Category Archives: Culture Nights

Opportunism is stimulated

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Well, the so-called “economic stimulus” checks have certainly stimulated some creative thinking. I can’t count the number of email and junk-mail offers that have tried to attract my attention lately, each mentioning the imminent tax rebate checks and, of course, suggesting that this particular service or product is the best way to do my patriotic duty. One in particular stood out yesterday; an offer from a carpet company offering a $300 voucher on their product and touting that that amount combined with the average “economic stimulus” check would give lucky me more than “$1500 in buying power!” That’s not a match for my brain power, however.

Given the slate of presidential candidates before us, one of whom actually has to win, I think the smart investment is in guns and gold. Interestingly enough, a one-ounce American Gold Eagle bullion coin and a Desert Eagle handgun are both running close to $1,000. Maybe a Sig and some silver are the solution for future home security.

Speaking of opportunists and home security, we also received two visits last night from “advertising directors” offering us a free home security system in return for posting one of their security signs in our “fabulous” front yard for advertising purposes. This is becoming an annual event, though we’ve never had two different duos (both from the same company) hit us in the same night as they worked our neighborhood. Well, of course, I’d buy a security system from somebody going door-to-door, just to avoid the hassle! Wouldn’t you?

Oh, wait – I don’t have to buy it, it’s free because I’m going to let them put their sign in my yard! But what if my security system somehow keeps Santa Claus from dropping in? You know, sometimes you just know you’re being scammed even though it’s hard to see exactly what the scam is. Trust your gut and then hit the internet, which is what I did some time back when these offers started to show up at my door. If you fall for it, what happens is that they install some cheap keypad/sensor/siren apparatus (usually hooked up to one window or door; if you want more “protection” it costs extra) and they con you into signing the service agreement for an over-priced monitoring service that adds up to thousands of dollars – and will cost you nearly that much if you try to break the contract once you find out what you actually agreed to (more details here and here).

Anyway, as it stands right now our economic stimulus is still safely in-hand and I’ve resisted the siren call of the free home security system. Until we decide what to invest the windfall return of our own money into we’ll be going with the tried-and-true security system of smearing jello on the floors, even though that means I’ll have to venture into the black market for Diazinon for the inevitable ants.

Paging Janet Reno

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Another great one from Scrappleface yesterday:

Feds to Raid Isolated, Black-Robed California Sect
by Scott Ott for ScrappleFace ·

(2008-05-16) — Federal agents and National Guard troops surrounded the gleaming white temple-like San Francisco enclave of an isolationist sect after the black-robed “high priests” of the group yesterday declared themselves to be above the laws of the state of California.

In a move reminiscent of recent raids on polygamist compounds elsewhere, authorities prepared to seize documents and computers, and to rescue any young interns or clerks who might have fallen victim to the cult’s bizarre, extra-legal rituals.

Yesterday, the “Supreme” leaders of the sect briefly emerged from hiding to issue a declaration overriding two state laws and loosening the definition of marriage to include “any practice or lifestyle the prohibition of which might make one feel discriminated against.”

“We’d like this siege to end peacefully,” said a Justice Department spokesman, “but these people need to know that this is still the United States of America. You can’t set up your own sovereign nation within its borders, and make up your own set of rules that counter the will of the people and violate the law of the land.”

I need you to do something for me, and for them

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All across the country tonight, and right here in the state of Minnesota, parents played with their children, tucked them in, listened to their prayers, kissed them, and told them they loved them. And tomorrow they’ll do it all over again, even though it never makes the newspapers.

I have to believe that.

I have to because the stuff that does make the papers is enough to make you despair of the madness in this world. A “hunter” father who stocks up on beer and pot for a hunting trip but can’t be bothered to buy a hunting license and forgets, apparently, what a turkey looks like, shoots and kills his 8-year-old son. A mother puts her 2-year-old son and 11-month-old daughter in a bathtub full of water and leaves them alone while she shops on-line for new shoes, needing the 2-year-old to come and tell her “something’s wrong” as the infant girl drowns. A massive professional football player decides to play a game of “let’s see if you can get out of a plastic bag” with his two year old son, who is fortunately rescued by his mother. A couple of weeks ago I read about a mother in Chicago who drowned her baby girl in the bathtub because having to care for the baby was cutting into her partying.

