Had a small epiphany today. I seem to have found a relationship between two of my annoyances at american culture, namely our dependence on cars and our lack of musicality. I realize either of those are debatable things, to say the least, but I name them only as annoyances, not as anything greater. Anyhow, I was thinking today about rhythm, and about how often, during the times I walk somewhere, I tend to compose little tunes in my mind which go with my walking rhythm. I suppose many people simply will think of some tune they know which goes with their rhythm. In any event, it suddenly seemed obvious that the reliance on driving as our most common mode of conveyance eliminates this natural source of rhythm in our lives. We thus become dependent on the artificial, uncreated (by us) rhythms which come through our car stereos.

Quick thought,

doing a search for internet ethics for Christians, I am being constantly reminded that the only people I am aware of who take a realistic and right headed (though in some ways very odd) approach to the problem of pornography are the folks at XXX Church.

Here's the first thing I've found close to what I want to accomplish. I like both the way the frame the document as well as the four issues they address. I had neglected to think about point one, I suppose because that's the one problem I haven't had myself, by God's grace. It should definately figure in though. I would like to say something larger about each of the articles they raise, as well as addressing the topic of how we write to each other on the internet.

I've been thinking for quite some time about circulating a set of standards about what I could call provisionally "internet ettiquette standards for Christians". My vision of this project would be to have a document listing some
general and specific principles which all the signatories would agree to abide by in all their communication and use of the internet. In this way, we can all help to keep each other accountable in our discussions and debates and, I hope, promote a greater spirit of peaceableness. Jesus told his disciples that the world would know, or maybe we could say "recognize", them by their love. This does not mean we will always agree with each other, but I think it means that all our discussions should be done is a spirit of humility, of considering the other as above ourselves, of concern for the feelings and reputations of others, particularly, thinking of the global nature of the internet, all the strangers or aliens we bump into at every turn.

What I envision is having a document of standards which would be linked publically by all those who agree to abide by it. This way, in theory at least, people interacting with those who participate will all be able to be aware of these standards and help with accountability.

My problem is that while I have several ideas on the subject, I certainly have nothing comprehensive. I need as much help as possible in attempting to get this rolling. If you are reading this and have something to contribute in any way, please help me out. I think a rough outline would include the following:

I Intro
A Preamble explaining purpose of the standards

B General priciples of Christian communication (with proof texts?)

II Specifical principles

A Broadly applicable principles

1 e.g. dangers of anonymity

2 local church affilitation--making available contact info to your church in case of irresoluble conflicts

3 manner of seeking forgiveness
etc

B Specific Internet formats with their own "rules"

1 Bulletin Boards
2 Email
3 Blogs
4 Instant Messaging etc

While I don't want to consider this "my" project, it would be good to make sure that any additions, clarifications, feedback or whatever do get collected and hopefully turned into something useful. To that end, at least for now, please send your communications to me, either as a comment or as an email. I'm frankly hoping that this will get taken over by someone wiser and more influential than me, but we have to start somewhere.

Please (!!!) feel free to link or copy this to everyone you think might help. I'll update my site with news when I have any.

Paul Baxter
paulthepianoman@yahoo.com

By request,

the drag and drop european geography test. Good luck!

Number one reason to never let kids on the internet unsupervised.

As much as I like musicians, things can get a little weird at times.

In the latest print issue of National Review, the is a very sharply written critique of the Live8 concerts written by Anthony Daniels (aka Theodore Dalrymple-his pen name). To be honest, I haven't seen any single writer write as sharply about contemporary western social issues as well as Daniels.

Daniels begins by noting the character of Mrs Jellyby from Dickens' Bleak House who "was so concerned for the welfare of the natives of Boorioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger, that she quite neglected to look after her own children." This ends up being the heart of his argument, and what I find most persuasive as well, though he addresses a few other interesting points as well. (By way of confession, I very recently attempted to read Bleak House but was unable to engage myself to it and put it down halfway through).

Daniels notes the oddity of rock stars trying to act as moral instructors. "Their profession, after all, has not been a byword for restraint, good sense, or selflessness . . . have not these same musicians therefore the inescapable moral duty to maintain their silence and do all in their power to prevent the further dissemination of their music . . .?" I left out in the middle his anecdote from a prison officer about the effects of rock vs baroque music on his charges.

Back to the main point though: " . . .the live 8 conception of virtue is now very widespread . . .the vast expansion of tertiary education has increased by orders of magnitude the numbers of people who think in sociological abstractions rather than in concrete moral terms. Statistical generalizations are more real to them, and certainly more important, than the trifling moral dilemmas of their own lives. How, after all, can your own sexual conduct compete in significance with the infant mortality rate or lefe expectancy of the inhabitants of Africa?"

This reminds me once again to recommend his book, Life at the Bottom (written under the Dalrymple name), which shows in frightening detail the effects the our modern ideas are having on the inhabitants of modern English cities.

This looks pretty stupid. The guy blasts american Christians for identifying our religion with Ben Franklinisms (fair enough), then judges them on not meeting socialist standards. I get tired of that sort of thing.

Looks like life in Ukraine actually is changing in a small but very nice way. I'm skeptical about any politician, but seeing them actually keep their promises does give me a warm feeling.

A note about Netflix performance. Our turnaround time for videos is highly determined by our local postal schedule. For a while, we were very early on the postal route, which meant that a video in our mailbox could get delivered to the distribution center that day. If it got there early enough, they might even send one back out that same day. Now we're back to afternoons, so they can't get there till the following day at the earliest.

