Yikes!
I hate to reference anything Maureen Dowd has written, but she's penned an interesting and lengthy "What's a Modern Girl to Do?"(via drudge) that has the following statistic:

A 2005 report by researchers at four British universities indicated that a high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to marry, while it is a plus for men. The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise.

In a fight, I want Jason Taylor Covering my Back.

The All-Pro Defensive end for the Dolphins had this to say about the win yesterday in Baton Rouge, amidst all the talk and blather about the "homecoming" of Saban to Tiger Stadium and Williams to the Saints, according to this morning's Miami Herald:

I don't care about coming back to LSU and this crappy locker room and the ugly colors and paint all over the field where you can't tell if you're coming or going,'' Taylor said. ``This win was important for everybody, not just [Saban].

Nick doesn't coach at LSU anymore; he coaches us. And we wanted to win for us, and he wanted to win for us, too.

Macon & Kellsey's Library
For about a year, I've been using a program called Delicious Library to catalog our books & videos. Among it's super-de-duper cool features: use the iSight to scan the ISBN barcode of the book and Delicious Library accesses Amazon's database to bring down the cover image, relevant publishing data, and publisher description to your computer. This way, it doesn't take very long to catalog your whole library. Another way cool feature: it accesses your Address Book for when you want to lend things to your friends, and then puts the Due Date in iCal with a reminder when the book is due. That is really all the functionality this nerd could want: ease of input into catalog, beautiful & effective interface (with ability to rate my books), and the ability to track where I've lent my treasures.

But then I discovered that some wonderful 3rd party wrote some code to export said library in HTML to put it out there on the intarweb. Cool! You can take a look at our library here. (With over 800 items, it takes a while to load, just so you know.) Wanna borrow a book?

Power's Up! About 6:30PM last evening the lights came on! What a great moment. In the early afternoon, I had noticed a large lineman crew from Sumter Utilities working in our neighborhood, and I had spoken with them in the hope that they would soon get to our little piece of the grid.

They were from near Sumter, SC, but the man I spoke to said his group lived toward the NC/SC line. He also told me that they had first come down for Katrina, and had been pre-positioned here when it roared through. Then they went home for a couple of days, then to Biloxi, then home for a couple of days, then to some town in Louisiana, then home, and then here. I asked him where they are staying here, and he said the Fountainbleu Hotel! (Nothing else was avaliable.)

About mid-afternoon I learned from a neighbor that there was a lineman crew working over on Hammond Drive, between Ibis and Heron, which is just NE of us. It is down Hammond that our piece of the grid travels before it turns west down our alley. So I got on my bike and spent the next couple of hours off and on watching the crew do its work, mainly dealing with and replacing two poles that the storm had snapped. It was the Sumter crew.

Some interesting things about the crew that I noticed: They were all white, not a black man among them. No latins either, They spoke with a right heavy rural drawl, and several of them smoked. They were clean-cut and, despite working all day, clean. They worked steadily. They were deliberate, very careful, but they never seemed to take breaks, and they seemed thoroughly competent. They were appropriately intense and there was no joking around - totally professional. They had a tool for everything, and looked in terrific shape. I would not call them "good ol' boys", because that term suggests (to me at least) a sort of propensity to incompetence that personality and relationships cover over. These were the sort of men that James Webb wrote about.

When the downed pole on Hammand had been replaced,the sun was fast going down, I became concerned that they would not get to my alley. I had earlier noticed that the fuse on the transformer on a pole half-way down the alley to our house had blown, and I knew that they would need to replace the fuse after the power was up. One of my neighbors said they were getting ready to go. I looked for the man I had spoken to earlier that day, and he happened to drive up in one of the supervisor trucks. I asked him whether he could send someone over to look at that fuse. He said, "I've sent someone over already. I remember we talked today. I didn't forget you."

