the world!' I stared into the man's intelligent blue-gray eyes: true National- Socialist philosophy, I thought, tulip bed or no. And then to my astonishment I heard my own voice saying boldly, “May I tell you the truth, Lieutenant Rahms?” “This hearing, Miss ten Boom, is predicated on the assumption that you will do me that honor.”

“The truth, sir,” I said, swallowing, “is that God's viewpoint is sometimes different from ours-so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things.”

I knew it was madness to talk this way to a Nazi officer. But he said nothing so I plunged ahead. “In the Bible I learned that God values us not for our strength or our brains but simply because He has made us. Who knows, in His eyes a half-wit may be worth more than a watchmaker. Or---a lieutenant.”

Lieutenant Rahms stood up abruptly. “That will be all for today.”

He walked swiftly to the door. “Guard!” I heard footsteps on the gravel path.

“The prisoner will return to her cell.”

From The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom, pp. 172-173.

Gossip! Gossip!

I don't watch a whole lot of TV, and I'm frequently encouraged that I made the right choice.

Here's a couple posts elsewhere on the enternet on the CW series Gossip Girls (along with an account of peculiar locker room hazing).

From Rod Dreher, the man with the awesome beard.

From James Poulos, the man with awesome sideburns.

Also, read the comments on Dreher's blog for bonus enlightenment/controversy. And y'all are free to post here any comments you like.

PS. Here's a question for you to answer on the comment boxes: did you find this helpful, in some way? Thanks!

Oden: the Saga continues

Greg Oden played the piano at the Espy's for Justin Timberlake. He even wore glasses a la Elton John. Enjoy.

The Pride of Columbus

Greg Oden and Jim Tressel: awesome people.

Oden on hosting the Espys, or "The Math Does Not Lie":

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Oden at the Espys and back in classes:

Tressel is French for awesome:

Enjoy.

Thanks to:

Men of the Scarlet and Gray

Eleven Warriors

The Hiding Place, part 3

Betsie poured a bowl of the soup she had cooked for supper from a much-boiled bone. The baby began a thin high wail; I rocked it while the mother ate. Here was a new danger, a tiny fugitive too young to know the folly of making a noise. We had had many Jewish children over a night or several nights at the Beje and even the youngest had developed the uncanny silence of small hunted things. But at two weeks this one had yet to discover how unwelcoming was its world: we would need a place for them far removed from other houses.

And the very next morning into the shop walked the perfect solution. He was a clergyman friend of ours, pastor in a small town outside of Haarlem, and his home was set back from the street in a large wooded park.

“Good morning, pastor,” I said, the pieces of the puzzle falling together in my mind. “Can we help you?” I looked at the watch he had brought in for repair. It required a very hard-to-find spare part. “But for you, Pastor, we will do our very best. And now I have something I want to confess.”
The pastor's eyes clouded. “Confess?” I drew him out of the back door of the shop and up the stairs to the dining room.

“I confess that I too am searching for something.” The pastor's face was now wrinkled with a frown. “Would you be willing to take a Jewish mother and her baby into your home? They will almost certainly be arrested otherwise.”

Color drained from the man's face. He took a step back from me.

“Miss ten Boom! I do hope you're not involved with any of this illegal concealment and undercover business. It's just not safe! Think of your father! And your sister-she's never been strong!” On impulse I told the pastor to wait and ran upstairs. Betsie had put the newcomers in Willem's old room, the farthest from windows on the street. I asked the mother's permission to borrow the infant: the little thing weighed hardly anything in my arms.

Back in the dining room, I pulled back the coverlet from the baby's face. There was a long silence. The man bent forward, his hand in spite of himself reaching for the tiny fist curled around the blanket. For a moment I saw compassion and fear struggle in his face. Then he straightened. “No. Definitely not. We could lose our lives for that Jewish child!” Unseen by either of us, Father had appeared in the doorway.

“Give the child to me, Corrie,” he said.