Not really a complaint, just an observation. We've been enjoying watching all the good movies. Also, for those who like gritty crime shows, The Wire is as good as anything I've seen on tv. You do have to watch it all in order, though, as it is a continuous story.

For all my unmarried readers.

Update!

In case you didn't already know, European politicians are on crack.

The things that happen when I stop paying attention. This makes me so sad and angry. For all of you non-anglicans, I caution you not to say that this makes you glad you aren't in their situation. Let us all pray for our brothers and sisters in Connecticut. While I hope there are great things in store for congegations like St John's down the road, that road seems so utterly distressing.

Just a real quick recollection of something I learned in church yesterday. The HS Sunday School was studying John 18. Many times in the gospels there's a formula that occurs thus, "This happened that the scriptures might be fulfilled . . .", usually followed by a specific OT refernce. In John 18 we get, "this happened that the words Jesus had spoken might be fulfilled . . .". Interesting equivalence there, especially as this is just after Jesus' "I AM" statement to the priests. I assume the major Johannine scholars have mentioned this, but I had never noticed it before.

The RYM trip to Panama City Florida was, for some reason, cancelled. So instead our youth group (that includes me) is going to the beach in North Carolina for a few days.

Before we leave, I guess I should comply with Al's query.

How many books do I own?

I tried counting a couple of months ago and got to around 800 on one floor before I got distracted and gave up. I would guess somewhere around 1200 to 1500 or so.

What's the last book I bought?

Not completely sure. I bought two cheap books at the good will store recently: a John Mortimer collection and a Pete Dexter novel. Dexter was recommended to me by a young reader working at Armadillo grill, but I haven't read him yet. The last thing I got (used) from amazon was Jackie Disaster, another case of getting interested in an author after hearing him interview on NPR. Dezenhall works as a damage control specialist for celebrities.

What's the last book I read?

If you haven't heard me say this before, I try to keep three (and no more) book going at all times, and try to finish all three in a week. My wife wanted me to read a parenting book, so I read Grace Based Parenting. Thought it was about half good, but don't want to take the time to go into that right now. I read Hauerwas' Suffering Presence, a good work on some medical ethics topics. It's a notable not least for the fact that Hauerwas takes the position that human suffering is by design necessarily tragic and thus cannot be solved in a satisfactory way by any particular conception of medicine. I also got to another Harry Potter book. I've enjoyed these, and certainly will want John to enjoy them as well, but I did think this one (unlike the first three) was truly longer than it needed to be. Specifically I thought the first part was much to long.

What are the five books that mean the most to me?

No idea. Of course I put the Bible in it's own category, since I have continued to study it regularly throughout my life and I have not done that with any other books. I think I'll just have to choose some books which seemed to open up new ways of thinking to me. I'll start with the non-fiction.

Helmut Schoeck's book Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior has always struck me as one of the most useful pieces of historical/cultural research I've come accross. As a human attitude envy can be very mysterious because of the fact that those who are experiencing great envy never admit to it. Schoeck gathers and synthesizes a very large collection of data from accross time and the world, probably too much for the taste of modern american researchers who don't seem to like large theories any more. The presentation of how envy controls certain cultural institutions and patterns in different societies I found completely fascinating.

This leads well to the work of two New Testament scholars, Bruce Malina and N T Wright. Mark Horne and several of people had been recommending Wright's work on the gospels to me several years ago. I began reading, iirc, The New Testament and the People of God. It was this book, more than any other, the rekindled my interest in learning about the NT in a serious way, as Wright was the first serious, academic NT scholar I saw who had a perspective I could swallow, though reading him stared changing my perspective around quite a bit. I know a good number of you readers here have read this, but f you haven't, it is well worth the effort. There's a fari amount of philosophy of history at the beginning, but if you find that difficult, just skip to the next section.

Having read some of Wright on understanding the NT in it's historical context, I took upon myself to try teaching a class at my church on that topic. Wanting to be well prepared, I tried to find more books to round out my reading and became entranced by the work of Bruce Malina, who I found had been a big source for Wright. Malina is one of the mor prolific writers of a movement called the Context Group, a group of scholars who attempt to bring a knowledge of ancient history and cultural anthropology to bear on New Testament studies. I began with The New Testament World: Insights From Cultural Anthropology, a work designed as a college textbook (it has study questions in each chapter). Really, from the day I began reading that until now the question of the cultural distance between us and the biblical writers and characters has loomed large for me.There are many other related works on this topic, but the one I mentioned as as good a place to start as any.

One last work for this category, then I'll try to get throgh fiction quickly. In a local used bookstore (the very odd Skylight Exchange), I noticed a book called A Community of Character. I think maybe I had heard of Stan Hauerwas a little, but not necessarily anything memorable, plus he taught at Duke, which made me skeptical at the time, but the topic looked pretty interesting, and it seemed to be closely related to the thought of Alasdair MacIntyre, which I had been reading. Little did I know how much his writing would change me. In a way Hauerwas was similar to Wright in that he was a well eduacted philosopher/theologian with all the proper academic credentials (in his case Yale and Notre Dame), speaking in the language of proper academic cicles (though a bit saltier here), and defending something I can only call authentic christianity. Getting on to Hauerwas would lead to far to many topics (war, peace, ethics, literature, virtue, family, medicine, politics, etc.) so I'll leave off there. Don't have time to write more about MacIntyre or Postman or Tournier or Hayek or Van Til or a host of others who have been important to me.