And so I rode my bike over to our block and, sure enough, there was a crew with a lift-bucket truck getting in position to fix the fuse. By then it was nearly dark. I saw the lineman lift up on a special stick and put in place the new fuse. Below the fixture, now in place, dangled a sort of latch which, when closed, makes the circuit. He brought the stick down, caught 'hold of the bottom end of latch, and lifted it up into place. Where the latch made contact, there was a bright spark, and then the lights in the neighborhood came on!

Note: Sumter Utilities is an example of the de-verticalization of the electric utility world. It has no grid of its own to tend. It works for others who do.

But where does Gawd come from?

Sean's Kottke pointed me here to explain why the White Sox are not the White Socks. The link gives some interesting history of American spelling.

As to the White Sox, years ago Walter, Macon, and I saw a pre-season game (then called an "exhibition game") between the White Sox and the Yankees in Ft. Lauderdale and Frank Thomas played. What a beautiful man! Its great that he is on a championship team at last.

Recalling that first sight of Frank Thomas reminds me of seeing F. Lee Bailey try a case in Manhattan federal court in 1971. It was a jury trial, and there was a witness being examined by opposing counsel in a large impressive court room right out of the movies. No one in the crowded court room, absolutely no one, was paying any attention to the witness, to the opposing counsel, to the judge, to anyone; they were all looking at F. Lee Bailey. He was just sitting at the defense counsel's table, not with his feet up under it, but with his chair more or less turned to stage right, in the direction of the jury. His legs were crossed, and his left elbow was on the table, and he was doing nothing but looking at a legal pad. Now that's presence!

So it was with Frank Thomas: you just could not take your eyes off of him.

Microsoft, Maybe it Needs De-verticalizing. Microsoft's quarterly earnings report is out today. It posted a 24% increase in its fiscal first-quarter profit. The market yawned: its up 2.57% today. Bernstein sold its position in Microsoft about 10 days ago. Merrill Lynch rates it a "hold". But Morningstar has a "buy" rating on it. Not a lot of consensus here.

The WSJ says that its MSN unit is falling more and more behind Google and Yahoo. Its Xbox 360 comes out next month, but its made no money for the company. Its Server and Tools division is doing well, and it makes big bucks from the Windows software. And there's a new guy who is heading up technology, Ray Ozzie, that is supposed to be a hopeful sign.

It pays a big dividend and the company is accelerating its stock buy-back program. I'm holding.

De-verticalization. I am the trustee of a small trust whose investments are managed by the Bernstein division of Alliance Capital Managment. Bernstein had been a stand-alone, privately held investment firm for many years, and made its money not only from investing people's money, but also selling its research to other investment firms. A few years ago, the owners (who were the senior partners) sold themselves to Alliance. (Too bad.) But the Bernstein research function lives on, and from time to time the people in that division publish some of their research conclusions in a format that is readable to laymen.

This week I received a new essay from Bernstein, entitled The New Industrial Revolution: De-verticalization on a Global Scale. I highly recommend it.

Some excerpts of the "executive summary" are as follows, but read ye all of it, all of the essay:

"De-verticalization is the process of separating functions and services from a vertically integrated business. Companies are undergoing this change because
they can operate more effi ciently and achieve better results by relying on partners to perform certain functions, rather than by maintaining control of these processes themselves.

"As de-verticalization unfolds in a given industry, supply-chain partners focused on particular aspects of the value chain emerge. Frequently, these partners develop greater economies of scale and superior skill than their in-house counterparts. The development of these partners reduces redundancy of operations in an industry and lowers the barriers to entry.

"De-verticalization is a profoundly destabilizing, continual process. The competitive edge gained by deverticalizing is usually fleeting because established rivals copy effective strategies, and lower barriers to entry encourage new competitors to emerge. Thus, companies must continually find new functions to de-verticalize in order to maintain their edge, and any given industry may go through many rounds of de-verticalization."

I have reflected on how this kind of thinking is expressed in the Amplifier idea.

Firing People. This is not one of the really enjoyable aspects of being a boss. I have had to do it in times past. These were "must do" situations, and they helped the enterprise in ways not limited simply to removing a person from a situation to which the person was not suited. But the experience takes something out of you (and, strangely, puts something in you). Sometimes the experience is tougher on the person being fired, which leads me to a story.