Father held the baby close, his white beard brushed its cheek, looking into the little face with eyes as blue and innocent as the baby's own. At last he looked up at the pastor. “You say we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the greatest honor that could come to my family.”

The pastor turned sharply on his heels and walked out of the room. So we had to accept a bad solution to our problem. On the edge of Haarlem was a truck farm that hid refugees for short periods of time. It was not a good location, since the Gestapo had been there already. But there was nowhere else available on short notice. Two workers took the woman and child there that afternoon.

A few weeks later we heard that the farm had been raided. When the Gestapo came to the barn where the woman was hidden, not the baby but the mother began to shriek with hysteria. She, the baby, and her protectors were all taken.

We never learned what happened to them.

From The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom, pp 114-115.

The Hiding Place, part 2

And while Haarlem and the rest of Holland strolled and bowed and swept its steps, the neighbors on our east geared for war. We knew what was happening—there was no way to keep from knowing. Often in the evening, turning the dial on the radio, we would pick up a voice from Germany. The voice did not talk, or even shout. It screamed. Oddly, it was even –tempered Betsie who reacted most strongly, hurtling from her chair and flinging herself at the radio to shut off the sound.

And yet, in the interludes, we forgot. Or, when Willem was visiting and would not let us forget, or when letters from Jewish suppliers in Germany came back marked “Address Unknown,” we still managed to believe that it was primarily a German problem. “How long are they going to stand for it,” we said. “They won’t put up with that man for long.”

Only once did that changes taking place in Germany reach inside the little shop on the Barteljorisstraat, and that was in the person of a young German watchmaker. Germans frequently came to work under Father for a while, for his reputation reached even beyond Holland. So when this tall good-looking young man appeared with his apprentice papers from a good firm in Berlin, Father hired him without hesitation. Otto told us proudly that he belonged to the Hitler Youth. Indeed it was a puzzle to us why he had come to Holland, for he found nothing but fault with Dutch people and products. “The world we see what Germans can do,” he said often.
His first morning at work he came upstairs for coffee and Bible reading with the other employees; after that he sat alone down in the shop. When we asked him why, he said that though he had not understood the Dutch words, he had seen that Father was reading from the Old Testament which, as he informed us, was the Jews’ “Book of Lies.”

I was shocked but Father was only sorrowful. “He has been taught wrong,” he told me. “By watching us, seeing that we love this Book and are truthful people, he will realize his error.”

It was several weeks later that Betsie opened the door from the hallway and beckoned to Father and me. Upstairs on Tante Jan’s tall mahogany chair sat the lady who ran the rooming house where Otto lived. Changing the bed sheets that morning, she said, she had found something under his pillow. And she drew from her market satchel a knife with a curving ten-inch blade.
Again, Father put the best interpretation on it. “The boy is probably only frightened, alone in a strange country. He probably bought it to protect himself.”

It was true enough that Otto was alone. He spoke no Dutch nor made any effort to learn, and besides Father, Betsie and me, few people in this working-class part of the city spoke German. We repeated our invitation to join us upstairs in the evenings, but whether he did not care for our choice of radio programs, or because the evening ended as the morning began, with prayer and Bible readings, he seldom did.

In the end, father did fire Otto—the first employee he had ever discharged in more than sixty years in business. And it was not the knife or anti-Semitism that finally brought it about, but Otto’s treatment of the old clockmender, Christoffels.

From the very first I had been baffled by his brusqueness with the old man. It wasn’t anything he did—not in our presence anyway—but by what he didn’t do. No standing back to let the older man go first, no helping on with a coat, no picking up a dropped tool. It was hard to pin down. One Sunday, when Father, Betsie and I were having dinner in Hilversum, I commented on what I thought was simple thoughtlessness.

Willem shook his head. “It’s very deliberate,” he said. “It’s because the Christoffels is old. The old have no value to the State. They’re also much harder to train in the new ways of thinking. Germany is systematically teaching disrespect for old age.”

