Ronald Reagan. Sean Meade encouraged me to post a view of President Reagan.

The senior partner of the law firm in which I grew up was George Smathers. Smathers was a US Senator from Florida from 1952 to 1968. He was in not only the law firm in Miami where I worked, Smathers & Thompson, but also had a separate firm in Washington DC, from which he did his lobbying work. He spent most of his week in Washington DC during the 1970s and early 80s, but came to Miami for the weekend and was in the office on Friday. We often went to lunch together on Friday. Senator Smathers, who is a Democrat, told great stories and seemed to know every one in Washington. And he knew Reagan.

When Reagan was running for the Republican Presidential nomination, I asked senator Smathers what kind of man Reagan was. Smathers without hesitation said that he "had great instincts". He compared him to Eisenhower in that respect. I think he meant that both men had the gift of knowing the right thing to do when it needed to be done. I think that proved to be the case.

Sean mentions that Reagan and Bush are alike in that both espouse limited government, but both turned out to be big spenders while in office. That observation may be true, but I would suggest that the men are quite different.

Reagan's administration spent a lot of money on defense in pursuit of a particular strategy that was immensely successful. That strategy assumed that the Soviet Union would attempt to keep up with the US in its own defense spending and, in doing so, the Soviet Union would spend itself into bankruptcy, which it did. The Evil Empire fell as a result.

Reagan began his administration with a very large tax cut. He believed that the only way to limit government was to cut down on what it fed upon, the people's money. He believed that government needed to be limited because it was a grossly inefficient in determining what its citizens needed and in delivering those services. I suppose that if you believe that government can be reformed to become more efficient than the market-place in delivering services, then you would have to say that Reagan was a bad president. But I think the verdict of the 20th Century is that he was right on that point.

When he came into office, the US was coming off of its worst inflationary period of the century and the economy suffered from something called "stagflation". His predecessor, President Carter, told us essentially that we would simply have to live with scarcity. Reagan would have none of that. The tax cut commenced a recovery that lasted through the Clinton years, even though there were some ups and downs during that period - although nothing particularly serious.

The tax cuts and the defense spending did, however, increase the deficit. But that deficit did not hurt us, and it vanquished an adversary.

Sean mentions that the first President George HW Bush labeled President Reagan's economic approach as "voo-doo economics", thus giving the Democrats a pejorative that they could not come up with on their own. George HW Bush delivered that judgment while he was unsuccessfully running against Reagan for the Republican Presidential nomination.

But George HW Bush did not let his views of Reagan's economics stop him from serving as Reagan's running mate.

Furthermore, George HW Bush was not nearly the man that Reagan was. He did not keep his promise to the American people when he raised taxes. He did not keep his promise to the Shi'ite's in southern Iran, when he invited them to revolt against Saddam and then allowed the US to stand by when Saddam massacred so many of them and caused them terrible hardship. We would not be in Iraq today had George HW Bush the character of Ronald Reagan.

My view is that the present President is somewhere between his father and President Reagan, but more like his father. It is very hard for me to understand GW's Medicare Drug Bill, his Education Bill, and the other big spending bills that he has championed or permitted. I think that he and Cheney are big spending Republicans in the same wing that George HW Bush led. I think President Clinton was much more astute in his spending (and cutting) than George HW has been. (When President Clinton served, the Republicans served as an effective check and balance. With GW as President, he is aided and abetted by big spending Republicans in Congress.) Reagan's view of government was entirely different from the view the two Bush Presidents hold.

So I think Senator Smathers was right. Reagan had good instincts. President Reagan served our country well. I thank God that he was our President.

The Great High Mountain Tour. This tour is coming to Winston-Salem this weekend, to Fort Worth on June 14, and to Austin on June 15. World Magazine gave it a good review. Many of the musicians are those that appear on the sound track for the movies O, Brother, Where Art Thou and Cold Mountain. Here is its website.

Greg Ordy Model Rocket Webpage and KAP. Greg Ordy is a ham radio operator to whose webpage I found my way this morning. One of his hobbies is rockets, and on his website he has a video of a flight, where the video is taken from the rocket itself! He also has some stills that were taken from the rocket in flight. Here is the webpage where that video can be found. Greg's webpage also has links to other rocketry sites, some with more videos.

Greg also mentions a related hobby: taking photos with kites. This related hobby is called "Kite Assisted Photography" or "Kite Aerial Photography" or KAP. Here's a link to a KAP enthusiast in Berkeley, CA.

Muslims and "The Passion" See an article on the Christianity Today website about how Mel Gibson's film is doing in the Middle East.

Miami Marathon.
yo-
I'm going to make plans to run at least the half marathon portion of next year's Miami Tropical Marathon and would love to have some company along the way. The race is Sunday, January 30, 2005. It should be a fairly flat course winding its way across Biscayne Bay and through some great Miami neighborhoods. And the free room and board at the Stokes home would make it a most excellent weekend for all. See the website for registration and course info.

Healthcare Watch - Canadian Version. Before we jump to the Canadian model of health care services delivery, maybe we should watch this developing story.

Room for Old Men? InterVarsity now has an Emerging Scholars Network.

Islam and the West. Fascinating interview of Bernard Lewis in the Atlantic Unbound.

From Mars Hill Audio.

"[I]t could be argued that the world of humane good sense, clarity and peace promised by modernity, if only we let go of God, has not been forthcoming. Natural science has turned out to be dumb with regard to values and ends for which it supplies the means in ever more astonishing, if troubling, abundance. The social sciences, far from explaining everything, have no convincing rationale for themselves except as successive rhetorics of power and control and are therefore pathways to nihilism. It should trouble us that one of the greatest successes of the so-called collapse of totalizing meta-narratives or of any attempts to establish truth, meaning and value is the production of the ideal late-capitalist consumer, whose objectives stretch no further than acquiring something, reducing it to rubbish, and going on to the next desirable commodity."

--Janet Martin Soskice, "All That Is," a review of David Bentley Hart's

The Beauty of the Infinite, in Times Literary Supplement, April 9,

God and Photons. As my family, especially Carol, is really tired of knowing, I became interested in amateur radio a year or two ago. For several months, I have been reading three books that I bought at Radio Shack about electronics: Basic Electronics, Basic Communications Electronics, and Basic Digital Electronics. These books are very well written and profusely illustrated. They have examples and questions at the end of each chapter. They explain technical points carefully and clearly so that liberal arts majors can hope to understand them.

In the Basic Electronics book, the last chapter is "How Photoelectric Devices Work". In some ways, the chapter is a culmination of many of the ideas that the authors explained earlier, especially about how semi-conductors work. To understand the point I am about to make, you need to know that the authors are very serious science writers. The book is not for children. And up until Chapter 11 they have laid their points out carefully and rationally, leading the lay reader along with respect for the subject and for the lay reader.

In Chapter 11, the authors introduce again the kind of semiconductor known as a diode. What we did not know up to that point is that such semi-conductors actually emit light. You are probably familiar with this property and don't know it. Those little lights that tell you when a thing is on or off, ready or unready, etc., are LEDs, or "light emitting diodes". All diodes emit light, but some are designed to emit light in brighter ways and to function as you see them function on the front panel of some sort of thing that does electricity.

So the authors in Chapter 11 carefully explain how these things are used in circuits and applications. Then they get to a couple of questions at the end: (1) How can forward current in a p-n junction diode produce light? and (2) Do all p-n junction diodes light up when they conduct? Here is what they say about these questions:

"The answer to the second question is yes-they all produce light. . . In an LED, the p and n regions are shaped and positioned so that a lot of the light shines out instead of being absorbed [by the silicon crystal]. . .

"As to the first question, light is produced whenever free electrons fall into holes in a semiconductor crystal. . . [W]hen each free electron drops to the lower energy level, the potential energy it loses is instantly converted into a photon, as if by magic. The photon zips away from the junction in some random direction traveling at the speed of light . . . "

"As if by magic?" That sounds like superstition to me. Is this the best these guys can do on the naturalistic end? I guess so. People accuse Christians of finding God "in the gaps" of scientific knowledge. They say that it is just a matter of time before one particular gap or another will be filled in by science. OK. But at the least, at Radio Shack I found a gap. I think the whole thing about electrons in holes, the special properties of semi-conductors, all this wonderment, proclaims the glory of God. Not just the gaps but the non-gaps. But the gaps remind us of the ultimate truth, do they not?

Myron Update. Myron came been home from the hospital last week, but Tuesday night he suffered an embolism and went to the ER where he was immediately admitted. The clot travelled up from his leg, through his heart (the doctor said that if his heart had not been strong, this would have killed him) and it has lodged in one of his lungs, diminishing the capacity of that lung substantially. Yesterday he underwent an operation where a cage was inserted in his aorta to catch any further clots. He is in intensive care, and the physicians are waiting out the clots in his lung and his leg, hoping that his body will dissolve the clots without further damage. So, again, I ask you to pray for Myron.

