The JP Survey

Fair Weather Fitness

2010-04-05T17:59:00.002-04:00

http://jpsurvey.wordpress.com

Representation in America

2010-04-02T16:39:00.002-04:00

New post at http://jpsurvey.wordpress.com

Clocks and Time

2010-03-31T18:16:00.002-04:00

New post at http://jpsurvey.wordpress.com

New Post on the New JP Survey

2010-03-29T17:29:00.000-04:00

In case you didn't see already - The JP Survey has moved to http://jpsurvey.wordpress.com, where there is a new post on the similarities of coffee and literature. If you use a reader, please redirect it to that new address or just re-subscribe on the new page. I'm unfortunately not tech-savvy enough to know how to redirect automatically.

Thanks!

The JP Survey Is MOVING!

2010-03-27T21:29:00.001-04:00

The JP Survey will be moving from Blogger to Wordpress as of the next post. Actually, it has really already moved. Why? Because I like Wordpress more- easier to use, no limits on comment length, and all sorts of behind the scenes benefits that will not matter to you at all but matter a lot to me. So reset those readers to the following site:

http://jpsurvey.wordpress.com

Thanks!

Education in America

2010-03-26T18:14:00.000-04:00

My wife and sister are studying to become teachers, my brother is a teacher, my mother-in-law is a teacher, and I have many close friends who are teachers. I really believe that they are all excellent educators, but unfortunately I don’t think they are representative of teachers in general. The current administration agrees, which is why they are pushing for education reform that aims to weed out bad teachers and reward good ones. It is undoubtedly true that the education problems in America are at least partially caused by teachers with inadequate knowledge of the subjects they teach. I have heard many stories of educators, particularly in elementary and middle schools, who cannot perform basic math or who consistently misspell simple words or who even teach completely false information because they are unaware of the truth themselves. These stories always make my teacher friends cringe, and rightfully so. If we really want better teachers, we must make their training more rigorous, focused more on the subjects they plan to teach and on student teaching, much less on educational theory. Perhaps one or two education courses on the side would be helpful, but we should not be so easily qualifying those who are responsible for training up the next generation.

Although improving the quality of our teachers is a prominent topic in the education discussion, it is only one step, and only a small portion of the problem. While we could bring up all sorts of things – inadequate funding (which is huge), teaching to standardized tests, demographic issues – I would like to discuss two things that are often neglected in the discussion. The first is the students themselves; the second is the overall implicit reasoning behind the American education system.

Having recently been through high school and college, and having a wife who teaches high schoolers every day, one thing is imminently clear: rich or poor, many students in America are not motivated to learn. It seems that much of the arguing and disputing that goes on about how to fix education ignores this fact. We cannot just assume that better teachers, more funding, or more appropriate curriculums will fix education – these will do nothing if the students do not want to learn. To me it appears that the younger the child, the more his interest in learning is influenced by his teacher. Great teachers can make a huge difference on young children. But by the time a student reaches high school, it is much more difficult to reestablish respect for authority and a belief in the value of education if they have been lost throughout the previous years. And it seems that more and more high schoolers have lost these values.

This lack of willingness to learn is at least partially due to the sense of entitlement that is growing among America’s youth. The wealthy and middle class students often believe that everything will be provided for them, that every problem can be solved with the application of money, that their money gives them intrinsic superiority over others, and that they will always have money. Ironically, I began writing this post, and then the next day I saw a post on Discovery News that discussed a recent study showing that narcissism and feelings of entitlement have been on the rise for the past fifteen years among US college students. I would wager that studies would find similar trends among younger groups as well. Obviously, if students have tricked themselves into thinking they will advance in life without work, they have no reason to think education will help them.

Regardless of affluence, in all cases I believe that both the lack of immediacy of future needs and the collapse of the American family have combined to contribute to students’ lack of motivation. For many kids, it is difficult to see the connection between doing an English worksheet today and achieving success tomorrow. We live in a culture of instant gratification, and it is hard for them to see that education is a long task with equally long payoffs. They want short tasks with current payoffs and little else. Additionally, with more and more single parent homes or homes with absentee parents because of workaholism, many children are not receiving the guidance and discipline necessary to push them in the right direction. They are never taught that money does not give them the right to be lazy or that the lack of education will often lead to ruin. In fact, they may be implicitly taught the opposite of what they need, for many parents act as if money is all that matters or that they deserve certain things because of their place in society. Sometimes teachers can work miracles on these kids, but we should never expect teachers to do so. Lazy students and their sense of entitlement can only be cured by strong guidance and discipline at home.

Secondly, America does not seem to recognize what its real strengths are. Whenever I hear a politician speaking about education, they always focus on our deficiencies in certain subjects, and they seem to hone in especially on math and science. They say that these two subjects are important for the rekindling of innovation in America. In focusing on innovation, they are headed in the right direction. America has always valued free-thinking and creativity, and while math and science may be the realms in which we need our innovation to bloom, the creativity itself does not come from focusing on math and science. What we should really be focusing on is achieving a greater breadth of education that exposes students to ideas from all realms of study. It is in the intersection of various fields or in the application of ideas from one field into another where many of the greatest ideas dwell. When it comes to innovation, focusing on anything too much is detrimental. I know there is only so much money to go around, but if we really are going to produce innovative leaders, we should think twice about cutting the fine arts and other “superfluous” subjects that often focus more than other subjects on the development of creativity.

I recently ran across a report that discussed the importance of a comprehensive education and how dedication to breadth in teaching seems to be one of very few traits that countries who consistently rank better than the US in education have in common. Here is a list quoted from their website of some of the expectations in other countries:

· Fourth graders in Hong Kong visit an artist’s studio, study Picasso’s Guernica, and analyze the works of modernist sculptor Henry Moore.

· Finnish 5th and 6th graders study how the invention of writing changed human life and the impacts of the French Revolution; they trace a topic such as the evolution of trade from prehistory until the 19th century.

· Seventh graders in Korea are expected to know not just about supply and demand, but about equilibrium price theories, property rights, and ways to improve market function.

· Japanese 7th to 9th graders “conduct experiments regarding pressure to discover that pressure is related to the magnitude of a force and the area.”

· Eighth graders from the Canadian province of Ontario are expected to create musical compositions, conduct, and know musical terms in Italian.

· Dutch 12th graders must know enough about seven events connected to the Crimean War to be able to put them in chronological order.

· Canadian 12th graders in British Columbia are expected to identify the author of the words: “Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” and to what Admiral Nimitz was referring when he said: “Pearl Harbor has now been partially avenged.”

· On a Swiss examination 12th graders write an essay analyzing JFK’s October 1962 proclamation that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Source: Common Core website

I am college educated, and I only ever dealt with Guernica, the musical tasks, and the economics, and the last two mostly in college. But what tremendous thinkers we could develop if we taught students with the breadth of education that many other countries employ. I am not an education expert, and I know there are tremendous hurdles to overcome, but I think we should begin to think more about a broadening of education rather than a narrowing of it. Innovation in technical fields is not the result of producing workers who excel only in math and science. Innovation will flourish when we produce more workers who are able to draw on education in many other fields to develop ideas.

The federal government may be able to reform education to help improve the quality of teachers and curriculum, but nothing will be very effective if families do not begin to invest more time in the encouragement and discipline of the young. Especially in suburbia, children are often so pampered that their work ethic is eradicated by the time they reach high school. Advocacy for a breadth of content in education must also start in the home, where children can be led into a wide variety of topics by parental encouragement. In this age when America is accustomed both to being the best and to thrusting off responsibility for its actions upon others, we as a nation must admit we are stumbling and attack the root of the educational problem in the home.

(Parentheses)

2010-03-24T20:34:00.001-04:00

The library is my favorite room in my apartment. (Just so you will know how vexing my life is, I spent about ten minutes trying to figure out how to bring my wife and both her joint ownership and her preference for the library into that sentence without it sounding awkward. I did not succeed, partially due to the horrible construction of “my wife’s and my” and partially because of the lack of antecedent for the use of “our.” I was not about to use the former, and the latter just wouldn’t do without the former, so I just gave up. How troubling!) One of these days I’ll learn how to write paragraphs that do not include lengthy parenthetical asides.

Hopefully I will learn that skill while seated in my library (what a segue!). (Speaking of segues, I thought they were spelled “segway” until sophomore or junior year of college.) The room, as one might guess, is walled in books. Even just thinking about it makes me joyful, but being there is “a whole nother” experience, as some would have it.