We stared at him, trying hard to grasp such a concept. “Surely you are mistaken, Willem!” Father said. “Otto is extremely courteous to me—unusually so. And I’m a good deal older than Christoffels.”

“You’re different. You’re the boss. That’s another part of the system: respect for authority. It’s the old and weak who are to be eliminated.”

We rode the train home in stunned silence—and we started watching Otto more closely. But how could we know, how in the Holland of 1939 could we have guessed, that it was not in the shops we could observe him but in the streets and alleys outside that Otto was subjecting Christoffels to a very real, small persecution. “Accidental” collisions and trippings, a shove, a heel ground into a toe, were making the old clockman’s journeys to and from work times of terror.

The erect and shabby little man was too proud to report any of this to us. It was not until the icy February morning that Christoffels stumbled into the dining room with a bleeding cheek and a torn coat that the truth came out. Even then, Christoffels said nothing.

But running down the street to pick up his hat, I encountered Otto surrounded by an indignant little cluster of people who had seen what happened. Rounding the corner into the alley, the young man had deliberately forced the older one into the side of the building and ground his face against the rough bricks.

Father tried to reason with Otto as he let him go, to show him why such behavior was wrong. Otto did not answer. In silence he collected the few tools he had brought with him and in silence left the shop. It was only at the door that he turned to look at us, a look of the most utter contempt I had ever seen.

From The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom. Pp. 74-76.

The Hiding Place, pt. 1

I’ve been thinking that it would be wise to share with you passages from books I’ve read, as humanity has passed down to us far too rich a heritage to ignore. Thus, I’ll begin with several passages from Corrie ten Boom’s World War II memoirs of supporting the Dutch Underground, hiding Jews clandestinely in her home, and imprisonment in the camp at Ravensbruck. Her book is The Hiding Place.

***

I was standing on a chair washing the big window in the dining room, waving now and then to passersby in the alley, while in the kitchen Mama peeled potatoes for lunch. It was 1918; the dreadful war was finally over: even in the way people walked you could sense a new hope in the air.

It wasn't like Mama, I thought, to let the water keep running that way; she never wasted anything.

“Corrie.”

Her voice was low, almost a whisper.

“Yes mama?”

“Corrie,” she said again.

And then I heard the water spilling out of the sink onto the floor.

I jumped down from the chair and ran into the kitchen. Mama stood with her hand on the faucet, staring strangely at me while the water splashed from the sink over her feet.

“What is it, Mama?” I cried, reaching for the faucet. I pried her fingers loose, shut off the water, and drew her away from the puddle on the floor.

“Corrie,” she said again.

“Mama, you're ill! We've got to get you to bed!”

“Corrie.”

I put an arm beneath her shoulder and guided her through the dining room and up the stairs. At my cry Tante Anna came running down the stairs and caught Mama's other arm. Together we got her onto her bed and then I raced down to the shop for Father and Betsie.

For an hour the four of us watched the effect of the cerebral hemorrhage spread slowly over her body. The paralysis seemed to effect her hands first, traveling from them along her arms and then flown into her legs. Dr. van Veen, for whom the apprentice had gone running, could do no more than we.

Mama's consciousness was the last thing to go, her eyes remaining open and alert, looking lovingly at each one of us until very slowly they closed and we were sure she was gone forever. Dr. van Veen, however said that this was only a coma, very deep, from which she could slip either into death or back to life.

For two months Mama lay unconscious on that bed, the five of us with Nollie on the evening shift, taking turns at her side. And then one morning, as unexpectedly as the stroke had come, her eyes opened and she looked around her. Eventually she regained the use of her arms and legs enough to be able to move about with assistance, though her hands would never again hold her crochet hook or knitting needles.

We moved her out of the tiny bedroom facing the brick wall, blown to Tante Jans's front room where she could watch the busy life of the Barteljorisstraat. Her mind, it was soon clear, was as active as ever, but the power of speech did not return-with the exception of three words. Mama could say “yes,” “no “ and-perhaps because it was the last one she had pronounced-”Corrie.” And so Mama called everybody “Corrie.”

