Glenn Reynolds: Annoying Illiteracy.

I wonder if he can make the connection between Stalin's godlessness and the tyranny he condemns. I doubt it.

"Quiet Strength"

This is the title of a book, a "memoir", by Tony Dungy. He writes in the introduction that people had been after him to write a book for years, but he resisted it. But finally he relented. This is the last paragraph of his introduction:

This book is not only about me, either. It's about the priorities, choices, approaches, and habits that lead to being a winner, to experiencing true success. It's about you and me and our journey in this world together. It's about the things I've learned, the mistakes I've made, and the heartaches that have made me lean into the Father's presence. I hope that when it's all said and done, you'll see that it's really all about Him.

Are we all agreed on this global-warming thing?

In the past few years there has been increasing concern about global climate change on the part of the media, politicians, and the public. It has been stimulated by the idea that human activities may influence global climate adversely and that therefore corrective action is required on the part of governments. Recent evidence suggests that this concern is misplaced. Human activities are not influencing the global climate in a perceptible way. Climate will continue to change, as it always has in the past, warming and cooling on different time scales and for different reasons, regardless of human action. I would also argue that - should it occur - a modest warming would be on the whole beneficial.

-S, Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, in Imprimis, author of Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years.

MeeSheeGin! Right!

Good column over on Sporting News.

Are You Kidding?

FIU plays Penn State today in the season opener for both teams.

Oh, Darn!

The Miami Herald reports that

Democratic presidential contenders Bill Richardson, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd have pledged not to campaign in states like Florida and Michigan that moved up their primaries in violation of party rules.

Blog Despair

Despair has a blog! (Obviously, we are way ahead of them on the internet curve but we are happy they have joined us in the blogosphere.) Walter gets my vote as best-supporting actor in the video that is first up on the blog.

BREAK-IN

It's 5:45 on Saturday afternoon, and Aidan, Honor and I have just enjoyed a great spend-the-night time at Pa-Pa's and Sue-Sue's ranch. We are driving into our street to come home when Aidan says, "Mom-ma, is our house broken?" I stop the car and look at the house, "well, let's see, does it look broken?" "no, Mommy, it doesn't."

I then turn into the driveway and down into our carport where I find that our house was in fact "broken." Our kitchen door window had been smashed with a large rock and there was glass everywhere.

In the meantime, Macon is about to board a flight from Seattle to Austin. He has been away for work over the last couple of nights. I call him, "Love, our house has been broken into".

"what?"

"our house has been broken into. The kitchen door is smashed and the door is unlocked"

"call the police"

"okay, and I'll take Aidan to our neighbor's"

"good idea"

"Love you"

"love you, too"

Poor Macon. He boarded the flight and had to wait at least 4 hours before he found out anything else.

Our neighbors were wonderful. They took Aidan, fed him, bathed him and put him in their son's pajamas. Back at home, I have gone through the house with the police and many other neighbors have shown up to help. I called my parents and they come out to help fix the door and to pick up Aidan and bring him home.

Eventually, my dad had put up a piece of plywood over the hole in the door, I put the kids to bed an hour late, my neighbors all went home, Walter and Morgan came over and we all hung out until Macon arrived home around 10 or 10:30.

I was so glad to see him.

The burglar got my laptop, our new camera, macon's briefcase, my new ipod, our ipod dock, old ipods, a diaper bag (yes, a diaper bag), and an airport extreme--not to mention that they destroyed my kitchen door. We think they used the diaper bag to haul the ipods in, but who knows? Maybe they felt the need for some huggies size 5's?

I am so glad that they did not make off with any of my Fuzzi Bunz or my Bum Genius AIO's! YEA!

Strangely enough, I did not ever feel super shaken. I know that I was somewhat shaken as I could not remember all the words to Honor's lullaby that night, but mainly I think I felt the peace of God and thankfulness that my children and husband were all okay.

we'll see if I was just in shock and will have an emotional melt-down later. I certainly did have some nerves when i was trying to fall asleep after getting up to nurse Honor.

crazy times, people, crazy times...

Unhold the French Fries

While Republican Senator Warner of VA is moving left on Iraq, the French, according to WSJ's Saturday edition,

may be prepared to provide assistance to Iraqi troops and police, part of Sarkozy's effort to improve relations with the U.S.

Yes, I will have fries with that. In fact, please make them French fries. (And no VA ham in that McMuffin).

(By the way, is there any meaning anymore to the word "Republican" insofar as it applies to a political party? I raise this as a registered Democrat, throwing a rock, as it were, from a fragile glass house. [The country is ripe for a radical political party realignment. Please get on with it.])

UPDATE: Super-size those FRENCH fries!!

MORE UPDATE: Here.

In Seattle

attending the PennyArcadeExpo.

I saw this on the way over:


I'm used to seeing 30somethings and below in that pose: gathered around one of the few power outlets. But these were grownups! Weird.

Jonathan Edwards, Corporate Prayer

Foster, in his discussion of corporate prayer to which I refer in the previous post, cites, in addition to direct scripture references, a "slender book with a bulky title" by Jonathan Edwards. The title is, indeed, bulky: An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's People, in Extraordinary Prayer.

Could I find a copy of that "slender book" on the interent? Of course!

Corporate Prayer

I mentioned earlier the Caldwells and their prayer program at Windsor Village UM Church in Houston. It has set me thinking about prayer in a way I haven't thought about in years. The Caldwells showed a series of photos during their presentation at the PGF meeting of about 500 of their members parading down the grassy median of a 4 lane highway through the heart of some acreage the church was acquiring to build a gigantic new church building, establish certain commercial centers, including a bank, and develop a tract of housing. The members lined up, left shoulder to left shoulder, right shoulder to right, so that the line had people facing both sides of the street in alternating fashion, as the subject property is on both sides of the street. Then the people prayed about the vision that they had for the real estate, prayed according to a script that had been written by the church leadership.

It all seemed a little regimented to me, maybe manipulated by the church leadership, but that's what they did, and apparently that is standard fare for this struggling little church of now 17,000.

I came home and looked at the books I have, now plainly visible on this great wall of books that Macon constructed for me while he was here (more on that in a future post), and among them was Richard J. Foster's Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home that was published in 1992, which was when I bought it at Montreat. The index had an entry on "corporate prayer", and here is part of what Foster writes there:

[A Korean pastor] brought me a newspaper article (complete with his excellent translation, for it was written in Korean) that describes the story of the Myong-Song Presbyterian Church, located in the southeastern part of Seoul. The Korean churches are well known for their early morning prayer meetings, but even so this story is unusual. This is a group that began about ten years ago with forty people, and today twelve thousand gather each morning for three prayer meetings - at 4:00 A.M., 5:00 A.M., and 6:00 A.M. Jung-Oh [the Korean pastor] explained to me that they must shut the doors at 4:00 A.M. to begin the first service, and so if people arrive a little late, they must wait until the 5:00 A.M. meeting.

* * *

There are indications that, as we approach the twenty-first century, the greatest prayer movement in living memory is already under way. In much smaller but still significant ways the story of Myong-Song Presbyterian Church can be repeated many times over. One congregation I know has forty prayer meetings per week involving a total of a thousand people. I am acquainted with churches in which anywhere from 15 to 24 percent of the congregation are engaged in organized, corporate, intercessory prayer weekly. I have met with national prayer leaders, and none of them has seen anything like what is now beginning to occur. It is too early to tell how significant this new awakening toward prayer will be, but the signs are encouraging.