In the first two cases, anyway, the reports are that the so-called adults are devastated by what happened, and some people even suggest that the legal sanctions be limited because the perpetrators are already suffering. And to that a little piece of me deep down inside says, “Good,” even though I know I should be compassionate and prayerful.

What I don’t know is what happened to the parental wiring in each of these cases to short-circuit certain instincts. I know that kids can be very frustrating and time-consuming and can wreak havoc on your neat little existence. That is not a capital offense, however, even if it seems as if our culture treats being able to do what you want to do as a sacred thing.

You know, I like doing my own thing too, but I knew the first time I held my first-born that I would willingly die for her; literally if called upon and figuratively every day as I adjusted my life in countless ways big and small to make a place for her (and later her sister) in this world. And I don’t say that to suggest that I’m exceptional in any way; in fact, I think that that is or should be the norm even though the headlines increasingly suggest that that is not the case.

Every so often, however, another headline proves the opposite.

CHICAGO — Chicago police say a man died as he tried to shield his four-year-old daughter from an auto allegedly driven by a man under the influence of a controlled substance.

Joseph Richardson was walking his daughter Kaniyah to a McDonald’s for burgers late Monday when a car jumped the curb. Police say the 39-year-old Richardson grabbed his daughter and held her up out of harm’s way just before the car slammed the two into a fence.

Richardson was pronounced dead at the scene. Kaniyah was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital in serious condition.

Police say the driver of the car, 32-year-old Angelo Thomas of Chicago, was charged with two felony counts of aggravated DUI. Witnesses say the man was driving erratically before the accident.

Richardson, a church musician, was the father of three, two girls and a boy, all under the age of 10.

Now that’s a father, willing to leave himself in the path of danger in an effort to move his child out of harm’s way. In fact, he probably didn’t even have to think about it, he just did it. The sad irony is that this little girl will grow up without getting to know this man, while in 3 of the other cases the parent is still here and it is the child that is gone.

Tomorrow, do this in their memory, and in honor of Joseph Richardson: play with your children, tuck them in, listen to their prayers, kiss them. Tell them that you love them.

Well would you look at that…

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There’s been a lot of discussion on the radio the last couple of days about whether NBC should or shouldn’t show the video of Eight Belles breaking down after crossing the finish line (and being euthanized right on the track) at the Kentucky Derby. It’s almost a quaint discussion in this age of YouTube, which probably had the footage up before the filly’s body was moved off of the track.

I hadn’t watched the race, but assumed the replay would show the incident in its entirety when I got around to watching SportsCenter that night. I was a little surprised but not disappointed when ESPN didn’t show it. In fact, I was a little relieved. Thinking it was coming up had me steeling myself kind of (but not as intensely) in the same way I had prepped myself for the opening moments of Saving Private Ryan the first time I watched that movie. I knew it was an important news story, but I don’t typically get a lot of entertainment value out of seeing animals suffer.

The discussions the next day reminded me of 1978 when I was in Journalism School at the University of Missouri. It was right after Karl Wallenda had fallen to his death during a high wire stunt in San Juan. The fall had been taped and the networks showed him falling but cut away before impact. A group of my fellow J-schoolers and I were sitting at the Old Heidelberg, arguing over whether or not they should have stayed with the image all the way down (I was on the side of cutting away). Some argued that it was “news” and therefore legitimate to be shown, no matter how grim. Others of us said the point was made and the story was told without the final moment and that to show the ending was gratuitous and sensational. Yet another person suggested that the whole reason a news camera was there in the first place was because of the chance that he might fall. Nothing was resolved then (do college arguments ever resolve anything?) but I think I could feel myself already withdrawing from what I thought was going to be my profession.

