Banana Report: First Fruits and Another Bunch Coming

About three weeks ago, the bunch on our "Goldfinger" banana plant ripened, almost all at once. Every day for about 5 days we went out and harvested bananas off the bunch, putting them in a bowl that I have pictured. There were too many even for me to consume, although we went an entire week without any store-bought bananas. With the overflow, we made gifts to neighbors, baked cookies, banana bread, and a cobbler (the second photo), and froze several quarts of them ripe and mashed up. And they were delicious!

Now we have another bunch on the way, this one on our "Ice Cream" banana plant. Not sure when the fruit will ripen, but it looks like it is getting close. Yum!

I'm Really Not Missing Television These Days

The other day a young man in an ATT shirt arrived at our doorstep trying to sell us his company's answer to cable. It's not a bad deal, for about $30 more a month on our ATT bill we can get something that seems to rival Comcast easily.

But what in the world is there worth seeing? NADA!

This came to mind as I read yesterday's WSJ, which, on a Friday, has its Weekend Journal section. That section has movie, book and TV program reviews, as well as ads selling multi-million dollar homes in the Hamptons (What a dissonant arrangement. Maybe.) Often when I read the TV program reviews, I have to restrain myself from going home and tearing the rabbit ears off our set, by means of which we can access commercial and public TV at no cost.

Did I say "no cost?" Only my precious, precious time on this earth. "No cost," indeed. But I digress.

This week's Journal reviews a show on HBO called "True Blood." It is probably very well produced and obviously staffed with attractive young adult actors (there's a photo). But the WSJ review of this show indicates that it is simply garbage. It reminds me of a scene in chapter 9 of Ezekiel, where, in a vision, the Lord's theophanus incarnation (clearly "the Son") leads the prophet through a hidden door inside the Temple. There Ezekiel sees "wicked and detestable things" portrayed in this hidden room. He sees

portrayed all over the walls all kinds of crawling and detestable animals and all the idols of the house of Israel. In front of them [these walls with their "art," that is these walls covered with graphics] stood seventy elders of the house of Israel . . . Each had a censer in this hand, and a fragrant cloud of incense was rising.

Doesn't this sound like people sitting in front of the TV looking at the detestable things and idols presented in many of the programs? Or in the movies? Or on our PC screens? None of the elders is actually involved in the bad behavior depicted on the walls, other than holding the censers (which means that they approve of what is depicted). They are simply observing it. Talk about displacing time!

A Rough Ride Ahead

The federal government is currently saddled with commitments for the next three decades that it will be unable to meet in real terms. This is not new. For at least a quarter century analysts have been aware of the pending surge in baby boomer retirees.

We cannot grow out of these fiscal pressures. The modest-sized post-baby-boom labor force, if history is any guide, will not be able to consistently increase output per hour by more than 3% annually. The product of a slowly growing labor force and limited productivity growth will not provide the real resources necessary to meet existing commitments. (We must avoid persistent borrowing from abroad. We cannot count on foreigners to finance our current account deficit indefinitely.)

Only politically toxic cuts or rationing of medical care, a marked rise in the eligible age for health and retirement benefits, or significant inflation, can close the deficit. I rule out large tax increases that would sap economic growth (and the tax base) and accordingly achieve little added revenues.

With huge deficits currently having no evident effect on either inflation or long-term interest rates, the budget constraints of the past are missing. It is little comfort that the dollar is still the least worst of the major fiat currencies. But the inexorable rise in the price of gold indicates a large number of investors are seeking a safe haven beyond fiat currencies.

The United States, and most of the rest of the developed world, is in need of a tectonic shift in fiscal policy. Incremental change will not be adequate.

-Alan Greenspan in today's WSJ.

S'mores Pie

Are you kidding me?

The Lawyer Bubble Bursts Big Time

Glenn Reynolds, himself a law professor, posts on the oversupply of young lawyers and the law schools that continue to pump them out. The higher education "bubble" has been a continuing theme of his blog, and the law school portion of it is a big part of that theme.

I have seen this difficult situation show up in my practice never more dramatically than this year. We are seeing highly qualified recent law school graduates, including LLM graduates in estate planning and tax, seeking employment even on an intern (read "free") basis. An estate planning lawyer I know in Broward employs young lawyers on a "contract basis" for $20 per hour. We are wrestling with whether we should hire one of these very attractive people and, if so, at what salary.

I sent the resume of one young man I met recently to an estate planning lawyer in Tampa that I know, a classmate of mine at UChi Law School. Here is a part of his email in response:

What I've seen and heard is nobody is hiring. There are hundreds (probably thousands) of quality law school graduates not getting jobs or being deferred for years. I was up at the Law School last year. It is a major, major problem for the Law School as well as the graduates. We are not really looking for a lawyer, even though we are busy. I will, however, look carefully at the resume you sent, because the young man certainly went to excellent schools.

The young man whose resume I had sent to my Tampa friend had been laid off from a Wall Street firm after being there for over a year. Another young lawyer we are considering was laid off from a prominent So. Florida firm a few months ago - after billing for that firm, he said, 2200 hours last year!

The question I have is this? How much of the reluctance of established lawyers to hire quality graduates is simply fear about the future, rather than a genuine lack of work for them to do? Note that my friend said "we are busy" but not "really looking for a lawyer." We are really busy too. I would be happy being less busy, and so would my clients, who often have to wait and wait for me to complete their work. But this atmosphere of fear and worry in the economy affects even our outlook.

On the other hand, I don't think it can be denied that right now there are too many young lawyers to be absorbed for a good while. I should think that the market will respond to that situation and less people will be seeking admission to law schools who lack a burring desire to be a lawyer at any cost, whose families simply cannot afford another three years or more of education for them, or who understand (as few of them seem to do) what a burden educational debt will be.

The "You Can Keep Your Plan" Lie

Firms were promised by the Obamacare advocates that we could keep our health plans. Today we received from our broker the conditions, as just announced by the Labor Department, under which we could "grandfather" what we have now and avoid what Obamacare will otherwise impose. Those conditions make it practically impossible for us to keep our plan.

And there is this footnote: unions are exempt from the conditions that make impractical our so-called "grandfathered" plans.

UPDATE (6/17/2010):

Health-care plans that existed before the new law are "grandfathered" with regard to some of its provisions. The rules released Monday spell out how little these plans can change without losing their protected status.

Health plans would no longer be grandfathered if a business changes insurance companies (a common practice when employers shop for lower prices), raises deductibles more than 5%, drops any existing benefits, or even increases co-pays by as little as $5.

Complying with these new rules would raise costs for companies who provide coverage, reduce competition among health insurance companies, and discourage efforts to make employees more price conscious. The Obama administration itself estimates that these draft rules could cost up to 80% of small employers and 64% of large employers their grandfathered status. This translates to between 87 million and 115 million Americans losing their current coverage. Companies and insurers promise a hardy fight on the proposed regulations, but repeal of the provisions that authorized them are the only guarantee of their defeat.

-From Karl Rove's op-ed in today's WSJ

Email: The Illusion of Attention

One of the problems that I notice with email is that people often do not read them carefully, but they will go ahead and reply to them anyway, making either bland comments that do not move the ball forward at all (at the one extreme) or wildly inappropriate responses that complicate matters (at the other). It appears to me that such a responder's purpose is to assure the person who initiated the electronic conversation that the responder is right on top of things, that is, he is paying attention and really cares. Of course, that would be a lie.

