The Church of Crist

The First Political Church of What's Happenin' Now.

(Tell me again, Charlie, just what the tourists are going to put in their tanks to drive to Florida? Oh! You plan to be in DC by then! I get it now.)

Marcus Atilius Regulus

Speaking of keeping promises. (Thanks ,Dan Carlin. Thanks, Macon.)

Hope

Now where are those weights?

Mary Visits the Cure International Hospital in Uganda

Yesterday we spoke on the phone with Mary about her visit to the children's hospital in Mbale, about an hour's drive from where she is staying this summer near Jinja. (She and another med student from Rochester are doing a malaria study near Jinja with an organization called Soft Power Health.)

The Mbale hospital is run by Cure International. According to the website:

The CURE Children's Hospital of Uganda (CCHU) in Mbale Uganda, is a 30 bed teaching hospital that specializes in treating the neurosurgical needs of children with an emphasis on hydrocephalus, neural tube defects, spina bifida, epilepsy and brain tumors. CCHU also maintains a large outpatient clinic and operates monthly mobile clinics in remote regions. CCHU was opened in 2000 and serves children with physical disabilities regardless of their ethnic background, religious affiliation or ability to pay.

CCHU serves approximately 7,000 children each year with a wide range of medical services. Approximately 900 surgeries are performed each year. The hospital has 30 in-patient beds and 10 intensive care beds and maintains a busy out-patient clinic. The hospital operates mobile medical clinics that find hundreds of children who are suffering from disabilities in remote areas and whenever possible, transports the children back to the hospital for care.
I'm looking forward to a write-up from Mary on her visit, but she doesn't have ready access to the Internet to do so on her blog. So for now I will do my best to pass on what she told us.

She knew about Cure International because the organization has a hospital in Kjabe, next to the AIM hospital. She visited those hospitals during her two years teaching at RVA, taking students there each week to visit the patients. When she arrived in Uganda in June, she asked Sarah, one of her missionary friends who lives in Kampala, whether Cure has a hospital in Uganda, and Sarah told her about the one in Mbale. Mary emailed the director to ask whether she and her friend from med school might be able to visit. She added that she had been diagnosed with hydrocephalus as a child and has a Ventriculoperitoneal shunt ("VP shunt").

The director responded immediately, issued an invitation, and asked Mary if she would talk to the mothers of the little patients there about her diagnosis and treatment, because he knew it would be a great encouragement. (This is the same reaction Dr. Bransford and his staff had at the AIM Kjabi hospital, when they learned that Mary is a VP shunt veteran.) So yesterday, Mary and her friend made the trip to Mbale.

She said that the hospital is a fine facility, unusually squared-away, with up to date equipment, clean and well-staffed. Mary said that CURE is definitely a worthy place for contributions.

She met one of the neurosurgeons who was just getting ready for surgery, and he invited her and her friend to scrub and watch. (Later, one of the staff said that this surgeon never allowed visiting med students to watch, so he was apparently pretty impressed with Mary.) He warned her that she might find the surgery a little uncomfortable to view, but Mary said she would have no problem with it, and she didn't.

The surgery involved a two-month old hydrocephalic baby, which the doctor said was old for the VP shunt procedure. The operating room was well equipped, even to the CT scanning apparatus that guided the surgery. (Mary said that ours is a great country, that its people would supply a machine like that to a hospital in a little town in Uganda.) Before the surgery commenced, the surgeon and the other operating team members prayed together. (We might pray for that baby too, even now.)

After the surgery, Mary, through a translator, spoke to a group of mothers that the hospital staff had gathered for her, and the staff made a video of her talk to show other mothers later.

(The photo is of Ian.)

The Faithfulness of Jesus

The upcoming lesson in our Sunday School's study of Romans is Chapter 3, verses 21-24. In this scripture passage, at verse 22, we bump into a very interesting translation battle. Here is the entire passage according to the NIV, and I bold the troubling verse:

21But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Here is that same passage in the NET Bible, with the verse at issue also bolded:

21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God (which is attested by the law and the prophets) has been disclosed – 22namely, the righteousness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. 24But they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. [footnotes, and there are many, omitted]

In N.T. Wright's study of Romans, Paul for Everyone - Romans: Part One, he is on the same side as the NET Bible translators. In the footnote, the NET editors discuss fully the controversy, and Wright refers to it in his little [but so helpful] commentary. Wright diplomatically writes that what he translates as "the faithfulness of Jesus" could be written "faith in Jesus." But it is clear that the former is his choice, as it is the NET editors.