Theolicious! I'm currently reading Regarding Karl Barth by Trevor Hart. Mary picked it up for me while she was interning at InterVarsity Press a couple summers ago. I just got around to picking it up a month ago, and I have to tell you, I'm so glad that I did!

I highly recommend it if you'd like to understand more about one of the most influential theologians of the 20th and 21st (so far) centuries, from an author who approaches the subject as a "friend" of Karl's. (This as opposed to authors who have particular bones to pick with Karl.)

You can borrow my copy when I'm done with it (Mary has first dibs). I want it back, since it's all marked up with my own brand of marginalia, but you might like it since I have a pretty healthy glossary of my own what-does-that-mean? words. Because I'm reader friendly, that's why.

(I'm back, by the way, from camp. You can read some of the results here.)

Hip-Hop Ministry. Greater Miami Youth for Christ has a hip-hop ministry called "Catalyst". There have been 300 first time decisions for Christ this year as a result of that ministry. Check-out the webpage. A young man by the name of Joel Stigale is the staff member who has developed this ministry. He needs your prayer. For one thing, he is not great at fund-raising. (Like Intervarsity, staff members have to raise their own support. His peer group is the hip-hoppers, which may not be a great hunting ground for donors. And Joel himself is not someone who would be in the middle of a traditional church community.) For another, Joel is losing his eyesight to glaucoma. (It is getting treated but I am not sure how effective the treatment is.) Nevertheless, he leads an event each Saturday night in a warehouse where, among other things, people come and "emcee", "dj", spray paint on big plywood panels that are hoisted for each event, dance, or whatever else hip-hoppers do. There is a point where he gets to give a short gospel message, and people quiet down for that. Not everyone buys it, but even the people who reject the gospel admonish the others at these meetings to show Joel "some respect", and they do. And the Spirit has been finding its mark, as the Spirit will do. So when you pray for Joel, praise God for the way he works out his redemptive will.

I unreservedly recommend the new greatest album:
Pedro the Lion's Achilles Heel

Myron got Hurt. Some of the kith and kin know Myron Harden, a good friend of mine and a member of our church. He is an excellent singer and guitarist, and plays on our Praise Team ("the Joyful Noise"). He has been commuting by bicycle to the Okeechobee MetroRail station from his home in Miami Springs. Last week, however, he fell off his bicycle and broke his hip. He is a nurse at the VA hospital but will have to stay home for four weeks while he heals. He is now getting around on a walker, but hopes to regain all of his mobility at some point. So keep him and his wife, Kim, in your prayers and drop him a note. If you need his address, send me an email. Thanks.

Ham Radio, Rockets, and Little Sisters. Amateur Radio Operators have their own national organization, called the Amateur Radio Relay League. Its 90 years old this year. A group of hams will be trying to boost a transceiver into subspace on Monday with a rocket and you can read about it on the ARRL website. I won't be in a position to receive its signals on Monday.

Hams have had their own satellites going around in orbit for many years, but they got up there by piggy-backing on a NASA launch. They are not in a fixed orbit. That is, a satellite will come up on one horizon and go across the sky and then "set". While it is racing by, however, one can communicate with other hams by using the satellite as a repeater, in a way somewhat similar to the way that we use a cell in the cell phone system. I have a transceiver that can do that, but I don't yet have the antenna and have not communicated with it. You have to aim the antenna at the point on the horizon at which you think the satellite will come up, and then, when you have it, you have to track it with the antenna as it goes across the sky. You can do this manually or you can construct an antenna with some sort of motor that will follow the thing. All of this is on my to-do list, but pretty far down toward the end of it.

This also makes me think about the times that Macon, Walter and I were building model rockets and shooting them up from the East Drive athletic fields in Miami Springs and from the playground at the high school. If there was a breeze (and there always seemed to be), we would shoot a rocket up and then spend the next 15 minutes or more chasing it down, as it floated on its parachute eastward or northward or wherever. We lost a few.

You could get a rocket that would have a compartment in it in which you could put things to launch. We didn't ever get one of those, but thought about it. We thought about putting a lizard or a mouse in the rocket and launching it. They didn't make those compartments big enough for little sisters.

Downloading Songs Releasing Time Praising God. I am an amateur singer, and help with the music ministry of our church. That ministry is in the midst of a radical transformation from traditional to contemporary. The church recently hired a new “music minister”, Steve, a keyboardist, composer, and music transcriber by profession. He is from the secular side of the music aisle, and is little acquainted with “church music”. Furthermore, as a Roman Catholic, Steve is not very familiar with “the Reformed Tradition”.

But Steve knows contemporary music, he knows what sounds “right” to younger folks in the pew, he can play anything on his computerized keyboard, and he brings a point of view that I would say, at the risk of sounding a little heretical, gives new life to the music side of our worship. He is a great complement to our new minister, Van, who has brought new life to the preaching of the Word at our church. Van does not consider himself a musician, but he is interested in music, he knows what he likes, what he likes is often what people in the pew like, and he has an ear for songs that go with themes in his text and in his sermon. So Van will mention a song to Steve. Steve will get the music somewhere, and then Steve will look at his amateur musicians and see whether someone might be able to do the song. Steve does not have a lot to work with in our church, but he and the layman who heads our worship committee, Rick, are doing very well in teasing out talent from our community.

So last Wednesday night Steve gave me a song he wanted me to sing today at church. It was a song that Van had asked him to do, “O Lord, You’re Beautiful” by Keith Green, a song that has been in the “praise song” library for many years. I knew the song a little bit and Steve had a copy of the original music that Keith Green had sung. The original music was a little different from
the praise song I knew, however. For one thing, it had a strange bridge that was hard to get just reading the music. So I decided that Saturday I would have to go to the Christian book store in
Hialeah, look through the CD collection there, and see if I could find the song. If successful, I would buy the CD, bring it home, and then just listen to it again and again, which is how I learn
new songs.

Saturday was very busy. Early in the day I was able to go by the book store, because I had another errand in the neighborhood. But it was before 10AM and the store had not yet opened. I had to run other errands, mainly downtown, and found myself back home in mid-afternoon and prepared to go back to the book store. But then I remembered that now one can buy and download songs from the internet. I called Walter and he pointed me to the Apple site,
Ipod.com, and the Wal-Mart site, Walmart.com. The Apple site required Windows 2000, which I do not have, but Wal-Mart would take Windows 98. And there on the Wal-Mart site was the original Keith Green recording. For 88 cents I downloaded it!

After downloading, it took some time for me to play it. I discovered that my Windows Player was obsolete, and I had to download from the Microsoft webpage the latest version. That took a while. But by the end of the afternoon, I was playing the song, singing along with it, and getting it firmly planted in my head. This morning at the worship service I sang it, with Steve on the keyboard. It turned out OK.

The point of all of this is to describe what was, for me, a revolutionary way to locate and acquire a song. I know. I know. This is old stuff to the generation below me. And even I knew that this was out there. But to experience this distribution system is astonishing. My routine of going to the bookstore, finding the right CD (if the right CD happens to be there), buying it and bringing it home, takes a great deal of time that I have little of to spare. The cost of the CD that has the song I want is often 15 dollars, on the order of more than 15 times what Wal-Mart charges for that song. But this is the least of the costs that the old way of find the song requires.

A few weeks ago I was able to download not the recording but the sheet music of a song I heard that I thought might do at church: “You Raise Me Up”, which is a cross-over from the secular to the Christian music world. I was able to buy the sheet music off the internet and print it out on my printer. I have the file in my computer (just as I have the file from the Keith Green song) and I can print out the music anytime I want to print it out. There was no way I would have been able to locate that sheet music at the book store in Hialeah, because it had just crossed over. But there it was, right on the internet.

Oh, Brave New World!

Walter-I-want-you-to-come-right-home-dept. Read about people in Austin who need a life.

Off to camp!

I'm going to summer camp for the next two weeks. You can check on my progress at the Coast & Crown weblog. (link in right sidebar) I hope to make some entries while at camp. I'll have to shanghi someone's computer, but that shouldn't be a problem. I'm a Ninja.

Audrey's Graduation. Carol and I flew to Tallahassee Saturday morning to attend the law school graduation of our niece (my sister's daughter) Audrey Gay. Audrey was diagnosed with MS about 6 months ago. She had been suffering from it unknowingly for years. She just thought she was tired. But when she woke up one morning without sight in one eye and went to the eye doctor, within 24 hours she was referred up the medical food chain to a neurologist who specializes in the disease, and she received the diagnosis.

Because she is young, her MS doctor felt free to hit her with chemicals and medicines about as hard as one can hit in an effort to get the disease under control. Meanwhile, the Stokes family and friends undertook some serious praying (which continues).

The fact that she was able to go through law school with the disease undiagnosed and untreated and then, when the crisis occurred, withstand the medication (which continues to this day), finish law school and graduate, is a credit to the density of her backbone and the power of prayer. Three cheers for Audrey and thanks be to God!