It’s not as though I, and my generation of television viewers, hadn’t already been sensationalized with a number of startling scenes. Already I’m sure we’d seen Evel Knievel break himself a couple of times on Wide World of Sports, and I also remember living in Indianapolis in 1973, during what was perhaps the grimmest year in the history of the Indy 500. That May we saw Art Pollard crash during practice or time trials, his car flipping and sliding upside down along the back straightaway, killing him. The start of the actual race that year saw another crash in the front rows, with Salt Walther’s car driving up over the wheel of another racer and flipping into the air, losing it’s nose cone and it, too, landing upside down near the infield with Walther’s legs and feet sticking out of the remaining shell of the car (Walther would live, but endured a long and painful rehabilitation). Even more dramatically than that, later in the race, driver Swede Savage crashed off the outside wall then the inside wall and his car literally disintegrated around him leaving him sitting in the middle of the track, beating at the invisible alcohol flames with his arms and hands while rescue workers raced to his side, with one would-be rescuer being hit and run over by an emergency vehicle driving the wrong way out of Pit Row. I remember seeing that man’s body laying crumpled in the infield as well. (Savage would ultimately die nearly a month later from complications arising from his injuries). All of these images were brought into our homes, over and over, via the magic box.

Still later in my life I would be watching the night Joe Theisman’s leg was snapped on live television, and I’ve seen things done to Moises Alou’s and Robin Ventura’s legs that legs aren’t supposed to do. I wasn’t watching these events in the hopes of seeing these things, but there they were and I couldn’t look away.

I suppose there is a percentage (likely a small one) of auto-racing fans that go to races hoping to see a crash, just as there are those who go to (or watch) hockey games hoping to see a fight (or a player nearly be decapitated by a skate such has happened earlier this year). Similarly, I know that “gawker slow-downs” around a traffic accident scene don’t have much to do with drivers suddenly becoming very attentive and careful with their driving and there are probably cave paintings somewhere of slow-running hunters being trampled by mammoths, too.

There’s just a vicariousness, and sometimes empathy, about us that draws us to the unusual and even painful. Sometimes it can ultimately be helpful. The ’73 Indy crashes led to dramatic safety changes in the engineering and fuel capacity of the cars and there’s talk that last weekend’s events at Churchill Downs will spur greater strides in horse safety ranging from breeding to more use of synthetic track surfaces that are easier on the horses’ legs. The one thing that wont change is that we’ll still like to look.

A question of, or about, faith (or Faith)

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by the Night Writer

A commenter on my last post, Uncle Raven — someone who has known my wife and I for some time — asked a great question in relation to my review of “Expelled”.

In the context of Evolution vs. ID or Big Science vs. Faith, do you believe the conception and birth of your girls was an event whose only adequate explanation is the extraordinary and direct intervention of God? Or do you allow for the possibility of Bad Science, i.e., that the RM’s physician misdiagnosed her condition? And, if that’s possible, how would it effect your beliefs?

Here’s my response (actually it should be my wife’s response because a great deal of it his her story, which I’m relating second hand because she’d gone to bed):

First, just to focus on our conception for the moment, my wife had had endometriosis several years before the two of us met. Her ob-gyn diagnosed it, treated it and performed surgery. Because of the place where she was in her life then and the things in her past that she was dealing with, she was sure she never wanted to have children anyway and told her doctor to tie her tubes as long as he was in there working on things. Which he did. Several years went by and the surgery was, well, shown to be effective at everything it was meant to do. During that time, however, she also found herself turning to God (since nothing else was working). Her heartfelt prayer eventually became, “God I want your will more than my own,” and “God, change me.”

She didn’t know what she was asking. We were married in October of 1987 (Uncle Raven was there) and pregnant in November. Did my wife fall to her knees, praising God for this miracle? No, she did not. She was not pleased, to say the least, because she was still of a mind that she didn’t want children. I won’t side-track into the things she (and I to some extent) went through over the next several months, but suffice it to say that she remembered what she had been praying — and we named our first daughter Faith. Five years later we deliberately set out to have a second child. We were very pleased with the way things had worked out with the first one and so we made a list of the sex (girl) and character traits and disposition we wanted in #2 and prayed together to become pregnant and for these traits to appear in her. At the very end of our prayer, and almost as a lark, my wife said, “Oh, and God, red hair and blue eyes would be really cute, Amen!” During the ensuing pregnancy we were often asked if we knew if “it” was a boy or a girl. We’d say, “Well, we asked God for a little girl.” The reaction was generally such that we didn’t feel encouraged to add, “and one with red hair and blue eyes.” Well, many of you know how that turned out, though I must confess my knees buckled when our second daughter was born with a full head of carrot-red hair. Not only that, but the other things we asked for, as well as a boatload of things we hadn’t even thought of, were deposited in her as well.