Until this point I was planning to talk about something completely different, but now that I have made this many asides and pointless comments, I might as well talk about how much I like them. You’ll just have to wait until a later date for my original thoughts (which I really haven’t given away at all yet). In multiple settings, I have heard that the use of parentheses (other than for citation) is a sign of a weak writer. My pride tells me to deny this, but I cannot. My wife and I are unable to think of any authors who conspicuously love parentheses. Apparently, being tangential is not something many writers aspire to.

Yet I cannot deny my love for the aside, even a multitude of asides. I view them as a more organized form of stream of consciousness. They allow the reader into the twisted meanderings of the brain, the ephemeral connections elicited by a visual clue or a long-forgotten memory, the complex interactions of the current state of the writer, his environment, his history, and his work. And yet the necessity of clarity is obvious to me because of its merits both for the reader and the writer. A focused writer keeps the reader entranced in an idea or a story, and the further that story develops, the more the reader becomes a participant. This generally also helps the writer by retaining his readership. I most certainly do not want to lose all of my readers, but to some extent I also write just because I want to. If I was entirely concerned with pleasing my reader, I would never write half of what I do, I would have a much more attractive site, and I would feel like a failure as an artist (to whatever extent I grant that blogging is art, which is certainly a stretch at times).

When it comes to writing for pleasure, the aside is one of the most enjoyable aspects my work. I think this is because the essay than resembles a conversation more closely, or at least one side of the conversation. Most people restrain their inner voice in conversations, though their thoughts are often more interesting than what they say. They do not say, “How are you today? [What is that thing on his shirt? Is it some sort of manly brooch? Oh, no, looks like some silver paint – or maybe it is a piece of stray aluminum foil from his Moe’s burrito.] Yeah, I’m doing pretty well too.” For the sake of keeping one’s friends, some thoughts, like the ones above, are better left unsaid. But often we arrive at the most stimulating conversations only after a long series of less awkward tangents.

It is not uncommon for me to begin a blog on one topic and learn after a few paragraphs, as in this blog, that I really want to talk about something else. I have a long list of jottings where I keep all my ideas for blogs, and I generally glance through it before I start writing any blog. But despite the thoroughness of my list, which truly captures nearly all of my random thoughts for writing, nothing compares to the wide array of topics that can shoot onto the page between a couple of curly brackets once I have begun writing about one of the topics already on my list. It makes blogging all the more exciting.

(All this time I’ve been trying to fit in this comment, but it doesn’t fit anywhere: Have you noticed how some people put nearly everything in quotations? They have some sort of “problem” understanding that quotation marks indicate utterances, irony, or risqué-ness, and very few other “things.”)

I will try for you, reader, to chain up the tangential tiger that lurks within me on future posts, though I will probably use weak chains, because I like it when he occasionally escapes. But perhaps I have already begun to tame that side of me by forcing it to be a topic in its own right. It is terribly ironic when one focuses on divergence.

Heresy

2010-03-22T18:11:00.001-04:00

I have created my own religion. It is founded on Christianity, but it contains one major addendum. That addendum is the wonderful book of Hesitations. I have been compiling it since birth, and it has proved its usefulness on many occasions. Here’s an example of where I might employ it.

Ashley: “Let’s have lima beans with dinner.”

Me: “I can’t. It’s against my religion. It says so in the book of Hesitations.”

Or perhaps

Ashley: “Why don’t you clean out the bathrooms today?”

Me: “Unfortunately, it is written in Hesitations 37:4 that ‘wicked is the man who scrubs and washes on his knees on his day off.’”

Ashley: “Well then do it standing.”

Me: “That’s covered two verses later.”

Ashley is particularly good at catching me in heretical acts, though. I try to use other verses from the book of Hesitations, but she remembers them better than I do, and she often quotes previously referenced verses back at me. Then I have nowhere to run (except maybe the apocryphal book of Necessitations).

Recently I have been thinking what it would feel like to be a real heretic, though. Truthfully, some would already consider me one. For starters, I believe in evolution; I don’t believe the Flood was global; I don’t believe Adam and Eve were actual people; and many are shocked when they hear my thoughts on heaven, hell, and the devil. But I do believe every sentence in the Apostle’s Creed, so I don’t think I’m a heretic.

But it is a strong word. Originally, its ancestor was used to describe any particular religious sect. For example, it was used in the Greek New Testament in reference to groups of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Christians as sects of Judaism. But today, as we all know, it is used to refer to someone whose beliefs are in opposition to the doctrine of a particular church, whether it be Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, though certain members of these groups are more likely to talk about heresy than others. I grew up in one of those sects, the Southern Baptists, who seem to use the word more than members of many other Protestant denominations. (I have twice in my life happily been a member of a Southern Baptist church, but it is nonetheless true that they can often be overly dogmatic.) I learned the word from an early age, though I didn’t quite understand its meaning for many years. In fact, I often used it myself simply to describe, perhaps in intentionally exaggerated fashion, those who I perceived did not believe in the true version of religion, which was of course what I happened to believe at that moment. Sometimes the word is intended as jest or as a precise explanation, but most of the time it is more pointed. Now that I am sometimes on the receiving end of the word, I have begun to think about it more.

Even were I to become an official heretic, I wouldn’t be terribly troubled. After all, the great reformers of the church were often heretics in their time, and many other “heretics” died for beliefs that are staples of the church today. John Wycliffe, for instance, preached the authority of the Bible over the authority of the church and was a proponent of having Bibles available in the vernacular (I believe his was the first Bible translated completely into English). After his death, his body was exhumed and burned as a heretic. Jan Hus, an admirer of Wycliffe, furthered Wycliffe’s ideas and also attacked the use of indulgences and the idea of the Crusades. He was burned at the stake for his heresy. Martin Luther was also a heretic, despite his love of the church. Galileo was found “vehemently suspect of heresy” for his support of the Copernican idea of heliocentrism and died under house arrest as a result. It took more than one hundred years for books related to heliocentrism to come off the Catholic banned book list. But those who were heretics to the Catholics eventually caught on to the old ways as well. John Calvin, an influential Protestant, also had heretics put to death in Geneva when he was there.

Thankfully, heretics are no longer put to death today, but some traditions of Christianity, whether overtly or covertly, are still eager to brand dissenters as heretics. We don’t often use the word anymore, but the mindset persists, especially in the US. It is inherently ostracizing and unloving; it says “You no longer belong and we don’t want you.” Depending on the group, this mental label can manifest itself around all sorts of topics: evolution, hell, communion, speaking in tongues (or the Baptism of the Spirit), prayers of healing, music. The list could go on and on. When a person finds themselves in conflict with some particular beliefs of a church, he is rarely cast out by the pastor or priest. Instead, the modern heretic is shunned by the church body for his beliefs, and even if he is eager to worship with those who shun him, eventually he despises the fact that no one will be his friend, and he leaves.

While I think it is important for the church to stay true to its core, which I would define as the beliefs mentioned in the Apostle’s Creed or other similar creeds, I would argue that ostracizing people in the church for “heretical” beliefs is largely ineffectual, unnecessary, and damaging to the Christian faith. Many atheists and agnostics today were once not opposed to religion, but a bad experience with the church pushed them out of it forever (I could list half a dozen that popped into my head within a few seconds). When people were booted from the early church, it was normally for saying things like, “Jesus isn’t God,” or “Zeus is just as good,” not things like “I’m not sure that hell exists,” or “I believe in evolution.” The things that often constitute heresy in the minds of some Christians these days are not central to the faith. What is central to the faith – love – is conspicuously absent in these cases.

I am glad that we have come as far as we have in our understanding of heresy. It would be much worse if we were still killing people for having different beliefs. But the idea of heresy still thrives in the mind. We are all taught from an early age what we ought to believe, and this information is extremely specific – from what kind of clothes we should wear to the proper way to speak to views on religion in general to whether or not the body and blood of Christ are actually or only symbolically present in the host. At some point, though, we must exit our tunneled view of religion and realize that there is considerable room in the church for differences of opinion.

Showdown

2010-03-19T18:49:00.002-04:00

When I was in high school, I was an uber-nerd (perhaps I still am now). I sang in chorus, was on the student council, took piano lessons, got good grades, did academic bowl, and honestly never did anything illegal. I was the kid who, upon running into a teacher in the hall without a hall-pass, would receive a wave and a smile instead of an interrogation about my destination. “Oh, it’s Jonathan. He’s probably going to a study session or something. And if not, he’s definitely not doing anything bad.” It was a safe assumption.

