Steve Peifer of AIM in Grapevine, TX

December 9 at the First United Methodist Church. His new website.

UPDATE: See Mary's post on Steve.

Say, Can You See?

Yesterday I met with a delightful octogenarian lady, and she told me that in the late thirties she had sung with a band. "After one performance," she told me, " a man came up to me and said, 'You must be a lot older than you look.' I asked him why he would say that, and he said 'You know so many of the old songs, you must be older than you look.' I told him, 'Mister, I know the Star Spangled Banner, but I wasn't born in 1812!'"

Ron Brummitt and the Miami Rescue Mission

The Herald prints something positive. Ron has preached in our pulpit at MSPC many times. The Miami Rescue Mission was doing its good work when I was growing up at Central Baptist. No references in the article to Jesus, a few to "God" if you keep reading. That's the best we can expect from the Herald. But Ron knows where his power comes from, and the people there too.

Chipotle Mexican Grill

Chipotle Mexican Grill has arguably become the country's most successful fast-food chain in recent years by rejecting almost every major technique on which the industry was built.

-WSJ 11/23/07

Cool website too.

Belief in Medicine

Faith does not necessarily make physicians more likely to help the poor, according to a survey by University of Chicago researchers Farr Curlin, John Lantos, Marshall Chin, and the Yale New Haven Hospital’s Lydia Dugdale, MD’06. They discovered that 35 percent of nonreligious physicians they surveyed worked in underserved communities, while 31 percent of self-identified religious ones did. Researchers published their findings in the July/August Annals of Family Medicine. The survey also asked physicians whether they viewed medicine as a calling; religious doctors who said yes were no more likely to practice in poor areas than those who answered no.

-From the Sept/October 2007 University of Chicago Magazine.

(I'm sure Christian lawyers do much, much better.)

What Good's a Liberal Education?

The current issue of UChi Magazine has an article on Leslie Key, who has a PhD in biophysics, and is an assistant professor in the UChi psychology department, a member of the committees on neurobiology and computational neuroscience, and an olfaction researcher. Her research team just "reported in the August Journal of Neuroscience the first direct measurement of how, as the subtlety of an olfactory decision increases, the brain's olfactory bulb intensifies coordinated neural activity." I know that this research is intensely interesting to everyone, but what I wanted to mention was how Leslie Key got to where she is, according to the article.

She earned a liberal-arts degree in 1983 from St. John's College in New Mexico, then spent three years in Los Alamos with GenBank, a forerunner of the Human Genome Project. "In 1985 she began a biophysics PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, that she interrupted after a year, traveling and working as a programmer for five years before finishing the degree in 1995."

Obviously a liberal arts degree is a sure way to get lost in the woods. I hope that by now this poor woman has settled down and been able to focus on something long term. And is she married?

Immigration and Unemployed Blacks

In September 2006, after multiple raids by federal immigration agents, Crider Inc., a Chicken-processing factory in Stillmore, Georgia, lost three-fourths of its 900-member workforce, most of whom were Hispanic illegal immigrants. To find new workers, plant owners raised wages by more than a dollar per hour and offered free transportation from nearby towns. Within weeks, Crider had hired roughly 200 local African Americans from the area's state-funded employment office to fill some of the vacancies. It was the first time since the late 1990s, when Hispanics started moving to Stillmore in large numbers, that the plant's productions line were manned mainly by blacks.

Thus begins an article on the connection being explored by a UChi professor between immmigration - both legal and illegal - and African American employment.

Although the introduction sounds like the basis of a Tancredo like argument about controlling our borders, you will see that the Chicago professor, Jeffrey Grogger, uses this example as all the more reason "to think about skill acquisition as a means to improve the labor-market position of African Americans in light of the immigraton we see."

Stem-cell Breakthrough

Simply huge. Another promise kept. See 1 Corintheans 10:13.

"Beowulf"

(ALERT! Some people may think I give away too much in this review. I don't think so, but proceed at your own risk.)

This is not an easy film to evaluate. We saw it at an IMAX in 3D. That's a completely overpowering experience in itself, something qualitatively different, at least as I experienced it, than viewing a movie in a conventional theater setting.