Awful, Actually. Its not a good thing to walk into a video store without any idea of what to get. I did that last Friday night. The only thing I had with me was a burned out brain and a desire for some mindless tube watching. (Its a little like going to a grocery store when you are hungry, but at least you usually have a list when you go grocery shopping.) I hadn't been in the video store for a long, long time, so there were a lot of titles I had not seen. Because Carol would be watching the video with me, I knew I needed to get a chick flick. That eliminated quite a few titles. (I won't mention the names of any of them, not a one.)

So I came across "Love, Actually". Hmmm: Same producer that did "Notting Hill" and "Four Funerals and a Wedding", and they were sort of fun, and Carol liked them; good actors too - Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Colin Firth (Mr. Darcy), Liam Neeson. This looked like a winner.

Awful! Awful! Don't even think about seeing this nihilistic, softly pornographic, foul mouthed, sophomoric trash. What were these people thinking? If there is anything remotely redeeming or interesting in the movie, then it is the over-the-hill rock star character, who was funny several times, but he is not enough to come close to saving this thing.

Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson are the only "normal" people in the movie. They have been apparently happily married for many years as the movie opens. They have two children and mother Emma is spending most of the movie getting them ready for the Christmas play at school. During the movie, Alan betrays Emma with a slut in his office. That's what Emma gets for being a faithful wife all these years. So be careful out there. Don't trust anyone and do whatever you feel like doing immediately.

I need to remember to consult Sean's blog for direction on movie titles.

Ten Reasons to Believe in a God Who Allows Suffering. My friend, Austin Carr, pointed me to this website that addresses the problem of suffering.

What's going on in the Stokes lab these days? I just finished assembling a "QRP" wattmeter from a kit. "QRP" is one of a set of "Q-signals" that are abbreviations for certain questions or statements that are used in communications. Q-signals were first developed when radio operators used Morse code (known as "CW" for "continuous wave"). For example, "QTH Miami" would mean "my location is in Miami". "QTH?" would mean, "What is your location?" The signal "QRP" means "I decrease power" and "QRP?" means "Can I decrease power?". So a "QRP" wattmeter is a meter that measures small scale RF power.

There is a minimalist subgroup of ham radio operators who use as little power as possible to communicate over the air-waves. Five to ten watts of output power is considered the top range of QRP operating. The maximum that the FCC allows amateur radio operators on most bands is 1500 watts of output, and the average ham rig has an output of 100 watts. On the other hand, some QRP fans try to stay under 1 watt of output power. In fact, the meter that I built has three scales: a 10 watt scale, a 1 watt scale, and a 100 milliwatt scale.

About a year ago I built from a kit a QRP transceiver that operates on 20 meters on CW only. Its top output, according to the meter that I just built, is about 7 watts. I have "worked" (meaning, I have communicated with via CW) people in NY, Texas, PA, NC, Indiana, and Guatemala with this "rig".

One of the advantages of building a kit is that, via email, one can sometimes communicate with the owner of the business that sells them. This was the case with the kits I built. The kits are not "plug and play" sorts of products. I ran into some difficulty in building both kits. I contacted the owner through the internet and he talked me through each problem over the course of about a week. Having the problems that I encountered worked an advantage for me, because I learned more dealing with these problems assisted by a competent mentor who really cared than I would have had I simply stuck everything together and it worked the first time.

Hmmm. Is there some theology here?

Nanoscience and self-manufacturing. Look at what science is offering up in this area.

Wedding Dress on Ebay. For a very thoughtful email post on ebay go here.

Canterbury Tales - From the Prologue.

WHEN that Aprilis, with his showers swoot,
The drought of March hath pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such licour,
Of which virtue engender'd is the flower;
When Zephyrus eke with his swoote breath
Inspired hath in every holt and heath
The tender croppes and the younge sun
Hath in the Ram his halfe course y-run,
And smalle fowles make melody,
That sleepen all the night with open eye,
(So pricketh them nature in their corages);
Then longe folk to go on pilgrimages,
And palmers for to seeke strange strands,
To ferne hallows couth in sundry lands;
And specially, from every shire's end
Of Engleland, to Canterbury they wend,
The holy blissful Martyr for to seek,
That them hath holpen, when that they were sick.

The first 42 lines of T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland
.
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu.
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Od' und leer das Meer.

Launch Begins of Space-Time Experiment. Really cooler article . (I fixed the link, and got a picture in the bargain.)

Post-Modern Management
An exchange

Carol started it by sending an email with the following excerpt:

GEN-X STRIVES FOR LIFE, NOT A LIVING
In the next couple of decades, what's described as perhaps "the most media-literate, sophisticated and cynical generation ever," will take over the reins of power, and the corporate world may be in for a wild ride.
Generation X, raised in an era of massive layoffs and restructuring, isn't interested in company loyalty -- it views work as a transaction where short-term payback is sought. It also tends to distrust hierarchy and formal authority, and confers respect based on merit, not status.

The conundrum for businesses is that the very people most able to adapt to change, who are eager to learn and immerse themselves in new experiences, are also those least likely to want to work in traditional arrangements. So what's a manager to do? Review your company policies and revise them to be as flexible as possible. Make it easy for people to come back if they decide to leave. Accommodate your worker's preferences for location, including offering telecommuting options.

And managers themselves will have to change, too. "What we are demanding of managers has to evolve," says an independent human capital analyst. "The emphasis in management will have to shift from one of ensuring compliance to one of communicating direction, facilitating problem solving and building commitment." (Toronto Globe and Mail 31 March 2004)

To which I reponded:
Not a surprise at all. Much of my job with InterVarsity is managing post-moderns. And, I am a post-modern who is currently managed! I would say, in regards to managing post-moderns (which includes the so-called "GenXers"), that the manager needs to be "for" them. So, it's not so much "managing" as it really is "pastoring" them. That is, in part, what the article is talking about when it says, ". . . communicating direction, facilitating problem solving and building commitment." I think that, managers who are Christians,and whom allow their obedience to Christ to infect their managing, do this intuitively.

Does this mean that managing a post-modern doesn't ever "lay down the law" when it comes to corporate policy? No. But it does mean that, when explaining/enforcing company policy, one continues to be "for" the employee, helping them to understand the "why" of the policy (not just, "because I'm the boss, that's why"), exploring with the employee the effects of the policy on the employee, and being willing to re-visit the policy (or engage the powers-that-be over the policy) if there is injustice or not enough room for grace within the policy.

I think that managing post-moderns for the long-term benefit of the company and the employees has a couple of implications. I agree that one ought to "Review your company policies and revise them to be as flexible as possible." But the truth is that the philosophy behind many company policies is to shield managers from messy/difficult managerial situations.

My intuition is that companies have inflexible policies because:
A) managers don't want to/don't have time to deal with gray areas in personnel management. (I would argue that there are few places in personnel management that aren't gray.) It takes a depth of character to work through gray areas of policy and personal issues well. It takes emotional and intellectual engagement. That's tiring. It's much easier to say, "dems da rules."
B) companies don't trust their managers to be competent to deal with gray (probably because they've hired incompetent managers!), and the company is "protected" from this by it's ironclad policies. Managers then don't have to manage, they just have to enforce the rules.

So, in order for a company to seriously "Review your company policies and revise them to be as flexible as possible," in any meaningful way, there's got to be a willingness to hire and have managers to deal with gray. This is not a chicken/egg connundrum, it's simply a "both/and" issue. You've got to do both at the same time.

For most post-moderns (myself included), the world is almost all shades of gray. We don't see very much black/white, and seriously mistrust anyone who does. What we do see and value are relationships. Which brings us back to managers who must be "for" their employees.

It's hard for me to conceive, as a post-modern, how one would ever manage anyone other than the way I'm trying to describe. I don't think that post-moderns have the corner on this market of how-we-want-to-be-managed, but I do think that, as opposed to "moderns", we have far less patience for institutions that are only black/white.

Walter responded:
I appreciate sociology and terms and the like but aren't they describing youth in general?

"it views work as a transaction where short-term payback is sought. It also tends to distrust hierarchy and formal authority, and confers respect based on merit, not status"

Couldn't that just as well have described the baby-boomers in the sixties?

Paul added his two cents:
That's where the GenX generation got it.

And then I piled it back on:
Yes and no.

In terms of "short-term payback," yes, in my opinion, we're talking about the general short-sightedness of youth. (Present company excluded, of course.)