I remember I once received detention for forgetting some homework. It was mortifying. I think my teacher thought it would be good for me to feel like I had been bad for once in my life. She was a chain-smoker, and while I don’t think she was a very good English teacher, the class was entertaining. She would regularly break down into coughing fits and say things like “Oh [hack hack] this chalk dust is really [hurl] terrible!” or “[Spasm] I can see you are all [fit] struggling with the ragweed [attack] today too!” She loved talking about sex scandals, and it was extraordinarily easy to get her side-tracked as long as you had some juicy comment to make. English was always one of my best subjects, but this teacher simply would not give me an A. She just laughed when I once asked her why I had gotten a lower grade than expected on a paper. I didn’t like it, but I can’t deny that she has proved to be the English teacher I refer to most from all my years of schooling. Her life would undeniably make a great movie. God rest her soul.

But the real showdown of the century came two years later in my senior year English class. I actually loved the class. The teacher helped me develop tremendously as a writer, but our class gave her some trouble from time to time. We did a project near the end of the year that was intended to be a fun, though serious, activity. We were to write a reflective essay concerning something of personal significance and read it aloud to music of our choice. On the day I was to go, I stood up and read mine. It was terribly grave and was accompanied by a depressing Shostakovitch string quartet that was written shortly after the composer was forced to join the Communist Party. A few other classmates read theirs, also serious, often melancholy.

Then one of the quietest members of the class, though also one of the most comical, stood up with somber face to read his essay. He hit the play button on the CD player, and what should grace our ears but the theme song of Pokemon, “Gotta Catch ‘Em All.” He launched into a long and colorful explanation of how Pokemon had changed his life, how every little furry creature inspired him to greatness, how it didn’t matter if your opponent was big and bad if you could be like Pikachu and zap them with lightning. I was inspired. So was the rest of the class, and we all struggled to restrain our mirth which grew at the same rate as the rage upon our teacher’s face. The speech ended; we didn’t dare applaud; steam rose from my teacher’s ruby face. She then launched into an invective as livid as our classmate’s speech was comical. We left the class unsure if we should laugh more or feel ashamed. I think most of us opted for laughter.

While this was the most notable conflict during the class, it certainly was not the only one. But I doubt she anticipated any trouble from someone like me. This teacher gave me more Cs and Ds than I have received in any other class. All year you would write short, timed essays and get them back ripped to shreds. But it seemed that the final grades always rose substantially at the end of the year. The mid-year grades were more for motivation to do well on the AP exam than for anything else. For me, though, Cs and Ds were to be avoided at all costs, even if I knew my class average would precipitously jump before grades came out.

At the end of a long train of bad grades on these essays, I received yet another unsatisfactory grade. Apparently so had many others, so our teacher decided to write us a sample essay on the same topic we had all just dragged through the mud. She went up to the overhead and began to write. As she wrote, she talked about how she would frame her thesis. The first point was one I included in my own thesis. She discussed it for awhile and I thought I must have really messed up the next two points. Then she got to her second point – also identical to mine. Then I was beginning to think my grade was too low. Finally, we reached her third point, and it too was in my own thesis. I sulked in pity for a few moments as she expounded, but I finally raised my hand, heart pounding, mood black, and said, “I wrote exactly the same thing you did and you gave me a 72!” I also thought I had written it more eloquently.

She expressed her doubt, and I could have left it there. But I couldn’t let go. I fired back. There was no turning back now. I hurled myself in headlong, expostulating on my seventeen-year-old brilliance, succinctly summing up all my paper’s merits with force and persuasion. My teacher calmly responded saying something that I did not really hear. I immediately retorted, and she again responded calmly. After a few more of these passes, she began to become frustrated. It continued, building, my classmates looking on in dread, wondering what was going to happen to me, until finally, I heard what my teacher said. “What do you want? Would it make you happy if I gave you a 96?” she spoke with passion and a red face. Not really expecting her to have actually given in, I said, pausingly, “Yes?” “Fine! Have your 96!” She slammed down her pen, came to my desk, took my paper, crossed out the old grade with my pen and wrote a large 96 atop it, her upper lip twitching in fury. The bell rang, thankfully, as we all sat in stunned silence, or in my case, fearful silence. My grade had just risen 24 points; my stature had fallen much further.

I later ran into my English teacher from the previous year, who happened to have in her possession at that time one of my college recommendations, uncompleted. She also happened to be very good friends with my current teacher. “So, Jonathan, I heard you had a little run-in today?” I blushed, never having considered that this would undoubtedly get around. At that point I knew I couldn’t just let the incident go. I ended up apologizing to my current teacher, and we finished the year on good terms, and I still got my college recommendation from my former teacher. But it was surely an episode to be remembered: the day the good kid went bad.

I have always been very concerned with being right. I will argue my point until I am blue in the face and I get my 24 points. Even if I don’t get the points, I will still argue. I must be right. I must be logical. You must listen to reason. Regardless of the topic, the most important thing to me is the cogency of the argument, and if I am convinced that my own perspective is cogent, then yours must not be. It is fortunate that I have a wife who is similarly logical and who is not easily hurt. We don’t really ever argue, not in the traditional sense. But we have epic debates. Whenever someone asks us if we fight, I always refer them to our multi-day standoff on the intent of the Framers with regard to the Second Amendment. It was legendary. I ended up being wrong.

Sometimes it is important to stand your ground on an idea, especially when it comes to moral issues. For instance, I will always be opposed to racism, regardless of who encourages me to accept it. But more often than not, life is not about being right. For the more common interactions in life, the wise path is more subtle. The argument with my English teacher probably only endangered our mutual amity. At worst, I might have gotten a detrimental college recommendation from my former teacher. Today, my interaction with authority has greater ramifications. A similar encounter with my boss could easily lead to the loss of my job. In certain places in the world, the unwillingness to stand down could land me in jail.

I have been learning this reality slowly and painfully for the last several years of my life. I am passionate about truth, so it has been difficult for me to back down. Sometimes the need to be correct only leads to the deterioration of a relationship, and relationships are much more important than a trivial fact or two. In business, if you don’t know the right people, you can’t get anything done. You look high and low until you find someone who knows what you need. But it’s even worse when you know the person who can help you, but that person stymies your efforts because of a broken relationship. The same is true in almost every realm of life. Knowing truth is important, but it only leads to progress if you can convince someone else of it too. So when it comes to everyday interactions, the people who are able to achieve great things and push the world in the right direction are always more concerned with being effective than with being right.

Mugs - A Sonnet

2010-03-17T18:36:00.001-04:00

I was a little lazy this week, so I decided to write a poem rather than a normal post for this Wednesday. Here is the fruit of my labor:

Mugs

They hang on walls in precincts, fortune’s lost

Souls: the drear and drooping, grim-faced, low.

Nor wealth nor penury will change the cost,

(They say) of being caught in badge’s tow.

There is another, too, that often glooms,

For lack of fullness in the joys of life.

Now here, now there, perchance, there blooms

A trodden darkness, waiting with a knife

To snuff me out and send me ere away

From others still that hold a different brew

Of tea or sweet or bitterness in clay,

All of which will remedy the blue.

The varied scope of palate, mood, or wall

Will prove the canvas for these three mugs all.

Religion, Story, and Truth

2010-03-15T18:25:00.000-04:00

When I grow up, I want to be a writer. That is why indulge in this blog. I enjoy it, and it’s good practice. And though I am currently focusing on nonfiction, my goal is to be a novelist as well. Regardless of whether I ever attain this goal, I love story, and I have a certain passion for defending it against all attackers, be they family, friends, acquaintances, or people I do not know. Unfortunately, I often find myself defending story from fellow Christians. This week, I find the need to do so once more.

Before I saw Avatar, a number of Christians told me that they enjoyed the movie…but the religion was weird and distasteful; in fact, it was downright evil. This is not the first time I have heard a similar argument. Most recently, there was all the hubbub about witchcraft in Harry Potter, which continues to this day in some circles. Similarly, even works by Christians, such as A Wrinkle in Time, Lord of the Rings, and even The Chronicles of Narnia have come under fire for their elements of magic, which many conservative Christians view as inherently evil. Some of you may be surprised to hear this, and if that is the case, I am very glad. But I assure you these groups exist and in larger numbers than you might expect.

So I was not really surprised by the backlash against Avatar, which went as far as to include the Pope. But the Christians who bash Avatar for its religion are just being ridiculous. Regardless of any political, religious, environmental or other motives, Avatar was first and foremost a story. Stories must keep your attention; they must be believable and cohesive. If they do not accomplish these tasks, they fail in any other more complex motives. And James Cameron is a master of making a story cohesive. In fact, for every plant seen in the movie, Cameron and company developed a full description of history, ecology, manner of reproduction, relationship to the Na’vi, and names in Latin, English, and Na’vi. Na’vi itself is also a completely functional language, created just for this movie. And the way in which the Na’vi learn English, while perhaps sped up to prevent the audience from becoming annoyed with their errors, is representative of the process we all go through when learning a foreign tongue. So why did Cameron include religion in the first place? He did so probably because we humans are historically religious, and we are thus able to identify with the religious tendency in the Na’vi. It is another detail that reinforces the story, making it more cohesive.