I had been with my first firm, Smathers & Thompson, for several years. The firm had been having trouble with a secretary who would come to work drunk. She was drawing very near to middle age, did not have a husband or children, and was a sad soul. The day arrived when our office manager, Betty, had to deliver to her the bad news.

This event took place in Betty's office, around two corners from my office. Betty is behind her desk and the firee, whom I will call "Sally", is sitting in a chair in front of Betty's desk. The door is closed and Betty gives her the termination message. As it is the end of the working day, Betty, after telling Sally that she is terminated, also tells Sally that she is free to stay in Betty's office for awhile so that she can collect herself. Betty excuses herself and goes home.

Meanwhile, totally without knowledge as to what is going on, I am working in my office, and it begins to get late. Most of the people have gone home. But another secretary comes into my office (I am about the only lawyer left, apparently) and she says, "Oh, Mr. Stokes, come quick! Sally is in Betty's office and I think Sally's dead!"

"Shoooot!!!", I think to myself, as I hurry down the hall and around two corners to Betty's office.

In I go, and there is Sally sitting in the chair in front of Betty's desk, with her head thrown back and looking at the ceiling. It takes me no time at all to realize there is nothing on the ceiling worth looking at and that this lady is gone, gone, gone.

I get on the phone and call 911, and they are on their way. Meanwhile, I am left in the office looking at Sally and wondering, what in the world did Betty do? Then I had another chilling thought: should I be doing CPR on this person? Oh my gosh, no! I really did NOT want to get intimate with this dead woman (I was sure she was dead.) I decided against this course of action.

The EMT people soon arrived, and looked at her expertly, did their thing with the pulse and stethescope and whatever, and said, yes, she's dead. That really was not a great relief to me. Should I have given her CPR? I asked one of the EMTs if he could tell me how long she had been dead. He said an hour or more.

That was a relief, and I told him so and why. He laughed and said there wasn't a thing I could do.

Years later I got the opportunity to do my first firing.

Omigosh!

News from the Wilma Front. Still no power at home, but we did hear a transformer blow up last night, which means that FPL was testing the local grid. And we saw two big FPL trucks rumble through our neigborhood yesterday evening as well. We had very cold water showers last night. You could hear our screams for blocks. On the other hand, the weather is beautiful.

We have land-line telephone service, and never lost it. I figured how to run the dsl modem and the Apple Airport off the Radio Shack lead-acid battery I have, so I was able to get on the internet from home with my laptop on battery mode. (I bring the laptop to the office to get charged.)

When I awakened this morning, still in darkness, I walked around outside to see if anyone had lights on: no one.

MetroRail is supposed to be on a 30 minute schedule, but we decided to car-pool again this morning. There was probably twice the traffic than yesterday, but it is still relatively light.

We had supper with the Lahmeyers last night, which was fun.

Hello, America! Just a quick post to let you know that we survived, and are back in the office on the second, simply beautiful day after Wilma roared through. And roar it did! A lot of trees down in Miami Springs, trees that survived Katrina's winds, even small oaks. Our power is out, and the prospects for restoration within a few days seem poor. (FP&L is talking about 4 weeks before we have complete restoration, as Wilma destroyed transmission lines, which the FP&L spokesman referred to as "the I-95s of the South Florida Grid".) But we do have power downtown. There is also power in Hialeah, just north of us, where my mother lives (she never lost it at Epworth Village, even though one of her bedroom windows blew in during the storm).
One of our paralegals and a church member, Cyndy, had a tree fall on her house, damaging the roof, so she is home dealing with that. But structural damage in Miami Springs is minimal. We lost two big fishtail palm trees, but they will grow back, and that was all the damage, except for a small coconut tree that blew over during Katrina and blew over again, despite my attempts to stake it up securely.

We completely buttoned up at home this time, even to taking the turbines off the roof and pulling the van and the car close into the protected area in front of our entranceway. That was a good thing.