Now, I’m not saying that this should become anyone’s doctrine or that I think this “extraordinary and direct” intervention in any way means God loves my wife and I more than anyone else or has a special purpose for my daughters more special than the plans he has for everyone else. We take it simply as a sign God gave us to bolster our faith and to encourage us to look to him. If there’s more to it than that, we’re happy to wait and see.

Could the RM’s doctor have mis-diagnosed her extreme symptoms, or failed to perform the tubal ligation completely? Conceivably (pardon the pun). Perhaps we were just lucky, except there are dozens of other testimonies, maybe even hundreds if we could write them all down, in our lives where we know we have heard from and been directed by God and seen the result — and even some where we know we didn’t pay attention and missed out to our detriment and the detriment of others (sometimes I really wish we could have a burning bush or bolt of lightning something to tip us off but it hasn’t worked that way for us). Similarly, we have heard and even seen similar miraculous things happen in the lives of others we know. Quite often these results line up directly with how scripture describes the ways of God. Perhaps one day I’ll write a book about how all that works, but for now it’s time to get back to the question about Evolution and ID.

Because I’ve seen scripture come true in my life, it’s easier for me to believe that other scriptures about creation could also be true. Similarly, I’m not ignorant of science (the depth of my faith is a relatively recent development). I’m widely read in a number of genres, and I’ve swum in the waters of evolutionary theory throughout my schooling. I’ve done the fruit fly experiments in Science class, and I know that species can change and certain traits can be developed (as any animal breeder can tell you), but I don’t think I could ever so alter a fruit fly to where it could become say, a housefly or a dragonfly, let alone a chihuahua. Oh yeah, if you had biiilllliiioonnns of years well then anything could happen, right? Kind of like the old “an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters will eventually produce all the works of Shakespeare” theory (to which a dyed-in-the-wool evolutionist might say, “What makes you think Shakespeare wasn’t a monkey?”)

The thing is, the more “we” learn through science, the more complex the subject matter becomes. Scientists mapping the human genome have found that cells — thought to be the simplest of organisms — are really fantastically complex and the interactions within the cells and between cells are remarkably ordered. The odds that one cell could accidentally get the right combination of materials and events to come into existence, along with the ability to reproduce itself, is literally astronomical. That the cell could divide and multiply itself into an organism that could then meet up with some other organism and that these two would discover a lot more interesting way of reproducing than just cell division is, well, incredible. (Oh yeah, I still remember the stages of cell mitosis from lab class: interphase, prophase, metaphase, anaphase and telephase.)

Anyway, somehow or another — either by an incredibly fortuitous and accidental events or by someone or something lining the dominos up first — we’re here in all our wisdom and glory. The evolutionary model holds that order came out of chaos, but in everything else we see that something put in “order” (at least by man) quickly returns to disorder. Does Nature “know” something we don’t and if so, how? And does that “knowing” imply an intelligence at work? As scientists continue to delve deeper and deeper and learn more and more about how much it is they don’t know, couldn’t it be possible that many (who’s job after all is to hypothesize, test, record and try to replicate) might, even without a “Christian” or religious background, start to say, “Hmmmm?” Isn’t it reasonable that countless “reasonable” people might consider that life from random crystals, or space aliens “seeding” the earth or infinite monkeys typing out, not the works of Shakespeare, but infinite lines of DNA code sound just as mythic as Adam and Eve?

An inconvenient truth?

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Is Ben Stein’s new movie, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” a know-nothing polemic … or ahem, an inconvenient truth? I imagine the movie’s debut will stir up quite a lot of response from differing viewpoints, or it may just sink beneath a wave of apathy. Either way, our family is going to see it tonight while we can.