If I am the initiator, I much prefer not to hear from a responder via email (or in any other context) until that person is ready to give my inquiry or comments thorough consideration before responding. If I don't hear from someone and I would like at least a confirmation that my message was received, then I may telephone or send an email seeking to set up a telephone call.

If one receives an email, but simply does not have the time to focus immediately, there is a risk that the initiator takes offense if one simply delays his response. The next thing we see is a repeat email from the initiator, barely masking annoyance. I think the answer to this is simply to respond to the initial email with an email that says something like "Thanks for your email. I expect to be able to focus on it in two [minutes, days, weeks, months, years]. I will telephone you about the matter, but will send you an email first to propose times for us to talk by telephone and see if we can settle on something convenient for us both. Adios."

This response, of course, does not refer to initiators whom I don't know or don't recognize and who give me no clue as to their identity. I will usually delete that kind. If I am not sure, then I will ask an assistant to respond to it and seek to determine whether the inquiry is a serious one.

BP Still Not Paying Attention

The Daily Business Review, a legal/business newspaper for South Florida, reports this morning that the giant law firm Akerman Senterfitt will be representing BP in the oil spill cases, "in what promises to produce years of litigation."

The Daily Business Review, a legal/business newspaper for South Florida, reports this morning that two of the Akerman lawyers in the Legislature, Sens. Dan Gelber and Alex Villalobos, are pushing for a special legislative session to ban offshore drilling off Florida.

The Democrats' BP "Compensation Fund"

The WSJ today reports that the Obama administration, joined by the likes of Harry Reid, the Senate Majority leader, is pushing BP to set up a separate compensation fund to answer to the damages that the spill will have caused others. This proposal drips in irony in light of the fact that one of the pillars of the Democratic left is the plaintiffs' lawyers bar. The proposal ignores them, these hired-guns who are already into the fray, ready, willing and able to take BP to the woodshed. It ignores a victim-favorable legal system similarly ready, willing, and able to supply the lumber.

But instead of the courts determining legal liability and damages in adversary proceedings, the Administration proposes . . . whom? Undoubtedly, when this proposal gets fleshed out, there will be some sort of political board applying rules that it makes up while it goes along, playing favorites along the way.

This is what happened to GM. Instead of allowing GM to descend (ascend?) to the bankruptcy court in an unfettered way, we had a political intervention so that the unions, of all interests, would be protected - the unions, whose work rules helped send that company into insolvency.

What we have is a "rule of men" developing, and we move away from a rule of law. Another irony is that a so-called US Constitutional scholar (who, as far as we know, never wrote anything on the subject) leads the charge.

UPDATE: The President during his televised speech on June 14, spoke of the "BP compensation fund." The next morning, the WSJ editorial writers commented as follows:

Tellingly, Mr. Obama declined to cite any legal authority for the escrow [BP Compensation] fund, about which he plans to "inform" BP CEO Tony Hayward tomorrow. We don't believe the President has the power to force a corporation to set aside money for future, undetermined and open-ended obligations. It is a precedent fraught with potential for abuse.

Slow Burn at Stokes McMillan Antunez

Word is getting around on the burdens imposed on businesses (even the small ones like ours) by the Obamacare measures. Among them, Section 9006(b)(1) of the new healthcare law, which requires that all businesses submit a 1099 tax form for every vendor from whom they purchase more than $600 in goods and services each year.

Not only will the firm have to issue a great many more of these forms. (By "the firm" I mean Carol, who wears many hats: VP finance, payroll specialist, purchasing agent, firm benefits manager, IT expert - for that matter all things dealing with firm management and administration other than personnel, on which she gets help from Nancy.) The firm (as defined) must get tax ID numbers from all the vendors. It already takes "the firm" a day and a half each year to ready these things. Now it will probably take three days or more, plus the addition and integration of more software.

Consider also the additional burden on the government, not only from processing these bits of paper, but also creating the extra enforcement capability to make the reporting useful. But it's OK, because the government can just hire more federal workers.

Maybe there will be a net gain for the deficit, that is, maybe there will be something left over after the extra costs to the government are deducted from the additional tax revenues (if any). But I doubt it will be worth the economic costs to private businesses. The extra costs to private businesses will, of course, itself reduce tax revenues. The best we can probably hope for is a wash.

This is what happens when we send to Congress men and women who, mostly, never ran a private business and when people who do run businesses fail to pay attention to what the government is doing.

The tax reporting burden is in addition to what is happening to our health-care benefits, which have been generous for a firm our size from the beginning. (Remember that our "law firm" has just 4 lawyers; the other 8 or so of us are non-lawyers, ranging from the receptionist to the senior paralegal.) But the health-care benefits issue is for another post. I will mention that Carol has attended nearly two days of seminars/webinars presented by our insurance broker Brown & Brown on that particular subject during the last two months. Needless to say, the news is not good on that front either.

The Blue Ridge Parkway and Environs.

Why would one vacation anywhere else? The Miami Herald features the Parkway in today's edition. (There's a video, a map, and more information at the link. Go ahead and register for the Herald, if they ask you to.)

Tim Conway: Still Really Funny at 78

The Natural Born Sibling who Just Showed-Up

``Simon isn't adopted, but he wants to be,'' Angie said with a laugh. ``He feels left out. Celia, the 14-year-old, tells him all the time, `Simon, we were chosen. You just showed up.' ''

-Great story from the Miami Herald.

(Thanks, Van!)

Why We Have the Second Amendment

The most important overlooked story of the past few weeks was overlooked because it was not surprising. Also because no one really wants to notice it. The weight of 9/11 and all its implications is so much on our minds that it's never on our mind.

I speak of the report from the Inspector General of the Justice Department, issued in late May, saying the department is not prepared to ensure public safety in the days or weeks after a terrorist attack in which nuclear, biological or chemical weapons are used. The Department of Homeland Security is designated as first federal responder, in a way, in the event of a WMD attack, but every agency in government has a formal, assigned role, and the crucial job of Justice is to manage and coordinate law enforcement and step in if state and local authorities are overwhelmed.

-Peggy Noonan in today's WSJ.

Freedom from Our Own Miserable Subjectivity

The truth of God is neither what you or I think, nor what the Church teaches, but what the Spirit says to the Church through the Word. And since churches and individuals err when they are not "governed with the Spirit and the Word of God", the greatest need of the Church in this as in every age is humbly to submit to the authority of the Word and prayerfully to seek the illumination of the Spirit.

I am conscious that some of you may think this places unacceptable constraint on academic freedom, or to verge simply upon a blind obscurantism. But is not this submission of our minds to the mind of Christ an intellectual imprisonment? No more so than the submission of our wills to the will of Christ is moral bondage. Certainly it is a surrender of liberty, for no Christian can be a "free thinker". Yet it is this kind of surrender which is true freedom - freedom from our own miserable subjectivity, and freedom from bondage to the current whims and fancies of the world. Is it stunting to spiritual growth? No, it is essential to it, for Christian growth is nothing if it is not growth into Christ as Lord and Head.

-John Stott, as quoted in Steer, Basic Christian - The Inside Story of John Stott, (IVP 2010) at page 157.

Your Local Government at Work

A Miami-Dade schools administrator who oversees special-education programs has been charged with using public money intended for disabled children to pay for her own children's private school tuition.

Deborah Swirsky-Nunez was arrested Tuesday, accused of taking $19,000 in John McKay scholarship money. The scholarship is funded by the state to help offset the costs of private schools for children with disabilities.