The storm's main fury came during the daylight hours of Monday morning. On the south side of our house we have a screened porch, separated from our den by storm-proof sliding glass door and panels. So Carol and I sat and watched from the den as the wind and rain pounded Miami Springs, first from the SE, then the S, then SW, and finally from the west, as the storm moved from SE to NW. They eye passed north of us, so we saw sustained fury without let-up. But we did fine.

Carol took some pictures, and we will post them at some point. Now we are trying to refocus on the work here at the office. I have a big hearing tomorrow in WPB, and we will see whether that's still going on. Another big hearing next week in FTL, but we understand that the court house there suffered extensive damage. When we can, we will post on other observations and comments.

Prayer would be good, especially for Cyndy, with her housing situation, and for Sue, one of our paralegals, who lives in Broward.

Adios.

Lurkers of the World: Unite!

Always wanted to title a post with that.

Anway, about the previous post re: Calvin - Here are some of my thoughts in response:

Mary: Yeah, you read me right, I generally fought the urge to speculatively raise my eyebrow when Rev. Calvin enters the discussion. (Aside: What an eloquent gesture: the raised eyebrow! It says, "I'm not so sure about that, but I'm not so unsure or impolite as to actually say something, but I do want you to know that you're going to have to do a Whole Lot Better than that to convince me. So keep talking, though you continue to run the risk that I might actually raise the other eyebrow, and then I might start rebutting your comments." All with the deft movement of one or two facial muscles! And for those of us blessed with abundant eyebrows, the statement is even more provocative. /Aside)

Not only did C&Z disagree about Communion, Calvin and Zwingli also disagreed strongly on the nature and meaning of Baptism. Hence the whole "Anabapitst" movement. (AnaBeets! movement? heh just kidding. And for balance, let me also say, Truly Reformbeets!)

Not to mention the fact that when lining up for Sunday School, they always lined up alphabetically (ascending), and most scholars agree that this really bugged Zwingli and he never forgave Calvin for it.

Sean: The reason I'm having to back into Calvin is because I used to share your same impression, both about Calvin Acolytes and about Calvin himself: that he was "systematic" to the point of "problematic". But what I'm finding is that the disparate parts of his work that I read lead me to the conclusion that he was more prone to resting "Mystery" back in step #1, even though he continued to do his best to think down to #10. At the very least, I find that in Calvin's writings he left plenty of Mystery Room for me to be a bit more comfortable with him than I used to be. And also bear in mind how I'm coming into this: via Karl Barth & T.F. Torrance -- neither of whom are fans of Double Predestination (or even Single Predestination) yet still located the bedrock of their theolgy in agreement with his readings of the Scriptures. (And may I also continue to reserve the right to radically change my opinion about anything, at any time? Thanks. I see no reason to stop that personal policy of mine at this point in my life.)

I also deeply appreciate your gentle introduction of the term Biblical Theology. You prevented the raised eyebrow! Nice pre-emptive measure. :-) And so, equally gently and humbly, I'll comment on the term. I understand that this has become, as my father says, a "term of art" in the theological world. In other words, "Biblical Theology," is a technical term used to differentiate a theological approach. I find it as troublesome a technical term as I do "Systematic Theology". The trouble, as you no doubt anticipated in your pre-emptive apologia, is that any Theology worth it's salt (IMHO), is biblical: ie, firmly grounded in the Scriptures. (Ol' Cal is spinning in his grave over the notion that some professor somewhere doesn't think his theology is "Biblical".) Just as any Theology worth pursuing is systematic: ie, internally coherent, thorough, thoughtful, addressing all of life in light of who God is. And while I'm at it, let's also nit-pick about "Pastoral" Theology. As if any good thinking about God (that is, Theological Thinking), didn't end up in pastoral application. Not that people don't all the time stop their theological train of thought before getting to pastoral theology. It's just that it's incoherent to do so: like getting married only to never move into the house with your spouse. That's the point of getting married: live & love together! That's the point of theological thought: to do pastoral care. (Snarky Aside: Then again, some folks' theology leads to very unpastoral care. Which is perhaps why in actual pastoral application, they switch theologies. Which is probably a very good thing. /Snark)