The trailer above certainly poses some interesting questions; among them Stein’s observation that every area of our society tolerates freedom of speech (even, or especially, if bizarre — such as the theory that life was “sown” by alien visitors) except when it comes to Intelligent Design, and nowhere is this more vigorously persecuted than in academia (I guess I’d at least question Stein’s view that free speech is tolerated in academia given the events at the University of St. Thomas in the last year).

Watching this movie should be an interesting counter-point to a show I happened to come across the other day on the History channel: Life After People. The show speculates on what the earth would be like if all humans suddenly disappeared, using CGI technology to illustrate conditions 30 to 10,000 years after “we’re gone.” The show was interesting, if somewhat snicker-inducing at how seriously it was taking itself. I found myself following along as each millenia rolled by, revealing what a wonderful place this could be. Somewhere around 1,000 to 2,000 years into the “future” I started to wonder if — with all this abundant life — the show would forecast the evolution of another human race.

In fact, the show did, toward the end, ask the question if whether tool-using primates would evolve into humans, capable of not only looking at the starry night sky but also viewing it with wonder and imagination. The conclusion offered, however, was that, though certain primates may become somewhat more advanced, it was extremely unlikely they would become humans. Soooo…I wonder how the producers of the show figure that humans ever showed up in the first place?

Maybe they could have asked Ben Stein….

UPDATE:
Rich Karlgaard posts his thoughts and encourages comments on a similar theme in his blog today.

Learning what’s important

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The University of St. Thomas has yet another speaker controversy on its clumsy hands. Just months after inviting, then disinviting, then re-inviting Archbishop Desmond Tutu (he respectfully declined) to speak at the school, the University has now blocked another speaker from appearing: author and pro-life advocate Star Parker.

Enough people (see the links above) are covering this latest development that I really didn’t feel the need to cover it here. That doesn’t mean, however, that I didn’t have an unction to apply the needle a little bit to the young woman who works for me as I left the office today. She’s a St. Thomas grad. “What’s with your old school and it’s treatment of would-be guest speakers, anyway?” I asked. She wasn’t up on the news of the day (I work her too hard for her to peek at headlines).

“What now?” she asked, with a roll of her eyes.

I gave her the quick rundown, and wondered why a Catholic university would block a pro-life advocate from appearing on its campus, especially after the Tutu hoo-doo. “Don’t they have PR people over there, or at least someone who’ll tell them that if you try to play in the middle of the road you get run down by both sides?”

I don’t have her exact quote, but she showed the kind of keen mind and insight that caused me to hire her in the first place. The gist of it was, “It’s not the politics, it’s the money.” She said she used to work the phone bank on campus, calling alumni to ask for money. “So many times I’d call and get someone who was angry about this speaker or that speaker who had come, or a book that was selected for a class, and they’d say they weren’t going to give any money because of that.” She finished by saying something to the effect that St. Thomas was more concerned about the money drying up rather than, say, the same thing happening to free speech.

Wow — here I was, thinking that St. Thomas wasn’t interested in principle, when it turns out that principle and interest are pretty important to them after all!

Elitist, moi ?

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Both the blogs and the MSM have been featuring Obama’s estimation of why just plain folks seem to not be warming to him in Pennsylvania:

“So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

[Image HT to Gino, via The Lumberjack, who really knows how to get his whacks in.]

While the blogs tend to feature the entire quote, the MSM (or the apologists offering commentary in the MSM) tend to focus on the “bitterness” part of the statement while ignoring the rest of Obama’s ignorant statement. I say “ignorant” here not in terms of “stupid” but according to the “lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified” meaning of the word. Essentially, Obama’s statement is an ill-informed assumption on his part, based on his experience or world-view. I say it’s ignorant because I was reminded of a Pew Research Center study that I blogged about back in 2005 after reading about it on Craig Westover’s blog. My post read, in part:

The study suggests that the old political party stereotypes of rich and poor, educated and less-educated no longer hold up as the two major parties now have similar demographics in terms of the distribution in these categories. The primary difference is now along the lines of attitude. From the Washington Post article:

The most striking differences between lower-income Republicans and lower-income Democrats come in their perceptions of the power of the individual. Both Pro-Government Conservatives and Disadvantaged Democrats include a substantial number of people who consider themselves to be struggling financially. Overwhelming majorities in both groups say they often cannot make ends meet.