More on the Myong-Song PC here UPDATE: This link is to an essay by Danie Vermeulen. He is the director of "Dawn Ministries" in Africa, and did church planting in South Africa. The Dawn Ministries Africa website has this reference to Kijabe (scroll down to "God Brings Somalia to Kenya"). Small, small world.

Who are these people?

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

Bum Genius is Bumtastic!

I just wanted to update everyone on one of my new favorite diapers. Yes, I know, "diapers again". well, I am a mother of two children under the age of three, so give me a break, alright? ;-)

I still love my fuzzi bunz, and would consider fuzzi bunz the backbone of my cloth diaper collection, but these Bum Genius 2.0 All-in-one diapers ROCK! They are as close to disposables as you can get: they don't have to be stuffed with anything, they don't have to be pulled apart to wash, and they have stretchy tabs on the side that make for a great fit.

My mom really likes using these with Honor. Macon says that he thinks they are easier since you don't have to figure out which snaps are the right ones so that the FB's are not too loose (and leak) or not too tight (and hurt). So, if you are in the market for some cloth diapers, but fear how difficult they can be, then these are the gateway drug for you...did I say drug? I meant diaper, although I must admit that once you get started on cloth, it can be addicting.

Baby Legs

On Sweetpea's Blog there was a recent mention of a product called Baby Legs. Basically these are leg warmers for babies...because the 80's are never really gone.

One of my best friends, Lindsay who also has a blog, gave us a couple of pair of these when she found out we were having a girl. Yea! for baby presents!

Honor looks adorable in these red and white striped Baby Legs. She also has some light blue ones with snowmen on them, but she had spit up her carrots on these earlier in the day. I especially like how her red fuzzi bunz go with her baby legs. SO CUTE!!!

My Problem, Your Solution

One of the speakers at the PGF conference was Alex Gee. He told the story of a young man who was somehow connected with his church family but who was a cocaine addict. Word came to Gee that the young man was out of his mind at a crack house and desperately in need of intervention. Gee got one of the biggest men in his congregation to go with him to the place. They broke the door down, went in, found the young man, and carried him out.

Later, when the young man came around, Gee said that he shook his finger in the young man's face and said "We've got to get ahold of your drug problem."

The young man said, "Drugs are not my problem. Drugs are my solution. You've never asked me what my problem is."

Gee said that the light suddenly went on.

And it went on for me as well. I have been thinking about that story ever since that talk. People who are problems to me may be people whose "problems" are really their way of working out things that I don't take the time to see. Maybe if I took the time, I would be less of a judge and more of a friend.

John West Thatcher

John Thatcher is one of the best men I have had the privilege ever of knowing. A Davidson graduate, Korean War combat veteran (grievously wounded but by God's grace survived), brilliant businessman, outstanding philanthropist, a rock solid Christian and great friend. Carol and I had the privilege of attending a birthday lunch for him at his home on Monday. (Carol and I are dressed up because we came from the office. That's not how normal people dress in Miami in August when they are being sociable.)

Building Trains

Lately, Aidan has taken to building things with his blocks. Usually, he builds his "house" and then he builds a Starbucks. (insert all your snide comments here about our family addiction to the 'bucks). Anyways, most recently he built a train--a train that was going to Starbucks. ;-)

Here's photos of his train.

Carrots, Anyone?

Wow. Just thought I'd compare Aidan's experience with carrots alongside Honor's experience of carrots. When i took Aidan's photo, he was probably 6 1/2 months old. Honor is 7 months old. So, the ages are pretty close.

Man, they are so definitely siblings!

Kirbyjon and Suzette Caldwell

These two people, husband and wife, spoke at the PGF conference that we attended. Kirbyjon Caldwell is the pastor of the largest United Methodist Church in the US, the 17,000 member Windsor Village UM Church in Houston. Wikipedia has quite an article on him here.

His wife Suzette T. Caldwell also a pastor at the church, has a prayer ministry, the Kingdom Builder's Prayer Institute.

The Caldwells presentation at the conference jarred us. We were rocking along, swinging with the fairly moderate though challenging curricula, when WHAM these folks appeared and hit us with what sounded like a "name it and claim it" Gospel in the context of a Super Target church program, raising eyebrows and some hackles in our group. I have to confess, though, that they fascinated me.

Here is the question: Would you prefer a church where there was virtually no prayer ministry? Just the prayers during the worship service and the prayers at the beginning and the end of church meetings? Where individual prayer was left to the hit or miss convenience of the members? Or would you prefer a church that has a highly structured, deliberate, and consistent corporate prayer discipline, mainly top down in its content, and maybe over the top from time to time, maybe a lot of the time?

Would you prefer a prayer theology that viewed prayer as essentially a means for us to conform our wills to God's sovereignty, whatever that sovereignty might turn out to be? A sort of view that believes that God's will is mostly unscrutable, and so the more general and hedged we are in our prayers, maybe the better.

Or would you prefer a prayer theology that moves from praise and worship to a search for God's will in a given situation, with particular confidence that his will is not inscrutable but is a will he will allow us to discern; that once discerned for that given situation holds that God's will as it is in heaven so shall it be on earth, specifically, here and now, a specific will for that situation that one can then declare; that moves from there to seeking forgiveness for self and others, thence to a petition for protection; and closing with more praise and worship?

The Caldwells left no doubt as to where their positions are on these questions.

"Are You Man Enough?"

We attended the Presbyterian Global Fellowship meeting in Houston at the end of last week. It began Thursday night and ended about noon on Saturday. The Stokes clan there included Walter, Morgan, Mary, Carol and me. The program was quite challenging and, in some parts, disturbing. But its OK to be disturbed, I think. I am still reflecting on what I saw and heard.

One of the speakers, Michael Frost, read a poem that absolutely blew me away. It's by Adrian Plass, and a copy of it is posted here.

Rove to Run Hillary's Campaign

You heard it here first.

"The thing I like most and a lot of guys like most is that they don't talk about other schools or about football. They talk about life."

So said [Miami] Northwestern quarterback Jacory Harris about the recruiting efforts of the UM coaching staff. He's a five star UM recruit, one of a remarkable number of top high school seniors (17) who have made a non-binding commitment to the 'Canes this summer. Read the whole story in the Herald this morning about the impact the new coach Randy Shannon is already having on this and other aspects of the program.

FSU is having similar early recruiting success, the article notes. But there is something a little different going on at the UM, with its black head coach and the special relationship he and his colleagues have with the black high school football coaches in Miami-Dade, territory from which the UM originally built its powerhouse programs.

What?!!

You know how to spell the word "stupid," but this is what it looks like in a photograph.

Books + Kids = Cuteness

"Convenient Care"Clinics

The 8/2 issue of the WSJ carried a column entitled "Health Care When You Want It" by Web Golinkin on the "convenient care" clinic network that is developing in such places as Wal-Mart, CVS stores, and Walgreens. (From that link, you can access the WSJ article on a "free preview" basis, if you register for their 2 week free subsctiption offer.) Golinkin is the president and CEO of RediClinic, LLC, "One of the nation's largest convenient care providers, and is a director and co-founder of the Convenient Care Association."

These centers are manned by nurse practitioners, and Golinkin has this to say about the quality of such care:

Research over the past 30 years has consistently shown that the primary care provided by nurse practitioners is comparable in quality to that provided by physicians, though nurse practitioners are still required to collaborate with local physicians in most states.

