Deaconpaul's money saving tips number 1: don't pay money for your international calls. This sounds like an incredible deal for those with friends or family around the world, so long as thy are in one of the available countries.

The first post here just cracked me up. We all ask dumb questions when we don't know what we're talking about, so I guess I shouldn't laugh.

World's 10 Oddest People

Some excellent police detective work on display here.

I saw one of the more curious films of recent years this week. Tarnation is a documentary of sorts by a young man whose mother suffers from severe mental illness. I say "of sorts" because this is obviously more personal to the filmmaker than perhaps any documentary has ever been. Jonathan Caouette had an early interest in filmmaking, thus resulting in lots of footage of his life and family from his early years. The story, as he presents it, begins with the marriage of his grandparents and the borth of their only daughter, Renee. Renee turned out to be quite a beauty and had considerable success as a child actress and model. One day in her adolescence, though, she jumped, for whatever reason, off the roof of her house and landed on her feet without bending her knees. Renee was paralyzed for 6 months though the doctors said that it was a psychosomatic condition. The doctors recommended shock therapy, which her parents agreed to. Every week for 2 years. Mr Caouette reported that nothing of her original personality was left after this experience.

Renee remained a beuty throughout this period and eventually met and married a travelling salesman and became married. The marriage did not last long and the husband left, unaware that his abandoned wife was pregnant. Thus the filmmaker is born.

At age 4 Jonathan's mother, in a psychotic state, took him to Chicago from their home in Texas, without any money contacts or apparent plans. Someone took them in off the street and raped Renee in front of her son. Renee called her father who wired money for bus fare. A short while into the bus ride Renee was removed from the bus for "disturbing the other passengers". She was taken by the police and jailed for a time before being sent to a mental hospital. Jonathan was sent into foster care.

As is sadly too common, Jonathan was abused quite a bit by his foster families. Eventually his custody was assigned to his grandparents in Texas and he continued to live with them until he was 23 (iirc). Jonathan did occasionally visit his mother and on one of these visits met a drug dealer who game him two joints which Jonathan duly took home and smoked. The joints were laced with PCP and induced a disorder known as "depersonalization" where he felt like he was a spectator of his life rather than a paricipant. During this time he started developing his acting talents, some of which are showcased. Jonathan made short films where he would play young women giving monologues about their very troubled lives.

In his teenage years Jonathan became active in the gay community where he was fortunately able to make some friends. As you might expect, this was still an exteremely troubled period for someone in such a difficult family situation. Jonathan reports that he quite often broke furniture in his grandparents home and staged frequent suicide attempts.

The remained of the film is not nearly so dark. Jonathan, follwoing the death of his grandmother, went to New York where he found acting work and a stable (gay) relationship. His mother, still quite psychotic, comes to visit him occasionally and he has also established a relationship with his fther whom he had never met earlier.

The whole film is made up of film clips from his life, photographs, interesting graphic pyrotechnics, and, from end to end, his favorite songs. I learned from Roger Ebert's review that he was able to do all of this for only $218. The producers did have to spend money to get all the song rights and print it.

So, I was quite impressed with the film. It was a startling yet open and unadorned look at mental illness and its effect on a family. After watching it I checked rottentomatoes to see how the critics had scored it. Unsurprisingly to me, it got a 91% favorable score, as well as a 100% score from site visitors.

Here's what is very interesting to me though: checking the Netflix reviews, most of the viewers only gave the film 1 or 2 stars. The most frequent epithet used was "self-indulgent". I'm not entirely sure how one could make an autobiographical film which could avoid that charge. It seems like a lot of films I have enjoyed have gotten that word tossed at them. I guess for me I consider it a good thing when a filmmaker fills up a film with things she or he find interesting. Maybe "self-indulgent" is just the opposite of "pandering", which would perhaps set up the flip side of the critics versus popular reviewers dichotomy.

In some sort of effort to make itself look shallow, The Atlantic has published a list of the 100 Most Influential Figures in American History. As an aside, nothing in the title rules out non-americans, so why isn't George III on the list?

Anyhow, their "american history" appears to begin in 1776 with one notable exception. The notable exception is also the only figure on the list who was a pastor, namely Jonathan Edwards. Martin Luther King Jr and Lyman Beecher are the only other figures on the list who are even remotely christian leaders (Beecher and Edwards are at 90 and 91 on the list). The two Billy's (Sunday and Graham), and all other pastors, theologians and evangelists apprently had less influence on America than Ralph Nader.

No composer or artist made the list unless you are willing to count Stephen Foster or Elvis Pressley for the first or Walt Disney for the second. No poets are named. Instead we have 24 presidents and other high government figures, 2 baseball players, and Mary Baker Eddy. Shouldn't the inclusion of Jonas Salk cancel Eddy out? Also included are 2 pairs of people (the Wrights and Lewis and Clark), which I'll just call cheating.

Somehow my friend Todd, despite all his coverage of happenings in Scandinavian churches missed this fine story.