The 45-year-old woman reportedly used the money to pay for her son and daughter to attend a private school in Broward County.

As Dave Barry might say, I am not making this up.

Out of the mouth of babes...

So, this morning, as Honor was trying to eat her breakfast, her older brother would not leave her alone.
She asked him to stop.
He did not.

And, then, (and this is what made me almost laugh out loud), my three year old daughter turns to him and says,

"Aidan! Stop antagonizing me!"

She is not even 3 and a half yet, and she is using the word "antagonize". Ahhh, I LOVE it. We all have Macon to thank for this one, folks. He has also been asking Aidan to stop antagonizing his sister for several months now. Looks like Honor picked up on Daddy's key phrase.

hee!

Lego Printer: Incredible!

(Thanks, Jane!)

Arnold Stott's Healthy Journey

On our recent trip to Austin, Macon gave me a copy of Basic Christian - the Inside Story of John Stott, published by InterVarsity Press and written by Roger Steer. Part of this biography describes the fascinating and difficult relationship that developed between John Stott and his father, General Arnold Stott, during WWII. John's desire was to pursue theological studies during the war and his father's desire, equally fervent, was that John defer those studies and take his place in the Armed Forces to fight England's enemies, as most of John's peers were doing. It is a credit to both men that their relationship during this period, while very heavily strained, more than survived, because John pursued those studies, treating his father firmly but with the utmost respect, and his father, very grudgingly at times, continued to supply him with the financial means to do so.

John's single mindedness about God's call on his life, his discipline, and great gifts, resulted in John becoming,at the age of 29, Rector of All Soul's Church in London, not long after the war ended. At a reception after John's installation, Steer, the biographer, describes a scene between John's father and Eric Nash, the minister who brought John to Christ when John was a teenager and attended one of Nash's summer camps. (In a way, then, Nash was John's spiritual father.) Rev. Nash's nickname was Bash, and John's parents knew well who he was, particularly how deeply Bash had influenced John.

Bash found John's father standing [at the reception] smoking a cigarette and (as Bash later told John) 'looking very proud of you and yet out of his depth by turns'.

'Good evening, Sir Arnold,' said Bash cheerfully.

Arnold slowly turned his head towards the speaker. There was a long pause.

'Who are you?' Arnold growled.

'I'm Nash, John's friend. We met in 1940. Do you recall me?'

There was another long pause. 'Yes, I do. What are you doing?'

'Oh, youth work,' Bash replied. 'You must be a proud man tonight, Sir Arnold. Wasn't it to be the Foreign Office for John, in those pre-war days?'

Arnold looked sour, almost startled, and puffed his cigarette. 'I was never against this. I only wanted no hasty decisions.'

'You've hardly a grey hair,' said Bash. 'You wear very well.'

I'm thin,' replied Arnold solemnly. 'You see?' he concluded and managed a smile.

Lilly [John's mother] arrived, beaming all over her face. 'I must shake hands with dear Bash again!'

FBI: Legal Gun Sales Up; Violent Crime Down

Data from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation show that America has been on a firearms buying spree since the end of 2005. Meanwhile, the FBI recently released preliminary 2009 crime data indicating that violent crime has been dropping at an accelerating rate since the end of 2006. More here. (Thanks, Instapundit.)

Sarah, have the jerk over for dinner, for goodness sake!

If she can't handle this one with some aplomb, why are we thinking about her as Presidential material? I'm about outta here.

"Having what is needful is better than having it all"

From an excellent column by Mindy Belz in the June issue of World Magazine. It's entitled Moveable Feasts. The source of the quote is Proverbs 30:

7Two things I ask of you;
deny them not to me before I die:
8Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
9lest I be full and deny you
and say,"Who is the LORD?"
or lest I be poor and steal
and profane the name of my God. [ESV]

No to Soft Drinks

Sugary drinks' link to high blood pressure. (Thanks, Instapundit.)

Growing up, my mom never had soft drinks in the house, never Cokes for example, and she was from Atlanta. The only exception was ginger ale when we were sick. There was also a soft drink called Squirt she would get - not often but sometimes - when we were not feeling well. Those came in 4 oz. bottles. But otherwise, no soft drinks.

Some Sweet Moments in Austin

So, another thing I love about Austin. It is where my family IS. It is where we have been laughing, crying, playing and sleeping for almost 5 years now.
I love that my son's soccer field is both right next to Town Lake and right next to downtown. And, I love my house and its location. I love that my son's kindergarten librarian has about 8 piercings in her right ear and that her hair is dyed black and white and that she LOVES, LOVES, LOVES books. I love that we will be walking Aidan to school next year most likely along with our across-the-street neighbor. And speaking of neighbors, I love that on my street of 18 houses, 10 of them have children 6 and under. I love that I love my neighbor moms. We are such a smorgasbourd, (how on earth DO you spell that word?). I look forward to meeting with all my fellow neighbor moms each month so we can have book club, (where we discuss books, eat good food, drink good wine and share with one another the triumphs and heartbreaks of parenthood). I love where we live. I love that the people in our city are more often than not committed to being good stewards of the earth (our reasons may vary widely, but I enjoy living around others who take this call to responsibility and stewardship seriously). I love how many amazing restaurants there are in town that are unique and homegrown (not to say that I don't like chains, too...let's hear it for Chuy's and their roasted veggies burrito!) I love how green it is, how many trees there are (even if they are all gnarled and squat, at least there's a lot of them, right?)

I love living here. I love that my family LIVES here, and since pictures of bookclub are not that interesting, here's some pictures of my family living here, in Austin.

Your Free Market at Work

Adroid-based smartphones in the first quarter of 2010 grew to 28%, beating iPhones' 21% share.

Quick, Apple, dispatch messengers to the beltway.

Things I Love in Austin...the first post

This is what I saw on my way to Town Lake (which has officially been voted "Ladybird Lake", but I just can't make the transition). You can't really see it, but that entire little lower bar to the stroller has deep maroon fringe hanging from it. This is the most "pimped" stroller I have EVER seen.

This is the beginning of the trail I run at Town Lake. The section I run about 4 times a week is 3.1 miles. If I ran to the next further bridge to cross over the river (which is a section of "The Colorado River" and which is at this point called either Town Lake or the aforementioned Ladybird Lake), it would be 4.17 miles. If I ran another bridge further it would be 4.82 miles. The longest route is either 10 miles or 13, I can't remember. Maybe someday I will run it. But for now, I am enjoying pushing myself to go faster and stronger on my little 5k section.

This is what I see when I have reached Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge (my midway point). On this particular day, I got to be there when the sun was rising. It was lovely, and so nice outside: mid 50's, cool breeze. It would only have been better if I had had the bonus of getting to have Macon run with me. This day, I was alone. (Unless you count, Michael Jackson, Rob Mallonee and the Vigilantes of Love, Linkin' Park, Kelly Clarkson, the Dixie Chicks and others who run with me often.)



These last two pictures are what I see when I come to the end of my run and look either way off the last pedestrian bridge.

I love Town Lake Trail. What a beautiful place to run. Lately the trail has been heavy with green. I love the peace, I love that no matter what time I am there, there are always other people running, walking, biking...pushing single, double and even triple jogging strollers! I love that the dirt trail is soft on my legs and doesn't pound back against me like the streets around my house. I love that I have grown to not only love how I feel after the run, but also how I feel on the run when I am there.