I'm not sure that "comparable" means the same as "the same as", but this growing service is surely a big piece of the free market response to the health care crisis, and it may be a good one. (I would venture that "comparable" care from a nurse practitioner is better than no care from a physician.) Golinkin also writes that 97% "of the more than 4,000 RediClinic patients surveyed this year said they would recommend RediClinic to their relatives and friends."

Fellowship of the Ring - DVD vs. HD

Wow, what a difference!

Captain Crunch Visits Miami Springs

where we try out video blogging for the first time.

Re-Photography

On locations photographed decades apart and what we learn about them as a result.

Five Things You Didn't Know About LIghtning

We get a lot of it here in South Florida. (Hat tip to Carol.)

General Patton on "the War on Terror"

This is circulating the internet.

Trusts and Estates Lawyers

My partner, Juan, has a post on his blog about the off-center breeds of lawyers who find their way to the trusts and estates practice, a practice that we at our firm hold dear. Juan cites the David Margolick book on the Johnson & Johnson probate/trust litigation. In the book Margolick classifies such lawyers as "eccentrics, aristocrats, gays, fops, . . . oddballs, geniuses, and women." If there is a problem with this classification, then it is only with respect to the limited number of such categories not in the main-stream, although "eccentrics" and "oddballs" are pretty broad, and I am very comfortable in either of those classes. I aspire to be a fop, but I don't think I'll make it. I think I'm just going to have to settle with being an oddball.

But you know all that.

The XO Laptop

"One Laptop per Child" - looks like we are well on our way to that goal.

Consider the implications.

Daniel Schorr

If you listen to NPR on Saturday morning, a sort of guilty semi-pleasure in which I indulge as I drive to the office, you probably will hear Scott Simon go over with Daniel Schorr all of the stories of the just previous week, those stories, that is, that NPR and its MSM allies decided were important. Simon simply defines the sort of smug broadcast reporting NPR typifies. Schorr is absolutely predictable on any given political issue, but at least he's entertaining and smart.

I laughed out loud when Schorr, commenting on VP Cheney undergoing heart surgery, said that the VP had made arrangements to turn over to President Bush temporarily his powers to run the country before submitting to the operation.

Sofa Beds

For visiting couples who don't get along. (Scroll down.)

Calories

Sometimes we post just for reference purposes. Here's a site that shows calories for various foods.

In WW, one converts this data to "points" using a little slide rule that you obtain in the program. WW involves the adoption of a plan where you track your "points" every day. You can eat whatever you want, provided that you do not exceed the total daily points that you allocate to your particular weight loss or maintenance program. So WW is not about denying yourself certain foods (go for it Lindsay!); it's about "portion control", that is, limiting the amount of those foods. A person, then, could be a "meat and potatoes" type, and still be successful.

On the other hand, "low [calorie] density" foods tend to fill you up faster and have relatively fewer points per serviing. An apple, for example, would be one point. A large toll house cookie might be 5 or six points. If one's daily points target is, say, 22 per day (with 36 reserve points per week), one would probably want to eat the apple most days - but now and then go for the cookie.

You also can add "activity" points to your daily routine in WW. For example, right now I am trying to return to my "goal weight" of 155 and that means I am on a 22 points per day program. But I usually walk 2 miles when I get up each morning. That will give me one activity point, according to another little slide rule you get from WW, so I would have 23 points to burn that day.

I mentioned having 36 reserve or "flex" points per week. Flex points are extra points you can use if you need to on a given day. If each week I keep within my daily 22 points, plus the activity points, plus my weekly flex points, then I should lose an average of 1 pound a week. This is the "flex plan".

You carry around a little "tracker" to record what you eat and the points you charge yourself. It sounds a little complicated, but it's not, once you get in the swing of it.

There is an alternate WW system one can adopt. This one is the "core plan". On this one, you can eat pretty much unlimited amounts of certain "core" foods. As to "non-core" foods, you limit daily portions according to the point system. With this system, you don't have to "track", that is write down in your diary, the core foods that you eat. (For example, steak is not a core food, but potatoes - not fried potatoes - are.) Some people seem to do better on the "core plan" than on the "flex plan".

Fire Your Friends, Lose Weight

Having overweight family and friends increases the likelihood someone will become overweight, according to a Harvard researcher who examined obesity and social network data from the long-running Framingham Heart Study.

More here.

Frees Your Hands Up to do What, Exactly?

I don't know, but this just seems wrong.

Miscellany

My law partner Jane went to Barnes & Noble (Borders? I can't remember which one she mentioned. And is there a difference?) with her two teenage sons on midnight of Harry Potter night. She said that the line was hours - hours long, and they were near the end of it. After awhile, people started coming out of the store, having bought not just one but several books. Those people offered their extra books for resale to those toward the end of the line for $30 apiece (they had just paid $20 for each of them inside the store). Jane bought one and they went home. She did the math. That's why she's such a great law partner.

There's a big article on the front page of the WSJ today about how states are cancelling new coal fired electric generators the construction of which had been authorized, on account of the carbon emission issues. The price of coal mining stocks is now heading south, having ramped up over the last couple of years because of the higher and higher cost of natural gas and oil. We have a huge supply of coal, enough to take care of our energy needs for decades and decades. But no. That's not to be. Florida's new Republican governor is at the forefront of this turn away from coal. (Florida gets a lot of its fuel from Venezuela, so don't worry.) UPDATE: Ooops. Glenn Reynolds beat me to it.

The WSJ also reports that iPhone orders undersold expectations, which surprises me. Some people are blaming it on ATT's inability to keep up with the demand for connecting to the system. I think its because so many people are so involved in trying to figure out their Treos (mostly unsuccessfully) that they didn't notice.

Mary flew into Miami from Africa today. She came home for a quick shower and took off with Carol for Dadeland.

Some theology.

Well, Shoot!

Diet drinks are out! There really ought to be something one could imbibe that would quench one's thirst, be safe, would be relatively inexpensive, and, finally, refreshing. We should all pray that just what that is would be revealed to us.

UPDATE:

Yesterday's WSJ has a column by the Health Journal editor, Tara Parker-Pope, on this subject. It's balanced and worth reading. Here is an excerpt:

The new report from the Framingham study compared soft-drink consumption among nearly 9,000 middle-aged men and women. Overall, soda drinkers were at 48% higher risk for metabolic syndrome, a collection of health problems including being overweight, and having blood-sugar levels signaling diabetes risk. The risks of metabolic syndrome were about the same whether the soft drink was sugared or sugar-free. The study authors noted that the research doesn't prove sodas cause health problems.

What about trying this for four weeks:

1. Drink only water, natural juices (coffee and tea, of course, we are not a bunch of crazies, after all. Maybe some wine now and then. It's from the grape, after all), but no soft drinks of any sort. UPDATE: Add skim milk. UPDATE UPDATE: Add margaritas.

2. Eat nothing with refined sugar in it. Nothing. Nada!

3. Eat whole wheat and not white breads. Brown rice, not white rice. Sweet potatoes not white potatoes.

4. Eat no meat or, at the very least, no red meat.

That leaves mainly veggies and fruits. See what happens.

Who will do this? Let us know. Keep us up to date.