In terms of "distrust hierarchy and formal authority, and confers respect based on merit," yes, this did describe baby-boomers in the sixties. But while many boomers "grew out" of their phase, I think the case can be fairly conclusively made that there is a culture-wide values change afoot, moving from what can be called "Modernity" to "Post-modernity."
In other words, so-called "GenXers" will not "grow out" of this phase. You, Walter, are thoroughly post-modern, as am I and as Mary is. In general, the things you value (many of which you've learned from the general culture, which btw, doesn't necessarily make them bad) you will continue to value as you grow up, so long as they conform to the Mind of Christ. Your start-up values (at least those which were not overruled by Mom & Dad), were learned in a post-modern world. The fact that you love and value your work at Amplifier so much is based very much on post-modern values. (You might protest, "They're Christian Values I have!" True enough, but most of those values you learned through the culture initially. Many post-modern values are Christian values, which I think is an example of God's common grace to the world.)
In fact, I think that the reason you so whole-heartedly rejected the idea of a job "in business" before and while in college is because you perceived the "business world" to be a thoroughly "modern" world, although this was happening at an intuitive level for you. Amplifier, on the other hand, is a business run with far more post-modern values, if not all post-modern values. And this shouldn't be a surprise, Jef & Justin are poster children for post-modernity.

(An aside: I'm not sure "post-modernity" is here to stay, it may be just a cultural way-point to a new non-Modern culture. In InterVarsity, rather than try to make the declaration that the new 1000 year reign of the "Post-Modern" culture is here, we are calling this new culture as the "Emerging Culture." That is, we recognize that it is after-Modernity and different from Modernity, but we're not sure the final shape it will take will be what people-who-know think of when we say "post-modernity".
Also, I am convinced that "post-modernity" does not equal "anti-christianity." In fact, the post-modern values of community and relationships are far more Godly than the modern values of individualism and function. While we're on the subject, "modernity" did not equal "anti-christianity" either. There were values of modernity, such as the elevation of critical thinking that are not against the Mind of Christ.
What you might say, then, is that in every age, pre-modern, modern, or post-modern, Xtians were being conformed into the Image of Christ, by the power of the Spirit. But in every age, those individuals began at different starting points. For the Modern, they began with the Godly values of thoughtfulness, but then had to be conformed to an understanding of Biblical Community, and submission to the Mysteries of Faith. For the Post-Modern, we begin with an a priori valuing of Community, and Mystery, but we must conform to the understanding of Christ's declaration of himself as The Truth, subjugating all other truth clams.)

Walter got the last (so far!) word:
fair enough.

I don't think that today's situation is near at all the situation of the
60s, I just think they did a poor job of describing today.

Policies have to change because the company doesn't control the information
anymore.

Anyone else want to chime in?

Go Canes! Carol and I attended a luncheon last week at which Larry Coker, the head football coach at the University of Miami, spoke. He told this joke:

Bobby Bowden, coach of the FSU Seminoles, died and, of course, he went to heaven. He was met at the pearly gates by God himself, who took him to where he would be living. It was a house, a modest house: frame construction, two bedrooms, a window air conditioner. In the little front yard there was flag pole with a somewhat bedraggled FSU flag drooping from it.

Coach Bowden took it all in, and then he looked up. There on a hill nearby was a beautiful, spacious multilevel mansion, with a view that commanded miles in every direction. Huge UM football flags on flagpoles at each end whipped and snapped in the wind.

Coach Bowden could not keep quiet. He turned to God and said. "God, I am glad to be in heaven, and I don't want to complain on my first day here. But why do I have this little house and Coach Coker has that big house up on the hill."

God said,

"That's not Coker's house. That's my house."

Vaccinating Children. Now that the next generation is beginning to appear in our blog community, I thought I would post an article on vaccinating young children. This is an article on the website of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity.

Antinomianism, some thoughts

(this would take more than there's space in the comments section, thus it becomes a post)

Two thoughts on antinomianism. Thought one, dealing with the logic issues embedded in the argument. There is, one must admit, a logical argument for antinomianism. It is good logic to say that, if I have been forgiven for all past, present and future sins, then I'm really free to continue sinning.

However, as the good lawyers, Mr. Carr and Mr. Stokes probably know, not all logical inferences are true. I may look outside my window, see that the sidewalk is wet and conclude that it has rained. This is a logical inference correctly made. (after raining, the sidewalk gets wet. the sidewalk is wet. it rained.) Clearly, though, there are more options to the sidewalk getting wet than rain. My neighbor could have sprayed it with his garden hose. It could be melted snow. An elephant from a passing circus parade could have sprayed it with it's nose. Simply because something follows logically does not, in fact, ensure it's veracity.

(To placate my freshman year logic professor, let me say here that the problem is actually in the pre-argument assumptions. that is what, in fact, leads to false, although logically correct conclusions.)

So this is the first problem in the antinomian argument: grace is a license to sin. Yes, it is logically correct to say so, but that does not ensure its truthfulness, or, to put it another way, it does not ensure ontological validity.

The second thought is more theologcial. The reason why the above, although logically correct, is not true is due to the nature of how it is that we receive this grace through faith.

We do not receive our "own" grace apart from Christ. It isn't as if we receive a get-out-of-hell-free token when we are saved by grace through faith. Rather, we partake in God's own righteousness in Christ, by the Spirit. That is, when we become Christians (Christ-followers, people of the way, etc.) we are, by the Spirit, united to Christ. Paul uses this language 164 times in his letters. That is, the language of "in Christ."

The Church Fathers & Mothers talked about this "union in Christ" as the reason for the "great exchange" between him and us. All that is ours is now Christ's, and all that is Christ's is now ours. So, our sin & rebellion becomes Christ's, and his righteousness, his intimacy with the Father, his death & life, his power, his Spirit are now ours.

But this exchange only happens because we are united to Christ by the Spirit. ("How," you might ask, "am I 'united' with Christ? I'm right here! I don't see me united with anything!" The answer is, you are united with Christ by the Spirit. Difficult to see, the Spirit is.)

Now, Luther talked about not being able to have only "half" of Christ because of this union. What half was he talking about? The half that the antinomians wanted to take: grace, forgiveness, righteousness . . . all those "good" things that came through faith alone. But because we only have those "goods" in our union with Christ, we also have the "bads" (as antinomians might say) that come from our union with Christ.

What are those things? Obedience, death to self, etc. Why do we have those as well? Because of the "great exchange". Remember, that's how we got to participate in Christ's righteousness. It is also why we now participate in Christ's obedience to the Father, even unto death. This is the crazy, wonderful thing! We are united to Christ, by the Spirit! We now have no choice but to do what Christ is doing: being obedient to the Father. That obedience does not earn us anything, it is the corollary to our salvation.

And not some insipid corollary that goes like: "Well, Jesus did such nice things for you, don't you think you 'owe' him? Don't you think that the least that you can do is stop sinning, for a least a little bit?" Rather, this is a corollary that has its base, not in sentiment, but in the reality of our union with & in Christ, by the Spirit.

The problem of the Antinomians (or at least one of the problems) is that they lost the theological understanding that their salvation came through their union with Christ. This is a very relational understanding of what happened to us in Christ. Instead they got it in their head that salvation is more about forensic or Federal issues. That is, there's some great judge that must be placated, and so, Christ placated Him by giving us all get-out-of-hell-free tokens that Christ "earned" by shedding his blood. If that's your understanding of what happened, it's extremely easy to go down the antinomian road.

Sadly, some of my more "reformed" brothers (and here I use the term in the extremely narrow understanding that the Westminster Confession of Faith is the definition of Reformed Theology) find themselves in trouble because, while they wholly hold to "salvation by grace alone," they hold to it in this forensic/Federal sense, and have to fight all the time on why antinomianism isn't the right way to go.

More On Medical Services

I have some anecdotal evidence for the Paul Stokes theory on the effect of scarcity on medical services. (You'll recall from his comments: "the demand for medical services is not so fixed: the more accessible (less scarce) medical services are, the greater the demand. Demand for medical services doesn't work the same as demand for most other things that are for sale. Usually if the supply of something goes up, the price goes down because demand stays about the same. But that's not true for medical services. And its especially true if they are free. Medical services get more scarce. If price, then, is not going to determine how scarce medical services are going to be allocated, some other system has to be in place.")

So yesterday, Easter Sunday, Kellsey and I found ourselves in the Emergency Room of Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte. I'd woken up that morning with what the ER doctor told us was "Positional Vertigo" caused by an viral-caused inflamation of my inner ears. This essentially meant that unless I held my head very, very still in one certain position, it felt like the room was rapidly and very unpleasantly spinning around me. This sensation was accompanied by the usual results of motion sickness, which is why I had to go everywhere with my own little plastic bag lined garbage can.

(If you'd like to know what I feel like every time I turn my head do the following: take a baseball bat or tube of the same length. Put one end of it on the ground and, bending over, place your forehead on the other end. Now walk around the bat, pivioting on your forehead. Walk around 7 times and then stand up and try to walk in a straight line. That's how I feel, unless I keep my head very, very still. Thankfully, sitting in front of a computer is a non-head-moving event.)

In case you were wondering, Easter Sunday is a very popular time to go to the ER. We waited for about 6 hours to see the doctor. While I would have preferred to see one sooner ('cause they eventually gave me Valium. Yum!), I was ok to just sit, hunched over, in a chair and watch BET Gospel Sunday Mornings, Hardball, starring Keanu Reeves, and Kindergarten Cop, starring Governor Schwartzenegger. (Later, when finally in an examining room, I also got to watch Phil Mickelson win the Masters. Hooray for Phil! Kells and I about teared up watching him finally win his first major, and the Masters, no less!)