"Strongarm" Alumnus Publishes

Jason Berggren, formerly of the band Strongarm, has made a splash with his 10 Things I Hate about Christianity.

Walter was one of the band's early promoters.

Here's the website for the book.

Slow Rehiring

This is a good article to which Instapundit linked concerning the very slow pace of re-employment.

In our own office we laid off two secretaries early last year, and have only lately upped the head-count by moving a part-timer to a full-time clerk/receptionist position. In part not rehiring two full-time secretaries arises from a partner leaving. On the other hand, a barely full-time associate has been transitioning to complete full-time as she completes some extra schooling which we funded for her. She will very soon replace the partner in terms of "billable hours" contributed.

Taking up part of the slack has been an increasing use by the "time-keepers" (the lawyers and paralegals) of the advanced software that we have. We simply don't need clerks to finish off a lot of the work - we can do it ourselves because of the technology at hand. We continue to edge up the learning curve with that technology.

Finally, the layoffs we made were of people who were barely performing anyway. In fact, we laid them off not because the recession had bitten into revenues, but because it made us stop and think about the overhead issue. We laid them off because we realized that we could do without them. And we have become less tolerant of average performers, as these two people barely were.

I wouldn't be surprised if in some respects we are a microcosm of what is happening in some areas of the private-sector economy where people are not being hired back.

Why We Live in South Florida

One reason, anyway. Rick Tuttle took this photo of the sun coming up off Miami Beach.

A Few More Miles to go Before I Sleep, God Willing

In the class I teach each year at the UM Law School in its Masters of Laws in Estate Planning program, I recently met a student who was not all that younger than I, a man who, after a varied and interesting business career, decided to go to law school five years ago. He told me about being inspired to go back to law school by the then "oldest lawyer in Massachusetts."

I searched for such a lawyer, and found his obit. His name was Reuben Landau. He died in late 2007 at the age of 103.

(I note that he changed his diet after having a heart attack while he was in his fifties.)

UPDATE: As I think about this gentleman, I also note that a son of his was in his firm. What joy that must have been each day for him to come to the office and work with his son. I stayed away from encouraging my children to go into the legal profession. I didn't discourage them, but I wanted to stay out of the way of the calls that God might offer them. Part of my reluctance, though, was that I found the practice to be so difficult, and I'm sure I let that show at home. Particularly difficult was the period during which I was a partner in the Miami office of an international law firm located in New York City. The boys were in their teen years at that time. When that firm closed their Miami office and pushed me out on the street, I began to discover how much fun it was to be a lawyer. By then Macon and Walter were out of the nest. Mary, however, gave law school a bit of a look. At least she seemed to enjoy wearing the "Chicago Law" sweat shirt I brought back from a reunion years ago.

Patrick the Alligator or Welcome to Miami

Nothing really changes around here.

Near Vertical Incidence Skywave (NVIS)

Here I thought high frequency radio transmission (HF) was so yesterday that only aging amateur radio operators used it. Now I read in the May 2010 QST Magazine that

HF NVIS propagation has been battlefield proven in the Balkans, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a method of communicating over mountains that you can't put VHF repeaters on. It has gained traction and is used for EmComm in the US, especially if conditions take out repeaters.

"VHF" means "very high frequency" and transmissions on VHF are good for line of sight communications only. "Repeaters" are what our cell phone systems depend upon.

The HF bands are between the broadcast bands at the lower end and the TV bands at the upper. (The TV bands are VHF and some U[ltra]HF.) HF bands are usually thought of as DX (long distance) frequencies, because the radio waves at those frequencies can "skip" several times back and forth off the ionosphere and the surface of the earth until they reach literally around the world. The radio wave that skips this way is called a "skywave." (I have discussed the miracle of propagation before.)

(Sometimes you can hear a transmission from someone that skips both ways - that is you hear the person from both directions - very nearly simulataneously. Very nearly is the key phrase, because one transmission is just a bit delayed: it would have traveled a little further than the other, unless the transmission originated exactly half way around the world from you. Thus, those sort of transmissions have a sort of echo.)

Usually if you are making an HF transmission, you want your antenna to be as high off the ground as possible, so that the radiation is a nearly as horizontal as it can be. This gives the signal a good bit of distance to travel before it bounces of the atmosphere the first time. Furthermore, the angle of the radiation when it hits the ionosphere will be acute.

But if your antenna is on or near the ground (that is, 1/4 wavelength or lower), the signal tends to go mainly up ("near vertical), hit the ionosphere, and then bounce back down (thus the "near vertical incidence skywave" or NVIS). If the incidence of the skywave were exactly vertical, then you couldn't reach anyone with your signal unless he was standing beside you. But the skywave is never completely vertical, so an HF NVIS can travel, according to the QST report, out to about 1000 miles.

The Competent Person's Worst Enemy

Arrogance.

I see this everywhere. I see this in myself.

It applies in all contexts, whether one is a competent lawyer, a competent husband, a competent church elder - you name the role one that one may assume from time time and think he discharges very well. Arrogance is incredibly corrosive.

Let's Make Plans!

The New World Symphony will open its new Miami Beach facility in January.

On January 30, NWS founder and artistic director will conduct Modeste Mussorgky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" . . .

-From today's Herald.

This is So Bad!

Despair.com, of course.

Catching up on Un-Related: Design Matters to Me

Jason Santa Maria's design bibliography. Macon points to it here.

Why would it seem that the older I get, the more important design seems to be? Maybe it's just my perception and forgetfulness, and that it has always been important. But now, with the fires banking and the energy seeming to settle, a good design simply makes it easier to get into a matter, easier to access. I don't have to fight through all the clutter of bad presentation. But for design to be "good" in this respect, it needs to get me to function quickly. Or to meaning. Or to function and meaning. Or maybe function and meaning are the same. I don't know. But good design makes it easier to get there.

I need some help here.

What's an API call, for one thing?

Say it Ain't So! Susan G. Komen for the Cure Supports Planned Parenthood

This is really bad.

Here are two alternate breast cancer research groups mentioned in World Magazine: Keep-a-Breast Foundation and Boarding for Breast Cancer.

How about this deal?

Government gets completely out of the health care business (it simply hands out a limited number of "health care stamps" to needy US citizens), abortion is NOT classified as a medical procedure for purposes of using those stamps (except in the case of abortions necessary to save the life of the mother), no medical person is required to render abortion services nor pharmacist to fill an abortion prescription, and "choice" continues to be the law.

Would someone please make the connection between the Arizona situation and our anti-marijuana laws?

For example, please connect the dots presented here.

Where is capital flowing?

In my practice, I see a lot of investment portfolios that are managed by professionals. The basic portfolio is apportioned ("allocated") mainly between stocks ("equities") and bonds ("fixed income securities"). There are other allocations in most portfolios today, such as, for example, real estate and commodities, but I would like to talk about the "equity" portion of the portfolio, which is usually a very large portion, sometimes 60% or more, depending on the objectives (and the risk tolerance) of the investor.

Over the last 30 years, I have seen the equity portion move from investments mainly in US "large cap" stocks to a situation now where at least half of the stock portion is allocated to overseas stocks. Of the overseas stocks, which were initially European and Japanese stocks, an increasing portion over the last 25 years or so has been allocated to "emerging markets," that is to stocks from China, India, Brazil, Thailand, and so on. (Actually, China, India, and Brazil are no longer considered "emerging" in many portfolios. Those countries are prominent, of course; they are now considered to have "emerged.")