Since Hauerwas has written elegantly about the role novels can play in learning about virtue, I'll very briefly mention a few novelists who have been important to me. As I think about my taste in novels, it strikes me that I primarily like two things in a novel: that it be educational, and that it be funny. I'll usually settle for either one. Among the writers who have shown a huge amount of erudtion in novel writing are Gene Wolfe, Umberto Eco and Patrick O'Brian. Mark Leyner is very funny in a very peculiar contemporary-cultural-references sort of way. The two writers I found who have mastered writing wise and funny novels are Mark Helprin and Robertson Davies. Not that their books are funny all the time, but they made me laugh often enough, wheras most novels never make me laugh at all.

The folks I'd like to tag are those I have known in that other, "real", world: Christina, Andrea, and Scott. I'll check these off as they participate.

Due to Netflix, I feel like I'm always talking about movies these days. I've seen a lot of truly great movies in the last six months, and a few not so great ones. Tonight we watched Barry Lyndon. The only thing I knew about it before it arrived was that it was an early Stanley Kubrick film. I was quite impressed. I hadn't read the novel, nor anything else by Thackeray, but it seemed like one of the best presentations of a 19th C. novel that I've seen. Seemed to capture the mood quite well throughout. Good sense of melodrama, of moralism, of the attractions and perils of love--all the elements of the victorian novel.

This looks like an interesting film.

This reminds me of the fact that I originally became a conservative political type because I became convinced that welfare was harmful to those it was supposed to help. I've developed problems with amercican political thought in general (republican included) since then, but I still think this is an important issue to wrestle with.

I gave in heavily to temptation today: I just paid two local kids to mow the lawn. I have the partial exxcuse that we needed to have it done next week when we will be away (I paid for two mowings), but really it just boils down to how much I hate mowing. Usually my cheapness wins out over my laziness, though. I guess its not really worse than paying the restaurants to make food for us instead of cooking, which we do too often as well.

You never know what people might learn fom actually talking and spending time with each other.

Ever had this dream?

Interesting article about Mark Helprin here. I like his claim that he has never read a work of popular fiction. That explains a lot. For those who haven't read his novels, it's about time you did so.

It odd to see a movie on video these days. We watched Ararat, a film by Atom Egoyan (writer and director of The Sweet Hereafter), and what I would consider the most emotionally powerful film I've seen made since 2000. However, I go over to rottentomatos.com and half of the reviews panned it. Too confusing, don't bother.

I fully understand that Turkish folks are just not going to like it (and thier voices are pretty prominent at the imbd reviews), but I don't see why that should make so much difference. Frankly, I think this was a much better tragic film than Spielberg has made. It was ambitious enough not just to tell the story of the armenian genocide, but also showed how it echoed down through the generations to today through art, family, stories, prejudices, etc.

If you see it, or if you have seen it already, let me know what you think.

Today I started on Charles Taylor's somewhat massive Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Despite it being a philosophy book, I'm enjoying it immensely. Since reading Habits of the Heart and a few works on ancient anthropology, I've become very interested in the nature and problems of modern wetern notions of identity, and in alternatives thereunto.

In chapter 2, "The Self in Moral Space", Taylor has been speaking about the american "tradition" of independence. He traces this back to the Connecticut puritan teaching that children as they grow older must come to their own conversion experience and develop their own, independent, relationship with God. This has evolved into the "tradition" of leaving home to establish one's individual identity, building the virtue of self-reliance.

In order to see that the cultural shift to the ideal of self-reliance makes a difference, even in its debased form, we have only to compare it to a quite different culture. It matters that american young people are expected to be independent of their elders, even if this is one of the demands of the elders. Because what each young person is working out is an identity which is meant to be his/her own in the special sense that it could be sustained even against parental and social opposition. This identity is worked out in conversations with parents and consociates, but the nature of the conversation is defined by this notion of what an identity is. Compare this with Suhir Kakar's account of the upbringing of young Indians: "The yearning for the confirming presence of the loved person . . . is the dominant modality of social relations in India, especially within the extended family. This 'modality' is expressed variously but consistently, as in a person feeling of helplessness when family members are absent or his difficulty in making decisions alone. In short, Indians characteristically rely on the support of others to go through life and to deal with the exigencies imposed by the outside world."

I'm not at all good at making predictions, but I think this will be remembered as one of the low points of our Supreme Court.

It's nice that one team's success can raise the level of play of everyone else. Unless they are all losers.

The building my father worked in during the '67 riots is apparently burning to the ground at the moment. It was a gvt. building back then.

Wow. I had no idea Boooks and Culture published things this sharp.

Had Daniel over for lunch and some book trading yesterday and somehow I neglected to have any of the beer bread on hand. TO be honest, I didn't even think of it til just now. He did, however, have some of my borsch (his first) and he seemed not entirely displeased.

Beer Bread

Ingredients

2 cups self rising-flour (for guys who don't normally bake, do make sure it says "self-rising")
3 tablespoons sugar
1 12 oz bottle of beer
(and remember the old saying, better beer makes better batter)

preheat oven to 350
grease a breadloaf pan
combine ingredients in order listed in a big mixing bowl
begin stirring as soon as you start adding the beer--it's ok if its slightly lumpy when your are done
put batter into pan, then into oven
bake for 50 minutes
remove and spread butter on top
bake for additional 10 minutes
remove and cool loaf on cooling rack

There you go. Couldn't be easier.

Beer For Breakfast?