I never really gave much thought to the "faithfulness of Jesus," until I encountered this controversy. What I mean to say is, "Of course, Jesus was faithful. He's the Son of God, after all. He would of course be faithful. He's perfect. So why stop and argue over this particular translation?"

But it made me stop and think about this. Was it possible that Jesus could have been unfaithful? Did Satan simply not get it, when he took the time to tempt Jesus, both in the Wilderness and at Gethsemane? I mean, really, Satan could not be as smart as we might think, if he subjected himself to such humiliation twice. Maybe Jesus could have been unfaithful. Maybe he had the choice.

Think of the reasons why Jesus might have been unfaithful: the world was a mess, everyone was falling short of God's intention for his creation, and even the Jews, especially the Jews, had completely blown it multiple times. Why not simply take over, as Satan suggested and [insert Obamaism referring to what a really great leader does when people are being bad].

But if there was a chance he could have been unfaithful [call it the Man side of him, if it makes you feel better], then the idea that his faithfulness (not ours) is at the heart of the gospel makes a lot of sense. This central truth of Christ's faithfulness very much needs to be transalated correctly.

There is an other side of that point, that Jesus, as a person not burdened with sin, had a choice and could have been unfaithful but decided not to be. The other side is that Christians, as people who have been set free, now, finally, have a choice too. We can choose to be faithful.

UPDATE:

The following is from the Preface to the First Edition of the NET Bible and, in particular, that part which describes "some of the distinctive characteristics of the NET Bible translation philosophy." In discussing their "commitment to following the text where it leads and translating it honestly," the NET editors address this very controversy. Here is what they say:

Passages Involving πιίστις Χριστοῦ and Similar Expressions in Paul. The phrase πιίστις Χριστοῦ ( pisti Cristou) is a difficult one to translate. The issue centers on the relationship of the genitive noun Χριστοῦ to the head noun πιίστις: is the genitive subjective or objective? That is, is the emphasis of this phrase on Christ as the one who exercises faith (subjective) or on Christ as the one in whom others have faith (objective)? Traditionally these phrases have been interpreted emphasizing Christ as the object of faith; “faith in Jesus Christ” is the traditional translation. However, in recent years an increasing number of New Testament scholars are arguing from both the grammatical and theological contexts that πιίστις Χριστοῦ and similar phrases in Paul (Rom 3:22, 26; Gal 2:16, 20; 3:22; Eph 3:12; Phil 3:9) involve a subjective genitive and emphasize Christ as the one who exercises faith: “the faithfulness of Christ.” A wider glance at the use of the noun πιίστις in the rest of the New Testament shows that when it takes a personal genitive that genitive is almost never objective. Certainly faith in Christ is a Pauline concept, but Bible scholars have begun to see that in Paul’s theological thought there is also an emphasis on Christ as one who is faithful and therefore worthy of our faith. The grammatical and theological contexts are not decisive, and either translation is acceptable. The editors decided to follow the subjective genitive view because a decision had to be made – “faith of Christ,” a literal translation, communicates very little to the average reader in the context – and because scholarship in this area is now leaning toward this view. The question is certainly not closed, however, and if further research indicates that the grammatical or theological context proves decisive for the other view, the translation will be modified to reflect that.

The Toxic Pill

This year apparently marks the 50th Anniversary of the Pill. I lived through that transition. I was a senior in high school (1963-1964) the first time that I learned that someone I knew pretty well was on it. (I didn't know her that well.) A few years later, in an upper level history class at Duke, the professor included in his lecture the impact of the pill on sexual morality. He said it was definitely negative. The phrase "well, duh!" wasn't in use then, but it was that kind of moment in the classroom.

This article about the "toxic" nature of the Pill (a Glenn Reynolds link) is pretty disturbing, particularly the point about estrogens in the drinking water. Can this be true? Or is this Roman Catholic propaganda? Or is it both?

There was an interval in the late 60s and mid-70s (if I have my dates right) between the introduction of the Pill and the public consciousness of the spread of disease occasioned by the moral unloosing that the Pill caused. Things got pretty wild during that period, although I was safely married (Thanks be to God. Seriously.)

Then the first middle-class STD reared its head: herpes. Time Magazine, which was important then, had at least one cover story on it before herpes was displaced by HIV as the STD of major concern. I had a very good friend who was a bachelor during the 70s and early 80s, and he was a sort of window for me into the Yuppie single world, and that world reeked with herpes.