The USS Dale in WWII

Ken, one of the men in our Saturday morning breakfast group at the Cozy Corner, served on a destroyer during the Korean War. He loaned me Tales from a Tin Can, which is about the USS Dale, a destroyer that served in the Pacific during WWII. The author's father served on that ship, and the author had little idea of what his dad had done in the war until he went with him a few years ago to a reunion with the crew. He was amazed and fascinated by the stories they swapped, and, a writer by trade, he ran to the car and got his tape recorder. Like pearls on a silver thread, he has strung those stories chronologically in this book, along a narrative of his own that helps place the stories in context. It is an easy, enjoyable read, and I learned a great deal about destroyers, fleet movements, typhoons, the Japanese.

For example, I had no idea that the Japanese occupation of a couple of the Aleutian islands in Alaska caused so much concern in the US and resulted in one of the first of the war's amphibious landings, difficult though successful landings that helped prepare the Navy for landings later in the war.

When you read about the kamikaze and other suicide tactics that the Japanese desperately employed in 1945, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki makes a lot of sense. The US Navy lost almost half of the ships it lost in WWII in the Pacific during that year, 1945, because of the desperation of the Japanese. I've heard it before, but the book recounts the belief that there would be over 1 million casualties on the US side if it took an invasion of the Japanese homeland to finish the war. And the Japanese were willing to sacrifice millions of their own to make the cost so high that we would negotiate.

"Who's a-shakin' my bed?"

Mary reports on tremors in Kenya, and otherwise updates us on her seminar work south of Nairobi.

The tremors are accounted for here.

"The Religious Right has lost the Evangelical Center"

Or so says Ron Sider in this opinion piece linked from the Evangelicals for Social Action website.

NPR "reports" on Kenya

And it's not good. Note how several paragraphs into the article, the writer takes a left-turn into a radically anti-evangelical position. Are we surprised?

Veggie Tales: Daniel, Chapter 1

1 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. 2 And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia [a] and put in the treasure house of his god.
3 Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility- 4 young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king's palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians. [b] 5 The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king's table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king's service.

6 Among these were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. 7 The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego.

8 But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. 9 Now God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel, 10 but the official told Daniel, "I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your [c] food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you."

11 Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, 12 "Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. 13 Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see." 14 So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.

15 At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. 16 So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.

17 To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.

18 At the end of the time set by the king to bring them in, the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. 19 The king talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah; so they entered the king's service. 20 In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom.

21 And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus.

High glycemic diets may increase the risk of age-related macular degeneration

This is big, I think:

In a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers tested the theory that dietary glycemic index (GI), which has been associated with the risk of diabetes and CVD [cardiovascular disease], may also increase the risk and severity of AMD [age-related macular degeneration] in elderly populations . . . Compared with the eyes in those with the lowest GI diets, eyes in the high GI subjects had significantly higher risk of AMD progression and severity. There was a 49% increase in the risk of advanced AMD for persons who ate a diet higher than average in GI. Researchers noted that the results indicated that 20% of all AMD cases in the study would have been eliminated if the participants consumed diets with a GI below the average.

Brandon's Dad: A Grade A Father

Brandon is two and half years old, the son of a very young couple we know. Because of extensive kidney problems, Brandon's had a rough time of it, and probably should be in heaven by now, but for some serious prayer, a lot of which has been going up from our church. The young couple are part of the extended family of some wonderful people in our church. We have been getting reports on Brandon and his young parents and praying for him and them since he was born. Our congregation met Brandon for the first time about a month ago when his parents presented him for baptism.

We Presbyterians aren't supposed to baptize infants when the parents are not in our church or a sister church. So were we going to hold the line on Brandon? Are you kidding? We readily bypassed that bit of theology. He's one of us, and so is this couple, whatever the technical details may be.

Brandon was just about as cute and alert and well-behaved as anyone would have any right to expect of any young man of any age. It was a great moment to see Brandon baptized, surrounded by a loving family and an intensely focused congregation.

Brandon and his parents are now in Pittsburgh where the university hospital there is getting ready for a kidney transplant from his mom.

Carol was telling me that, right now at least, those transplants only last around seven years. Both his mother and his dad are good matches, but his dad gave Brandon a blood transfusion early on when Brandon needed it, and the physicians are concerned that Brandon may have developed some anit-bodies that will make accepting a kidney from dad very risky. But we'll see.

Brandon's dad had always been over-weight, Carol tells me. But he's lost 50 pounds getting himself in shape for whatever the physicians may need to do to his body to take care of Brandon's.

Two Bads

Bad 1:

Patient: Doctor, I think I'm a moth. Can you help me?

Dr.: You think you're a moth?

Patient: Yes. Can you help me?

Dr.: Well, I'm just a general practioner. You need to see a psychiatrist.

Patient: I know that, Sir. In fact, I was on my way to the psychiatrist's office when I saw your light.

Bad 2:

Old feller is in bed upstairs, about to die.

From below comes the aroma of home-made chocolate chip cookies baking.

He says to himself, "Before I go, I'm going to have one last chocolate chip cookie", and he painfully crawls out of bed, down the stairs, into the kitchen, and reaches his hand up to grab a cookie from the cooling rack on the kitchen table.

WHAPP!!! A spatula hits his outstretched hand. "You let that thing go, Hiram!" his wife demands. "Those are for the funeral!"

Unsweet Tomatoes

Last night Carol and I went to Sweet Tomatoes, a sort of salad restaurant that we love. The problem with that place is that one's usual defenses against over-eating are disarmed. This place is about salad, after all. So everything goes, right? Wrong.

I piled high a plate of salad, and the plates the restaurant offers, while not huge, are not of an ungenerous size. It is a serve yourself format, and the process involves putting one's plate on one's tray and then walking down a long buffet line, loading up. (What happened to all my WW "portion control" disciplines?) While almost all the items are vegetable based, there is some chicken salad here and there, some mayonnaise and oil. However, I think if I had kept just to the plate of salad, I would have been all right, especially since I did not eat unsparingly earlier in the day.

But then we sit down and start eating, and along comes a person from the restaurant offering chocolate chip cookie pieces, and we take some. Then, when we finish with the salad, we get up and go get a cup of "soup", which for me is a bowl of chili into which I mix about a quarter cup of white rice. This is not a large bowl at all, I tell myself. After I finish that, I go to the bread line and get a couple of pieces of foccasia bread - not large pieces, small pieces, but two of them nevertheless.

Then I visit the ice cream bar, a place where soft ice cream is available on a serve-yourself basis. There are small bowls there, and I pick one. I get the swirl of vanilla and chocolate. Then I move to the condiment station and squirt on the chocolate sauce, topping it all off, remembering fondly how my grandfather loved ice cream, that he always great quantities of it in his freezer and always had a can of Hershey's chocolate sauce in his refrigerator to top off his big bowls of ice cream. (I didn't call to mind how he smoked, always ate what he wanted, rarely exercised or walked anywhere, and died at age 70 as he was getting ready to come to my law school graduation. [He had been an athlete in high school, a baseball player.] He never looked overweight to me, but there you are.)

I didn't feel well as we left the restaurant. I have been fighting some sort of sinus issue this week, and I know that didn't help. But I know all that food didn't help. Ugh. How could I have done that?

And the idea that Sweet Tomatoes is a "free-zone" is hilarious self-deception. Fully half the people there are 'way overweight. And it was Saturday night. That should have been a clue. (What was I thinking? That these people pick up a pizza on the way home?)

Thank you, Melissa!

We're still using the blanket you made!