So if there was going to be religion, why isn’t it something closer to Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism, the three largest human religions? Pantheism was the earliest of human religions. It was the natural first perspective for the primitive man who was so mystified by the forces of nature. The Na’vi obviously have some basis in early man (bows and arrows, loincloths, face paint), so it would be appropriate to use a primitive religion in the story. Given the other aspect of the Na’vi biological connection to nature, pantheism seems not only reasonable, but almost required for credibility.

One may retort that Cameron could well have written the screenplay any way he wanted to prevent this particular form of religion from being appropriate. But who knows what struck Cameron first in the development of this story? Perhaps he developed many of the themes about nature first and then realized that pantheism fit well in that scheme. Regardless of the process, though, I think if we were to consider it, we would all realize how absurd it would have been to throw any sort of complicated theology into that story. The Na’vi are simple, living in harmony with nature. Christian theology would have been extremely awkward, if not terribly destructive, on the story as a whole.

The backlash against Avatar reveals a common trend. All stories are capable of revealing truth, regardless of their religious affiliations. But conservative Christian groups are often unwilling to accept truth unless it is explicitly stated in the Bible (even if out of context) or unless it comes direct from the mouths of certain far-right editorialists (who often call themselves newscasters). These same groups then bring their dogmatic ideas into the realms of science and politics. Evolution can’t be true because it’s unbiblical, so is global warming, and, in case you had forgotten, so are democrats. Their mindset of a Christian exclusivity of truth permeates all they do.

Once when I was travelling in Scotland, I met a young man in a hostel in Edinburgh. We had both been separately to see the display of Rembrandt etchings at the National Art Gallery earlier that day, and we found ourselves discussing it that evening. After only a few minutes, he brought up the fact that while he loved Rembrandt, he wasn’t terribly keen on many of the etchings in this display. I asked him why, and he replied that most of them were on religious themes, and as an agnostic, he just couldn’t relate. I found this odd because most of the etchings were not obviously religious. If there had been no descriptions, I would have only guessed one or two of them were on religious themes. I told him this, and he agreed, but somehow when he found out they were religious, they lost all relevance. I tried to persuade him of how illogical that was, but he would not be won.

I found this incident to be terribly sad, for the etchings were beautiful, and this man could not enjoy their beauty because of an unfortunate association. But I realized later that this is exactly what Christians are doing when we spurn truth because it lies beyond the familiar language of Christianity. In both cases, the viewer of truth or beauty does not just maintain the status quo after his experience. Rather, he is worse off than he was before, for he has seen something good and rejected it.

Veracity On!

2010-03-12T18:15:00.001-05:00

Facebook is a fascinating creature that seems to be on evolutionary steroids. I remember when it had first come out and it was only for college students. We all had a chip on our shoulders back then. Only certain schools had access originally, and you had to write in with requests to get new schools added. And you couldn’t actually do much on the site, just put in your interests, get as many friends as possible, and write on everyone else’s wall. Then before you knew it, anyone in college could have an account, then anyone in high school (of which we all highly disapproved), then anyone at all. And along the way there were groups, applications, a privacy scandal involving extraordinarily large e-petitions, and about three hundred different layouts, each of which confused me. I am yet to grasp the most recent layout changes in their entirety.

As Facebook became larger, security became a more important issue. At some point, I don’t remember exactly when, Zuckerberg and friends introduced word verification as a way to fight spam. Most of you are probably aware of this process, but for those who are not, when you post something on your status or on someone else’s wall, you now often must type in two words that are randomly generated for you to copy. They are displayed in such a way that is supposed to ensure only a human could actually read them. So you type in the words and then your message is displayed.

Well, I have always been a fan of these often ironic or otherwise comical word pairings. So I have recorded the last few verifications I have had to enter, and now I offer you a tribute to the irony of random word generation. The following story is fictional, and the word verifications will be the only dialogue. This is probably going to be a little random, but indulge me.

Persephone was not easily crushed. All her life she had been told she had no sense of expression, but she could not abandon her dream of acting. She wanted more than anything to express ideas on stage, to open up the door to new possibilities, to explore the fuzzy boundary surrounding truth and reality. Now she had her chance. She had heard of an independent film that was looking for a few actors and actresses in town, so she drove down one day to a large warehouse near the Perimeter where much of the production was going to occur.

She found the warehouse, verifying the address on a print-out she had brought with her, though she knew she was in the right place by the eclectic group of people milling around in the parking lot waiting for the doors to open. They looked like dramatic folk. It must have been the greasy hair.

She got out of the car and walked up to join the small crowd. After standing around for a minute or two, she plucked up her courage and asked the person next to her what this was a movie of.

“Of evacuees,” he replied. She wondered how he had discovered this, for it not been listed on the ad. She also thought his answer was odd – who puts the word of at the beginning of an answer? But she was pleased that the topic was substantial, one that could use some exposure in the world.

After a few more minutes, during which Persephone began to grow anxious, unconsciously curling and uncurling her flowing black hair, the doors finally opened, and the crowd flooded into the building to the gratuitous welcome of a young man. As they piled into a small antechamber, the man receded to the back door of the room, which presumably opened into the larger production area. The crowd’s murmuring and motion began to die down, and Persephone noticed a short woman discreetly come through the door behind the man. She was so short that had it not been for the door opening and closing, it would have looked as if she had just appeared out of thin air, so effectively was she hidden in the young man’s shadow before moving next to him. To the general surprise of the crowd, as soon as she stood next to the young man, she began chiding him for something, and the man’s previously strong demeanor faded into meekness as he tried to apologize through a gushy mixture of sycophancy and touchy gestures (the woman was obviously his girlfriend). After nearly a minute of this spectacle, which was now being keenly observed by the whole crowd in silence, the woman tersely commanded the man back inside the production area, and he quickly obeyed.

“He whipped,” Persephone heard an indiscreet voice mumble, which brought out a small cascade of snickers and restrained laughter. The woman, also apparently catching the remark, glared in the general direction of the speaker, though she could not make out who was responsible. Without a word, she motioned for all of them to follow her through the door behind her.

Inside they found a large room with two small occupied areas. There was a portion just ahead cordoned off with ribbons where large pieces of electronic equipment still resided unpacked. To the left and beyond this first station was a stage room, well lit, which looked like a sitcom set from the seventies. The film crew was going to revamp it soon, but it would serve the purpose of their audition space today.

The woman was now passing through the ranks handing out pieces of paper, one color for the men, another for the women. She explained that each scrap had a number on it. They would be trying out in groups of two, one woman and one man, in some sort of prelude to a love scene. Apparently the greasy man who suggested the topic of evacuees had been wrong; it was a romantic comedy, and a fairly risqué one at that. Persephone became all the more nervous when she heard the woman say something about breaking new ground in love scenes.

Just then she received her scrap of paper and, unfolding it, saw the number one on it. She would be going first! Great. Without wasting any time, the woman called the number ones forward. Persephone was smitten with fear, and when no woman moved, a few of the actors around Persephone pushed her forward, seeing her piece of paper. The woman handed her a script and told her to read, pushing her further onto the stage. The man was waiting.

Persephone glanced down at the script and saw she had the first line. Gathering herself, she spoke, “Vacuous Mr…” She was immediately cut off by the male role, who launched himself into a passionate monologue about how lovers should never refer to each other as mister or miss. Apparently he missed the fact that Persephone had just called him vacuous to his face. And apparently the female roles in this movie were solely focused on providing flesh for the audience to slobber over: she had only one other line, and here it came.

She missed it. Silence reigned. She peered confusedly at her script. Was this really all she was supposed to say? The woman who wore the pants came stomping into the light looking irritated. “Remember ‘and!’” she growled. Persephone had not forgotten. She just didn’t think and was much of a line worth saying. But she uttered her single syllable answer to the opposing man’s constant stream of emotion. And must have been inviting some response from the man, though Persephone was not sure exactly what, as she hadn’t really been listening.

The man got a strange look in his eyes. To Persephone it looked like he might throw up any second, and she turned her head away in disgust, throwing up her arms for protection. The man lunged at her, as a lion pouncing on his prey, and the director again came forward, this time throwing her stool into the scene, which quite startled the two on stage. She yelled and cursed for a moment then told the man to go back to his original position. The look in his eyes was supposed to be one of deep love, and Persephone had missed it. But the director had advice for the man this time. After all, the woman was just there to be pretty.