Initially the reason I heard for stock investing overseas was "non-correlation." That is, the stock prices, say, in Tokyo generally would not correlate with the stock prices on the NY Stock Exchange. Thus, when our market was down, Japan's market was up, and the volatility of the portfolio was dampened as a result (which is a good thing). But that reason for investing overseas has pretty much gone by the board as we have moved into a more-or-less single, one world market place.

Now one invests overseas because one is likely to get a better return, even when adjusting for risk. I never quite made the connection between the amateur-investment-policy-observer part of me and the amateur-economist part of me until this post from Instapundit. People are increasingly going overseas with their investment dollars because they are finding economies there that favor a better return. In other words, you can get more for your money outside the US. That's pretty sad.

"A leading cleric warned that women who dressed immodestly disturbed young men and the consequent agitation caused earthquakes"

Do they know about South Beach?

Tebow to Denver

Total class all [first]'round.

Aborting One's Grandchildren

A really sad thought, as I consider the millions of unborn babies killed in the US over the past 40 years: The children aborted by my contemporaries in the seventies would, had those children lived, be raising children of their own by now. Those children would be contemporaries of my grandchildren.

More on the Arizona Boarder Problem

Sen. McCain's so-called "flip-flop:" it's not just politics. (Thanks, Glenn Reynolds.)

"An Economy of Liars"

Congressional committees overseeing industries succumb to the allure of campaign contributions, the solicitations of industry lobbyists, and the siren song of experts whose livelihood is beholden to the industry. The interests of industry and government become intertwined and it is regulation that binds those interests together. Business succeeds by getting along with politicians and regulators. And vice-versa through the revolving door.

We call that system not the free-market, but crony capitalism. It owes more to Benito Mussolini than to Adam Smith.

-Gerald P. O'Driscoll in an opinion column in today's WSJ entitled "An Economy of Liars."

Good-bye, Mr. Sharpe

In the middle of the fourth book in the Sharpe series, Sharpe's Trafalgar, our hero murders a man who threatens to tell a cuckolded husband of Sharpe's affair with the cuckold's wife. Notwithstanding that the victim was seeking to use the threat to have his own way with the adulteress, I concluded that Sharpe is not a man I want to spend any more time with and put the book down.

Meanwhile, Back at the Border

A call for 3,000 more US Troops. (Thanks, Drudge.)

Weekend at River Cities

For the first time in many years, Carol and I attended the Miami Springs' River Cities Festival this weekend. This has definitely not been a must-see event for us, mainly because we are so stuck-up. But also because the event is so very well lubricated with outdoor bars set up for the occasion and plenty of beer. We let that more or less characterize the event for us, which probably was to our detriment.

But this year, our pastor thought our church should use the occasion for evangelism. So after talking about what to do for several months, we decided not to have a booth, as the rest of the churches do, but to conduct a survey. A group of us, then, with clip-boards in hand, invaded the festival with a survey about religious attitudes, a paper thin pretext for talking to people about Christ. It turned out to be much more fun that I thought it would be and made the festival itself very enjoyable.

The main thing about doing the survey is that it required me to focus on the people, rather than the context. Our targets were people who, at least momentarily, seemed to be just standing around deciding what to do next and were not in a hurry to get anywhere. Everyone I approached was polite, although some of them declined the survey. Many of those who took it turned out to be professing Christians, and it was encouraging to them and to me to discover that. One man, although polite, thought churches were full of hypocrites; others, once we got started asked if they really had to complete the survey and were relieved when I said, "Of course not." One fellow chased me down and wanted actually to take the survey, and then proceeded to tell me his views on the age of the earth and how Noah's sons each fathered a sort of proto-race with implications to this day and time, giving me book titles and authors. Having conversations with these strangers this way was a special and surprising pleasure.

I also had a good look at all the booths this year, and I discovered that Miami Springs has a new church, the King of Glory Anglican Church. It meets at Grace Lutheran, and is one of those break-off groups of Episcopalians that is part of the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMIA), under the Archbishop Kolini of Rwanda. They were passing out leaflets from the Miami Rescue Mission and Food for the Poor, and were selling Rwandan coffee with the label The Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee. This is a fund raiser for a development in Rwanda that addresses the awful damage of the genocide in that country. The church's website has a statement of beliefs.

I ran into people I had not seen or talked to for years as well. I think the fact that I was trying to connect with people anyway facilitated these link-ups. One couple graduated with me from Hialeah High School. I had not seen them since 1964! Another man had grown up in my neighborhood on Falcon Avenue and I had not seen him in decades. And there were others I simply had not visited with for a few years. I saw the Curtis' kids (now young men), for example. Brad is working for Curtis Publishing, Matthew lives in Delray and has a business there, Atypical Rim & Tire.

I met two cousins who have gone into the "mobile barbecue" business, and had a most impressive rig from which wafted a most delicious aroma. They are from Port Charlotte and are known as Smokey Trails BBQ. They were attracted to my Despair "knock knock" shirt, which I suppose is a pretty good evangelism tool, when you think about it.

I don't know if anyone "got saved" as a result of our efforts. But the nice thing about being Reformed is that it's really not up to me, so I'm not worrying about it. And why wouldn't anyone be interested to find out that God took on the form of a man to reconcile us to himself? That's pretty interesting, I think.

SEC's Fraud Suit Against Goldman Sachs a Diversion

Goldman Sachs is accused of facilitating a hedge fund in the fund's betting against the real estate market. But what hedge funds do, mainly, is short market enthusiasms. (Hence, the word "hedge.") In the case of the real estate bubble, it wasn't mere enthusiasm, it was insanity that inflated the bubble. That is, it was politics, as the easy money policy of the federal government encouraged the banks to make bad loans. So a hedge fund asked GS to build a way for it to short the resulting surge in real estate values, and it did so.

The bubble burst and the hedge fund made money. That's what happens when a hedge fund bets right. But neither the hedge fund nor GS created the real estate related madness. The whole thing was bound to crash. But now GS gets sued. It's a scapegoat. Everyone needs to remember that. Whatever it might have done wrong in the process was really not the problem. The problem was the federal government's policy of making credit for buying real estate available for the asking, abetted by big banks (who simply resold the bad debt to others, with all concerned making fee after fee after fee in the process). And when I say "federal government" I mean Congress and either complicit (in the case of Clinton) or distracted (in the case of Bush) Presidential administrations.

I wish I could have figured out a way to bet against the real estate bubble. We all knew its burst was inevitable. Everyone paying attention knew.

On Shooting the Other Foot Too

The left foot shooting of last year is captured in the photo.

Now the other one.

Let's Send Barack to Sarkozy's Body-Language School

(Front page of WSJ today. The WSJ caption of the photo, taken at the Nuclear Security Summit this week, is entitled "Mutually Assured Discussion.")

Embracing Guns & Religion. And where would that be?

At and about "Our Lawless Mexican Border." The link is an indirect link to the WSJ column that appears in Saturday's WSJ and written by Leo W. Banks. Without a WSJ on-line subscription, you won't be able to read the entire article, but you will get the gist of it. However, if you let me know, I will email you a full copy of the column.

Another approach is to go the Tucson Weekly and read Banks' other articles on the subject. Here's a good one to start with.