To communicate, she and I invented a little game, something like Twenty Questions. “Corrie,” she would say.

“What is it, Mama? You're thinking of someone!”

“Yes.”

“Someone in the family.”

“No.”

“Somebody you saw on the street?”

“Yes”

“Was it an old friend'?”

“Yes”

“A man?”

“No.”

A woman Mama had known for a long time. “Mama, I'll bet it's someone's birthday!” And I would call out names until I heard her delighted, “Yes!” Then I would write a little note saying that Mama had seen the person and wished her a happy birthday. At the close I always put the pen in her stiffened fingers so she could sign it. An angular scrawl was all that was left of her beautiful curling signature, but it was soon recognized and loved all over Haarlem.

It was astonishing, really, the quality of life she was able to lead in that crippled body, and watching her during the three years of her paralysis, I made another discovery about love.

Mama's love had always been the kind that acted itself out with soup pot and sewing basket. But now that these things were taken away, the love seemed as whole as before. She sat in her chair at the window and loved us. She loved the people she saw in the street-and beyond: her love took in the city, the land of Holland, the world.

And so l learned that love is larger than the wails that shut it in.

More and more often, Nollie's conversation at the dinner table had been about a young fellow teacher at the school where she taught, Flip van Woerden. By the time Mr. van Woerden paid the formal call on Father, Father had rehearsed and polished his little speech of blessing a dozen times.

The night before the wedding, as Betsie and I lifted her into bed Mama suddenly burst into tears. With Twenty Questions we discovered that no, she was not unhappy about the marriage; yes, she liked Flip very much. It was that the solemn mother-daughter talk promised over the years for this night, the entire sex education which our taciturn society provided, was now not possible.

In the end, that night, it was Tante Anna who mounted the stairs to Nollie's room, eyes wide and cheeks aflame. Years before, Nollie had moved from our room at the top of the stairs down to Tante Bep's little nook, and there she and Tante Anna were closeted for the prescriped half-hour. There could have been no one in all Holland less informed about marriage than Tante Anna, but this was ritual: the older woman counseling the younger one down through the centuries--one could no more have gotten married without it than one could have dispensed with the ring.

Nollie was radiant, the following day, in her long white dress. But it was Mama I could not take my eyes off. Dressed in black as always, she was nevertheless suddenly young and girlish, eyes sparkling with joy at this greatest occasion the ten Booms had ever held Betsie and I took her into the church early, and I was sure that most of the van Woerden family and friends never dreamed that the gracious and smiling lady in the first pew could neither walk alone nor speak.

It was not until Nollie and Flip came down the aisle together that I thought for the very first time of my own dreams of such a moment with Karel. I glanced at Betsie, sitting so tall and lovely on the other side of Mama. Betsie had always known that, because of her health, she could not have children, and for that reason had decided long ago never to marry. Now I was twenty-seven, Betsie in her mid-thirties, and I knew that this was the way it was going to be: Betsie and I the unmarried daughters living at home in the Beje.

It was a happy thought, not a sad one. And that was the moment when I knew for sure that God had accepted the faltering gift of my emotions made four years ago. For with the thought of Karel-all shining round with love as thoughts of him had been since I was fourteen---came not the slightest trace of hurt. “Bless Karel, Lord Jesus,” I murmured under my breath. “And bless her. Keep them close to one another and to You.” And that was a prayer, l knew for sure that could not have sprung unaided from Corrie ten Boom.

But the great miracle of the day came later. To close the service we had chosen Mama's favorite hymn, “Fairest Lord Jesus.” And now as I stood singing it I heard, behind me in the pew, Mama's voice singing too. Word after word, verse after verse, she joined in, Mama who could not speak four words, singing the beautiful lines without a stammer. Her voice which had been so high and clear was hoarse and cracked, but to me it was the voice of an angel.