“Advance steamier,” she said with emotion to the man, making some grotesque motion with her hands about her middle, seeming to indicate that she was being disemboweled. Persephone didn’t bother to say her one line – she knew it was pointless. Even were she a terrible actress, she was above this pitiful excuse for a movie. As the man began to lunge once again, this time looking like he had just crossed a desert and was about to fall on top of the well of Persephone, she dropped her script and walked off the stage toward the exit.

The man missed his target, crashing into the wall and bringing down a deluge of old lights and props. Amid the chaos that ensued, Persephone could hear the director shouting hysterically about truth and art and how Persephone clearly did not understand the ideals of artistry, otherwise she would recognize what a great film she had just flouted. The screams grew more and more intense as Persephone realized the director was truly enraged at her. She picked up her pace, and finally reached the door to the antechamber. She turned around briefly and saw the livid director, her boyfriend crouching behind her in panic, pick up a defunct light casing and hurl it towards Persephone, shouting in her rage.

“Veracity on!”

Persephone squeezed through the door and heard the casing crash against the other side. Maybe it was time she started trying to express truth in another field after all.

Avatar

2010-03-10T18:05:00.002-05:00

As a kid, I loved getting up every Saturday morning to watch cartoons. There was Batman, the Ninja Turtles, Scooby Doo, Darkwing Duck, Looney Tunes, Animaniacs, Tailspin. Then there were the renowned Disney movies of old – Aladdin, The Lion King, and Toy Story probably being my early favorites (later to be followed by the best of them all – The Emperor’s New Groove). These were all created to appeal to someone like me – your average kid. But many of them, especially the classic movies, still appeal to me today. This is partly due to nostalgia, but it is also due to the fact that they all present the same basic story, the heroic ideal that has been with us since the dawn of legendary human exploits, which is to say, since the dawn of humanity.

That being said, Sunday I finally saw Avatar. First of all let me expound upon its greatness. It was absolutely dazzling. It is perhaps the only movie I have ever seen that I am considering seeing again in theaters. Vivid and creative, it certainly deserves the hype it has received. I had been told a variety of things about it beforehand. But the most frequently heard comments were that the visual effects were amazing, the plot was terrible, and the religion was weird. The last of these I will address in my next post. As for the others, I agree completely with the first point, and disagree with the second in spirit.

Maybe the plot was terrible to the detached viewer, but I simply was not detached. From the moment I acclimated to the stunning picture before me and saw the gorgeous landscape that Cameron had created, I let down my guard and immersed myself as I did in those Saturday morning cartoons. It was the sort of movie that, in my opinion, easily sucks you in. It was so familiar: boy begins a task with wrong motives, boy gets girl, things start getting complicated, boy loses girl, boy fully repents of his former ways and commits to doing what’s right, boy proves himself and gets girl again, boy helps save the “world” from evil, they all live happily ever after. Some may call it overused. And indeed, this could just as easily have been a summary of The Lion King.

But this is the classic hero story, and we have a passion for them. Hero stories of old tugged at the hearts of Greeks, Romans, and Elizabethans, and they continue to intrigue us today. Recasting the model in new ways is one of the great traditions of art. Avatar succeeded at this task by introducing enough visual novelty to make the willing viewer trade his critical mindset for the perspective of an eager child who glories in the story for its own sake. I knew what was coming by instinct, but like the child who has heard his favorite story over and over and still fears it might turn out differently this time, so I was caught up in the excitement, allowing myself to wonder if it would actually work out in the end or if everything would fall apart.

I’m glad it worked out. But as confirmation that the movie had really succeeded, I was sad too. I left the movie theater faintly wishing that there was such a story, that Pandora was real, that I had won my own girl through courage and danger, that I was a part of that story. When you approach a story just as it is, a story, with a hero and a villain, with love and hate, war and peace, it is easy to project yourself into it. But you never think of those fallen warriors or unrequited lovers; you view yourself as the hero who gets the girl and saves the world from destruction. For a few hours, the screen is your portal into heroism. You become the hero, experiencing all his ups and downs, and in this case his ultimate triumph and joy.

Then you leave. And it’s over. You feel the joy being stolen away as you acquiesce to the fact that you do not live on Pandora, you have not just protected a species from their doom. You exit the building into the vast asphalt parking lot, squinting in the glare of a thousand windshields. You see no pristine jungle landscapes. Even if you have the girl, you remember that relationships are more than just perfect romance. That world in which goodness and love have so thoroughly triumphed has vanished, and this world where death and decay loom large returns.

The melancholia sticks around for awhile, perhaps until dinner time, and then life gets back to normal. The perfunctory essentials return. You realize the kitchen still has to be cleaned; you must still go to work; your bathroom scale still shows a number too high for a hero. But we fight our own heroic struggles. Some decide to fight for their marriage that has been falling apart around them, a decision sometimes more heroic than going to war. Others decide to continue helping that seemingly hopeless child at school, though all others have abandoned him. Many decide to face the next day, though there is no hope for a better life anywhere in sight.

I did not learn anything new about human nature when I saw Avatar, nor did I leave with any surprising or revelatory new ideas about truth, beauty, love, or joy. But I was reminded that justice is worth fighting for. I was reminded of how similar have been man’s faults all through the ages, and how similar they will likely be into the future. Once my movie melancholia had faded, I also remembered, trite though it sounds, that I could be a hero too.

And it was just awesome.

A Day in the Life of a Paranoid

2010-03-08T16:57:00.002-05:00

Flames shoot in all directions, not just up, but down, left, right, diagonal. Various objects of affection careen out of the inferno like scorched animals, still carrying bits of fire on their tails. There is my copy of The Complete Icelandic Sagas, churning its weighty way through the air, 700 of the 1000 pages already burnt to a crisp. There on the left I see my Brahms recordings balanced on a charred wooden precipice. They plummet into a seemingly endless abyss as their support finally gives way. I feel a burning sensation on my neck and swat away a chard of a memory on a piece of glossy, evaporating paper – my wife and me on our wedding day. The conflagration rages ever on, and Chopin’s Funeral March fades in, growing louder and louder, its ominous tones pounding their way methodically into my desperate soul. Louder, louder, the dirge pulses and throbs, bursting in and receding again. It grows harsh, cacophonous, in and out, over and over…

“Jonathan! Turn off your alarm!”

My eyes open slowly as I fade into reality and I hit the alarm, grateful to find myself in my comfortable, unoxidized bedroom. Safe, I lay back down to sleep a few more minutes. I doze in and out again, dwelling in that place between waking and sleeping where dreams can be manipulated. I masochistically bring back the image of my burning apartment and wallow in its depression. I vaguely sense my wife walking around the room, bringing with her faint spines of peace piercing the raging fires of my dream. I hear myself starting to snore, pulling me further into reality, and the fires begin to melt away, drifting as on a piece of paper in a gentle ocean swell, now near at hand, now distant, now near again, until the dream has vanished on the waning tide.

I get out of bed and begin to go about my day. I shower and eat, check my email, putter around the place doing nothing in particular. I turn on the coffee pot while I get dressed for work, and I hear it gargling and purring from my bedroom. The smell lazes its way through the rooms, finding me and lifting my spirits. By now, all I remember of my dream is that it ended very peacefully. Dreams only seem terrifying when you wake from them suddenly and permanently.

Now I am ready for work. I have seen my wife out the door to her school, and I prepare for my own departure now. I pour my coffee and prepare it, gather my few other effects, put on my coat, and head to the door. Then I turn back around and make for the master bath. “Is Ashley’s curling iron is off?” I find everything in order and verbalize it, “Off.”

I march back toward the door but make a stop by the kitchen. “Off, off, off, off, off, off, off.” That covers the coffee pot, the toaster oven, the four stove eyes, and the oven. Now running a little late, I quicken my pace as I remember to check the library for any lights that are still on. I find them off and take a shortcut through the guest bath on the way out, or so I tell myself, though really I’m checking to make sure Ashley did not leave any other hair paraphernalia plugged in there either. “Good.”

Finally I walk out the door when I realize I have not checked the heat! I unlock the door and find the dial in the hallway, turning it down a quarter of a degree to make myself feel better about the fact that it was already set where I intended. I scan the lights on the stove one last time, just in case, and then head outside once more. I lock the door and jiggle the handle in and out several times. “Locked.”

I hesitate on my way down the stairs, torn between the idea of going back up to make sure I really turned off the coffee pot, but I force myself on. Ten minutes after originally heading to my apartment door, I finally make it to the car. Inside, I start the car and simultaneously start worrying that I didn’t lock the door completely. But I know I’m paranoid, so I drive to work.