One doesn't hear of herpes much anymore, nor of STDs in general, other than AIDs. As to AIDS, one rarely hears it discussed in the media in terms of heterosexual risk. And one hardly ever hears or reads of other STDs. So STDs must have all gone away, right? Or we would be hearing about them. We must be back in the 70s, then, in a time of no consequences attending sexual license.

Or maybe it's because the Yuppies of my generation are now running the country that we don't hear about these things. (That's Obama's real problem: he's not one of us. Thank goodness Biden's there, giving us a bridge to Hillary and the return of the Clintons.)

I would venture that the toxicity of the Pill has hardly been confined to the drinking water.

Kidnap Insurance

For many of us in the Kith & Kin Circle, this matter strikes close to home. I receive a newsletter from Bessemer Trust from time to time, and the most recent one has an article on Kidnap insurance. Among other things, it lists the "Top 10 Countries per Number of Kidnaps in 2009" as follows:

1. Venezuela
2. Nigeria
3. Mexico
4. Pakistan
5. India
6. Afghanistan
7. Honduras
8. Brazil
9. Philippines
10. Somalia

Some of these you would expect to see in the top 10, but Honduras, Brazil, India? And then one would want to know the particular risks for each country and where inside the country are they concentrated.

Nevertheless, it is certainly sobering for someone who has a globetrotting family.

The article gives a list of "the most common types of victims." That list includes "aid workers [and] religious staff."

The article also discusses Ransom Insurance Coverage. It gives a couple of examples, here is one:

A policy recently issued to a husband and wife traveling on missionary work to Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe with a $5 million limit had a cost of $5,400.

The article ends with this statement:

As unsettling as it is, by addressing this very real risk through kidnap and ransom coverage, it puts you in a position to protect not only your family's financial interests, but your family itself.

[Maybe] a Final Word on Promissory Notes

So, where are we? Christians are called to keep their promises. Keeping them can become very difficult, especially where the circumstances (other than the promise we have made) are not of one's own making (e.g., the economy, a spouse who turns out not to love us just as we absolutely know we ought to be loved and, in fact, are entitled to be loved; a child whom we promised to raise in the nurture and admonition of the Lord but who exhausts us, so we will sleep in on Sunday morning). One conclusion is to be very careful of the promises one makes. But once we make that promise, well . . . maybe the housing market will come back, maybe we will become happy with the way we are loved and learn to demonstrate to the other how we think a spouse should be treated, and maybe the spirited child will grow up with a strong Christian character of his own. Or maybe none of this will happen in this world, but the Lord will bless us in other ways. Or maybe he won't, at least right away. That's not the point, is it?

It seems to me that we are much too free with what we promise, and are very careless about our promises. Or, when others seek a commitment from us, we haven't the courage to say no. Or we are too dependent on the regard of others to turn them down. Or we so very much want what the other is offering, want it right then and there, that we will say about anything to get it. All of these reasons seem to go to the matter of our character and integrity. They really don't justify making a promise and, then, later breaking it.

This sort of thing is exactly what got John Mark in trouble with Paul

Mary texts this morning that she is bungie jumping into the Nile.

"Resourceful kids are making their own jobs . . . "

I like this.

Here's the link to the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, an organization mentioned in the article. (Sounds like a great "missional" ministry.)

"The Teacher" Should Get Out More

Yesterday in our Sunday School class, we covered Romans 3:9-20. My NIV edition entitles this section "No One is Righteous." Here Paul appears to be primarily addressing Jews. So he quotes or paraphrases a string of OT passages (8 of them) where the point is made that everyone falls short.

Among the references is one to Ecclesiastes 7:20: There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins.

I read on down the page in Ecclesiastes, Chapter 7, and found verse 28 of that chapter interesting:

while I was still searching
but not finding—
I found one upright man among a thousand,
but not one upright woman among them all.

As I chuckle, Carol says she doesn't find this funny.

But is the "one upright man" a placeholder for Messiah, as unintentional as the Teacher may be?

Happy 4th of July!

Whatever that means.

Food Dyes Not Good

But didn't we know this?

Non-recourse Promissory Notes

There is a kind of collateralized promissory note (or mortgage) called a "non-recourse promissory note." In this case, the creditor (the person lending the money) understands that if the borrower stops paying, then all the creditor can do is foreclose; there will be no deficiency judgment against the borrower; the creditor looks solely to the collateral.

With a non-recourse note, then, it is clear that the promise is contingent on whether "things work out." There would be no moral opprobrium attached to a "strategic default."