All the way through she sang, while l stared straight ahead, not daring to turn around for fear of breaking the spell. When at last everyone sat down, Mama's eyes, Betsie's, and mine were brimming with tears.

At first we hoped it was the beginning of Mama’s recovery. But the words she had sung she was not able to say, nor did she ever sing again. It had been an isolated moment, a gift to us from God, His own very special wedding present. Four weeks later, asleep with a smile on her lips, Mama slipped away from us forever.

From The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom. Pp 62-66.

Incest and its Discontents

Here's something to wrap your mind around.

At Dreher's Crunch Con, read Incest is best for me.

A British academic writes about her relationship with her brother:

"Of course abuse happens, but it can happen in any sexual relationship and there's an expectation that a family member would never hurt you in the way that someone else could. There's no comparison between siblings close in age having sexual feelings and contact and an adult forcing a younger member of the family to do something they neither understand nor want to be involved in...I know this is meant to be wrong, but I've never felt anything so right."

The author then explains the tension occuring now that she and her brother have found other partners, but still keep a special place in their heart for each other.

Rod makes this killer point:

Here's my question, though: If God doesn't exist (that is, if there is no such thing as absolute moral truth), why shouldn't the woman have sex with her brother? They're careful not to risk reproduction, its always been consensual, they enjoy it, and they don't feel guilty. So what's the problem?

Ross Douthat responds:

I think this British essay making the case for incest being no big deal (the title, "I had sex with my brother but I don't feel guilty," more or less tells it) inadvertently makes a pretty good case for why incest is, in fact, a really bad idea - because it corrupts not only the siblings involved, but the lives of the people around them...

But this begs the question--what is corruption? Is it merely the manifestation of these feelings? It can't be that there has been some subtle weakening of a moral code or cultural order if those things are presumed to be social constructions. One might make an argument on purely pragmatic ground--namely, that childless incest creates a cultural precedent that would draw people from child-producing relationships, and, in the long run, contribute to population implosion and social decline. But if it's purely pragmatic, why the revulsion?

I remember in a philosophy class discussing what morality actually is. Some have argued that it's simply a gut-level, emotional response: I don't like that. And while I disagree, I think that when one forsakes both revelation and reason to define morality only in terms of personal preference, a visceral response is all that's left. Deny the soul, remove the head, and all that's left is guts.

Cause sometimes you hafta dance!

This is awesome...

It's neat to see so many of the beautiful places in the world...and fun people too. Of course, the indifferent guard at the Korea Demilitarized Zone shows it takes more than a peppy dance step to bring about brotherhood.

What the heck is a pleural effusion?

During my trip to Europe, my lovely host--and loyal blog reader--Sarah (she's An American in Paris and cooks a mean English-muffin sandwich) suggested that I write about my goings-on as a doctor-to-be amongst the fine pages of this blog. Hence, I shall do so, and I will try and use regular person words so, at the very least, you won’t think I’m as big a dork as I actually am. And you might even learn something.

So today I am shadowing at the Hematology/Oncology ward at my university. And I can see I already lost half of you, so:

Hematology = blood studies
Oncology = cancer studies

So Heme/Onc focuses mostly on blood-related cancers, such as leukemias, which are found primarily in bone marrow, but may migrate elsewhere in the blood to other organs, and lymphomas, which primarily involve lymph nodes, where your body has little store-houses of immune cells that fight off infections (they swell up during infections b/c cells there are rapidly multiplying to fight the invaders, so if you’re sick the doc will often feel under your neck to see if lymph nodes there are enlarged—quick and dirty check to see if you’re infected). Heme/Onc also deals with other blood-related conditions, too, such as sickle cell anemia, which one patient we saw today has.

In any case, today I got to help out with a thoracocentesis—don’t worry, I’ll define it in a sec. Tumors can cause many different secondary effects. We had a patient who developed a pleural effusion, which I’ll define in a sec also, but you first you need to know about your lungs. Your lungs are normally surrounded by membranes—thin layers of tissue, called the pleura. You can see them in this picture from Wikipedia—don’t worry, it’s public domain. The pleural membranes kind of make a balloon—the membranes are in blue, and the space within is in black. Your lungs (red) kind of fit into and are surrounded by the pleura on most sides.