On the way there, I think of how much I dislike being this way. I blame the American way sometimes, and its obsession with security. Other times I settle on the notion that I’m just that way, buying into our culture’s perverse idea that we can pass the blame for any of our unsavory aspects onto our genes, stymieing personal responsibility. On occasion, though, I make some lofty goal of eliminating my paranoia. I give myself a pep talk, ending with a rousing call to action, a declaration that “I can do it,” and a loud battle cry as I charge against the menace of anxiety. But then I have arrived at work, and I have to calm down. The will to fight fades as I walk the path into work, and by the time I scan my card at the door, I have forgotten my determination to improve.

The day goes smoothly. I give that big presentation on the work I’ve been doing for the last six months. It goes well, and I’m glad to have finally finished it. I am mostly free of paranoia while I’m at work, and after a tiring day, I return home.

As soon as I step in the door, fears that had been lurking somewhere in the corners of my mind pounce upon me. What if my numbers were off in that presentation? What if I was mistaken about the entire premise of the project? I could have made some tiny error that threw off the whole process. Then I would have to go in and tell everyone who had heard my presentation that it was all wrong. The foundation of the project was an error, and I just wasted six months of time. My wife assures me I am being crazy, and I settle down to dinner, Jeopardy, and some reading.

Bed time rolls around and I am fatigued from fighting with my mind. I brush my teeth, read a little more, take my allergy pill, and then prepare to turn off the lights. Picking up my alarm, I check that it is set for the right time, assuring myself that the alarm is set for AM, not PM, and that the current time says PM, not AM. Then I turn the alarm on and off several times, just to confirm that the little symbol of a bell I see appearing is actually related to me pressing the alarm button. I hit the snooze button, which is also the light, and then worry that by doing so I may have disengaged the alarm, just like snoozing does in the morning. So I repeat the whole process again. Finally, when I feel confident that all is well, I stare at the display for at least thirty seconds, looking for any sign that my confidence was ill-founded. Then, doubly-confident, I put the clock down, turn off the light. The peace of the night and the comfortable bed soothe me. I sigh pleasurably, and roll over. Maybe I can beat this worry after all. Maybe I can slowly free myself from its net. But then I wonder, “Hon, is your alarm set too? Just in case?”

Judging a Book By Its Cover

2010-03-04T19:17:00.001-05:00

“Never judge a book by it’s cover.” So the saying goes, at least for those who do not know how to use apostrophes correctly. Regardless of who is telling me this trite wisdom, be it an expert grammarian or an illiterate yeoman (though that would be a rather ironic thing for an illiterate yeoman to say), I never take their advice. I might try to, but I know covers affect me.

I recently read Lord of the Flies for the first time, and I absolutely loved it. I expected to, and I’m glad it did not have a grotesque cover to spurn me. Then on my last trip to the library to buy used books, where we buy nearly all of our books that we always meant to read but never did, I picked up another Golding book, The Inheritors, and thought, “What the heck – it’s only twenty five cents.” I say that a lot when I’m at the little used book shop at the library. I buy them in droves, flocks, mountains, hoards, heaps, clans. Thankfully, there is no border control to stop me even when adopting in such quantity. But I assure you I provide a loving home for my books.

So anyway, I picked up that Golding book, barely glancing at the cover because I had just read his other book and enjoyed it so much. I fanned through the pages to test the extent of defacement (which is a great burden to my soul, especially that caused by grisly highlighters), and seeing that it was mostly free of such sin, I gathered it into my herd, where it quickly lost itself amongst its comrades.

I then led them to the checkout, where I paid nearly six dollars for about twelve books, deciding that one particular collection of essays was worth the hefty price of ¾ of a Starbucks Latte. (I later decided it was worth at least five Frappucinos, so I was rather pleased.) I left the library with a pleasant mien and a heavy sack.

Later, when I was distributing the new gaggle amongst the various sections of the library, I had a small, involuntary twinge when I placed The Inheritors upon the shelf. I wondered at it for a moment, and then thought nothing of it and promptly left the feeling stranded. But it returned with a vengeance when I later pulled the book from the shelf to sample it.

There on the front of my vintage copy, which cost less than a stick of gum, was a hideous drawing of a Neanderthal, or something like it, hunched over naked in shades of brown and chartreuse, sniffing and poking at some unknown plant. Like the sculptures of the Greco-Roman world, whose paint has long since faded, the androgynous creature has no pupils. But ancient sculptures did not choose to let their painted eyes fade away. The “artist” who created this cover, on the other hand, purposefully left the creature to look soulless and evil. Opposed with this depiction is the fact that the Neanderthal is hunched over in the most polite of manners, kindly remembering to shield us and our fragile sensibilities from the private nooks and crannies of his body. I guess in this aspect he decided to rise above the artist’s implications of his nature.

And then there is the looming question of why there is a name written in the ground next to the Neanderthal. Did someone named Charles travel through time, perhaps like one of those hunters in The Sound of Thunder, dropping his name randomly about the landscape, hoping that it would be noticed in one of these artistic book covers? Or is the Neanderthal merely posing in this posture, feigning ignorance, while all along he has left us a clue that he can actually write his own name? Perhaps, like so many, he is an oppressed being, grasping at any chance he has to reveal his true potential.

Maybe I’m being a little harsh on this Charles chap and his book cover, but can I help feeling repulsed when I pick up the book? When I bought it, not having really noticed the cover, I could not wait to read it. Golding was my new territory in literature, a fresh and verdant landscape I had just discovered. But this cover could not help but remind me of vomit.

About once a week I now pick up the book, hoping I will find in my heart some pity for its wretched estate. But as of yet, I have been unsuccessful. I know this is all very sophomoric of me, but I can’t help but feel distaste when a great artist like Golding is paired with such mediocrity. I remind myself, when I think of the harm that has been done Golding’s name in publishing a book with such an abysmal cover, that I did not used to enjoy green beans or asparagus but I now like them both. I doubt I will ever like this book cover, but I hope to one day push beyond the foul taste it puts in my mouth and arrive at the story mostly unscathed.

Balancing the Checkbook

2010-03-02T20:42:00.001-05:00

I’m 23. I sometimes forget my age; I guess it just seems irrelevant and my brain has decided to stop remembering it. But I am always reminded of my age when banking comes up in conversation with members of another generation. I’m not sure where the gap is, but I would guess it corresponds closely with the development of the internet.

A conversation with a member of my parents’ generation or earlier might go something like this:

“So Jonathan, make sure with all those car problems you’ve had that the bills tie out at the end of the month when you balance your checkbook.”

“Checkbook,” I ponder. “Ah yes, the checkbook. I hardly ever use it.”

“Well you do balance it every month, right?”

I pause, awkwardly. “Of course! Who doesn’t?”

“Good!”

I leave the room in search of someone in the know. Spotting my wife, I duck into a dark corner and gesture for her to come over, “Psst…Ash…come here a sec.”

“What are you doing?” She looks around to find out who I’m hiding from.

“Just, come here a sec. I have a question.”

She comes over, giving into the fact that her husband’s strangeness is incurable. “Hey, do you know what it means to balance your checkbook?”

“Um, sorta, I think. Isn’t it just making sure your bills match the checks you’ve written?”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, but I wasn’t sure. They were saying something about tying out to the penny, so I guess that works…Have you ever done that?”

“No.”

“Ok, just checking...” She rolls her eyes and starts to walk away, but I stop her. I don’t want to be spotted. I stealthily look around to see if anyone has noticed this covert conversation, and then jump back into the light and walk down the hall whistling.

The truth is, I’ve never once balanced my checkbook, and I don’t intend to ever do so. I’m pretty confident that most of my generation conforms to this pattern, and here’s why. First of all, we never write checks. It took me five years to make it through my first packet of checks. Why write checks when you could be getting one to two percent cash back on every purchase you make? There is nothing so pleasing as checking your rewards at the end of the year and seeing you have earned a couple hundred bucks just by paying your bills and buying what you would have bought anyway.

Generally, proponents of the checkbook point to the security it provides over the plastic option, but I have to respectfully disagree with this perspective. It’s true that these days you can almost count on one of your credit card numbers being stolen during your lifetime. But you can dispute any charges that you know someone else made, and I have never heard of anyone who was defrauded in this manner actually having to pay for the fraudulent charges.

Credit card companies are putting much more effort into identity protection now anyways. I recently got a new credit card that had better rewards, and I immediately started using it (because of the rewards). The next day I received a phone call from the company to verify charges they thought might be fraudulent. Apparently, most credit card users do not jump right into their new card like I did. So I verified the expenses and that was that. But I was pleased with their vigilance.