Teaching and Electronic Whiteboards

A lot of what I do in my estate planning practice is teach. A client's Last Will, for example, is her or his legally enforceable expression of what the client wants to happen to the assets that would be subject to that document at the client's death. A Last Will, then, is an expression of the client's intention with respect to the particular "estate" that the Last Will controls. (An "estate" is simply an aggregate of assets that have a feature in common. An " estate" subject to a Last Will is an aggregation of assets that must go through probate proceedings in order to be distributed to a client's beneficiaries at the client's death.)

But usually a client is not exactly sure of what she or he wants to happen at his death. The client may be generally sure, but is rarely exactly sure. What are the issues involved? What are the options available? My job is to inform the client of those issues, those options, and to suggest strategies. This is a teaching job. I find it challenging. But not only that, it is the sweet spot of my work. It is where the joy resides for me. I love to teach.

My favorite way to teach is to have an easel or white board to mark on. I think I do some of my best teaching while I stand up and draw diagrams, lists, maps, circles, squares, arrows going here and there, and so forth. I often will jump up and down from my chair to the white board or easel at a client conference (some of them lasting two hours or more). I think that this activity alone keeps the momentum of the conference going and all of us awake.

I have been looking at "electronic whiteboards." They are expensive, but by way of a Wiki article, I came across a genius whose name is Johnny Chung Lee. Johnny has a way of doing an electronic whiteboard on the cheap. I have embedded one of his YouTube videos.

I would welcome any comments or suggestions as to any of this.

Duke Won, America. Get over it.

Great article.

He Stood and Delivered

Jaime Escalante died.

Read My Lips

In 2011, income tax rates for the highest earners will go to 39.6 percent, up from 35 percent, and the capital gains tax will rise to 20 percent from 15 percent, unless Congress acts. The increases aren’t likely to be overturned by Congress, said Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Washington- based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The capital gains tax will rise to 23.8 percent in 2013, to help pay for health-care reform signed by President Barack Obama March 23. That’s because the legislation applies a 3.8 percent Medicare tax on unearned income such as realized capital gains, dividends, interest, rents and royalties. The health-care bill also increases the employee’s share of the Medicare payroll tax levied on wages by 0.9 percentage points to 2.35 percent in 2013.

Both increases related to the health-care legislation will apply to about 1 million individuals who earn more than $200,000 annually and about 4 million couples who file jointly and make more than $250,000.

-From an excellent article by Margaret Collins and Alexis Leondis from Bloomberg News in Business Week. Its worth reading the whole thing.

Note, however, the last sentence of the second paragraph of the quote. The increase in the "employee's share of the Medicare payroll tax" applies to all employees, and not just individuals who make more than $200,000. Somebody call Joe the Plumber.

Anna and Paloma are Baptized

Anna is baptized at sunrise yesterday, Easter Morning. A very similar photo appeared on the front page of this morning's Miami Herald but with a photo of Anna's sister, Paloma, who was baptized yesterday too. That photo has a caption that reads in part, "Paloma . . . is baptized in the waters off 73rd Street and Collins Avenue after attending the 17th annual Miami Beach Easter Sunrise Service. Pastor Rick [Paloma's dad, a Friday morning breakfast brother], left, and Pastor Robert Fountain [of Calvary Chapel, Miami Beach] performed the baptism."

I just love the expression on Rick's face in the second photo. What a joy to have your children accept Jesus Christ. I am reminded of the broad promise from Acts 16 at verse 31, a promise that I have claimed from my earliest moments as a father: "They [Paul and Silas] replied [to the jailer, who had asked Paul, 'Sir, what must I do to be saved'] believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved - you and your household."

Eating Meat and Brain Damage

From Dr. McDougall's recent newsletter:

Copper and Iron from Meat Damage the Brain and Body

Risks of Copper and Iron Toxicity during Aging in Humans by George J. Brewer published in the February 2010 issue of Chemical Research in Toxicology [Brewer GJ. Risks of copper and iron toxicity during aging in humans. Chem Res Toxicol. 2010 Feb 15;23(2):319-26] found that, "Diseases of aging, such as Alzheimer's disease, other neurodegenerative diseases, arteriosclerosis, diabetes mellitus, and more, may all be contributed to by excess copper and iron. A very disturbing study has found that in the general population those in the highest fifth of copper intake, if they are also eating a relatively high fat diet, lose cognition (brain function) at over three times the normal rate... both (minerals) contribute to the production of excess damaging oxidant radicals."

The author's recommendations are to:

Avoid almost all multivitamin/multi-mineral pills because they contain copper and/or iron.

Avoid eating all kinds of meats because they are plentiful in both minerals. Copper and iron are much more bio-available from meat than from vegetable foods. Liver and shellfish are particularly high in copper. Red meat is particularly high in bio-available iron.

Avoid drinking water with elevated copper content. Eighty percent of the homes in the US have copper pipes for water. Check levels in your water. A reverse osmosis device can be installed on the tap used for drinking and cooking water.

Comments: Copper and iron are metals essential for life; however, in excess they are toxic to the body's tissues. The author, Brewer, points out that careful research by Waldman and Lamb in their book, Dying for a Hamburger, has shown that Alzheimer's disease did not exist until 100 years ago. It still is rare in India and Africa. (Waldman and Lamb believe the infectious prion agent that causes Mad Cow Disease from tainted beef causes this form of dementia.) Brewer believes copper and iron toxicity cause Alzheimer's disease from consuming meat. Other metals taken in with our foods and beverages, especially aluminum, are also believed to play a major causal role in Alzheimer's disease. The Western diet has been tied to Alzheimer's disease because of damage from the cholesterol and fat in the diet.

Brewer considers diabetes, atherosclerosis leading to heart attacks and strokes, and other common diseases to be from mineral toxicity. His paper adds to the interesting debate about which part of the Western diet is most harmful? Or does it really matter? As consumers we have enough evidence to know which foods (meats and dairy products being prime culprits) are making us sick.

Basketball in Lucas Oil Stadium

As I watched the Final Four on CBS last evening, I thought, "How could you see anything as a spectator in that place?"

Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe writes this morning:

So now [Duke] will be playing national darling Butler for the championship tomorrow night.

A matchup like this, taking place in this city, deserves to be played in a magnificent basketball atmosphere such as the Canseco Fieldhouse, rather than in this monstrosity, where patrons (and not just those in the upper reaches) are seated closer to the Illinois border than the court.

Sharpe's Tiger

The name of the first historical novel in Bernard Cornwell's Richard Sharpe series. The epoch is the same as that in the C.S. Forrester Hornblower novels and Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series. Masterpiece Theater has brought filmed adaptations of Richard Sharpe stories to public television, and last Sunday night we watched a re-run of one of them. This provoked me to the downtown library, and I discovered an entire bookshelf of Cornwell's books.

The particular settings are actual British battles and the events surrounding them. In my edition of Sharpe's Tiger, the author writes a "Historical Note," where he describes how his narrative differs or is similar to what historians record. He also commends two histories of Wellington, who appears as a young colonel in this book: Longford's Wellington, the Years of the Sword, and Weller's Wellington in India.

Sharpe's Tiger whetted my appetite, and I'm going back for more.

How was it that Duke beat Baylor?

Yesterday's basketball game between Duke and Baylor in Houston was a great contest. At the end of the first half, the Bears were ahead, and I thought they very well might win. They seemed to be more energetic and committed than what I seemed to observe with the Duke players. Kyle Singler, one of Duke's stars, was either terribly cold or effectively shut down by Baylor's great defense (or both) that first half, a situation that continued on the offensive side with him until the end of the game.