The animation is astonishing. At first, one simply reacts in a sort of back-peddling way to the the 3D experience, which the film makers particularly exploit at the beginning with dramatic and explosive scenes. In addition, one is somewhat detached at first because the people in their animated forms seem less than real, but very interesting nonetheless. In other words, as you work yourself into the movie, you are a curious and fascinated and critical spectator. But after a while, your brain somehow settles down and gets involved. You start to live in the movie. That's a familiar place to be with a good movie, but this one somehow occupies you (or you it) more intensely simply on account of how the film makers put the thing together visually and aurally. Again, to an extraordinary extent it is the medium that takes you over.

The story is a different matter, and the characters, but I do not mean that the movie fails here. At first, the characters are interesting, as I already indicated, not as people as such but in their verisimilitude. But after awhile, you "forget" about that and actually accept them as "people". Although Beowulf, the hero, is a sort of screamer (at least at first) like the commander in 300, which I find annoying, he certainly becomes more of a human as the story develops than a lot of heros I've seen lately, including those in 300.

The story is about great temptation, great betrayal as one yields to it, and, finally, redemption, at least for the individual if not for the world. (What will happen to the world as it deals with evil is left hanging at the end.) I found that plot especially interesting because I have just finished reading The Kite Runner, another story of betrayal, an excruciatingly painful betrayal (I almost put the book down at that point), and redemption. Neither of these stories is written by Christians. (In Beowulf there is, in fact, gratuitous Christian bashing, which won't sell the producers any tickets to the evangelical community, and the author of The Kite Runner is of Muslim background.)

In both Beowulf and The Kite Runner, redemption is achieved by the works (and suffering) of the protagonist. But in The Kite Runner the opportunity for those redemptive works appears to be providential (or is it a plot-device, who knows). In Beowulf, the opportunity for redemption is provided by self-knowledge ("conviction"), guilt, and a second chance that the forces of evil themselves provide. In Beowulf's universe, as in ours, evil cannot keep a promise because that is the nature of evil, and that provides the redemptive opportunity.

The nature of the good is far less developed, even stunted in this movie. We see the unaccountable loyalty of Beowulf's wife and that of his friend, who engages in self-deception all the way to the end. The "gods" are remote and uninterested. There is only Beowulf and whatever he can muster. As I also indicated, we are not sure that this will be enough for anyone but Beowulf.

I have no idea of the extent to which the movie hews to the classic tale of Beowulf. I imagine it roams far afield. So it needs to be viewed on its own merits.

One other thing about the film I must mention is the beauty of Angelina Jolie. The animation moves her beauty to a place that no human can possibly occupy, something like, I suppose, what the Greeks did in idealizing beauty with their sculpture. That beauty dominates the last scene of the movie (this is not the scene from the trailers) and she is simply breathtaking. How could any man withstand her? In such a universe, where overhwelming beauty is the tool of hell, what hope is there?

The show has comic books aspects, of course, and sometimes it is simply crude, especially at the beginning. This is not Shakespeare or Homer or Tolkien. You have to allow for that. But as a total experience I would say that it is well worth seeing.

UPDATE: Good review in CT.

Running into the Winklers at Cozy Corner

Only two of our Saturday men's breakfast regulars showed up at Cozy Corner this morning. It was rainy, and probably people didn't want much to think about food at this point in the Thanksgiving Week. But Richard Miller and I were there, and we will opt for quality any time.

Across from us I noticed a young couple with a baby girl, about Honor's age. The little girl and I made eye contact, and she kept turning around and looking at me during the entire breakfast. I thought her dad looked familiar, but I wasn't sure, until his wife spoke to me about how fascinated their daughter was in Richard and me. (Richard didn't have anything to do with it.) About that time, the father asked me if I was "Mr. Stokes" and I recognized him as Mike Winkler immediately, one of Walter's good friends. They were getting ready to drive back to Orlando, having visited his family in Miami Springs for Thanksgiving. They both work for a Christian Counseling firm in Orlando, New Beginnings. Here's a webpage with their bios and pictures (scroll down).

They attend an Anglican church in Orlando that is under the authority of the Bishop of Rwanda. Kelly told me the name, but it didn't stick in my mind. I told them Mary might be coming to Orlando this summer, and they were very interested in that.

Going to see "Beowulf" tonight

Here.