Then there is the obvious factor of internet banking. If I couldn’t go online and see every purchase I had made, on both my credit and debit cards, I would be tempted to go back to checks. But I can see everything – every tiny interest earning, every automated bill, every singular coke that I didn’t have enough cash to pay for because I wanted my credit card rewards so earnestly. It’s all there.

Now let’s think about the check. There are two obvious drawbacks in my opinion. First, it is slow and cumbersome. Between the actual writing of checks and the checking and rechecking of sums at the end of every month, much time is wasted. But more importantly, in terms of security, using a check is openly handing out your bank account number, complete with your name and address. I find it ironic that some people can be so careful about blocking off their bank account numbers on other documents, but are completely fine with handing it out on every check they write.

At least with debit, the card number is auxiliary to the account number. And for credit, where the card number is often the account number, no one is leaving that number in someone else’s keeping. You swipe the card and get it back. Sure, people still manage to steal it, but they have to be trickier about it. And when there is credit fraud, the money is coming out of the bank’s keeping first, rather than coming straight out your bank account. When the fraud is recognized, it can be fixed entirely without affecting your personal cash balance.

No – I don’t balance my checkbook, but I keep a very close eye on all of my accounts with online technology and I pay my full bill every month. I see only one possible benefit to the checkbook habit. For those who are tempted to overspend when using credit or debit, because it doesn’t seem like real money, using checks is a good way to temper this habit. But for those who have no trouble keeping track of their finances, it seems to me that using checks for everyday transactions is throwing money away, wasting time, and less secure to boot.

What were you thinking?

2010-02-28T16:34:00.000-05:00

Scenario 1:

A couple walks into their house, the woman obviously flustered. She throws down her purse and flings her jacket at a chair. The husband meekly follows, locking the door, gingerly hanging up his coat.

“Ugh!” She is pacing around the living room wringing her hands. “How could you be so stupid? What were you thinking?”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t”

Scenario 2:

A group of friends reflects over a late night meal at Waffle House. They are lounging, full and happy, laughing as they recount the events of earlier in the evening.

“I swear, I thought the guy was going to pull a knife out of his pocket any second and spit us all!” He lunges at his friend with a leftover straw, and they all laugh some more.

“I guess I’m just stupid – I thought he really wanted our help fighting the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide. What were you thinking?” He looks across at Jeff.

“I have to be honest – I knew the guy was messing with us the whole time. I guess none of you took high school chemistry!”

Scenario 3:

A young man lies on a couch in a cushy office. In a high-back chair next to him sits a psychologist. He looks a lot like Steve Martin. He might even be Steve Martin. The young man speaks:

“I guess I can see her point. I mean, a blender does suggest a certain... reference to sexual politics, but I swear, it never entered my consciousness at the time.”

“What were you thinking?”

“You know those banana shakes she likes to make, right? Well, that's why I thought she'd like a blender.”

“And how did that make you feel?”

“..What? That she liked banana shakes? Haven’t I already been telling you what I feel?”

It’s amazing what a little change in emphasis can do to a sentence. It is said that tone of voice (and I think that this number also includes things like emphasis) provides 38% of communication when speaking. 55% is facial expression, and only 7% is communicated by the actual words you speak. That is to say, I’m probably communicating basically nothing right now.

When I was in middle school, written communication was both a blessing and a curse. Like most young teens of my day, I spent as much time as possible on Instant Messenger. It was one of the safest ways to talk to girls without embarrassing yourself. You had as much time as you wanted to think through how to say things. You could just small talk if all else failed, and you didn’t need to worry about those awkward silences that can come up in real conversations. Half the time conversations just sort of ended without even having to say goodbye.

But then there were those moments when the lack of vocal and visual clues would drive me insane. There I would be, talking to some girl I had a crush on. We had just started our conversation and she would ask, “So what r u doing tonight?”

My mind would race. Was that “So…what are you doing tonight?” Was that a hint? Was she twirling her finger in her hair as she said that, perhaps raising one of her eyebrows? Was she asking if I wanted to go out with her? Or was it “[You’re] so [boring], what are you doing tonight?” Maybe when she said it in her head, she was completely apathetic, filing her nails as she responded in kind to my “what’s up?” (I never even considered that she was saying “So what are you doing tonight?” and was actually curious.)

I would debate between “not too much” which would leave the door open to the possibility of actually being available, though I really wasn’t (I couldn’t drive and I wasn’t about to admit to my parents who my crush was), and “pretty busy - tons of homework in math,” which would force me to admit that I knew deep down this girl was not asking me out. Back and forth, back and forth, and after ten minutes, I would decide it was too late to say anything at all, and I would just give up.

Later that night I would find myself in my room, listening to my traditional melancholy music – Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 – staring out my window as the rain dripped down the panes. I had lost my chance. If I had just said something, anything! But now I would have to hide my face from her tomorrow, or I’d have to come up with some lame excuse about my dog eating the computer wire. But I don’t have a dog. So she’ll just think I was ignoring her, which isn’t the greatest way to get the girl.

Man! What was I thinking?

Trailing Off

2010-02-26T17:35:00.000-05:00

Many great composers had serious problems with self-confidence. Paul Dukas, who composed The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, later gaining public renown from its use in Disney’s Fantasia, wrote a considerable amount of music, but he destroyed most of it rather than publish something that, to him, was less than perfect. Anton Bruckner, who composed some of the most grandiose romantic works in the canon, did not seem to trust his own preferences and often revised his work repeatedly to conform to the recommendations of other musicians. To this day some of his works do not have a standard version.

Other times, the composers have some great ideas, but they lose steam as the work nears its end. The first two movements of Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique are both very “pathetic,” meaning they are full of pathos, but the last movement does not match the emotion of the first two. It seems as if Beethoven had used up all the inspiration he had for the first two movements, and by the third he was just tired, trying to spit something out to complete the required three movement form.

I only work in essays, and at that I am a mere amateur, but I suffer from both of these problems in conjunction. As a writer, it is easy for me to get excited about a topic. Almost anything can hold my interest for awhile, which I think is fairly obvious from the variety of topics I discuss in this blog. I love coming up with bizarre ways to approach a topic, starting somewhere off in the bleachers beyond left field, slowly meandering my way through the crowds, stopping for a hot dog, eventually entering the field over the home team’s dugout, and then puttering my way to home plate, where my topic awaits me. The pursuit of a good introduction is one of my passions.

Unfortunately, the pursuit of a better conclusion is where I should really be focusing. I often feel like a song-writer who has come up with a catchy chorus. You hear it one day on the radio and find it at least agreeable, so you keep listening. After awhile you realize the song should be coming to an end soon or it will pass into the realm of lost novelty, and right on cue, it begins to quiet down. But it’s not leading up to any cadence, any semblance of finality. No, the writer got so caught up in his catchy chorus that he forgot to figure out how to end the song. Luckily, in our studio era, there is an easy way to hide this error – just keep playing that catchy chorus and slowly fade the music out.

So what do those bands do when they have a concert? They obviously can’t just fade out at the end. Rather than face the deafening silence, the bands (or perhaps their more pragmatic producers) come up with some contrived ending that’s forced in where it was never intended to be. They have a quick pause followed by a final ringing chord, or they have a ridiculous build up where the drummer goes berserk until the crowd is roaring. Either way, the band has been forced to awkwardly cauterize their idea, effectively terminating the song but stealing away some of its vitality.

I commiserate with them. When you are pouring all your creative energies into an idea, sometimes you are just too sapped to figure out how to wrap it up. You would rather it hang around, ringing in your ears until everything in the world is better. Nearly every time I write I face this problem, but no amount of interest early on can mask the lack of a conclusion.

Thus I am forced to try. Some of the time I realize that I just told a story with no point whatsoever. Other times I have a point but I’m too bashful to make it forcefully. Like Bruckner I am overly concerned with what others will think. Still other times I know my purpose and write it plainly, but then I come across as pompous and moralizing. And all the while I would rather be back in the first part of the essay, writing another exaggerated story of my duel with a tiny spider. I become frustrated and start looking for excuses to procrastinate. Eventually, after the excitement has left me entirely, I abruptly end the story.

Emergency Books

2010-02-24T19:24:00.001-05:00

“Jonathan come here quick oh my gosh Jonathan hurry hurry hurry HURRY!”

Computers careen through the air; chairs helicopter lopsidedly; small tremors shiver through the apartment. I charge upon my invisible steed toward the sound of my damsel in distress one room over. I overshoot my target, since steeds are hard to stop once charging, then back-pedal to find my wife gesticulating wildly toward some dark corner.