Anyway, the waiting room was full. Kells and I were the only ones there who met the White, Under-30 demographic. For almost the whole time our other waiting room friends were minorities and a white elderly couple. Almost everyone was, like us, content to sit and wait and wait for our turn. No one in the waiting room was in obvious trauma.

After we were there about two hours, a man in his latre 30s/early 40s came in with a friend of his and sat down next to us. He was having an asthma attack and when he came in they gave him a nebulizer and medicine to treat the attack, but had him wait in the waiting room to see a doctor after he was stabilized. After about an hour of waiting, he started asking us around him how long we'd been there. When he heard that he was waiting behind people who had already been waiting for now 3 hours, he got a bit upset.

He commented to his friend, "Man, next time this happens, I'm just calling an ambulance, 'cause my insurance will pay for it and they take you right in when you come in an ambulance." Finally, about 20 minutes after that comment, he said, "Forget this s#*&, I'm fine now, I'm just going to pay what I need to pay and leave." So he ripped off his hospital wrist band and walked out of the waiting room.

I was struck by his willingness to use his insurance company's money to pay for an ambulance ride (which are not cheap) for a non-emergency event, simply to keep him from having to spend the day in the ER waiting room. And, by the way, jump in front of the line of us who were waiting to see an ER doctor.

I am happy to report, though, that this man was the exception in the crowded waiting room. Everyone else there seemed content to wait, even celebrating the moments when one of us waiting-room-folk would have our name called.

Between bouts of nausea (caused by the vertigo and Kindergarten Cop), I thought some more about this man's comments. It reminded me of the time I was at the dermatologist having some moles examined. Some of them warranted a biopsy to check for cancer (all negative btw), but one prominent one didn't warrant the check. However, the doctor offered to "fudge" his report so that, if I wanted, he could remove that mole and would write it up so my insurance would pay for it.

Besides being unethical (the nice way to say "fraudulent"), the reason I didn't ask to do this was that InterVarsity is self-insured. That means that everyone in the Fellowship pays into what you might consider a Medical Savings Account (MSA) that InterVarsity owns. When someone in the fellowship gets sick, the Fellowship pays for that out of this account. (The account is administered by GreatWest, but the money is ours.)

So my thoughts went something like this: "Hey, I've always wanted to get that mole removed, now's the time!" "Wait a second, that money's for other staff people when they get sick. They're counting on that money being there." "Besides, the Fellowship has had so many illnesses lately that the MSA is almost overdrawn." "Oh, and I think it would be insurance fraud, too." "No, I don't think we'll do this today."

After these two experiences, I can see how having an MSA would incent one to spend less and only when necessary.

Antinomianism. Is grace a license to sin? That question came up in the discussion at the Bible study and breakfast that I attend each Friday morming. My friend, Austin Carr, who is also a lawyer, is the founder of that Bible study. Here is what he wrote me Saturday about this question. I told him I wanted to put it on the blog and that was OK with him.

The question that came up at our breakfast Friday is, by no means, a new one. In fact, there is a word for it and it is:

Antinomianism: (anti, against, and nomos, law) The heretical doctrine that Christians are exempt from the obligations of moral law.

The term first came into use at the Protestant Reformation, when it was employed by Martin Luther to designate the teachings of Johannes Agricola and his secretaries, who, pushing a mistaken and perverted interpretation of the Reformer's doctrine of justification by faith alone to a far-reaching but logical conclusion, asserted that, as good works do not promote salvation, so neither do evil works hinder it; and, as all Christians are necessarily sanctified by their very vocation and profession, so as justified Christians, they are incapable of losing their spiritual holiness, justification, and final salvation by any act of disobedience to, or even by any direct violation of the law of God.

Here is a link to a page that gives more information about it. CATHOLIC
ENCYCLOPEDIA: Antinomianism which goes into depth about the analytical flaws in following the perceived logic of it.

Two points of mine before you go to the link:

1. There are very few original thoughts, if any.

2. See how quickly our sinful minds try to seize onto a thought, doctrine, some logic or explanation, so that we can get away with sin. (Sin being defined here as doing what we want to do and controling things for ourselves, rather than what God would prefer that we do and what He knows is best for us and relinquishing control of our lives to the one more qualified to pilot it.)

New Blog on the block!

Thought I'd let the Kith&Kin community know that I've started the Coast & Crown blog to help friends, prayers & donors understand a bit more about my work as an InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Area Director.

This won't take the place of Macon's Missive, but I hope it will be a good supplement to it. At any rate, it's an experiment to see if I can't be a better communicator about the ministry of which I get to be a part.

Help Wanted. Legal secretary for senior trusts and estates lawyer in boutique downtown Miami law firm. College graduate preferred. Must be literate, computer and otherwise, must know WordPerfect, and must enjoy dealing with people. Experience would be good, but a bright, teachable person should not hesitate to apply. Email pstokes@smpalaw.com and attach your resume.

The War on Wal-Mart. Look at the article by this name written by Steven Malanga in City Journal. (The WSJ published a shorter version on its editorial page on Wednesday, April 7.) If you think that Wal-Mart is not a good thing, especially for poor people and those clinging to the bottom rungs of the middle class, this article could change your mind. Malanga identifies a "crusade" by a left-wing coalition of "labor unions and their allies [who] try to convince the public that super-efficient operators like Wal-Mart lower workers' standard of living." To the contrary, Malanga makes the case that people clamor for the jobs that are open when a Wal-mart store moves into neighborhoods, particularly now that Wal-Mart is moving into urban areas. "[W]orkers in minority communities traditionally friendly to the left's agenda have shocked opponents by welcoming Wal-Mart." There is a lot more in the article to chew on.

Language Magic. I ride "MetroRail", a commuter train, from about a mile near my house to the Government Center on the west side of Downtown. From there I transfer to the "PeopleMover", another public mode of transportation that is elevated and runs in a couple of loops around all of Downtown and over the Miami River to what we call the Brickell area (if you remember Miami Vice, Crockett was always shown driving down Brickell Avenue in his sports car.) The PeopleMover brings me within a block of my office building, and I walk the rest of the way.

Sometimes the PeopleMover is crowded, as it was today. One stop away from my stop, even more people entered the already crowded car. I had moved over near one of the doors so that I could more easily exit when we arrived at my stop and thought I was well positioned. But one stop away the new crowd got in and several people bunched between where I was standing and the door. Not a big problem, but I knew I was going to have to ask for folks to let me out. The people who were between me and the door were several Haitian young men, one of them dressed in a kitchen uniform. I figured they were going to one of the hotels at stops beyond my stop. They were speaking Creole.

As my stop approached, I was trying to think of the French word for Excuse Me, Please. I managed to remember Excuse Me, but not Please. So when my stop arrived, I said "Excusaymoi" (I did not study French and I know that's not the right spelling).

Well.

Those guys were really surprised. They had been ignoring me and everyone else when the crowded in. Not in an offensive way, but I think that if we had been in a Southern, middle-class place, they would have been careful to position themselves and conscious that others may want to get off (not because they were black and others were white, but just because of the idea of community courtesy that I think is stronger in the South). But that was really OK. This is Miami, and people tend to keep within themselves and they are not going to relate to "strangers" automatically.

So here I was in my lawyers uniform: white middle aged guy, $400 suit, white shirt, tie - the works.

"Excusaymoi".

They were surprised. The fellow right in front of me moved over without hesitation and said very politely. "Monsieur", as if to show me the way out. Absolutely no irony in what he said. Pure courtesy and a little surprise in his voice.

I couldn't remember the words for please and thank you until I got out and the doors closed. Shoot! I should have said, "Si vous play" (again, bad, bad spelling). And "Merci".

Oh well. But that little interchange, where I connected with these young men, was a flicker of intensity, recognition, and friendliness that I did not expect, but which, I guess, I was really hoping for.

Miami is a great city, and I am very happy to live here. I am going to learn some Creole.

Meanwhile, back in Spain, things continue to deteriorate. I read this article in the NY Times about the changing of the guard in Spain. The article says Mr. Zapatero, president-elect, thinks that Spain needs a "social and sexual revolution, " which indicates that Spain somehow lags behind western civilization in those two spheres. Somehow, I did not see that at all when I was there. The Spanish seemed quite sexually liberated: the local beaches were just like South Beach; transvestite prostitutes paraded their wares across the university campus every evening; and I quickly learned through trial and serious error to mark Spanish film off my list because of its pornographic tendencies. I did not sense great disparities between the sexes, and the only machismo I experienced was in Paris and Italy, not in Spain. Granted, I spent most of my time in Barcelona, which has a more "continental" atmosphere than does southern Spain; and of course, four months in a country is hardly enough time to begin to understand all its history and feeling; but still, I have a hard time accepting the dated, flawed picture that the new guard seems to want to paint about their country. Zapatero (a name which keeps recalling in my mind that of a famous Mexican revolutionary...) apparently hopes to rid the country of any residual conservatism left over from the last president and to further purge the country of any religious, more specifically Catholic, residue.