But where they part company is in their overall sense of optimism, with the Republican group expressing much greater faith in personal empowerment. Three-fourths of the Pro-Government Conservatives agreed that people can get ahead by working hard, and four-fifths agreed that everyone has the power to succeed. Just 14 percent of Disadvantaged Democrats agreed with the first statement, and only 44 percent agreed with the second.

Meanwhile, this faith in one’s ability to overcome may be rooted in a greater faith:

For all their similarities on income and education, Enterprisers on the right and Liberals on the left diverge on religious habits and cultural attitudes. For example, almost half of Enterprisers attend religious services at least weekly, while just a fifth of Liberals go to religious services that often. A fifth of Liberals are classified in the Pew study as secular – defined as atheists, agnostics or those who say they have no religious affiliation – compared with about one in 20 of the Enterprisers.

So, the way I put this together is that even though they are about the same in terms of income and education, the group with the more positive view of the future is the one that puts its faith in God and in themselves. The group with the most pessimistic outlook puts its faith in the government.

Which group do you figure already knows who its Savior is, and which one is most likely to turn, in their bitterness and hopelessness, to the next one that happens to come along?

Nevertheless, Obama has proven himself to be nothing if not resilient and adaptable. I expect that once he leaves the high-falutin’ San Francisco fund-raising circuit and returns to campaign in Pennsylvania his next quote will be, “Git ‘er done!”

Court and spark

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I discovered another blog with an appreciation for Courtship: iPandora. Blog founder Matthew has been joined by co-blogger and future bride, Grace, aka American Texan.

Currently at the top of the page are their two stories of how they met, became friends, then reached the decision to court and now, ultimately, are engaged. An “engaging” story indeed, told from two viewpoints but with a common vision. Check it out.

One reason why I blog

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by the Night Writer

Back in January Mitch Berg had a post likening the abortion issue to a ribbon in the middle of a tug-of-war rope, with each side trying to move the ribbon (i.e. public opinion) closer to it’s position. Mitch thought he was seeing signs that public opinion has pulled more to the right of late. That naturally triggered a comment string that centered around the role of faith in one’s view and of legislating belief. Surprisingly, it actually turned out to be one of the most civil debates I’ve seen on his site, and one I was proud to have participated in.

I’ve thought about that discussion several times since then, and while the topic at that time was abortion, I’ve realized that my comments then pretty well encapsulated my thinking on many issues and, unintentionally, provided an explanation for one of the reasons for why I blog, limited as my contribution may be.

I’ve extracted the main portion of my comment from that day (addressing another commenter, not Mitch) and posted it here to help me remember, on nights like these when I’m really tired, why I keep doing this.

… I merely want to address your view that the abortion issue is an issue of faith. It is a matter of faith, but not necessarily “faith” as in being Catholic, Evangelical or Humanist, but in terms of “belief.” The underlying point I took from Mitch’s post is that what people “believe” about human life appears to be changing, and ultimately what a society believes is reflected in its laws (for good or ill). Inevitably some beliefs are going to be in the minority. Thank goodness the vast majority today believes it’s wrong to hang people from trees, though a few still say it’s okay to threaten to do so, while even fewer would be willing to do it. (At what point prosecution should enter into that example is a topic for another day).

It’s not a process of legislating faith (or belief), but of faith/belief affecting legislation. The fact that some will disagree or be offended by the result is not reason in and of itself to not act on the greater will. Thus the ribbon, as Mitch says, is moved. That does not mean, however, that the minority doesn’t have the right to protest, or to work continually to change the beliefs of the majority, even to the point of risk and sacrifice (since risk and sacrifice are what differentiates belief from emotion). Though I may be in a minority on a number of issues (or because I’m in the minority on a number of issues), I thank God (not goodness) that we live in a society where these beliefs can still be contested.