With Van, Joe, and Margaret Lahmeyer. Carol will be scrapping with Juliet.

I'll give you a full report tomorrow.

The Primaries

I'm still a Democrat. Should I change parties so I can vote in the Republican primary, or stay a blue-dog Democrat? Staying a Democrat, I would vote for Hillary, and there's no question about that. Moving over, I would be in a quandry. Just whom can I trust over there? I think I know what I have with Hillary. I thought I knew what we had with GW, and I was wrong in some very important respects. As to the Republicans, I like McCain (good comments from others to that post), Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, in that order. As to Huckabee, I just don't know. Is he a dark horse or a Trojan horse? I find him worrisome, more so than, for example, Giuliani.

I'm talking primaries here. Not the general election.

Fortieth Thanksiving

Carol and I will have our fortieth Thanksgiving together tomorrow. The first two were before our marriage in 1970. They each took place in Greensboro at Carol's house. I was in law school, and I flew down from Chicago. Carol remembers that I didn't like mushrooms then, and that among the dishes her mother, sister, and she prepared for the first Thanksgiving were green peas mixed with pearl onions and mushrooms. She remembers that I picked out the mushrooms. In fact, she says that the only thing she remembers about that Thanksgiving is my picking out the mushrooms. How did I ever get this woman to marry me?

Tomorrow it will be just the two of us for Thanksgiving dinner here in Miami Springs. This will be only the second one we have spent alone together, just the two of us. The first one was my third year of law school. We had been married in September of that year, just a week or so before the school year began. We lived in an apartment in one of the law school dorms. We were "resident heads", and our job was to look after the other law students who lived there. It was a co-ed dorm, and our apartment, made from three adjoining dorm rooms, was on the floor where the women lived. The dorm was built in college Gothic style and was old and stately. The room that served as our living room had a fire place and was well furnished. It had a bay window that overlooked the reflecting pool in front of the dramatically modern law school building. The dorms adjacent to the law school (known as "Burton-Judson") had a dining hall. The ceiling was two stories high, wood beamed across the ceiling, with heavy rectangular tables and high back chairs. The dining hall crew had a Thanksgiving meal for those who stayed there over the holiday, and that's where we had our first Thanksgiving feast. So we weren't really alone, because there were students and dining people there too. Carol had to work that day at the UC Hospital, where she was employed as a "ward secretary", but she came back across the Midway for the dinner.

Carol remembers that we were alone together one other time, "when we had Macon". Then she thought that maybe Walter had been born by then too, so maybe not. I pointed out that we would not have been alone together even if Walter had not been born, if we had Macon. She thinks I misunderstood what she said, but, on behalf of Macon, I took umbrage. The fact is that one is never alone when Macon is in the same house. But she was talking about our being the only adults. So I calmed down and let the umbrage pass.

Anyway, we will truly be alone together tomorrow for the meal, although we will go down to the Lahmeyers for dessert.

By the way, I'm over the mushroom thing, but there still won't be that dish tomorrow.

ZoomRoom

To think that we could have avoided all that renovation.

Question for Christian Republicans

Now tell me again why you are supporting Giuliani and not McCain? (Thanks, Glenn.)

Is it the social issue thing?

Versailles Restaurant

"The unofficial town square of el exilio." If you come visit, we'll go have dinner there.

Salad vs. Big Mac

Why a salad costs more.

On "Going Home"

Great new post on Mary's blog. And a fascinating first comment to that post as well.

Sean Posts!

Sean has interesting posts on Beowulf and on "Sibling Effect". Check 'em out.

"Therapeutic" Cloning: Right.

The idea is to create an embryonic clone of a patient, then transplant altered versions of that embryo's cells back into the patient. Because the DNA of the transplanted tissue would match the DNA of the patient, the immune system likely wouldn't reject it.

From the WSJ's Health section on Thursday, in an article reporting that monkey embryos were cloned by scientists in Oregan. (Originally reported in Nature.) The next step is to take a rhesus embryonic clone to full term "and thereby create the world's first cloned money." Next is to test "whether fresh tissue derived from rhesus clones can treat diabetes or other diseases in a monkey, a process known as therapeutic cloning."

And the next step after that? Oh, we already know that, there was a movie about that two years ago.