Why don't we start a new Theological Movement right here? Let's put it all together and call it Integrated Theology. Of course, in my mind this is like saying, "Let's call it Good Theology." But it's my movement, and I'll cry if I want to. (I can already hear the protests, "Hey, wait! Are you saying that my Theology is somehow un-integrated? Dis-integrated? How dare you! If I were wearing gloves, I would take one off and slap you with it. But I'm a poor Theologian, so I can't. Wait, I didn't mean that, I meant that I don't have alot of money, not that I'm a poor Theologian.)

Finally:

i would want to look at Systematic Theology as a valuable resource with all of the Augustine/Luther/Calvin/Barth/Torrance eminences as valuable resources, but secondary over against the Biblical data.

Me too. And I think Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Barth & Torrance would all agree with you. Shall we also throw in all the Biblical and Pastoral Theologians in that list as well and declare that we all are just doing the best we can to understand the Scriptures by the Spirit and live in Christ also by the same Spirit? :-)

Willis! Good to see you here at Kith&Kin. Lurkers are always welcome. Though your Lurker status is somewhat jeopardized by your comment. Jeopardize away!

Edited at 9:30pm: because coherent syntax & grammar are so helpful to reading comprehension! And because, in the immortal words of Paul Stokes, the 8:39pm post was, "a good rough draft."

More Calvin than I thought

It's been a busy few months getting these Carts going, and now that they're going, we've got to figure out whether they're going anywhere or not.

But in the margins, I've been reading Christ, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, by Leonard J. Vander Zee (a Christian Reformed pastor). I picked it up because Kellsey and I have been thinking about the second in that list since Kellsey was pregnant.

I've thoroughly enjoyed the book, cover to cover, and highly recommend it. In particular, I think it does an excellent job in articulating the differences between Reformed Traditions of Calvin and Zwingli. Baptists are in the Zwinglian Stream, all other Reformed folks are in the Calvinian Stream, except for where they've been influcenced by the Zwinglian stream, which is pretty much everywhere in America. (Didn't use the heavily and unhelpfully freighted adjective "Calvinist" on purpose, thank you.)

These are two wholly different theological paradigms for looking at the world (and, by extension, baptism and the Lord's Supper), but Vander Zee also brings them together in, you guessed it, the Lord Jesus Christ, the One True Sacrament. (All you InterVarsity Staff lurkers who are reading this will hear Calvin-Barth-Torrance-Deddo bells ringing now.)

Among the many, many thoughts that zipped around in my head as I read this one was: Dang, but the more I read of Calvin (he shows up alot in this book), the more I really really like him, and discover that Karl Barth and T.F. Torrance are very thorough students of Calvin and follow him very closely. In fact, I am discovering that my stream of theology (Reformulated Reformed Theology, as my professor once called it), is actually quite Calvinian. One might say that Calvin, in my eyes, is rescuing himself from the Calvinists who utterly turned me off of him.

Funny how I've had to back into really liking Calvin from a starting point of really liking Karl Barth. Who, in turn, I had to back into liking from starting out with T.F. Torrance & Sons.

Anyway, back to the book: Communion has, for a long time, been my favorite part of Church. I mean, if I could take Communion every Sunday, I would. I thought that perhaps I was a closet Orthodox or Anglo or Roman Catholic (and perhaps I still am) for thinking something very special was happening at Communion and that it was the highest point of any service. But, lo and behold, I find that Calvin thought the same thing and for much better reasons than I. There sure is a great deal of room here in the Reformed Theology Tent. I am grateful for this.

Other streams of thought which sprung up during the reading of the book (and in no particular order): Modern Evangelicalism has some strong leanings towards the Gnostics and their anti-flesh/world beliefs - I think this is a correct assessment; Many Dyed-in-the-wool Presbyterians are more Anabaptist in their approaches to Baptism & the Lord's Supper than they are Calvinist; A solidly Trinitarian Theology is absolutely essential in making sense of the Scriptures that surround Baptism & the Lord's Supper; A solidly Chalcedonian view of Christ (One Person, Two Natures) is essential in making sense of them as well.