The US System for Delivering Medical Services. Our system of rationing scarce medical resources is to make the cost of insurance too high for many people. The big winners are the insurance companies, the medical profession, and people like my family who can afford to pay for the insurance.

What alternatives are there? My vote is a Medical Savings Account ("MSA"), where people can save money in an account like an IRA and then draw from it to pay medical expenses. There would be a tax deduction for putting money into the plan and no tax taking money out of the plan, provided it is used for medical expeneses.

That plan would be paired with catastrophic medical insurance that would pick up after a substantial deductible is paid (say, $2000 or more). For poor people, the government would deposit money in such an account or just give them money that they can use as they choose, including putting it in such an account.

A Medical Savings Account would let people withdraw money from it after they reach a certain age for any purpose. If they draw it out for a non-medical purpose, however, then its subject to the income tax.

This will give people an incentive to do what they can to avoid medical expenses or keep them reasonable. Maybe they will lose some weight and get some exercise. Maybe they will shop around for the best physician or hospital for their needs at the best cost.

Paired with that appraoch, we should de-regulate the medical service industry. Let Wal-Mart (OK, Macon, Super Target) type people get hold of the system.

MSAs are currently available under some circumstances. They have been made more accessible under the recent Medicare legislation. We are looking into MSAs here at the firm.

Let me add, finally, that the current US medical services delivery system, with all of its faults, has been very, very good to my family and me over the years. I don't think that medical services delivered by any other country can compare with the quality of those services here in the US, provided you have the insurance or other means with which to pay for it. But I don't think its the best of all possible worlds.

Movie Review: "My Darling Clementine". This has Henry Fonda playing Wyatt Earp and Victor Mature as Doc Holiday. Walter Brennan plays one of the most irredeemable villains ever seen in a Western. Ward Bond is one of Wyatt's brothers. It came out in the late 1940s. Good and evil are drawn in stark relief. But when Good responds to Evil, it does so in a lawful and deliberate way and it suffers casualties that could have been avoided if due process considerations had been ignored. So I found it fascinating when I viewed it a couple of months ago. Its on VHS and recently came out on DVD with some footage restored and an alternate ending. John Ford directed it. I have the VHS and will mail it to you if interested and if you will either mail it back or mail it to the next person who would like to see it.

"As the speed of information increases, the tendency is for politics to move away from representation and delegation of constituents toward immediate involvement of the entire community in the central acts of decision." Marshall Mcluhan, Understanding Media, 1964

Clash of Civilizations? In an op-ed piece in the WSJ on Tuesday, George Melloan considers a speech that Douglas J. Feith, the US undersecretary of defense for policy, gave to a Heritage Foundation audience in November. That speech offered the "Bush view" of the idea that we are involved in a "clash of civilizations", with the Muslim world on one side and the Judeo-Christian West on the other.

The Bush view is that the battle of ideas in the global war on terrorism is largely a "fight within the world of Islam, between the extremists and people in the Muslim world who oppose them." Feith said that "We [the US in its current foreign policy] look at ourselves as being allied with millions of Muslims-who we believe are a clear, overwhelming majority-who do not want to come under the rule of fanatics and extremists." I think that's a helpful and healthy idea. It tends to reign in any impulses I have as a Christian to paint all Muslim people as the enemy or as a people incapable of being reasonable participants in a free political economy.

Recently, I became acquainted with a young man who graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, had moved to Miami to follow his girl friend, and was looking for a job. He comes from a Muslim family in Buffalo. What a fine young man! How I wish I could have found a place for him in the firm!

We started an email dialog via email, had a meeting here at the firm, and we have continued our dialog via email as he continued his job search. I contacted a number of people in other firms who might have a position. He kept looking and we kept talking via email. He finally got a job in a top firm, as I thought he would. He certainly is an example of a Muslim who is a credit to this country. The Bush administration seems to think there are a lot like this young man and his family around the world. Do we have any choice but to proceed on that idea?

The Free Flea. Yesterday I went to a "free flea" in the parking lot of the Motorola center on Sunrise Boulevard. A "free flea" is an event that a ham radio club sponsors where hams bring junk from their garages, set up card tables, and sell the stuff to one another. Some of the engineers at Motorola are hams, they have a radio club, and they sponsor a "free flea" every six months or so, or when their garages fill up to the point where, to preserve domestic tranquility, they have to push the stuff out on the rest of us. As a ham radio operator (K4JSU), I just love these events, and so I went.

These events also provide the opportunity to meet hams in person with whom one has spoken on the air. You can put a face with the call sign, the first name, and the voice (or, if you mainly communicate digitally, the "fist").

Meeting other hams in person is a problem for hams, however, because, as my late father observed, most hams are "introverts". His theory was that the only way the sorts of people who become hams can relate to other people is by the relatively elaborate mechanism of licensure, antennas, transmitters and receivers, propagation, and RF. Now this does not apply to all hams. My dad was a ham (WA4DCK), and he certainly was not an introvert. But my experience with hams supports this view, and the free flea was no exception.

Because I wanted to make contact with people I had worked on the air, I wore a badge that has my call sign and first name on it. It is permissible to wear such badges in ham protocol, even if most hams will not wear them. Most of the hams at the free flea did not wear them.

Most hams think that ham radio is all about the radios All about the junk. Of course, it is not. It is really all about shy people devising a safe means to relate to one another and carefully giving other people permission to talk to them. Of course, I knew all of this when I went, and did not expect many people to have badges on. I knew that if I wanted to know whether I knew any of these guys (they are almost all guys, by the way) I would have to be fairly outgoing.

So I would go up to a card table with junk on it, behind which sat the ham carefully avoiding eye contact. Instead of my standing there looking at the junk and then in a monosyllabic way, commenting on an item, ("Is this an early serial number?") I would brightly smile and say "Good Morning!" There would be a sort of look of surprise, almost a flinch, and the ham would, after just a moment, say "Hi" and we would talk about the junk or the weather or something, and it would be pleasant. For they are really pretty nice people, though shy (To my dad, being an introvert was like having a disability.)

I did meet some guys that I had met on the air, and really had a good time.

I spent $2.

Politics on the Blog! Mary's blog generated some political commenting, including my own. Let all who read this be aware that this is a free-speech blog and that people can say whatever they like. There will be no hurt feelings.

In the law we recognize a zone of contention where "reasonable men can differ". In a trial, where there is a crucial fact at issue and the evidence is such that "reasonable men can differ" on whether the fact is established by that evidence, then the case goes to the jury, and the jury decides. If, on the other hand, the evidence is so clear that reasonable men would not differ on whether the fact isestablished, then the judge rules and the case (or at least the issue of whether that fact is established) does not go to the jury.

The judge is the person who decides whether the evidence is such that reasonable men can differ as to what it means. That's what make judges so powerful and important in the intense, little world of the jury trial.

I propose that we be very broad in defining the zone of contention. There is no judge here anyway, just our own consciences.

On the matter of whether Bush "lied" or not, I am not sure whether I would want to characterize his manipulation of public opinion quite that way, if he did really know better about WMD. But if I were so to characterize it, then I should be ready to hang that stark label on his adversaries. Kerry is a particularly vulnerable figure if we are going to do that. I am not ready to use the label on either figure, because I don't want to cut myself off from a full understanding of who Bush and Kerry are and what each has to say.

I'm with the band . . . Linkin Park part 2

One of the super cool things about being good friends with Phoenix's (the bassist) brother is that when we go to an LP concert, we get "back stage" passes. Kellsey and I are always floored that we get such a privilege. Every time I walk past the "Security" guy and flash my pass I think these two things, simultaneously: "Woah, this is the COOLEST. THING. EVER." and, [shaking my head, mentally] "This is so bizarre, I am so such a normal guy, how did I ever get to do this?"

The first time that Joe and Anne took Kellsey and I back stage with them, we were both pretty much of the same mindset: This is really neat, and we're so tickled to meet the band, but we sure don't want to bother them, we're sure they have a hundred things they'd rather do than meet the friends of Phoenix's brother and sister-in-law. But Joe assured us that it would be fine for us to go back, and so we did.

This was when the "Family Values" Tour came to Charlotte in 2001. We met the Farrells there, who gave us our tix and passes and then went backstage to meet Phoenix. (We'd actually met him before at the Farrell's home in Winston, but it seemed very different to meet him again backstage.) Then we went back to watch some of the show.

The show went: Stained, followed by Linkin Park, followed by Stone Temple Pilots. We got back out in time to watch Stained's last two songs, which were the two that were getting radio play at that time, so we were pretty familiar with them. The crowd seemed to be moderately into them.