WikiHow

Heard of this Wiki? Here's an article about how to convert an analog "song" or "talk" from, say, a tape or record to a digital file, using an Apple computer.

Water or Coke?

Uh, water?

Binkies, God's Gift to Parents of Certain Children

Carol and I often listen to audio books when we drive on vacation. (Can you imagine that she might not just want to listen to me talk hour after hour? But, really, it's true.) We went to the library to see what we could find for our recent trip to Montreat NC. We checked out a number of books, both regular and audio, among them an audio version of Anne Tyler's "Digging to America".

Carol made this selection, and I wasn't paying a lot of attention. I had in mind that the author in question was the mystery writer, Ann Perry. Wrong. This was Anne Tyler, whose fiction is about RELATIONSHIPS! (Boooorrrrring.) I didn't realize my mistake until we were about 12 seconds into the audio book on our trip. (Maybe it was 5 seconds, I really don't remember.)

Well, it was quite a long book, and I have to concede that it was sort of interesting. It's about two Baltmore couples and their extended families who first meet each other in the late 1990s in the gate area of the Baltimore international airport as they are awaiting the arrival of an airplane from Korea. Coincidentally, among the passengers on that airplane are two little girl babies, one that is being adopted by each family. The babies are being delivered by representatives of different Korean adoption agencies. One of the couples is sort of typical American, noisy with a lot of friends and other family members in the waiting area with them with cameras, party hats, signs, and video cameras. The other couple is Iranian-American, quiet with only the mother of the husband with them. When the babies are brought off the plane, the two families realize that they have something very special in common with one another and a friendship commences, the growth of which over the next three thousand, four-hundred audio-book hours (or 1600 miles, whichever comes first) is the "backbone" of the "plot" of the book.

Anyway, deep, deep, deep into the book, one of the families adopts a second little girl, this one from China. This little girl becomes a total Binkie freak. It is obvious that the author has had some very significant, probably traumatic personal experience with this sort of little person. The house becomes filled with this little tyrant's, excuse me I mean strong-willed child's, binkies. (Could such a personality type possibly be associated with Binkie madness? I'm sure not. It's probably just fiction.)

At some point in the narrative, the mother decides the Binkies have to go, and a sort of war of wills commences between her and the little girl. The mother decides that she will have a good-bye Binkie party, during which she will have all her friends over. She promises her tiny daughter a wonderful present to commemerate the day that the Binkies will go. In preparation for the party, the mother prepares helium balloons and ties a Binkie to each balloon by means of a string dangling from it. The highlight of the party will be when each person attending will get a balloon and go outside with it and, at the count of three, release his or her balloon into the atmosphere. The Binkie strategy doesn't quite work out, and it is funny, I have to admit.

As Carol and I discussed Binkies, as a result of Kellsey's post about Honor, she said that with one of our children, who will go unnamed in this public place, the Binkie saved her sanity. I wouldn't go that far, given what I know of her sanity at this point, but it probably prevented infanticide.

A fine Friday feast following fatiguing week

So great.

Where the Boys Are

(Austin's looking good here. Miami not so good.)

Disturbing Numbers from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

See this article on obesity rates in the US.

The obesity rate in the United States has increased at an alarming rate over the past three decades. We set out to estimate the average annual increase in prevalence as well as the variation between population groups to predict the future situation regarding obesity and overweight among U.S. adults and children,” said Youfa Wang, MD, PhD, lead author of the study and an assistant professor in the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of International Health. “Obesity is a public health crisis. If the rate of obesity and overweight continues at this pace, by 2015, 75 percent of adults and nearly 24 percent of U.S. children and adolescents will be overweight or obese.

Sitting up

Can she do it, folks? Can she master the intense and focused control of her core muscles necessary to get herself from being parallel with the floor to sitting up?

let's follow the photo journaling of this epic attempt at a new milestone:

















And she does it! (and the crowds go wild!)

Macon's newest kettlebell...

The Blue Devils Arrive!

When I was a senior in high school, I ran into Charles Battle over Spring break. Battle's family were members of Central Baptist Church, and he was a year ahead of me and back home from "Chapel Hill" (I had no idea what "Chapel Hill" meant at the time, but I knew that I was supposed to know and that Charlie knew I didn't know.) Charles' parents had sent him off to McCallie instead of allowing him to suffer with the rest of us in public high school. From there he had gone to UNC. By the spring, I had been admitted to Duke, and his comment was something about my going to "the University of New Jersey".

When I was at Duke, the place really struggled with being a school on the make but buried in the South, and probably still struggles with it. During my senior year there, I applied to "Duke Law", as well as to other law schools. My LSATs were OK, but not outstanding. The dean at Duke said he would admit me, but he wanted me to take the LSATs again so that their first year LSAT average might be a little higher. After four years as an undergrad at Duke, I had had about enough of the "Harvard of the South" mierda, and I said good-bye and went to Chicago.

In yesterday's WSJ, there is an op-ed piece in which the JFK myth is pilloried. Toward the end of the piece, the writer presents the thesis that the Kennedy myth makers ruined the Democratic Party, steering it from the party of the little guy to the elites of New England and Hollywood.

But the criteria for president of the United States aren't the same as those set by the deans of admission at Harvard or Yale, Brown or Duke. The happy snobbery of feeling culturally superior and morally virtuous that is at the heart of the Kennedy myth shouldn't be what politics is about. [Bold mine]

University of New Jersey indeed. Eat your heart out, Charlie Battle.

"The Culture Gap" by Brink Lindsey

A good essay about the economic cost of behaving badly and the premium for behaving well.

Football. Football. Alas.

I asked Tom Curtis at church a couple of Sundays ago whether he could do anything about speeding up the beginning of football season. He sighed and confessed that he had spent the previous afternoon watching some sort of golf game on TV that had elements of poker larded into it, he was that desperate for sports. We asked each other whether he had the slightest interest in hockey, and of course neither of us does. And as for baseball? Please.

Which takes me momentarily to a review that appeared in the WSJ Saturday of a non-fiction book entitled The Real All Americans by Sally Jenkins. It is the story of the "the momentous college-football game in 1921 between [Glenn "Pop"] Warner's renowned Carlisle Indian School squad and a vaunted Army team."

Jenkins quotes "the best locker room speech ever . . . to be":

Your fathers and your grandfathers are the ones who fought their fathers. These men playing against you today are soldiers. They are the Long Knives. You are Indians. Tonight, we will know if you are warriors.

Carlisle beat Army 27-6. It helped that Jim Thorpe was in Carlisle's backfield.

As football continues its inexorable migration from free to pay tv, every new season sees me weaken in my resolve to stay with the rabbit ears. The gods have taken away Monday Night Football, and the autumn weeks have dimmed. MNF once redeemed Mondays. Now MNF is no longer a matter of grace, but a matter of money. American Civilization is clearly on the downslope.

I think I heard the word "awesome" in Japanese

My birthday is July 16. Plus, it's too late for Carol's birthday, which was yesterday, but I have my eye on this for her next time.

"Thank God you live in America!"

Alas, Spain.

Saving the Banana

We love bananas at our house. They are so cheap, so filling, and so healthy, we buy several hands a week. Among other things, we eat them like Popsicles after we have peeled them, cut them into two pieces, and frozen them.

I read this article indicating that bananas are at risk, and that a scientist in Uganda is doing something about it. (More on the banana blight here.)