Given the fact that non-recourse notes are in the market place, the argument is stronger that there is moral opprobrium attached to a strategic default where the promissory note is the more typical recourse note.

Of course, a non-recourse mortgage is very uncommon in the home mortgage context. In such a case, the down payment requirement would be larger and the interest rate higher.

As strategic defaults become more common, then one will see the cost spread between the non-recourse note and the recourse note narrow. That is, the down payment required of a recourse borrower will increase and look more and more like that which would be required of the non-recourse borrower and the interest rate the recourse borrower pays will similarly increase. It will, then, be harder for people to finance a new home. The advantage that the strategic defaulter claims for himself will work to the dis-advantage of all home-buyers. Furthermore, the value of all homes will decrease because fewer people will be able to buy them; and then construction generally will decline and people in that industry lose their jobs. This starts to look like strategic defaulting on a recourse promissory note really is immoral, because the individual advantage is to the detriment of others.

Gamecock coach Ray Tanner goes to Omaha...



The Promissory Note

When one buys a house that he finances with a bank, he signs a promissory note. He also signs a mortgage, which "secures" the obligation he undertakes to pay back what he borrows. (I would shorten the phrase "promissory note" to simply "note," but it would not be useful in this discussion to drop the word "promissory.")

The promissory note contains the promise of the borrower to pay back what he borrows, together with the interest, according to a time schedule described in the note. There is a mortgage, as I mentioned, but the core of the transaction is the borrower's promise which resides in the promissory note.

If the borrower were to break his promise (i.e. "default" on the promissory note) , the creditor could simply sue the borrower. There is no obligation that the creditor foreclose on the mortgage first. The creditor could simply sue and get a judgment.

However, in practice the creditor will foreclose, because the house will not run away and disappear, as the borrower might. Furthermore, in the course of the foreclosure proceedings, the creditor will get a judgment against the borrower anyway, if the proceeds of the foreclosure proceedings do not cover the borrower's indebtedness and the expenses of the foreclosure. The judgement is the "deficiency judgment" that I discussed in an earlier post.

Again, at the center of the mortgage foreclosure proceedings is the borrower's promise. There is nothing in the promissory note that states that "I promise, provided everything works out." It is simply "I promise."

It is important to point out that, if the foreclosure proceedings happen to yield more than the sum of what borrower owes and the expenses, (that is, the house sells for more than the mortgage balance) the creditor doesn't get to keep the profit. It goes to the borrower. Of course, in such a case the borrower porbably won't let his house go into foreclosure, because it has equity in it. After all, the creditor only agreed (promised) to take back what he lent, plus the interest. The creditor can't take the profit. We will hold the creditor to that promise.

The idea that the borrower can walk away, because the creditor has his remedies at law, and that there is, therfore, nothing immoral is nothing new, of course. It reflects the school of "legal realism," whose most famous advocate was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. It pretty much reflected the philosophy at the University of Chicago when I attended the law school there, and I would say it reflected the philosophy of the other major law schools in the country. That philosophy is fraying at the edges, because its basis in Social Darwinism worries the Statists. Government, after all, needs to step into the economic jungle and impose "fairness."

But Christians don't take their cues from the pagan culture, regardless of how refined and sensible it seems to be (at least in a given case). We have to take a second look at these difficult questions. To coin a phrase, What would Jesus do?

What about Jesus? (By the way, he did not own a house here on earth but owned many of them elsewhere. Actually, here he did not have a place to lay his head. That's a little troubling when we worry about our houses here on earth.)

Maybe this question about keeping your promises in the financial context is a Caesar vs. God thing. Maybe Jesus refers to two worlds when he had answered the Pharisee's question and that Christians can walk back and forth between them when it makes economic sense to do so.

Maybe not.

"Lay Up Not for Yourselves Treasures upon Earth . . . Where Thieves Break Through and Steal"

Growing up in South Florida, the mantra always was to buy the most expensive house you could afford, leverage it with the biggest mortgage you could get, and then, when you could afford a larger house, sell the old one and finance the acquisition of a new one. (A corollary was that the house you can barely afford should be purchased in a neighborhood where that particular house would be the least expensive.) This was a sure-fire way to build wealth.

To that formula, now add a government policy of easy money, mortgage fraud, and a conspiracy involving policemen, one of whom coached at Dade Christian School, an FBI agent, and a couple of real estate lawyers, one of whom is a prominent Republican fundraiser. Now what what do you get? A federal indictment. (Not to mention a real estate bubble, lately burst.)