My wife sent me, from one of her coworkers, a recipe for beer bread. It was my first time making bread of any kind, and I have to say it turned out very well. I just had a slice with my eggs. It only has 3 ingredients, sp it's pretty hard to screw up. I used Amber Bock for the beer, which gave it an interesting flavor. Lenise said it wasn't that flavorful when her coworker made it. Probably used some abominable lite beer.

I hope my opening didn't make you think I'd joined this guy.

I've been reading The Vintage Book of Amnesia, ed by Jonathan Lethem. It just a collection of short works about memory loss. I'm only 100 pages in and I've already been impressed with many of these works. Some are excerpts from longer works, such as Lawrence Shainberg's story of a neurosurgeon who is suffering from gradual brain damage. A few things I had already seen, such as "Funes: His Memory" by Borges (a classic) and an except from Percy's The Second Coming. The msot extraordinary story so far, one which only tangentially deals with memory loss, is Brian Fawcett's "Soul Walker" which posits the idea that our souls can only travel at walking speen and that if we move around too quickly we leave them behind.

I guess he's back. (He being Scott Cunningham, if you don't immediate recognize the signs)

The blog addiction is not so easily shaken.

You can put that quote on my tombstone--if you buy me a very large one.

In the domain of music the importance and influence of its dissemination by mechanical means, such as the record and the radio--those redoubtable triumphs of modern science which will probably undergo further still development--make them worthy of the closest investigation. The facilities they offer to composers and executants alike for reaching great numbers of listeners, and the opportunities they give those listeners to acquaint themselves with works they have not heard, are obviously indisputable advantages. But one must not overlook the fact that such advantages are attended by serious danger. In Johann Sebastian Bach's day, he had to walk ten miles to a neighboring town to hear Buxtehude play his works. Today anyone, living no matter where, has only to turn a knob or put on a record to hear what he likes. Indeed, it is in just this incredible facility, this lack of necessity for any effort, that the evil of this so-called progress lies. For in music, more than in any other branch of art, understanding is given only to those who make an active effort. Passive receptivity is not enough. To listen to certain combinations of sound and automatically become accustomed to them, does not imply that they have been heard and understood. For one can listen without hearing, just as one can look without seeing. The absence of active effort and the liking acquired for this facility make for laziness. The radio has got rid of the necessity which existed in Bach's day for getting out of one's armchair. Nor are listeners any longer impelled to play themselves, or to spend time learning an instrument in order to acquire a knowledge of musical literature. The wireless and the gramophone do all that. And thus the active faculties of listeners, without which one cannot assimilate music, gradually become atrophied from lack of use.

Igor Stravinsky

I'm glad Chris has been taking the time to read Gatto and summarize for us. The book is available free online, but I don't have much patience with reading on a computer screen. This particular entry was quite powerful, but Gatto is always pretty strong. I was blown away the one time I heard him on NPR. Couldn't believe they would let someone that anti-establishment on the radio.

Breaking News!

Rather interesting article about textbook controversies in Russia.

A film by some folks I know. I really want to see it. The director of this film did a little acting with me for some film work for this years VBS last week. I'm Moses this year, and Josh and another fellow were playing the two fighting Israelites who ask me about killing the Egyptian. Was a lot of fun watching them throw mud at each other.

Maybe you can find Bill Harris more entertaining than me. I know I do.

I apologize to everyone except Valerie for how boring my blog has been lately. There's been a lot I thought about posting, mostly quotes from Samuel Marchbanks and such. It's just been a little difficult lately to put together enough time to both a) find interesting things and then b) write them up. Spending a fair amunt of time lately studying Russian, but beginning language studies don't make very interesting stories.

I DO enjoy being a father, and that takes up virtually all of my time. Unfortunately for y'all, I'm not very good at writing up cure baby stories. I can say generally, though, that J S has been very popular everwhere he has gone. I understand that on his recent zoo trip, the animals were tapping each other on the shoulder, saying, "hey, look at the cute baby."

You'll probably have to select a new option under view->character encoding to read the previous entry.

я сейчас могу писать по-русский

I can clear up this mystery by letting you know it isn't me.

Sometimes there are heart warming things about being a presbyterian. How do we get something like this started at our church? (Daniel?)

Also, I'm 36 today whereas I was not yesterday. Big public thanks to my brother for a lovely amazon certificate to help me clear out some of the books that had been clogging up my wishlist for a couple of years. It's down to 170 books, so if each of you will grab a few of them for me, it'll be light work :)

Show of hands: how many of you have ever heard your pastor throw the word "blogger" into a sermon?

Interesting story on media and politics in Ukraine. You have to figure that a similar action in the US would get someone fired and castigated, but then our situation is much different.

I don't want to hear any of you complaining about YOUR boss now.

Sink me, or What Would Percy Blog?

I've also been toying with the idea of adding Darth to the blogroll. What do you think?

I don't know how many times people have written asking me to post some links to videos of amazing Russian jugglers, but I've finally decided to give in. Just click on "videos", of course.

I agreed to send off my copy of Theology Without Foundations to Tim Enloe, since a. he badly wanted it, b. it seems to be out of print and copies are in short supply, and c. I really need to get some books out of the house. I told him I'd reread it and then send it off to him. I'm enjoying it even more the second time around, probably due to some small shifts in my thinking bringing a bit closer to the some of the writers in the volume.