Then LP came out and completely lit up the crowd. They brought (and bring) a real energy and presence to their shows. You can tell that they're dialed into where the crowd is energy-wise. I think that part of the reason they connect well with their crowd is that there are two lead singers. While it seems to me that Chester is more of the official "front" man, he and Mike pretty much both lead from the stage vocally. I think that the fact that they have to interact and communicate during the show and can't, by definition, be completely self-focused, that helps them to be aware of what the crowd is doing around them. This makes for a great show.

One thing happened that really impressed Kellsey and I, though, during that show. As you might expect, the crowd make-up of a show with Stained, LP and STP was more of your shaved-head, punk/hardcore types who were really into slam-dancing and the mosh-pit. I've got absolutely nothing against that. It mostly looks like fun to me, so I say: have at it. But sometimes those pits can get rather hurtful. Another thing that was going on was typical crowd surfing, but when the surfers made their way over to the pit, they often fell rather abruptly.

This happened a couple of times, until, in the middle of one of their songs, Chester stopped singing and stopped the band's playing and said to the crowd, "Hey! What do you do when someone falls down?!" The crowd didn't quite know what to make of this. Some of them thought he was joking and laughed, others made some rude, non-kith&kin-comments. Chester gave them the answer, "You pick them up!" (there may have been an f-bomb thrown in there, for emphasis, but I'm not sure) He then repeated his question and waited for the crowd to yell back, "You pick them up!" They did this call and response about three more times, until Chester was satisfied that they'd gotten the point. Then they started back with the song.

I thought that was a really classy thing to do. And convinced me that these guys really did care about what happened to their fans. Who, really, weren't even their fans, they were STP's fans.

The crowd was really into LPs set. Much more than you would expect for an opening band. We (Joe, Anne, Kellsey & I) decided to watch some of the STP set and give LP a chance to shower and clean up before we went back stage again. Besides, Joe and I liked the STP we heard on the radio and thought it'd be fun to see the show.

We were so very disappointed. In contrast to LPs set, which I now could see had been very audience focused, STP's front man was all about himself. It was startling to see how much that had an effect on the crowd. It wasn't as if the crowd got upset, but the energy level and interaction dropped significantly. Their music was technically very fine (just like their CD), but it was a little stomach turning to watch this 30 something man glory in himself and his own star-ness.

We decided that it wasn't worth our time to stay out watching anymore, so we went backstage and met Phoenix. He invited us out the back door into their tour bus, where the rest of the band was staying. This bus was WAY cool, with satelite tvs, bunks for sleeping, and a large screen tv in the back of the bus where they played on their PS2s (pre XBox days).

We met the rest of the band, all of whom were very gracious with Kellsey and me, virtual strangers to them. In fact, we'd walked in on Brad (the guitarist) as he was beginning to eat his dessert from dinner. Chocolate cake, or something like that, as I recall. He was sitting at the table in the bus and he looked up at our entrance, introduced himself, and offered to share his dessert with us. We politely declined, embarassed that we were interupting his dessert-eating-time. But he was fine with our presence and made polite conversation with us.

If we hadn't been sold on the band before that night, we definitely were sold by the time we left.

Next time: maybe the concert in Greensboro. But i'm not promising anything.

Mom recently sent me a link to a piece published on opinion journal by Andre Glucksmann, a French intellectual/writer: The World of Megaterrorism. Glucksmann responds to recent events in Spain and makes a passionate appeal to all of Europe to be on guard, and to fight against "megaterrorism" by Al Qaida and Islamic extremists. Having spent a semester abroad in Barcelona back in the fall of 2001, I have been especially interested in and concerned about what has happened in the country in recent weeks, and appreciate Glucksmann's perspective. I particularly liked his last paragraph, which recalls Spain's rich and conflicted literary and political past:

"Rome, Paris, Athens, Warsaw, Berlin . . .? Don't ask who's next! "Never ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." Hemingway the anti-Francoist was quoting John Donne, an 18th century poet. Bin Laden's mercenaries take their inspiration from the Spanish fascist Millán Astray: "You want life, we want death." Will Mr. Zapatero find the voice of Miguel de Unamuno, the independent thinker of Salamanca who denounced the fascist general's "cry of necrophilia," and stand up to today's nihilist killers? It is never too late to prevent a disaster."

Why I Like Linkin Park (and why you should, too.) Part 1

Several weeks ago now, I had the pleasure of attending a Linkin Park show at the Greensboro Coliseum. It was one of their last stops on the Meteora tour (Meteora is the name of their current album). I've been meaning to write about the concert since then, but work, church, work, finding out we're pregnant, and having visitors kind of got in the way of my posting.

Kellsey and I come by our love for LP in a round-about kind of way. Four or five years ago, when we lived in Winston-Salem, we became friends with Joe & Anne Farrell, who, one otherwise unremarkable day, played some strange music for us while we were hanging out at their house. Joe casually walked over to their stereo and asked us if we'd heard of "this band called Linkin Park." "Not really," we replied, visions of swing-sets & slides & green grass running through my head (you know, things-in-a-park stuff). So Joe hits play and this strange hybrid of rock/hardcore/techno/electronica comes out, and I can't decide if I'm hearing something American or Euro or Asian. He tossed us the liner and we noticed that the lyrics to that particular song were rather insightful, so we bit: "Interesting. How do you know about this band?" "My brother will be their new bass player," Joe says, grinning.

That, at least, is how I remember my introduction. It's probably only slightly related to how it actually happened, but you get the gist of it. If you want story details which are correct and correlated with reality about anything that happened more than three months ago, your best bet is to talk to Kellsey. (I like to think of it like: with Kellsey you get the word-for-word translation of the past, with me you get more of a dynamic, idea-for-idea translation of the past. Depending on your needs, you'll want one more than the other. Like in a courtroom, you'd want to be talking to Kells.)

So, from the get-go, we had a quasi-personal connection to these LP guys. We were pre-disposed to like them, since Joe could personally vouch for his brother, who could personally vouch for the other guys in the band. (I mean, they wanted Joe's brother to be in their band, they had to be good guys, right?)

Another reason which made it inevitable that I like LP's music was what I'd grown up listening to and loving: good old rock&roll, hardcore (e.g. Strongarm, Six Feet Deep, P.O.D.), punk, post-hardcore (e.g. Stavesacre), techno, dance or "house" music (as they called it in Miami), and industrial music (e.g. Circle of Dust, Chatterbox).

You'll notice that all of those bands are "Christian" bands. They're the ones I remember. I owe any sophistication in my musical tastes to Walter, who introduced me to all this stuff, and without whom I'd still be thinking "Bang Bang" by Danger Danger was a rockin' song. Walt played much secular music for me as well, just so you know. (Maybe sometime I'll post on my perspective of Walter's musical journey.)

All that to say, one of the reasons why I like LP so much is that I think they bring together in their compositions influences from all those genres. Since I like those genres, it's not so surprising that when a group of artists come along who bring them all together in a new kind of sound, I would like their work! There may have been bands who put it all together before LP, but I don't think anyone put it together as well as they do, nor with as much commercial success as they have had. (And I don't think that "commercial success" necessarily disqualifies a band from being "good" or "legitimate" or "authentic", by the way.)

That's why I like the instrumental, rythmic and melodic work that they do. Because LP makes good art (although in this case, the art is music), I think they're accessible to a broad audience, and you don't have to have liked those genres to like them now.

Next time: lyrics, or maybe some personal interactions with the band, maybe both.

Here's the URL of that article:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/entertainment/20040311-085521-1823r.htm

Johnny Ramone of the Ramones in the Washington Times. Not sure about the whole "most influential rock band of the last 30 years" bit...

"....Johnny dropped his job as a construction worker in 1974 and held down stage right for 22 years as the guitarist for the most influential rock band of the last 30 years. The Ramones fertilized the punk-rock scene first in their hometown of New York City, then in England. Eventually — who knew? — that sound would form the chassis for what the corporate rock industry later dubbed "alternative" and, eventually, infiltrated top 40....

....Johnny was driven right by a youthful revulsion against, um, face-ism. "It was in 1960, the Nixon-Kennedy election," he says, recalling his first inclination toward the right. He was an only child of Irish heritage in a working-class neighborhood. Families on his block voted left, pro-union. "People around me were saying, 'Oh, Kennedy's so handsome,' and I thought, 'Well, if these people are going to vote for someone based on how he looks, I don't want to be party to that.' "

The Jewish Trial of Jesus (Part 2) It would help us understand what happened to Jesus before the Chief Priests and their colleagues if we had a clear picture of the Jewish legal system at that time. Then, if we must judge the participants, as inevitably we do, we would be able to judge them against a set of standards or "the system" to which they subscribed and not against those to which we subscribe. That would seem more fitting. We can assume that Jesus' adversaries knew the system. But I think we can also safely assume that Jesus had some idea of the system as well; his few remarks during the trial supports that assumption. But how do we know what the system was?