Calorie Reduction Can Be Very Difficult

Having been involved with Weight Watchers for many years, I have had the opportunity to see how people struggle with their weight, especially women, the gender that comprises the very large majority of WW persons. It is harder for women to lose weight and then maintain their weight at a healthy level; in fact it seems to be much harder. Generally speaking, it is very, very difficult to deal with weight matters and physical fitness in our stressful, sugar coated culture. (On the other hand, I have seen some remarkable successes, especially among women.)

My motivator was the cancer. That really got my attention, and Carol's. I thought I was going to die, and half the people in my support group did die within five years of their diagnosis. I was in my mid-forties at the time. My oncologist thought that if I were lucky, I would live until about 60 if I got beyond the first five years. Diet was one thing I thought I might be able to control, and so I started down that road. I don't mean to sound smug when I write about health topics and weight loss. It just seems so vital to me.

How do he do that?

That. And this.

Parkour

My friend Kurt turned me on to Crossfit. Kurt's a Captain in the Army, on his way to med school, and tends to run marathons on a whim - as in he makes the decision 6-12 hours before race time.

So I've been showing him my kettlebell propaganda, and he's seen my kettlebell ante and raised the stakes.

I'm still a bit overwhelmed by the splendor of the site, and I'm going to subscribe to the journal, but this article was too cool to leave unposted.

Stupiddog

You have to see this one.

Toward a Theology of the Self

I think orthodox American Christianity lacks a theology of the body or, to put it in a way that does not necessarily separate body from mind/spirit, a theology of the self. Maybe not "lacks" a theology: it does have a theology, but it is not well articulated; it is inconsistent, maybe incoherent; and it may be wrong in large part.

I have thought on and off about this for many years (which, I readily concede, hardly makes me an expert), but what most recently generated some reflection on the issue was seeing so many over-weight people at the Christian Life Conference. (I know. Everyone is groaning. This again.) But I think the over-weight people I saw simply do not connect what they do with their bodies with their calling to be salt and light. I think there is a sort of Gnosticism at work here, a dualism that leads us away from thinking about how we affect our neighbors by how treat our bodies, in this case how we eat.

If every Christian would reduce his calorie intake so that his weight would fall within the mid-range of the charts and if the food that he ate would be nourishing and empty of empty-calories, the demand for medical services would fall, the price of those services would go down, and poor people would be better able to afford those services. Chronic diseases among elderly Christians would fall, reducing the demand on care-givers, nursing homes, and the like, thus reducing the costs of those services, and making them more accessible to the poor. The junk food industry would stop growing and alcohol consumption would go down.

But I hear nothing, nothing about that. I just hear the body mentioned in two contexts: sex and the Lord's Supper (how's that for a combination?).

Sex seems to be the most important thing about the body that Christians talk about. And we talk about it so competently that our divorce rate approaches that of the general population, and we allow the same-sex relationship issue to define whether we are "really" Christians.

As to the Lord's Supper, I come from a tradition where it has been completely and utterly spiritualized. "This is [really not] my body, broken for you."

The Presbyterians, where I presently have a home, are not quite sure about the Lord's Supper. It is a sacrament, not an "ordinance", to be sure. We think something happens. It's not simply a metaphor, as the Baptists seem to believe. But I'm not quite sure that the Reformers completely worked it out. (I could be wrong on this, and I apologize to those in the Reformed Tradition if I am.)

Here is what happens at our church. We "celebrate" the Lord's supper at a worship service once a month. We have little wafers for the bread/body of Christ. We have grape juice for the wine/blood of Christ. (I don't understand the grape juice versus the wine, especially with wine so cheap and plentiful.) Then, after the service, we have a light lunch in the Fellowship Hall. Here's what I think about that: the real Lord's Supper occurs during the light lunch, where our bodies are being nourished along with our spirits through the wonderful fellowship. I would like for the pastor, as the light lunch fellowship begins, instead of saying the blessing, to pick up a sandwich and then a cup of lemonade and go through the litany. (And maybe the deacons would wait on people during the lunch.) Then we would sing a hymn when the lunch is over and go out.

Like a lot of things, the ancient Jews had the body thing right. There is a unity between mind and body. Adultery, being unkind to one's spouse by the use of one's body, is on the same list as having "no other gods before me". Resting on the Sabbath has the same amount of moral weight as does adultery. When the resurrection occurs, the resurrection will be a bodily one. We will have clothes in heaven. We will recognize each other. We will walk on streets. Finally, Christ was not simply God, he was God incarnate.

So eat your vegetables and stay away from the sweets. That would be a righteous thing to do.

UPDATE: American Christians are not entirely bereft of some leadership on this issue, although Mennonites may not qualify as exactly mainstream. And Pam Smith has been featured on Focus on the Family.

Nowhere to Run to, Nowhere to Hide

Indoor air not so good.

Africa, the Americans have Landed

Interesting article in July's Esquire Magazine by Thomas P.M. Barnett about US forces in Africa.

Montreat Books

Carol and I attended the Christian Life Conference from June 31 through July 3 at Montreat College, which is east of Ashville about 25 miles. John and Nancy Ortberg were the keynote speakers at the plenary sessions, and they were fabulous. In addition to plenary sessions, the conference offers seminars on various topics. During the conference, book titles dropped like leaves from a hardwood in autumn. Here are the ones I managed to rake up:

These were mentioned by Rob Weingartner, the Executive Director of The Outreach Foundation, during his seminar entitled "What is the Presbyterian Global Fellowship?" (See Rob speak of the Outreach Foundation on a short video here. The Presbyterian Global Fellowship page is here. Walter and Morgan are planning on going to the annual conference to be held in Houston August 16-18 of this year. Carol, Mary and I are thinking of attending as well. We wouldn't want to miss spending part of August in Houston anyway.)

Jenkins, The New Christendom: the Coming of Global Christianity and The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South.

Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.

Escobar, Sowing the Word: The Cultural Impact of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1804-2004.(Book review): An article from: Church History [HTML] (Digital)

Snyder, Liberating the Church.

Hirsch, Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church

Pat MacPherson cited the following during his seminar entitled "Igniting the Men in Your Church":

Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man.

Morley, No Man Left Behind.

Nancy Ortberg mentioned these two books:

Everetts, Jesus with Dirty Feet

Lamotte, Travelling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith.

Weight Charts

Following up on my comment to Scott's comment to the preceding post, here is a webpage with weight charts. Another chart is here on the Weight Watcher's website.

I am a medium framed male, about 5' 9", and for a few more days I'll be 60 years of age. My range on the chart to which I first link is 148-160. On the WW chart it is 135 to 169. (Today at the Weight Watchers meeting I weighed in at 159, seeking 155 as my target weight.) Those are pretty broad ranges. I am sure that in an individual case one would want to move carefully as he or she approached the limits. But they are instructive.

Please Pass the Veggies

Following my diagnosis of NHL 13 years ago, Carol and I became quite interested in improving our health. We focused on what we seemed to be able to control, diet and exercise. Along the way, we became involved in Weight Watchers, which has helped us focus weekly on the matter of nutrition and we have read books and magazines, especially Nutrition Action Health Letter (which we would recommend).

Carol is simply a marvelous cook, and she transformed our diet: we moved away from red meats almost entirely, we eat plenty of vegetables, whole grain breads, brown rice, and so on. It would be difficult to be in a family where the cook is not on the same page. Carol is not only on the same page, she has developed simply delicious and healthy meals over the years.