Only one of the essays was less than useful to me, and even that one had a very poignant story in it. I'm on the last section now, an article by Jewish scholar Michael Goldberg called "Discipleship: Basing One Life on Another--It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know". In the first part he talks about traditional rabbinic methods of teaching in which the disciple serves his teacher/master uncritically, observing everything about the teacher's way of life and performing mundane tasks for him. He contrasts this with his experience at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York in the 70's. He starts the section with a quote: "When I was at the [Jewish Theological] Seminary, the least frequently mentioned word was God." --Art Green

Goldberg continues a bit later:

I remember a Bible teacher who had spent some lengthy period of time translating a difficult text in Isaiah on the basis of certain parallel cuneiform texts. Barely able to contain himself, he proudly informed us of the text's proper translation. But when we asked him what that meant, i.e., what religious meaning that prophetic text might have for us, he waved his arm as if shooing flies, and said, "That's not my department."

The Bible teacher's answer may well be acceptable within the modern academy. For despite foundationalist quests to decontextualize and depersonalize knowledge, that quest itself provides a context within which a certain type of personality is produced with a certain set of virtues particular to it:"clarity but not necessarily charity, honesty but not necessarily friendliness, devotion to the [academic] calling but not necessarily loyalty to particular and local communities of learning."[footnote refernce to Schwehn, "The Academic Vocation"--pb] But even though the Bible teacher's answer would likely gain acceptance within the academy, it would be, it must be, unacceptable in any institution that would lay claim to being heir to what Israel's sages taught. In fact, it remained unclear to me how what the Seminary's teachers taught or what we students learned might be called Torah--God's instruction to and for his people. But if talmud torah was not what we did, then into what practice were we being schooled? And what kind of practitioners were we expected to become? Seminary faculty such as the Bible professor--like many academics everywhere--generally taught their clases and then disappeared. Few shared with students anything at all about thier lives, and far fewer shared anything with us at all about life itself. The sages believed their distinctive life-embracing practices critical to making God present to their disciples. It can hardly be surprising that at the Seminay, where there were so few rabbinic masters, God's presence was so largely absent.

What a coincidence. My birthday is coming up, and I've now seen the perfect gift for any guy.

Thanks to Jim Hart for the link.

Finished watching the film Dogville today. With 3 hour films and babies crying and so forth I find it easier to break these things up. Also gives me a chance to reflect on things a bit. This film is almost universally condemned as a piece of anti-american propaganda by an ameriphobic Danish writer/director (Lars von Trier). Just look up Ebert's review, or most of the comments on imdb. I'm not linking them because I think they all missed the mark really badly. While the setting is a tiny rocky mountain town, and there is a 4th of July celebration in the middle of the film, it is really a Christ story, though arguably one with some seriously flawed theology, depending on how one interprets things. SPOILERS AHEAD

The sequence of events shows a young woman named Grace (Nicole Kidman), appernetly recently escaped from some involvement with gangsters and seeking refuge in Dogville. She offers to work for the residents in exchange for their goodwill and hospitality and some meager wages. They are eventually convinced by Tom (Paul Bettany) to accept this. Before long, though, she is the object of sexual advances by all the males in town, and the object of scorn of all the females. After a failed attempt to escape, she is chained to a heavy iron wheel and still made to work without any wages. Through all of this, while recognizing the evils being done, she is always ready to forgive and move forward. However, her one "friend", Tom, betrays her to the gangsters out of anger that he is the only one denied her sexual favors (being the town moralist, he is unwilling to rape her, like the others).

When the gangsters arrive, we learn that the boss is in fact her father. He offers to kill everyone for her. She resists this idea, saying that the people are only acting according to their nature. After further discussion with her father and one last conversation with Tom, she agrees to have the town burnt down and the people killed.

For those accustomed to more realist films, Dogville seems by turns evil and finally vindictive. However, there is nothing realist about this film. The whole film is performed on a stage with only chalk outlines for buildings, thus allowing us to see the activities of the people inside their homes, etc. Even the town dog, Moses, is a chalk outline.

The only comment I've seen so far that seemed anywhere near the mark was one on imdb which compared it to the story of Lot, which seemed at least partially appropriate. There was like Sodom, not one soul found righteous. When confronted with Grace, they all rejected her, and thus were subjected to the wrath of God and his angels (most of the killing and burning was done by the thugs).

Anyone else seen this yet and have a comment?

Overheard at Harvard:

student 1: my econ prof is SOOOoooo full of BS.

student 2: oh yeah? I guess mine felt he wasn't full enough.

I think the only thing missing from this document is a mention of the chapstick industry, which apparently is based in some lesser state.

Our small group from church tonight watched a fascinating film called Mountain of Fire. It followed a couple of guys who decided to search for Mt Sinai, and seem to have found it in Saudi Arabia. The stuff they found was just unbelievable. If you can get a hold of this movie, it would make good viewing for any church group.

I've noticed that one of the "favorites" for the next pope is Francis Arinze of Nigeria. Makes me wonder if I'll start getting emails like this:

Dear Sir or madamm,

You have probably heard of the recent seccession of my cousin's brother-in-law, Francis Arinze, to the ofice of Pope in Italy, Europe. Our accounting ofice has noticed that there is the amount of SEVENTY FIVE MILLION DOLLARS ($75,000,000) which we need to remove from Rome ASAP.

Your aid in this matter is greatly appreciated and we simply need you to send us a prepaid envelope to mail you the money. COntact me directly for further details.