I would like to point out that this all happened in Broward, but this happens in Miami-Dade of course. Send them all not to jail, but bury them all under the jail.

South Carolina wins College World Series! [Update]

Go, Gamecocks!

(The player at the middle-right with his cap on backwards is the cousin of Sandy, one of our paralegals.)

Sandy's cousin is Adrian Morales. He lives in Hialeah and graduated from Miami Springs Senior High. He has four brothers, all of whom play baseball. Adrian played for Miami-Dade College his first two years, and was drafted by the Astros with a really big bonus offered. He decided to go, instead, to Carolina, play there, graduate, then seek a direct draft into the majors rather than the farm system which the Astros offered. Smart guy.

The "Strategic Default" Outcry (UPDATE)

The matter of a borrower walking away from his mortgaged home, where the value of the home has dropped below the outstanding indebtedness, has been getting a lot of attention recently. The Miami Herald has an article on the subject today, and Glenn Reynolds links to this post on the Atlantic Magazine blog. The Herald article cites some surveys that indicate that nearly 19% of home foreclosures are the result of a solvent homeowner (a homeowner who is apparently able to service the mortgage) simply walking away from the house that he bought (and financed) at what now appears to have been a very inflated price.

The idea suggested by some of these reports is that the "strategic defaulter" is doing something immoral, and that someone (maybe the government) ought to do something about it. The strategic defaulter is contrasted with the upright debtor who plugs away at his debt, figuring that someday the market will correct itself and some equity will appear or that the walk-away price he would pay (the moving expenses, the taint on his credit history, and the prospect of a deficiency judgement - see discussion below) is too high a price to pay.

But before getting to the issue about the character of the borrower, the matter of a "deficiency judgement" needs to be kept in mind. A "deficiency judgment" is what the mortgage lender gets when it receives less in the foreclosure proceedings than what it is owed. It is the difference between the balance due on the mortgage and the market value of the house. It is the very thing that prompts the "strategic defaulter" to walk away in the first place.

The catch for the defaulter is that he is personally liable for the deficiency. Not only that, but the deficiency judgement will also include the bank's attorneys fees and all other costs associated with the foreclosure. What the creditor will do with its deficiency judgment is to turn it over to the sheriff for collection or a collection lawyer who will scour the countryside for the debtor's assets. By definition, the "strategic defaulter" has other assets, because this is a person who could have kept up the mortgage payments if he weren't such a smart . . . smart . . . smart . . . (Mr. Vice-President, can you help me here?).

Now why won't the banks simply go after the strategic defaulter's other assets with a deficiency judgment? Part of the reason may be that the paperwork was so sloppy when the financing was done that the bank is going to have a rough time proving its deficiency case in court But whose fault is that? Or maybe the strategic defaulter is just barely in that category, so that it turns out there aren't that many assets upon which to levy the deficiency judgement. But whose fault is that? Or maybe tracking down the assets is not going to be that easy. But whose fault is that? Or maybe it turns out the debtors assets are all "exempt" under his state's debtor protection laws or the Bankruptcy Code, a situation that would have been disclosed on the loan application documents, if the loan officer had only reviewed it carefully and not been distracted by the fee his bank was going to get. (In the case of fraud on the loan application, we would not be dealing with a "strategic defaulter" but with a criminal, for which there are other penalties.) If you want to talk about moral turpitude, may we please talk about the banks here? They are the ones who are supposed to be the defenders of prudence in the market place.

But, of course, the banks were enabled by the likes of FNMA, which was enabled by . . . our government. So if we are going to cast moral aspersions, let's make sure we have our targets properly sighted. I believe number one on the list has to be the federal government.

And it would be just like the government (and the government's defenders in the press) to blame the "strategic defaulter" for the problem rather than itself.

If there are a bunch of "strategic defaulters" out there (and, frankly, I doubt that there are as many as these surveys indicate), then we must assume that each of them has run the numbers, understood the costs and the risks, and finally made a hard-headed walk-away decision. Such a person is merely exercising his rights, based on the bargain into which both he and the lender entered into freely. And I say, if there really are such people as "strategic defaulters" and they see a net gain in the walk-away, then go for it.

UPDATE: Carol dissents. And, of course, she has a point. In a perfect world, everything would work out: banks would loan prudently, the government would not be a player but a referee, deficiency judgments would be generally collectible, and borrowers would not take imprudent risks. But we are not in a perfect world. Should, then, the debtor be concerned only with his own economic self-interest?