Some people in the nutrition community, maybe a bit on the fringe, believe that being under-weight contributes to good health and longevity. This week I bumped into a the website of the "Calorie Restriction Society" where this thesis is presented and discussed. Among things that I note, after a brief review of the site, are these points:

1. Low glycemic index foods are much preferred. This is the thesis of Sugar Busters, a best seller for many years.

2. The sweet spot of being underweight is somewhere below 10% of our teenage weight. I weighed in around 145 when I was a teenager. When I got my cancer diagnosis, I was pushing 180. I weigh around 160 right now, although my Weight Watcher “goal weight” is 155, and I am trying to get back there. So that would make my sweetspot around 130, which I am sure would alarm everyone I know if I were to get to that point.

3. The reason one lives longer on this particular diet seems to be that the poisons and toxins in foods that one eats tend to be stored in fat, where there is fat around in which to store such things. So less fat means that those toxins and poisons will be sloughed off as you eat only what you will burn up in energy. And I guess the less food one eats over all, the less the foods will poison you. And, of course, the healthier food one eats, the less one is poisoned. I think this is it, but I am going to read more about this.

"Pulled out his handgun and shot both in the head."

Semper fi.

No Signs

It's been a while since I've posted on K&K regarding this, but now is a good time.

...can't help to share some good news.

Scott

A Solid Foundation

Now I'm ready for the world of business.

Highest-Form-of-Flattery Department

Despair chemical copycat.

"The woman is almost always the first victim of a dictatorship"

Read the entire interview of Mario Vargas Llosa in the weekend edition of the WSJ, kindly reproduced without charge at OpinionJournal.com.

Movies

Sean keeps an eye on Kelly's blog, which is worth keeping an eye on. Sean points to Kelly's post on the updated American Film Institute's new top 100 "American" movies. It looks like political correctness is alive and well at the AFI.

I like Kelly's comments. For example, I couldn't agree more with his comment on Saving Private Ryan. But his comment on Gone With the Wind shouts "Yankee! Yankee! Yankee!" But some of my best friends are Yankees.

Hello on Sunday.

Obama is a Bible reader.

Phoebe's portrait.

Build your own computer for $72? Sounds like fun!

The case against cardio.

Flash Gordan Conquers the Universe! John Williams has nothing on Franz Liszt, and other similarities. CW is one of the advanced technologies exhibited in this masterpiece. Plus one of the deepest thoughts ever affirmed on the silver screen: "There is no power in the universe powerful enough to destroy human thought." And don't you think that Buster Crabbe could be Billy Graham's uncle?

A Tall Poppy? Not I.

From a column by Dorothy Rabinowitz in Friday's WSJ.

Duke President Richard Brodhead was doubtless disturbed by the charges [in the Lacrosse team case] and the plight of the accused athletes. But that didn't prevent him from firing the lacrosse coach, in deference to the reigning hysteria--or treating the team members as though they merited shunning. For the most part, he kept his head down while the fires raged around him. His was, it should be said, not unusual behavior. The great consuming career goal of our college and university presidents--with the exception of oddities like Harvard's Larry Summers--has for more than two decades been the same: to avoid any word or deed that might incur the wrath of their gender- and race-obsessed faculties and allied campus activists. University presidents once had higher ambitions.

The entire article is worth reading.

Can it? Should it?

In an earlier post I posed the question "Can this marriage be saved?" in referring to the matter of a long-running disagreement between Carol and me over the question of whether any part of our precious lives should be spent engaged in board games and the like. I want to be sure that everyone understands the ironic allusion behind my use of the question "Can this marriage be saved?". It may not be obvious to younger members of the community.

"Can this marriage be saved?" was the title of a column in the Ladies' Home Journal, a women's magazine that was a best-seller in the 50s. The writer would present a particular non-fictional marital situation, one that seriously threatened the marriage, and then would offer suggestions on "saving" the marriage. The question, "Can this marriage be saved", crept into the language idiomatically, and, for example, one spouse would use the phrase as a sort of benediction after describing a not too serious disagreement with the other spouse.

I would see my mother reading that column sometimes and I would ask, "Should that marriage be saved?" But that was a little irreverent and, of course, not scriptural. My mother had an idiomatic phrase that she used in replying to me, her son, but I won't repeat it.

Hey!

Carol and I are not alone!

3,500

The average number of abortions that were performed daily in the U.S. in 2002, according to US Census figures. But don't worry, immigration will make up for it.

On the other hand, there's this.

"Flightplan"

Saw this movie with Jodie Foster on DVD last night. (By that I mean Jodie Foster was in the movie and I saw the movie. Jodie and I, in other words, were not on a movie date.)

(No Wednesday night Bible study for the rest of the summer. There was some sort of board-game activity last night at church. I should say "bored-game night". I came home after the supper. Carol, on the other hand, stayed on. She was in her element with the bored games and enjoyed every minute of them. Which leads to the question, "Can this marriage be saved?")

(Alert! Alert! I may give away too much of this movie.)

Anyway, I put on this DVD. It's not the kind Carol would have enjoyed: mother loses her kid on transatlantic flight and everyone else thinks she's delusional and never brought the kid on board in the first place. The movie is spookily dark. Jodie Foster is at her usual best, and Sean Bean plays the captain of the airplane, a giant 757 sort of thing. He's good, playing a slightly befuddled, tough, good guy. (He was in Lord of the Rings, the original member of the Fellowship who gets killed by orcs toward the end of the first movie. Hollywood can't decide whether he should be a hero or a villain when they cast him. He can go either way.)

The plot moved quickly, so quickly that after the movie I was unable to explain the plot to Carol. But it seemed to make plenty of sense as it was flying by. Of course, it comes out OK at the end, but the denouement is disappointing.

What disturbed me about the denouement is that the Jodie Foster character is essentially unforgiving of the people who didn't believe her, in particular the captain and an Arab passenger whom she erroneously suggested had been looking in her daughter's bedroom window before they left for the airport. During the denouement, both of them make gestures of regret about their not believing her, and she just looks at them without saying anything like, "Gee, I can understand the position you were in with me, although you probably should have realized this movie was made in Hollywood and I'm Jodie Foster. But it's OK."

I guess forgiveness - grace - is not a big value in Hollywood. But the movie disappointed me in that respect. I would have given it a B, even a B+, with an appropriate denouement. Instead, it gets the B-.

I, Claudius

I, Claudius was on Ann Perry's list of favorites that I mentioned in a post on May 17. I just finished reading it. It is an historical novel written in the 1930s. Robert Graves, the author, drew together all sorts of historical materials concerning the reigns of Caesar Augustus, Tiberius Caesar, Caligula, and finally Claudius himself (him, briefly, but there is a sequel Graves wrote just about his reign). Graves used a fictional narrative purportedly written in the first person by Claudius.

I have been reading Livy's, The Early History of Rome, which is so densely written (at least to me) that I can only read it in short sittings - but I am making good progress. It is "history" and not fiction, but it has the same feel as I, Claudius without the characterizations that help move Graves' narrative along. I enjoyed I, Claudius, and I continue to enjoy the bits and pieces of Livy that I am reading. (I'll finish it one day.)

Maybe you saw the Masterpiece Theatre series, I Claudius. It was broadcast at a busy time of my life, and I didn't get to see it. But I've ordered the first two DVDs of it from NetFlix. It was allegedly the most popular Masterpiece Theatre series of all time.