XXXXX XXXXX
Lagos, Nigeria

From all I've heard, Pope John Paul II was a fine and upstanding fellow, but I sure hope they choose a new pope soon. I've been seeing a lot of Jesuits wandering aimlessly in the streets. Bit of a road hazard.

I was noticing that the last three Netflix films we saw were in some way about violence, although with the first one I'm cautious af making many judgements.

Andrei Rublev is a period piece about the famous Russian icon painter of the 15th century. It's a strange film in many ways, especially as it never once, in three and a half hours, shows the title character painting anything. It does feature some of the most extraordinary violence I've ever seen in a film in a sequence where the site of a cathedral under construction is attacked by Mongols. First time I've ever seen a cow on fire.

While I appreciated the artistry and skill of Tarkovsky, I was a bit baffled all the way through. The second film was much more accessible to americans: Changing Lanes. The story follows the path of two men who collide on a busy road in NYC. The wealthy, rising lawyer, played by Ben Affleck, claims he doesn't have time to take care of things properly (he's late for a court appointment), and just writes a blank check. The middle class insurance worker (Samuel L Jackson (I still don't know what the "L" is for)) is also late for his own court appointment in family court where he was hoping to do som reconciliation with his estranged wife and kids. This starts a cycle of revenge, all of which was occasioned by the accident, but all of which is clearly perpetuated by each party being unwilling or unable to forgive the other. I suppose you could call it a study in why forgiveness is so difficult.

The third was City of God, which for some reason I expected to be a vaguely religious film (probably the title). For those who haven't seen it, this is one of the most colorful, personal, authentic well directed gangster movies ever made. The center of the film is a war between two drug gangs in a favala, or slum, in Rio de Janeiro. What marks it as unusual, is that as each character appears, a flashback tells his story. There are perhaps a dozen of these, and it makes for a remarkably human look at how gang violence develops and is perpetuated.

All three of these were top notch, though the first one is not for folks who are short on patience.

Perhaps you will allow me, on the occasion of the hubbub over the fate of Terri Schiavo, to recommend a couple of books on medical ethics from two thoughtful Christian writers.

First, A Doctor's Casebook in light of the Bible by Paul Tournier. Tournier was a physician from Switzerland who put a lot of thought into holistic ideas of medical care. His faith was not fully orthodox from my point of view (he was a universalist), but his mind was very penetrating about issues of health. It is unfortunate that his works are not very popular in the States. His writing reminds one of CS Lewis, with whom he was friends iirc.

The other is Truthfulness and Tragedy by Stanley Hauerwas. Prof. Hauerwas takes a very sharp look at a number of specific issues, including abortion and the problem of the limits of medical responsibilities. Certainly a more philosophical work than the other, but well worth examination.

My friend Todd has published a very fine Good Friday sermon. Go read it.

Anyone still want to maintain that we live in something called a "Christian nation"?

Apparently there's still one across the pond, though. ;)

I don't know much about genetics, but this sounds pretty interesting to me. I guess they're doing good work at my brother's university. No coincidence that he is there, I'm sure.

A fairly lengthy but considered commentary on why Terri should be allowed to die. I feel like I'm the only person I know who thinks that position is basically the right one. While ordinarily withdrawing food from someone should be conisidered evil, I think in this case the person involved is already substantially dead and those who have weighed the evidence have felt that Mrs Schiavo would have wished to be able to die in some timely fashion rather than having death prolonged indefinately.

While I tend to dislike the rhetoric and positions of many "right to die" folks, at least when they advocate assisted suicide and such, I think our society, particularly in the area of medicine, does not have any sort of coherent idea about death anymore. Somehow it is seen as both unavoidable as well as needing to be fought tooth and nail at every turn. People don't seem to realize that medicine cannot prevent death, it can only, sometimes, postpone it or make it less painful.

Lenise pointed out to me yesterday that my son's 6 month birthday is the same as Johann Sebastian Bach's 320th birthday.

In our small group meeting this week we talked a little bit about forgiveness. Just got me thinking--I wonder if sometimes we don't harbor some "safe" sins, that is, sins we aren't too embarassed to confess. "Yes, I've been a little lazy this week, and also I ate more dessert than I should have." I'm just thinking that we might treasure these sorts of things as insurance against confessing those things about which we are truly ashamed, the things we really do NOT want to tell anyone. Just a thought.

Sorry, IE has been acting up on my lately. It does weird things like not letting me use links very well. Trying to figure out how to fix it without reinstalling XP altogether.

You can't make up quotes like this:

"A greyhound ought to be a dog in the state of Kansas," said Kevin Neuman, of Overland Park.

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--John Sebastian Baxter

Last week I completed reading through all of the Gene Wolfe series books. I was talking about Wolfe with someone yesterday and thought it might be good to say a word about him here.

Wolfe is in my mind one of the most brilliant writers that the US has yet produced. I would suggest that his obscurity is due to two factors. One is that he writes within the science fiction genre, the other that he is erudite and likes to challenge his readers. His books are generally full of puzzles, hints, allusions and assorted arcana. But I have always enjoyed a good challenge and love see authors who don't feel the need to talk down to their audiences.

In addition to a number of stand alone novels and short stories, Wolfe main work to date has been three inter-related series of "sun" novels. The first set deals with an earth of the far, far future, the second with a generational spacecraft (that is, a large space ship intentionally designed to be a home for several generations of colonists on their way to a new world), and the third with the settling of a new world (or pair of worlds to be more precise). All of these were excellent and tied in so many themes and ideas that it would be an exercise in frustration to even attempt to characterize them further.