Imagine punching a balloon with your fist, and having it spread all over your clenched hand. This is what the pleura do around the lungs—they cover most of the lung surface, except where the lungs connect to your windpipe and the blood vessels connect to the heart (your wrist punching the balloon). The space in between the layers of the pleura is squashed pretty small. Normally, it’s filled with fluid—about 15 ml, or half an ounce per lung. This allows the inside and outside layers of the pleura to slide across one another when you breathe, so your chest can expand and your lungs fill smoothly.

Sometimes too much fluid can go into the pleural space. This is a pleural effusion, and happened to our patient today as a result of his lymphoma. Here is an x-ray picture from Wikipedia by Clinical Cases that is much like the case I saw today. In both cases, the patients’ right lung (left side of x-ray) is normal—air looks black in x-rays. The left lung is almost completely cloudy due to fluid—not inside the lung, but inside the space around the lung.

Our patient had trouble breathing, so we performed a thoracocentesis. We had him lean over on a table near his bed, and the internist (sort of novice resident) carefully inserted a needle in between the ribs and into the pleural space—but not into the lung. The needle was hooked up to a syringe, which was used to withdraw fluid and pump it through a one-way valve into a bag. This took probably 15-20 minutes from start to finish. When the patient was leaned over with the internist behind him, this transpired:

Patient: “But what if I have to fart?”
Resident (internist’s advisor): “It’s ok, you can fart.”
Patient: “I know, but it would be awfully mean.”

I should note here the patient had two Percosets in the morning. It’s too bad these things don’t get written up in case reports. Then again… (and to think, I’ve been looking all over for “gas impermeable Mylar pantaloons.”)

We removed over 1000 ml of fluid. That's a quart, you metric-hatin' Yankees. And I got to hold the table the patient leaned on so it wouldn’t roll away. I am basically paying $30,000 a year to be a door-stopper. With a white coat. Living the dream.

Also, I know I've been bad about updating, but I'll try to do better. Promise! I know my Week of Being a Real Man turned into a Month of Being a Bum, and everyone's been pestering for the Official Finches and Sparrows Europe Experience, which I just might deliver to you, if I can decipher whatever I scribbled on that napkin at the train station in Munich. Witness the potential--posts on Wall-E; Blade Runner; biological perfectionism; the Louvre and the dying art world; German beers and Italian wines; why your photos are terrible; why my photos are only mediocre; more medical adventures; the long-awaited Weekend Blog round-up; peculiar cocktails you can't afford but wouldn't like anyway; novel art with novels; the best meal of my life; building a culture of heart and hands; the Holocaust; the Gospel according to Mark; T.S. Eliot, and the craziest Italian wedding that didn't involve the mafia (as far as I know).

Plus I might even redesign the blog layout itself, which, if I pull off, will be beautiful, but will require more Photoshop skills than I have, John James Audubon, a better understanding of CSS and XHTML, typographic vector art, a new blog host, and Scotch whisky. Maybe even a fountain pen. I told you it was crazy, and I'll probably just end up spilling liquor and ink all over my computer.

That being said, pray for me.

PS. John, that last inside joke was for you. If you didn't get it, I'm marching down the hall and smacking you.

Peter Pan in The Promised Land

Here's a couple of edifying pieces.

The first is an essay from a recent City Journal by Kay Hymowitz, titled "Child-Man in the Promised Land," in which she accounts the cultural glorification of men who never really grow up.

Here's the beginning:

It’s 1965 and you’re a 26-year-old white guy. You have a factory job, or maybe you work for an insurance broker. Either way, you’re married, probably have been for a few years now; you met your wife in high school, where she was in your sister’s class. You’ve already got one kid, with another on the way. For now, you’re renting an apartment in your parents’ two-family house, but you’re saving up for a three-bedroom ranch house in the next town. Yup, you’re an adult!