But Duke had a sort of intrepid, mature approach about them that I began to appreciate during the second half. They simply moved ahead without appearing to get too passionate about the situation. And their outside shooting and offensive rebounding were simply fantastic. During the last five minutes, Baylor seemed to lose their focus; they seemed almost frantic with their being so close to victory but not quite there yet. The technical foul committed by one of Baylor's fine players spoke to the loss of poise that finally did them in.

I think that's what did it. The Baylor players were every bit as good as Duke's. But Duke had been there before. Duke had a coach who, although he may be no more gifted than Baylor's, had many more years of tournament experience. Those things finally made the difference.

Biden: What an Embarrassment

Teen calls him out for his foul language. But the young man needs to understand that the Vice-President is working with a very limited vocabulary.

Chad Henne Dissing Tebow? You're kidding, right?

From Yahoo Sports:

"My judgment is he's not an NFL quarterback. I'll leave it at that."

—Dolphins quarterback Chad Henne on former Gator quarterback Tim Tebow. However, Henne didn't leave it at that, later backtracking with, "I didn't really say he wasn't able to be (an NFL quarterback). We're all in this process of learning how to be an NFL quarterback. Obviously he's taking the right steps to improve his game. His throwing motion actually looks a lot better with his release and everything. I think his Pro Day went really well and he was happy with it."

Mr. Tebow has a Heisman, Mr. Henne does not.

Mr. Tebow was twice a first-team All-American. Mr. Henne was never a first-team all American

Mr. Tebow was once a second-team All-American. Mr. Henne was never a second-team All-American.

Mr. Tebow won the Maxwell Award twice. Mr. Henne was once a Maxwell Award finalist.

Mr. Tebow was three times First Team All-SEC. Mr. Henne was once All-Big Ten Conference Honorable Mention and once All-Big Ten Conference Second Team.

Mr. Tebow was on a National Champtionship team. Michigan has had no national championship football team in many years.

He's a great person [Tebow] and a heck of a quarterback. He's a courageous, competitive, playmaking, indestructible force, and I think he's going to be a great success.

-John Gruden.

"As a coach, I always like winners," [former Indianapolis Head Coach Tony] Dungy said. "Tim Tebow doesn't have the classic throwing motion, he doesn't have the accuracy, maybe, right now that some people are looking for, but I think when he gets into a pro system that really stresses throwing the ball accurately, the big thing is he makes the people around him better. And he's won. ... I think he's going to be a great player in the NFL."

Dungy said that if he were running a team with a Top 10 pick, he'd take Tebow. Patrick then asked Dungy who he'd pick for his team if he could have any of the top college quarterbacks, including Washington's Jake Locker, Notre Dame's Jimmy Clausen, Oklahoma's Sam Bradford and Texas's Colt McCoy. Dungy didn't hesitate and said, "I'm taking Tebow."

-NBC Sports Interview here.

Walt Minnick Voted Against it.

In fact, 34 Dems voted No.

Thanks, Walt and the rest.

Not Happy with Mr. Stupak

Stupak's Competition

Right to Life. I believe in the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Paramount is life. From conception to death, all human life must be considered sacred and must be protected.

-Dan Benisheck, running against Stupak.

Aliens vs. Predator

The true story.

Fess Parker Dies

I was nine years old when Walt Disney introduced Fess Parker as Davy Crockett on Disney's Sunday night TV show, Disneyland. Within weeks, we were all running around in ersatz coonskin caps, toy flintlock rifles, and singing all umtillion verses of "Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier." One of the first 45RPM records I bought with my allowance was that song. I'm sure I drove my parents nuts.

Born on a mountain top in Tennessee
Greenest state in the land of the free
Raised in the woods so he knew every tree
Killed him a Bar when he was only three!

Davy, Davy Crockett,
King of the Wild Frontier
Davy, Davy Crockett,
King of the Wild Frontier!

He was an actor whose personal life seemed to be as sound as the values Davy Crockett stood for, at least as Walt Disney presented them. I just hated it when he died in the Alamo, but my mom told me that we were related to Col. Travis, and that helped some. Davy's motto was "Be sure you're right; then go ahead." His flintlock's name was "Betsy" and she had her own song, "Bang, Went Ol' Betsy."

Bang Went Ol' Betsy
I owe my life to Betsy
I can travel far and wide
With Betsy by my side!

A few years later John Wayne starred in another telling of the Alamo, and as Davy Crockett. He was good, but it should have been Fess Parker. Only the fact that it was John Wayne prevented me from walking right out.

Frontierland at Disneyland, the amusement park, and at Disney World in Orlando were based on the Davy Crockett series.

Fess Parker was a University of Texas grad. That sounds only right.

And, no, Carol is not related to Davy Crockett. At least not that we know of.

Home Improvement

The next upgrade at Dove Avenue: a garage door cover.



More here. (Thanks, Juan!)

The Basketball Battle of the Century

It looks like Pine Bluff!

Go, Duke!

The Grove Struggles

Today's Herald. A victim, in part, of the bursting of the real estate bubble: The rents got too high; Cocowalk's new owner paid to much; and now stores are half-empty. The article mentions commercial cannibalism by other, newer developments.

I would note that the nearest MetroRail station is not within walking distance of the Grove. Mary Brickell Village, on the other hand, is quite close to both MetroRail and the PeopleMover. Brickell's overbuilding was mainly residential, although there is some new retail. Now the condo and apartment prices for new residences in the off-but-not-too-off-Brickell area are fairly reasonable. The South Miami retail district, which has had its own struggles, is doing fairly well, as the article notes: it is also near a MetrolRail station, the U, and has a new Whole Foods.

Maybe we'll move . . .

Killing Buzz

I'm a little late getting around to this, but I went on my Gmail account, scrolled down to the bottom, pressed "Turn off Buzz," and then followed through on killing the connection.

Speaking of "Arrogance Quotients", there seems to be no limit in the Google home office. (Although I will give them credit for pushing back on Communist China.)

Mr. Obama's Problem is Not a Failure to Communicate

In Marvin Olasky's excellent column in the March 13, 2010, issue of World Magazine, entitled "A Better Path," he writes:

Now the big question is whether President Obama will think that his problem is merely a failure to communicate. He should read the work of Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto Polar, who describes [in his book, The Other Path: the Economic Answer to Terrorism]the "tremendous conceptual error" of his country's leaders in words that should make the Obama administration tremble: "the assumption that, in an urban society swamped by migration, a ruler can know everything that is going on in the country and that a new social order can be built on this presumed knowledge."

As de Soto notes, "In such a society, with millions of people whose specialization makes them interdependent, with complex systems of communication between producers and buyers, creditors and debtors, employers and employees, with a constantly evolving technology, with competition and a daily flow of information from other countries, it is physically impossible to be familiar with and directly run even a small fraction of national activities."

Anyone without a high AQ—arrogance quotient—knows this.

Robotic Surgery

I have two friends with prostate cancer. For one of them, the recommendation is surgery, the other radiation. The surgery recommended for the one is robotic surgery at South Miami Hospital. The Herald has a good article this morning on the subject of robotic surgery. Be sure to read the article to the very end, if you are interested, as it quotes critics of the surgery, including Michael J. Barry of Massachusetts General.