In contrast, his new two volume work, The Wizard Knight, is written an essentially an adolescent level. I would not feel hesitant about having, say, an average high school senior read it. The story follows an american boy who unexplainedly finds himself suddenly in another world. This world is the world of Celtic and Norse mythology. If you've read Nikolai Tolstoy's The Coming of the King, some elements will seem familiar to you. The subject finds himself unable to remember his name or much at all of life in america beyond the name of his friend Ben, to whom he relates his story.

The focus of the story is how one becomes an honorable man. Our protagonist, through an encounter with a fairy queen early in the story, finds himself in a large, very muscular body and is give the name Sir Able of the High Heart. He is told by this fairy that he is a knight. He believs this himself and tries to act as a knight would act. Early in the tale this mostly involves bullying people to achieve his objectives. Also early inthe story he meets a "real" knight who demonstrates to Able bravery and other knightly virtues.

As Able travels around the land, his claim to be a knight is constantly challenged. He has no "gentle birth" and many he meets do not believe in the existance of fairies, and thus doubt his commission. Able's only response to these situations is to always act as he thinks a knight should act. Of course this often offends, and also brings Able into a number of dangers, many of which he is unprepared to handle.

I don't really want to summarize the plot, as it is quite a long tale and would be considerably diminished by my retelling of it. It does provide a wonderful picture, to my way of thinking, of Aristotle's idea that to acquire virtue one must do virtuous things. This has always been something of a puzzle. If one is not brave, how can one do brave things? Sir Able answers this by believing he has virtues first, then trying to practice them. He is constantly plagued by the notion that he is "just a boy", and his reflections on his actions often show that he is ashamed of much he has done, but throughout is the recognition that virtue can only be achieved through practice. It cannot be conferred by someone else.

Teething going on, simultaneously hurting John's gums and my eardrums.

Surprise of the day: seeing a license plate on our street that said I R L33T.

I draw your attention to this modern day MacGyver. Not only can she tell you moment by moment the course of the war of 1904-5, but she can also do surgery with an unsterilized fruit knife. Plus, gents out there, she's still single.

Anyone want to try to beat my grammar/spelling score? I'll put my scores in the comments so you can try it before you compare.

It hadn't happened in a while, but blogger ate my last post. It was a wondrous recounting of the events of this past Sunday in which I eloquently described the visit of my friend Sasha from Kiev, rhapsodized about Daniel Kirk's Sunday School class, and poigniantly related a touching incident with one of my firends in the youth group.

Alas, such prose is now lost in the cyber-ether. If you would do me a favor, though--no advise about how I should have written into a text program and copied it to blogger. Thanks.

BTW, John has been very grumpy for the last couple of days and seems incapable of sleeping for very long at any one time. Last night he slept for almost 3 hours before waking up at 1, and 1:30, and 1:50, and 2:15, etc.

I guess this could send huge economic dislocation to the Russian economy.

Some things protestants miss by not reading the apocrypha. This is from Ecclesiasticus chs 18-19:

Do not be governed by your passions, restrain your desires. If you allow yourself to satisfy your desires, this will make you the laughing stock of your enemies.

. . .Being too ready to trust shows shallowness of mind, and sinning harms the sinner. Taking pleasure in evil earns condemnation; by hating gossip one avoids evil.

Never repeat what you are told and you will come to no harm; whether to a friend or to a foe, do not talk about it, unless it would be sinful not to reveal it; you would be heard out, than mistrusted, and in due course you would be hated.

Have you heard something? Let it die with you. Courage! It will not burst you!

A fool will suffer birthpangs over a piece of news, like a woman laboring with a child. Like and arow stuck in the flesh of the thigh, so is a piece of news inside a fool.

Ditto for this one.

One of those stories I just wish were true.

I had been planning for several days now to write a little diatribe about how iPods represent everything I find wrong with way our society handles music these days. You were only spared because I've been out of the house a lot plus I wasn't sure how to organize my thoughts on it. Well, lo and behold, Andrew Sullivan summed it all up nicely for me this morning. Key quote:

Music was once the preserve of the living room or the concert hall. It was sometimes solitary but it was primarily a shared experience, something that brought people together, gave them the comfort of knowing that others too understood the pleasure of a Brahms symphony or that Beatles album.

But music is as atomised now as living is. And it’s secret. That bloke next to you on the bus could be listening to heavy metal or a Gregorian chant. You’ll never know. And so, bit by bit, you’ll never really know him. And by his white wires, he is indicating he doesn’t really want to know you.

While I think this (possibly) is the more serious of the two points I wanted to make on the issue, the other is the issue of how we have turned music into something which happens at the push of a button, something we have farmed out to profesionals instead of learning to do for ourselves (and for others!).

It has become exceedingly rare, at least among white americans, to find people who sing. Singing is, without doubt, the easiest, most natural form of musical expression. I would assume it is naturally available to virtually everyone. I harbor the suspicion, which I'm afraid cannot prove, that many of those who claim they can't sing suffer from some form of neglect of natural talent, akin, I suppose to saying that one cannot drive. Almost anyone can learn to drive, barring major physical/mental defects. And most of those defect would not prevent someone from singing.

More health care news. If this becomes trendy, I think hospitals will just close up and we'll all have to go to Mexico to get care or something.

While I'm not really in favor, I have to give these folks points for creativity, so to speak.

Do you think this guy will actually get out of jury duty? I suppose if being dead isn't enough, maybe being the victim will get him some sort of consideration.