Email Survival

I was going to title this post "Email Management", but I realized that I do not find myself even near an "email management" status; I'm simply trying to survive. I would like to know how the community is dealing with their emails these days. I am not doing well.

At my former firm (KDW) when email first began to become prominent, the lawyers were very careful about publishing their email addresses. For example, a client would ask a lawyer's secretary for the boss's email address, and the secretary said "she [or he] would check", and not give it out without permission. An email address was treated something like a cellphone number is now treated (or itself used to be treated).

Now our email addresses are printed on our business cards and stationary. They are better known than our mailing addresses and telephone numbers. They tumble in, not mediated by receptionists, mail room clerks, and secretaries. They come in without any priority except the time of receipt. Nowadays, they come in with a receipt feature, so the sender will know if and when I opened it, and I would not be able to duck it by using "my spam filter ate your email" white lie. (Anyway, we are criticized for not reviewing what our spam filter eats.) Not that I would use such a lie, of course.

I have started using Outlook "rules" to try to herd some of this stuff. I have tried telling people who are not clients to use my home email, and that's very often ignored.

Macon told me that he has (or is thinking about) an automatic response that says something like "I'll get back to you within 24 hours". I am thinking about "I'll get back to you in about 24 weeks".

I would appreciate suggestions and links to advice on managing this mixed blessing of email. I suggest we label such posts "email survival".

Don't send me an email on this. Just post something.

A Duke Faculty Member for a Duke Alum to be Proud Of

Steve Baldwin, Professor of Chemistry.

Here is a post about him and what he had to say about the Lacrosse Travesty. Be sure to follow the link to what he wrote last year in the Duke Chronicle, the student newspaper. (Thanks, Instapundit.)

Visual Technology Advancing

Unbelieveable.

Steve Peifer's Computer Ministry

Macon and I have posted about Steve's work in Africa before, and I am going back and label those posts "Steve Peifer". His computer ministry, to which I made oblique reference when I was suggesting Father's Day gifts, is now featured on the AIM website. (Mary sent me the link.)

Agricultural Development in Africa

Problem solved.

"God said, 'Put down the Boxing Gloves'."

In a comment to Kellsey's great Rhythms post, a friend of her's, Nancy, tells her that a mutual friend of the two of them, a young woman, has died of cancer. Nancy writes:

[Sandra] would have been 31 on June 30. After fighting cancer for 3 1/2 years, she is no longer in pain. A week before she passed she said that God was telling her to put down the boxing gloves. Now she is celebrating with her dad and our Heavenly Father.

(Nancy solicits prayers for Sandra's family.)

Such a poignant metaphor - "Put down the boxing gloves" - especially in the context of a mortal disease. But I would think it applies to everyday life as well. God says, "Put down the boxing gloves, I have plans for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." See Jeremiah 29.11

"A Lot of Blocks in Miami"

We spoke with Mary this morning. She described a shopping trip that took her to a little stand where a Kenyan was selling the sort of scarves she was looking for. She said that when you discuss a possible sale with a Kenyan shopkeeper, they fall into conversation with you (probably to disarm the shopper - a great technique!). She said that the Kenyan asked where she was from, and Mary said "Miami", of course.

"Oh, there are a lot of blocks there."

Mary didn't know what to say to that. Yes, she could say, there are blocks, and streets, traffic circles, parks and such in Miami.

"Blocks?"

"Yes, blocks."

Then she realized he meant Blacks, as in Black people. How politically incorrect, she thought. He should really say African-Americans, she found herself thinking.

"Oh, you mean "Blacks"! Right, there are many Blacks there. And a lot of Latin people too, who speak Spanish."

"Do you speak Spanish", he asked?

"Yes, I do, but I want to learn Swahili".

"Yes, you should learn Swahili."

Mary said it would probably have been foolish to describe to the Kenyan the "blocks" in Miami as "African-Americans". I would agree. I think its a little foolish to describe them that way over here too. I think of them as, well, Americans. Haven't we all been trying to think of each other as Americans for quite some time?

I'm Feeling Infringed

As a Stokes, you know.

Ping-Pong

Amazing.

"Life with Father: What Kids Get from Time with Dad"

If you can get your hands on yesterday's WSJ, turn to page D1 and read Sue Shellenbarger's "Work & Family" column with this title. She writes about the special ways that dads positively impact their children, even if they are not able to spend as much time with them as mothers sometimes are, especially when the children are toddlers, but later as well.

For one thing, dads get physical with their children in a way that mothers don't. This was called "rough-housing" when I was growing up, and it was fun to rough-house with the boys, even when they were tiny. (I was more reserved with Mary. She's a girl, after all.) We would "wrestle", rolling over and over on the floor, with my protecting them with my elbows as my embrace trapped them against my chest when I rolled on top. That was great fun.

Another thing she mentions is that dads talk to their little ones differently. They tend to talk to them as they would to grown-ups. I remember that too. I would intentionally use adult words that I knew they wouldn't know, just to get them at least familiar with the sound. And then I would give them longer answers to their questions than one might expect. If an answer led to another topic, then I would discuss that topic. (At the very least, this approach would lead them to thinking about taking a nap as Dad dronned on and on and on.)

She mentions playing games. (Not board games!!!!) Hide and seek was really fun. Once I had a couple of two way radios, and put one in a closet and then I hid elsewhere in the house. As they were getting close to my hiding place, I would whisper in my radio, and it would make a sound where I had hidden the other, and off they would go!

We also had a really grotesque halloween mask, one that would fit over one's entire head, and I would put it on a soccor ball. Then I would put it in various surprising places and scare the heck out of them when they opened a closet door or a drawer or whereever. One night, before they went to bed, I put the thing on the pillow of one of the boy's bunks, and pulled the covers up to it after placing other pillows under the covers to make the shape of a body. Another night I propped the thing outside their bedroom window, looking in.

Then she mentions how dad's deal with behavior. She said that they are more likely to warn a child about "real-world" consequences that would attend bad behavior than mom's. I recall warning one of my children that his/her unfriendly behavior to his/her sibling(s) could result in their not being friends when they grew up. He/she took that seriously I think, and they are now great friends. Or maybe they would have been great friends anyway. (After all, they obviously had a common enemy.)

If you are a dad, you will find that article very encouraging and not feel so bad about spending less time with them than, perhaps, their mother. That sounds like the old "quality time" excuse, but I think Ms. Shellenbarger has a point. (We had a joke about quality time vs. quantity time around our household. When the kids and I were just goofing off, we called that "quantity time" and loved it.)

From our Local Critters Department

Gators (4 legged kind) in Miami Springs. In fact, right down the street.

The Power of Ten

Cool!

"Africa should stand on its own two feet"

When we visited Mary in Kenya, we had dinner with a third generation missionary who had been born and raised in Kenya. He spoke to us of his frustration. He values the idea of providing the resources to the Kenyans to build their own country, but he laments the fact that they largely waste what is given them and nothing is accomplished. They are often back for more help, depending on the white missionary to solve their problems. He said to me, "I just don't know what is to be done!"

Carol brought to my attention this interview in Der Speigal of Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, and it is well worth the read. (Glen Reynolds links to it on Instapundit.com). Shikwati cries, "For God's sake, please stop the aid."

A mere ten days in Kenya hardly makes one an expert, but I came away thinking that the main thing these people need is the Gospel. See Acts 3:1-10. And John 5: 2-9.

UPDATE: This on the West's patronizing interference with Africans regarding the malaria menace.