We know more than we might think we know about the sources of the Jewish law that made up "the system". Anyone who kept awake while growing up in Sunday School knows that there were two sources of law among the Jews of Jesus' time. There was "the Law", that is the Mosaic Code, the written law, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. And then there was the source that gave Jesus so much trouble: the pre-Talmudic oral tradition, a sort of commentary on the Pentateuch that became the trade of a class of professionals who were Jesus adversaries, the scribes and the Pharisees.

We have a two source system in our own legal culture. For example, there is the Internal Revenue Code. It contains the federal tax laws that were enacted by Congress and signed into law by the President. Right now on my bookshelf, I have a copy of the current Code. It consists of two volumes, two large paper back books, each at least an inch thick.

Then there is the second source of tax law, "the Regulations" or "the Regs". This is sort of a commentary or interpretation of the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. The Regs were not enacted by Congress and signed by the President. Instead, they were developed by the Internal Revenue Service. They take up about six volumes on my bookshelf. A practitioner cannot feel comfortable about reading something in the Code without going to the Regs and reading what the IRS believes is meant by that part of the Code with which the practitioner is concerned.

Now and then, someone takes the position that the "real law" is in the Code and that the Reg that might apply to the particular subject matter of the Code must yield to what the Code "really" says. Except in the case where Congress has expressly authorized the IRS to make law through a Reg, the person contesting the Reg might actually be able to persuade a court that he is right and the IRS is wrong. In that case, the court would overrule the position of the IRS.

Is this a digression? Arguably yes, but it does show that there is a tendency not to leave a Code alone, whether it is the Mosaic Code or the Internal Revenue Code. Too many new circumstances arise that test the Code, that seem not to have been anticipated by it, that seem too particular for the more general aspects of a Code provision to control. So particular applications are developed. They seem to make sense and are passed around from user to user. A tradition develops and experts in the tradition rise up. Now we have two sources of the Law: the Code and the Regs. The Law and the laws. Maybe we should be a little more sympathetic to the system in which we see Jesus. Maybe it is a lot more like the one that we know than we would like to think.

Matthew 10:38
"he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me."

I think today when we read this verse, we read it with the knowledge of Jesus on the Cross, his paying for our sins, doing the work for us, and so on. That's not the way it was heard.

He spoke these words before his crucifixion, of course, and to an audience that had no idea that a crucifixion lay ahead.

I think these words are all the more striking in that context.

Jesus's call is for complete sacrifice (and humiliation 'take up your cross') today, in faith that he is worth the cost and that the Spirit will sustain us, but without the benefit of knowing what is ahead aside from the provision and salvation of God.

Of course, no one will prove themselves worthy of Jesus. Should we let that be our concern? "by no means!" heh.

The Jewish Trial of Jesus (Part I). There were two trials of Jesus, maybe even three, as he made his way to the Cross. The first and most controversial was the trial before the Chief Priests. The second, maybe in two parts, was before Pilate. The third before Herod.

But the first is the most interesting, in part because it presents a vivid example of how an advanced legal system, designed to safeguard the right of the accused and even to frustrate the imposition of capital punishment, can come under terrible political stress at the most critical moment in its history. It is also interesting because it is generally misunderstood to have been the direct cause of Jesus' death and, as a result, has provided grist for the pagan mill anti-Semitism over the years. The legal system that actually condemned and executed Jesus was Roman, of course. This fact has implications beyond the anti-semitism question. It has great significance theologically.

Finally, in the Jewish trial we confront the question of whether Jesus was a passive victim of a mindless legal process or whether he participated in that process actively, as part of his submission to God's will.

My approach will be first to describe the Jewish legal system as it may have existed during Jesus' time. Then, with that background, to look at the scriptures and see how that system played out when Jesus entered it.

The Middle East is already laid waste.

Pop culture will destroy the nationalistic and religious ties that unite the Middle East against the West.

Pop is completely decentralized and depends on technology, not any nation, for its power. The Middle East recoginizes their enemy in Pop Culture, but lacks the framework to understand its decentralized nature.

They mistakenkly believe that they can defeat it by destroying the US and the West.

They don't realize that pop has already destroyed the US and they have no hope against it outside of Christ.

How long will it be before societies reorient themselves around something other than nations?

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/08DAE45E-F241-4857-8A53-F937254A59E8.htm

Just what does "Passion" mean, anyway?. A perfume? A great love? Intense emotion? Those would be my guesses, but this probably indicates the post-Christian culture in which I live or the Southern Baptist/American Protestantism with which I grew up. The movie sends me to the dictionary.

Webster's New International Second Edition Unabridged ("WNIDSE") was the US law firm standard when I commenced the practice. In its definition of passion, we reach the idea of a "feeling; emotion" only in the fifth definition; of "desire", as in sexual desire or lust, in the sixth definition. In the seventh definition we get to "strong desire or predilection, esp. as expressed in action . . . " And in the eighth we finally reach the idea of passion being "an object of love or ambition". The ninth definition gives us "pl the feelings or emotions collectively".

But go to the initial definition, the first. At the beginning, passion is a "Fact or state of enduring inflicted pain, tortures, or the like; an affliction. Obs. exc. specif. a [usually cap.] Orig. and usually, the suffering of Christ on the cross; or, often, his sufferings between the night of the Last Supper and his death, thus including the agony of Gethsemane. b The sufferings of a martyr; martyrdom.

The OED (Compact Edition 1971) shows the first usage in English about 1175, but the reference is in Middle (Old?) English, and I can't read it.

Passion derives, according to the WNIDSE, from a French word meaning "to suffer", and it has the idea of passivity, not activity in it. The word "patient" is related to this idea of passion, as in a patient, the one who is the passive figure, the one who suffers from an active agent, that is from illness.

And so we see Jesus in his Passion, being passive and submissive: not calling down the angels, not destroying the Temple, the prosecution, the Romans, not destroying us.

Today I spoke to Walter about the film. He said his favorite part was at its beginning, with Jesus in the Garden, when he smashed the head of the snake with a suddenness and perhaps a sort of contempt, as if that thing did not deserve a bit of attention other than being crushed under his heel. I loved that part too. Why does it appeal to Walter and me?

We want our Messiah to clean house. Yeah!

If Passion is one's total submission to God's will, then the other side of that submission is total contempt for and the efficient dispatch of evil from one's path of obedience. Would that I had that approach to the sin that wants to insinutate itself into my life.

from Peggy Noonan's current column, the last couple of paragraphs:

But they are convinced it is going to be a close race. That's not just spin to rev the troops; it's their conviction. They don't see us as a 50-50 country but as a 48-48 country, with the fight over the remaining 4% of the population. It took me aback when I heard this--not that it was surprising, but it reminded me of something Lee Atwater told me 20 years ago. Forty percent of the country will vote Democrat no matter what, he said, and 40% will vote Republican. Every presidential contest is a wrestling match for the 20% in the middle.

That was true then, or at least the polls bore it out. Now that 20 has shrunk to four. I'm not sure what that means. No one else is either. But somehow it strikes me as both inevitable and not good.

Smashing Pumpkins broke up and Billy Corgan, the lead singer, released an album with a new band, Zwan.

lets compare some of his older Smashing Pumpkins lyrics with his newer Zwan lyrics:

"Bullet with Butterfly Wings" (Smashing Pumpkins)


The world is a vampire, sent to drain
Secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames
And what do I get, for my pain
Betrayed desires, and a piece of the game
Even though I know-I suppose I'll show
All my cool and cold-like old job
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
Then someone will say what is lost can never be saved
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
Now I'm naked, nothing but an animal
But can you fake it, for just one more show
And what do you want, I want to change
And what have you got
When you feel the same
Even though I know-I suppose I'll show
All my cool and cold-like old job
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
Then someone will say what is lost can never be saved
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
Tell me I'm the only one
Tell me there's no other one
Jesus was the only son
Tell me I'm the chosen one
Jesus was the only son for you
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
And I still believe that I cannot be saved

"Jesus, I / Mary Star Of The Sea" (Zwan)

jesus, i've taken my cross
all to leave and follow thee
jesus, i've taken my cross
all to leave and follow thee

i'm destitute, despised, forsaken
all to leave and follow thee
and follow thee

man may trouble to distress me
to drive my heart to the cross
yeah, man may trouble to distress me
to drive this heart to the cross

i'm resolute, reviled, forsaken
all to leave and follow thee
and follow thee

jesus
jesus
jesus
reborn
reborn
reborn
reborn

so perish every fond ambition
god and trouble are all i've known
yet how rich is my condition
god and heaven are all my own
god and heaven are all my own

rooms full of salt
fault my pluck
and a poets charm so far, ever far
little stars that burn the holes in my soul

and everything just feels like rain
the road we're on, the things we crave
and everything just feels like rain
the nights i sleep, what's left to dream
when everything feels like rain

drift as i dive
find the deep
out of reach of all light
stars, ever far
listless tides along the changing shore

and everything just feels like rain
the road we're on, the things we crave
and everything just feels like rain
if i should sleep, what's left to dream
when everything feels like rain