I'll second this suggestion, though I'll have to make an exception for my wife since I watched it while she was at work.

At class last night I happened to be sitting between two people a fair number of years older than me. It turned out they had both sent kids to the same university which I will not name. The woman on my left said to the man on my right, "You know what I love about X University? They are SOOOOOOOO liberal there. I just love that." I can't say I've ever heard that sentiment expressed before. I decided not to enter that conversation, but I thought it was interesting that I had just finished reading Ronald Beiner's fine book, What's The Matter With Liberalism?

This looks like just my sort of job.

This is too good not to post: Stanley Fish on Tolerance

Readers of the wifely blog will be aware that we've all been pretty sick lately. I can't say I recommend it if you are considering illness as a way to spend your next week. If I had lots of mental energy I would talk about my reading over the past month or so, much of which has been outstanding. I hope I'll finish my contest reviews by year's end in any event.

Today's Turkish news is brought to you by the letter W. And I'm totally not making that up.

Probably the most important article of the year right here. What's the opposite of "just do it?"

As some of you may know (and I'm sure some do not), I have been enrolled for a while in the ESL Teaching Certificate program through Duke University. As part of the requirements for that program I have been doing practice teaching for the last few weeks at Durham Technical Community College (Durham Tech for you locals), working with a friend who is a paid teacher there. I have trouble thinking of many things which are more fun than classroom teaching.

Tonight in class we played the "alibi" game. Three students were the "criminals" and had to leave the room for a few minutes to get their stories straight. The basic outline of their story was already provided for them but they had to improvise the details. Then they came back into the class one at a time for interrogation. If the "policemen" (the rest of the class) could find 5 inconsistencies in their stories, then they would be found guilty. This was, by far, the most hilarious activity I've seen in a language classroom. It also fit well as a practice activity for making past tense verbs, which was what we had been woking on for a few weeks.

I'll break my totally unannounced and unanticipated hiatus for the time being. I've been trying to come up with a list of the best high school themed films. I don't necesarily wnnt to restrict it to a certain number, or to either strictly comedy OR dramatic films. However, I need to start writing it down cuz I can never keep them all in my head for long. Here's the list so far roughly organized from more dramatic to more comedic.

ELEPHANT: Gus Van Sant's take on the essential unexplainability of the violence of the Columbine massacre.

ORDINARY PEOPLE: One of the great films of all time which happens to focus on a high school student.

STAND AND DELIVER: The drama of advanced math. So few "high school movies" actually look at learning.

DONNIE DARKO: Dark fantasy of a possibly schizophenic student. A cult favorite but still one few have seen.

LEAN ON ME: Another one which takes school seriously, this one looking more at the principal.

SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, SIXTEEN CANDLES, SAY ANYTHING, PRETTY IN PINK: They probably each deserve their own entry, but I'm lazy so I'll just call it the John Hughes set. My favorite is Breakfast Club, just because it all takes place at the school.

RUSHMORE: I hope no comment needed.

CLUELESS: My wife's favorite of the bunch.

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE: I think pretty much EVERY current hs student has already seen this one.

FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF: Possibly the best known teen comedy? It's also Hughes, but less dramatic/more funny than the others mentioned above.

BETTER OFF DEAD: The teen comedy time forgot?

So what did I leave out. I know there are a few I haven't seen (Heathers for one), and some I think are borderline "great" movies like Election. What would you add?

Seriously, where do you sign up to become a headline writer?

How come I always get tagged for these book things?

1. One book that changed your life:
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:
Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:
I don't know, but something large enough to give me some shade.

4. One book that made you laugh:
Mark Helprin, Memoir From Antproof Case (the best way to read this book is to read the dedication AFTER you finish the rest of it)

5. One book that made you cry:
Mark Helprin, Soldier of the Great War (there are some ubelievable moments in this one) or, Louis De Bernieres, Corelli's Mandolin

6. One book that you wish had been written:
How to speak Russian fluently in just one week

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
The Scofield Reference Bible

8. One book you’re currently reading:
Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics
(also, Sigrid Unset, Kristin Lavransdatter; Jim Steinmeyer, The Glorious Deception; and N T Wright, Reflecting the Glory)

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
For me meaning to read and planning to read are the same thing since I'm pretty systematic in my reading (in contrast to the rest of my life). One I'm looking forward to is TR's Through the Brazilian Wilderness.

If you can read this and have read enough to fill it out yourself, consider yourself "tagged" and leave a comment so I know to look for your responses.

In what we call chapter 14 of Romans, St Paul said, "now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions." The question of who Paul meant by the "weak in faith" is an interesting one. Loren Rossen cites scholar Mark Nanos saying the the weak in faith are non-christian Jews. Go read his arguments on this point.

Make a point of purchasing the current issue of National Review. The issue features a compelling piece by George Gilder on how information theory shows darwinian evolution to be logically impossible.

edit: or be cheap and read the whole thing here