This is a great book for those who are interested in Baptism & the Lord's Supper as well as those who are interested in continuing reading in the Athanasius-Augustine-Calvin-Barth-Torrance Theological stream (you know who you are).

No, it's not a coffee cake at your local Starbuck's, though it could be your local Starbuck's.
For those who needed to know, from wikipedia:

Simulacrum is a Latin word originally meaning a material object representing something (such as an idol representing a deity, or a painted still-life of a bowl of fruit). By the 1800s it developed a sense of a "mere" image, an empty form devoid of spirit, and descended to a specious or fallow representation.
In the book Simulacra and Simulation (1981/1995), the French social theorist Jean Baudrillard gave the term a specific meaning in the context of semiotics, extended from its common one: a copy of a copy which has been so dissipated in its relation to the original that it can no longer be said to be a copy. The simulacrum, therefore, stands on its own as a copy without a model.

"The Powers That Be".

That oft used phrase comes from the KJV, Romans 13:1.

"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God."

NIV uses "the authorities that exist".

Your Elbow.

"A measurement of length frequently used by Leonardo is the braccio. The word means 'arm', and is thus equivalent to the old English ell (no longer in use as a measure but still heard in 'elbow', which is where your ell bows.)"

Charles Nicholl in Leonardo da Vinci, Flights of the Mind, a biography I started today.

Unhappy Outcomes. Headline of lead article on front page of today's WSJ:

"How a Victorious Bush Fumbled Plan to Revamp Social Security".

Hello, Tomorrow! In one of the amateur radio magazines I read, an article appeared (to which I cannot link) about a fuel cell power supply about the size of a small suitcase. It supplies 40 watts at 12 volts continuously off of hydrogen cylinders that can be recharged easily. Its pricey right now, about $6000 last summer. The company that produces it is called Jadoo Power Systems. Here is a link to another article on one of the devices Jadoo produces.

Iraqi Economic Indicators. Michael Rubin in the WSJ yesterday said this about Iraqi "metrics", rejecting the idea that car bomb counts are the index to credit:

"Other indicators suggest Iraqis have confidence in their future. The Iraqi dinar, freely traded in international currency markets, is stable.

"When people fear for their future, they invest in gold; jewelry and coins can be sewn into clothes and smuggled out of the country. When people feel confident about the future, they buy real estate. Property prices have skyrocketed across Iraq. Decrepit houses in Sadr City, a Shiite slum on the outskirts of Baghdad, can easily cost $45,000. Houses in upper-middle-class districts of Mansour and Karrada can cost more than 20 times that. Restaurant owners spend $50,000 on top-of-the-line generators to keep open despite the frequent blackouts. In September 2005, there were 40 buildings nine stories or higher under construction in the Kurdish city of Sulaymani. Five years ago, there were none. Iraqis would not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on real estate if they weren't confident that the law would protect their investment.

"Iraqis now see the fruit of foreign investment. A year ago in Baghdad, Iraqis drank water and soft drinks imported from neighboring countries. Now they drink water bottled in plants scattered across Iraq. When I visited a Baghdad computer shop last spring, my hosts handed me a can of Pepsi. An Arabic banner across the can announced, "The only soft drink manufactured in Iraq." In August, a Coca-Cola executive in Istanbul told me their Baghdad operation is not far behind. Turkish investors in partnership with local Iraqis have built modern hotels in Basra."

Read the whole thing on OpinionJournal.com.

Wild Kingdom. Today on my early morning walk I saw the raccoon again. He wasn't very afraid of me. But wait till he gets a load of this.

Morning Rituals

Here are some of Aidan's friends at our local Starbucks. (L to R: Didi, Denise, Phoenix.) They've really enjoyed watching him grow over the past 3 months. He's really enjoyed the attention they give him!