Not that anyone asked, but I thought I would mention a little about my reading habits. Somewhere around 10 years ago I started growing frustrated with myself about having started a dozen books but not being able to finish any of them before starting more. I made a simple resolution to myself that I would start reading books all the way through. Over time this evolved into a system whereby I allow myself three books at a time, but I won't start a new one until I finish one. While I will make an exeption from time to time, I have kept pretty closely to this system.

I also realized at some later point that I wasn't reading the quality of literature I wanted to, so now I try tomake sure I only purchase books which I've gotten some sort of strong recommendation for. I read very few best sellers. I try to make my fiction reading to be of high quality authors as much as possible, and my non-fiction reading broad, though I have certain categories I try to get some depth in.

In terms of systemetizing that aspect, I keep a reading queue. Any new books I get go to the end of the line. I occasionally feel frustrated that I can't read anything quickly, in terms of getting the book and immediately setting down to read it, but I'm pretty happy with the way things have gone. Delayed gratification is a good thing and I always need things to help teach me patience in our instant gratification age.

I try to make up for the frustration by setting high reading goals for each week. Two years ago my goal was 2 books per week. This was done fairly easily, so I made it 3 books per week last year, and that worked out pretty well. I've treid to maintain that this year, but I'm a little behind. It always depends on exactly how heavy the individual books are. I've got Norman Davies' fat History of Europe staring at me on my shelf, challenging me to start it and finish it in some reasonable time. I've got a bunch of skinny books in the queue, so I may start it soon and work a bunch of other books around it. I did that last year with a World Literature textbook which took me 3 or 4 weeks to get through. Was fun to read short stories from Africa and Japan and so forth.

As Daniel has already mentioned, we had a couple of wonderful weekend visitors to our church from South Africa to speak about reconciliation. What I just love about our church is that our senior pastor invited Union Baptist, the largest black church in Durham, to come join us for the Sunday evening session. Union provided all of the music, which was terrific. Their last piece was a alto solo with the choir singing "God is my All in All". It rocked. Their pianist was one of the best blues/gospel stylists I've ever heard. Had a good time talking to him afterwards. Most pianists are usually interested in my profession :)

The one comment that really stood out from the message, though, was Micael Cassidy saying that one of the white churches in SA condemned his views as too political for opposing apartheid. Somehow opposing apartheid is political, but supporting it is not. It apllies well here, in the sense that just as all things can be considered "religious", so all things can be considered "political". Its not a matter of "whether" politics, but "which" politics.

We have a train track that runs through the middle of Mebane. One of the main intersections in town has a traffic light on both sides of the track, which leaves the possibility, of course, of people stopping on the tracks to wait for the light. There are signs conveniently posted which say "Do Not Stop On Tracks", but many ignoe these. So just a few minutes ago I heard a loud BOOM. I looked outside and saw smoke rising, so I decided to go down and have a look. It so happened that a car was hit by an Amtrack train and exploded. No further details. I hope that this is the past time this happens in Mebane for quite a while. Fear always served me well as a motivator to stay off the tracks and I hope that will spread to the rest of the town.

If your name is Mark Horne you may click here.

It's a good thing that such potential injustices are being protested and brought to light. Think what might have resulted.

Given my abiding interest in the subjects of honor and shame, I found this fascinating. Are other authors questioning modern notions of identity? I a couple of Charles Taylor's books on my "to read" shelf, and I suspect he talks about the issue of modern identity to some extent.

I remember when I was teaching on ancient ideas of personality using the "Who are you" question as a jumping off point. I realized that the way we think of personality these days is rather problematic. When (and how) do you really know someone today? What do you have to know about someone to say you know them? Is it even possible to know another today?

Part of the answer today seems to be in consumer choices. I remember at one point amazon.com had a program called "Just Like You", where you could look at the user profiles of other people who had purchased similar products or rated products similarly to you. Thus one's identity becomes "I am the sort of person who likes [x movie] or [y book] or [z tv show]" etc.

A must read interview with Neal Stephenson. WHo knew he was reading Walter Wink?

Two words for you. Napoleon Dynamite. This would the opposite sort of movie to the one mentioned below, but hey, a good comedy is perhaps harder to come by than a good drama. I can't ask any High School friends to see this one cuz they've already seen it.

Ordinary People. Strong movie. I would love to watch this with some of my more mature high school student friends. Especially the young lady who's on the swimming team. Anyone watched it lately?

We've got problems. Of course the problem, so far as I can tell, is that we just consume way too many health servces, and increasingly costly ones. Broadening coverage, socialized or not, can only exacerbate that, unless that means that we make doctors' offices and hospitals so awful that no one wants to go there.

A little dream sequence for all of you who are paranoid about technology and personal freedom.

Last night we watched a French film called He Loves me, He Loves Me Not. About a third of the way through I thought it was pretty awful, but then something weird happened in the story and suddenly I was fascinated. You have to see it, but I don't want to spoil anything. Its an interesting illustration, though, of how "facts" don't interpret themselves but always require an interpreter. Plus it has Audrey Tautou of Amelie fame.

Someone should take up a collection for these girls. Perhaps the most ridiculous "no good deed goes unpunished" story I've seen, ummm, ever. Link via The Corner.

--Update, already being done.

Well, it seems that the story linked below in the Telegraph regarding Germany was probably rather inaccurate from the get go. Sorry about that. But hey, it COULD happen, right?

Riddle for you. How does a man born blind learn to paint? Be sure to look at the pictures.