Should a Christian act differently? Isn't the discipline of the market place, when things get out of kilter because of negligence or greed in the particular transaction or elsewhere in the economy, how God more or less keeps the lid on this fallen world? Is the Christian aggravating a bad situation by failing to act as a self-interested economic, pagan actor or is he helping the situation? Whether he is helping or not, should he do what he promised to do? (He did, after all, make a promise.)

If we put it simply on the basis of keeping a promise made to another, a promise on which the other relied, then the matter becomes pretty clear. And Carol's right.

"Here, Mr. President, is your Head [again]"

President Barack Obama arrived at the [G20] summit on what White House officials hoped would be a triumphant note after House and Senate negotiators reached a final compromise on a bill that would bring about the most sweeping overhaul of financial rules since the 1930s.

But he left having achieved little on the fiscal issues that dominated the summit.

The United States was forced to give ground on European demands for a new emphasis on budget austerity, which it had warned threatened to torpedo the fragile economic recovery.

-from the [UK] Telegraph today.

"Minimizing Marriage: An Economist Looks at a World Without Husbands and Wives"

This is the title of Marvin Olasky's interview of Jennifer Roback Morse in the June 19, 2010 issue of World.

According to Olasky's introduction to his interview, Dr. Morse is "an economist and the mother of two children plus two books: Love and Economics [subtitle Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work] . . . and Smart Sex about, as the subtitle says, Finding Lifelong Love in a Hookup World."

Olasky's interview is well worth reading, and I would think the books as well, although I haven't read them (yet).

The Ferenji Funderburks.

Well, I'm ready to go.

Reading Stott

Finished Basic Christian: the Inside Story of John Stott, the Stott bio. (Thanks, Macon!)

Picked up Stott's Through the Bible Through the Year, and am making it the center of my daily devotional. Also picked up his Why I Am a Christian, to see if it would be a good one to give to non-Christian friends (or do you think Basic Christianity would be better?). Also picked up The Living Church - Convictions of a Lifelong Pastor.

I like Stott's habit of an after lunch nap, his "horizontal half hour" or "HHH" and his one day a month getaway to think things over.

He got in trouble with other Evangelicals for his view of annihilation. I've thought about the issue for years, and I like his position. The link is to the Wikipedia article on "annihilationism." Here's a quote from the wiki article:

Stott first publicly commented on the issue of whether hell is eternal in the 1988 book Essentials: A liberal-evangelical dialogue with liberal David Edwards.[13] However in 1993 he said he had held this view for around fifty years.[14] Stott wrote, "Well, emotionally, I find the concept intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterising their feelings or cracking under the strain."[15]

Yet he considers emotions unreliable, and affords supreme authority to the Bible.[16] Stott supports annihilation, yet cautions, "I do not dogmatise about the position to which I have come. I hold it tentatively... I believe that the ultimate annihilation of the wicked should at least be accepted as a legitimate, biblically founded alternative to their eternal conscious torment."[17]

(The footnotes in the wiki quote refer to Edwards and Stott, Essentials: a Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue.)

"And I come home with $100 worth of groceries and I still don't have anything to fix for dinner! What's up with that? "

Constructing a meal plan around specials at the supermarket can help save money-but it also requires extra time and coordination. E-Mealz (e-mealz.com) charges its subscribers $5-$8 per month to receive weekly menus based on sales at local grocery chains.

-from the June 19,2010 World magazine (which magazine, by the way, just gets better and better).

E-Mealz includes Publix, Wal-Mart, and Kroger among the stores they watch. They will prepare veggie menus.

Al Gore

If I were a poodle, I would be deeply offended.

Your Federal Government at Work

Do you think the feds might do something about this, now that they have undertaken to provide health care?

Probably not.

I plucked this image from here, as did the New York Times here, as did a site called treehugger here.

"But, surely, you eat seafood . . . "

American scientists who spent five years shooting nearly 1,000 sperm whales with tissue-sampling darts discovered stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals in the animals on their 87,000-mile (140,000-kilometer) voyage, according to a report obtained Thursday.

The levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium could affect the health of both ocean life and the people who consume seafood, the scientists say.

More here.

Evangelical Cocaine

Rule of Law?

What rule of law?

Mr. Salazar forgets that judges have contempt powers. This could be fun.

"Living After Cancer"

The title of a good article in last Sunday's Parade Magazine.

My diagnosis was in 1994. I am so thankful to be here.

Copyrighted?

The Father in this Household is Very Well Cared For

White chocolate chip cherry chocolate cookies

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.