Now meet the twenty-first-century you, also 26. You’ve finished college and work in a cubicle in a large Chicago financial-services firm. You live in an apartment with a few single guy friends. In your spare time, you play basketball with your buddies, download the latest indie songs from iTunes, have some fun with the Xbox 360, take a leisurely shower, massage some product into your hair and face—and then it’s off to bars and parties, where you meet, and often bed, girls of widely varied hues and sizes. They come from everywhere: California, Tokyo, Alaska, Australia. Wife? Kids? House? Are you kidding?

That description may sound like a bit of hyperbole, but read the whole thing. Our culture is inundated with that attitude, and among many sections of our society, men forsake hardship for the JM Barrie fantasy.

Contrast this with "The Month of Man" address by Ray Van Neste of Union University.

Our culture is infatuated with youth and encourages you not to grow up. After all, it says, the glory is in the youth. If you would be men you must reject this siren song and swim against the tide. You must diligently seek to throw off immaturity and to grow up. Remember the one boy who never grew up was Peter Pan - and in case you haven’t noticed his role has typically been played by a woman. The chase for perpetual youth is never manly. The other example of avoiding the effects of growing up is the medieval boys choirs. To maintain the high voices of the boys as they aged, the boys would be castrated. Again, avoiding maturity is emasculating.

So my main point to you tonight is, work on growing up. It does not “just happen.” Examples abound of physically mature males who have never truly attained manhood because they failed to mature in anyway other than physically.

Read the whole thing. You won't be disappointed.

Jim Tressel's Mancakes

This is so great. So there's a blog out there that is about "college football recipes" or some such. I don't know if they are recipes inspired by college football celebrities or actually shared by them, but this place has something called "Jim Tressel's Mancakes," because he's such a man, he doesn't eat pancakes, he eats mancakes.

I will warn you, the writer of the blog uses naughty words, which is almost as bad as not liking Ohio State. Anyway, here's the recipe:

1 c. wheat flour
1 c. oatmeal
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbspn brown sugar
4 tbsp ground flax seed
1 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp nutmeg ground
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 c milk
2 eggs
1 tbsp butter

add dried fruits, or maybe almonds

mix to same consistency as regular pancake batter and cook normally.

Photo caption: Jim likes to celebrate victories over Michigan with a big stack of mancakes. He also likes to forget the sting of bowl losses to SEC with a big stack of mancakes, 'cause in the South, they're not man enough to eat mancakes. That's why they have grits.

Being a Real Man Week resumes

So, when you have a neuroscience test and your computer hard drive dies, things can get put on hold. By the way, don't try to remove the battery to restart your computer. You can push and hold the little power button, and that should do just fine. If you do what I did, your computer will forget what a hard drive is, and not even John can fix it completely (though he did save my files from oblivion by booting up in Linux, the operating system for people who hate Windows but know they don't listen to enough indie rock to have a Mac. But John does listen to enough indie rock to own a Mac. But I digress).

Anyway, it's time for a new installment of Being a Real Man.

Here's another good post from the Art of Manliness.

Are you a pace-setter? You might want to buy a Homburg. And if you have no idea what I am talking about, click here.

Also, when you shave, do you feel like you got run over by a lawn mower? Resolve the pain of razor burn with a classic wet-shave here. Plus save money. (PS. Chris, the beard is gone. I'm sorry).

But now we get to the good stuff. Seriously, skip the first links and go with these. They're from Boundless. Folks our age (I assume most of my readers are my age, but if you're not, that's ok) are asking how to become a man. And some wise folks answered.

Becoming a Man, Pt. 1

Becoming a Man, Pt. 2

Ok, that's all for now, peoples. But I got some more links to finish up our Week (and a Half) of Being A Real Man.

Photo caption: John drilling a hole in my computer to get the files out.....Actually, it's "Carpenter at Work at Douglas Dam," by Alfred T. Palmer, June 1942.