Keller's "The Importance of Hell"

I had apparently given one of the newer men in our Friday breakfast group the impression that I was weak-in-the-knees about hell. I don’t know exactly what I said that may have given him that impression, but I do recall that I referred to the “lake of fire” as a “metaphor,” and it seemed to concern him that I didn't see it "literally."

The next Friday he brought me a copy of an article by Tim Keller, entitled The Importance of Hell, as a corrective, I think. (The article is well worth reading, and can be found in its entirely at the link.)

In the article, Keller writes in part:

Virtually all commentators and theologians believe that the Biblical images of fire and outer darkness are metaphorical . . . Even Jonathan Edwards pointed out that the Biblical language for hell was symbolic, but, he added “when metaphors are used in Scripture about spiritual things . . . they fall short of the literal truth.”

Keller makes it plain that separation from God is such an awful state that it is beyond description. Metaphors, then, are the only thing Jesus could resort to in order to explain how awful it is.

Dealing with the metaphor of fire and darkness and the like has significance in terms of our personal evangelism. Keller states later in the article:

I’ve found that only stressing the symbols of hell (fire and darkness) in preaching rather than going into what the symbols refer to (eternal, spiritual decomposition) actually prevents modern people from finding hell a deterrent. Some years ago I remember a man who said that talk about the fires of hell simply didn’t scare him. It seemed too far-fetched, even silly. So I read him lines from C.S. Lewis:

“Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others . . . but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of Gold ‘sending us’ to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell until it is nipped in the bud.”

To my surprise he got very quiet and said, “Now that scares me to death.”

As a “modern person,” I can tell you that this scares me to death too. Sometimes I think that I am mostly grumble already! But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor. 15:57)

We Be Bananas

A super site that Carol found.

"Lars and the Real Girl"

Carol read the review of this movie at the Christianity Today website, we ordered the film from Netflix, and saw it last night. Despite the unusual premise (very shy young man orders a life-size sex doll over the internet and then has a chaste relationship with "her"), it will grab your heart and not quite break it.

Furthermore, it makes Christians look good. That's probably even more unusual than the premise.

Anatomy & Physiology Camp

This sounds like fun!

The purpose of these camps is to enable 9th - 12th grade students to better understand human anatomy and physiology by engaging in a variety of unique, in-depth, hands-on experiments, labs, and assessments . . . and have fun doing it! There are no prerequisites for attending this camp.

Anatomy and Physiology Camp is appropriate for all high school age students but is especially geared toward students interested in careers such as medicine, physical therapy, physician's assistant, dentistry, nursing, biology, exercise science, sports medicine, chiropractic, athletic training, nutrition, forensics, etc

And all from a Christian worldview.

Goths, Spain, and Bibles

When Carol and I visited Spain with Mary in April of 2008, one of the highlights was Toledo. As our guidebook reported: "In a landscape of abrasive desolation, Toledo sits on a rocky mound isolated on three sides by a looping gorge of the Rio Tajo. Every available inch of this outcrop has been built upon: churches, synagogues, mosques and houses are heaped upon one another in a haphazard spiral which the cobbled lanes infiltrate as best they can." We had a very nice hotel, located a vegetarian restaurant with tasty food, and saw terrific sights, about which we posted a little here.

Among the sights was Toledo Cathedral. There at the cathedral we learned a little more about the Visigoths, because a mass in the "Gothic rite" continues to be celebrated there. In Cordova, we had first learned about the Goths at one of the museums. This Germanic tribe had ruled Spain before they were driven from power by the Moors. They were Christian, and their sect persisted during Islam's rule, to emerge on the other side of history when Isabella drove the Muslims from Spain. After some tension between those who followed the Gothic Rite and the Catholics, they made their peace. On Thursdays one could go to the Toledo Cathedral and celebrate the Gothic mass.

I am reading Metzger and Ehrman's The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (Fourth Edition), and today I read there an account of the Gothic Version of the Bible:

Shortly after the middle of the fourth century, Ulfilas, often called the "apostle to the Goths," translated the Bible from Greek into Gothic. For this purpose, he created the Gothic alphabet and reduced the spoken language to written form. The Gothic version is the earliest known literary monument in a Germanic dialect.

As I read this fascinating book, it becomes evident that the development of literacy in the Western world was propelled by the Bible. That is, there was such a thirst for the Gospel, the Acts, the Pauline and Catholic epistles, that there developed profound advances in the technology of books (moving from scrolls to codices, that is to books), the adoption of a cursive form of writing Greek to replace the block form that made copying so slow, even to the invention of written languages (such as that which was a precursor of German), and the rise of a class of educated people who were not necessarily among the nobility. All of this a thousand years before the printing press, itself an invention the crucial market for which was the production of Bibles.

MORE:

With the exception of St. Jerome, more is known of the life and work of SS. Cyril and Methodius, the apostles to the Slavs, than of any other translators of an ancient version of the Bible. Sons of a wealthy official in Slavonica, they are credited with the creation of the Glagolitic alphabet, as well as the so-called Cyrillic alphabet. Soon after the middle of the ninth century, they began translating the Gospels (probably in the form of a Greek lectionary) into Old Bulgarian, commonly called Old Slavonic. - Metzger and Ehrman, op cit., at p. 121

Change: Removing the Shoe, Shooting the Foot

One reason that so many of our jobs have "moved overseas" is because of the way we tax the US corporations who create those jobs. If a US corporation has its operations division here in the US, the corporation is subject to income tax on the profit the people in those jobs produce. However, if the corporation moves those operations overseas, then it can escape the US corporate income tax on those earnings, at least until it decides to "repatriate" those earnings, which may be never.

There is double taxation on corporate earnings, as you may know. (This applies to "C Corporations" not to "S Corporations" which small businesses use.) The income is taxed at the corporate level first. Then, when what is left over of a corporation's earnings is distributed to the shareholders as dividends, the shareholder is taxed. The corporation gets no deduction for what it distributes to the owners. So an earnings dollar is taxed twice, once at the corporate level and once at the shareholder level. By putting operations overseas, however, the US corporation defers indefinitely the tax at the corporate level.

There is change in the air! You might think that the change is to reduce the negative impact of double taxation and encourage US corporations to bring their offshore operations back to the Homeland. Such a thing would surely help the US economy, no?

It would help the economy, but that's not the change that Washington has in mind. For one thing, the tax on dividends will go back up next year. And, for another, and this is big change, there is a movement to tax US corporations on their "worldwide" income, whether or not the US corporation chooses to bring the overseas income back home. Will that bring the jobs back home? Not so much, I think.

How may the tax on a US corporation's worldwide earnings be avoided? Here's an idea, let's not be a US corporation anymore. There's change for you. This is exactly what Rupert Murdock seem to be contemplating with News Corporation. He is moving News Corporation to Dubai. There is nothing in the article at the link about this motive, but my bet is that the prospective change in the US corporate tax system is behind it.

Hardly a great American, one might say of Murdock. But America was built on entrepreneurial spirit and a distaste for taxes. I would say, then, that he is a great American.

"[A] huge, wealth destroying, regulatory machine . . ."

There is one of those in Ottowa, according to David Warren. (Thanks, Macon.)

There is one of those in Sacramento, but not in Austin, according to Michael Barone. (Thanks, Glenn Reynolds.)

There is at least one of those in Miami-Dade County, but you would have to add the word "corruption" somewhere in the tag line.

Tallahassee is trying very hard to grow one.

The common denominator in all of these is the public sector union.

Miami Youth for Christ