“It was HUGE hurry get it before it runs away there it is!”

I swing my mighty battle axe at the fell beast and smite it upon the head repeatedly until it is cloven in two. (Despite being mighty, my battle axe is not very sharp).

“Is it dead let me see.”

Once again I have saved the day. I gather up my wilting battle axe and the beast within and flush them into the toilet’s twirling torrents, never mentioning to my wife that the bug was smaller than my pinky fingernail. Okay, so sometimes I do mention it, but I still kill the foul little creatures. And occasionally they are considerable enough to warrant both my respect and a larger weapon than a tissue.

Though I am generally the more emotional of us, my wife has a more sudden and cataclysmic response to perceived emergencies. Or perhaps my responses are just as intense, but my mind classifies fewer events in the category of emergency. For example, a few minutes into a trip, my wife will sometimes suddenly release the sort of severe gasp that I would reserve for situations akin to the moment when I realized Evelyn Waugh was a man. I respond:

“Where are they? Where?” The gasp indicated to me that a herd of antelope was charging at our car from somewhere outside my line of vision.

“Dang it, I forgot to bring my white sweater in the car with me!”

“Your sweater? It’s in your suitcase - are you telling me there are no antelope?”

At this she seems confused, and I emit my own sigh. But I have to give her credit for putting up with what I consider emergencies, particularly issues related to evolution, theology, or Swedish holidays (and their accompanying gastronomy – mmm St. Lucia buns).

Concerning one particular emergency, though, we are ardently united: the travesty of having to wait somewhere for more than five minutes without something to read. And I mean something worth reading, not those awful magazines that befoul countless waiting rooms across the nation. (The least they could do is cancel all their subscriptions to Horse and Hound and pool their funds to get a worthy news periodical like The Economist.)

I might even admit that one of those gasps without warning is justified when one has forgotten her emergency book, and my wife and I have both had this misfortune. My wife is really responsible for helping me establish the habit of the emergency book, and I can no longer imagine life without it. She has had this practice since she was a youth, when she would sometimes even bring books when her family went out for dinner. I never brought a book with me on common errands until I married my wife, but now it is one of the items on the list whenever I go anywhere. And her habit of reading during meals has influenced me as well. It is not uncommon for us to read through meals at home together, and this often greatly improves are conversations later. Rather than just making small talk about the day, we can discuss issues raised by whatever we are reading, whether it is the social consequences of the bubonic plague or the effects of censorship in China, the diction of Shakespeare or the merits of natural food. And I assure you all of these topics have actually arisen.

One of my favorite topics to discuss is Medieval Literature and History. It would not be strange for someone to find my wife and me discussing The Battle of Maldon, Volsunga Saga, and Lord of the Rings in conjunction some night at a coffee shop. This sort of conversation would undoubtedly be enriching for us. While my wife would have been equipped for such a discussion due to her degree, I never would have been able to participate were it not for a day trip when I stole Ashley’s copy of Beowulf as my emergency book. What literary passions I would lack without having encountered Beowulf I cringe to consider.

In a world where conversation often descends to the banality of voyeuristic reality TV shows, there is an easy solution for recapturing quality discussion. Rather than picking up that remote when you’re bored, pick up a book. And if you find yourself so busy that you don’t even have time to be bored, the emergency book is one of the easiest ways to squeeze in some extra time immersing yourself in new (or old) ideas.

Pajama Pants

2010-02-22T19:42:00.002-05:00

I was unshowered. My “Let the Big Dawg Eat” hat, which was too small for my head, was tilted upwards so as to cover as much of my oily hair as possible. I had not shaven in several days. I glanced down and saw my pajama pants and flip flops. Then looking back up and stealthily sipping on some Dr. Pepper, my bleary eyes tried to focus on the music projected on the screen at the front of the room. We were discussing falling fifths, a simple but elegant progression often used in classical music.

I dropped my pencil. Leaning over to pick it up, I saw my outfit once more and something clicked in my mind. What was I thinking? Had I no good taste, no sense of decorum or decency? How could I have ever allowed myself to step out of my dorm in such a state? Shame rushed over me as I considered my case. I could see the hard-working faces of my forebears in a field somewhere, laboring from dawn to dusk. How pitiful it was that after all their toil and effort to make a living, to get their children and grandchildren a leg up in life, their progeny would be so miserable and pathetic. I blushed to think what even my living relatives would think if they could see me now.

My face beet red, I knew I must do something. I quietly excused myself out of the back of the class and headed to the restroom. The eyes of passersby caught me, and, though they seemed courteous, I knew they were wondering how such refuse of the earth could actually be in their music building.

Quickly passing by their scrutiny, I arrived at the restroom and went inside to hide. There, finally, I was safe and could do something to fix my sorry estate. I took one look in the mirror and cringed. Eager to fix the problem, I took off my shirt, turned it around, and flipped it inside out. Looking in the mirror again, I found the image much more agreeable. I looked down and no longer saw the tag of my shirt dangling in front of my neck, but rather the shirt’s tasteful front. At that moment, I vowed never again to be so loose with myself as to wear my shirt inside out and backwards to class.

I took one more look at the mirror and still thought something looked off. “Ah yes! My hat.” I donned its gracious cover once again and returned to class, finally put back in order.

Not only did I feel like I had disgraced my forebears that day, I also felt rather ashamed that my pajama pants had to put up with such a ridiculous counterpart in their ensemble. But they are gracious and forgiving, my pants, and I do not think they begrudged it me or the shirt. The pants were the most comfortable I have ever owned, though they had humble beginnings. I found them in a clearance heap at Walgreen’s one day. They were purple and blue plaid and roomy in the legs. In fact, they still are so, for I have not forsaken them to this day though I have had them since high school.

They have seen many a college classroom, many a midnight walk around the quad, and untold hours of lounging here and there as my whims dictated. But recently I have grown concerned, for I can tell the pants are losing some of their earlier vitality. The elastic waistband is now visible atop the pants, some frays have developed, and they are generally feeling their age. I have already been through one difficult separation with a pair of pajama pants. I bought them at about the same time, and they too were blue and comfortable. I wore them regularly along with my current pair, but they did not last as well, and before long there were significant tears on these pants. It came to the point that I had to shear off large portions of the legs as the tears crept up like ivy. When they were more like capris or even shorts than pants, I decided it was time to end my bigamous relationship and settle for only one pair of pajama pants. I said adieu to the much amputated pants, and ever since I have been a monogamous pajama wearer.

I do fear what will happen when my current pair descends to the grave, though. All the younger types these days lack the depth of character I so relish in my current pair. The younger ones are fickle and flighty, prone to faithlessness at the most inopportune times (like just before a vacation, when a small piece of home works wonders on your ability to sleep).

And so in anticipation of the period ahead, I have a small poem to dedicate to my pajamas.

One pant, two pant, three pant, four,

Hie thee not out of my door.

Five pant, six pant, seven pant, eight,

I fear I’ll mourn thee ere too late.

I wish you all long relationships with your pajamas.

Suburban Regalia

2010-02-20T22:45:00.000-05:00

I don’t exactly have a backyard. In fact, I definitely don’t have a backyard. Nonetheless, this very day I discovered a wonderful place in my own backyard. It’s really the sort of thing I should have known about years ago, and I know I had the opportunity to do so. I knew the name of the location, and I knew that it had a place to do some rock climbing. But it remained vague and distant until today.

Vickery Creek and its accompanying trails comprise this wonderful place. Not two miles from my current dwelling lies a small wooded area containing a few miles of scenic trails. These trails criss-cross the wood and follow the creek as it twists its way toward the Chattahoochee River. I would have never ventured into this realm had I not learned a vital fact – there is a waterfall along the trail.

Water has always been a key inspiration for me to go hiking. Forests are pleasant, but they lack the vitality of waterfalls or even creeks and streams. And there exist few boys who do not enjoy getting wet on a warm day.

So when I found out about the waterfall, I pledged my loyalty to the trails even before I had seen them. And I woke this morning eagerly anticipating my day’s planned adventure, right in my own backyard. Sometime around 11 o’clock I gathered up my small hiking knapsack and filled it with a water bottle, a sandwich, a small pad, and a pen for I intended to lunch and reflect during the hike.

I drove over to the trailhead and began to tromp up the trail. (I never merely “hike.” Tromping is much more invigorating.) Not two minutes later I encountered a long entourage of middle-aged hikers and realized reflection might be a little more difficult than expected on a beautiful day like today. But they passed rather quickly and I let them get ahead a bit to at least create the illusion of solitude in the woods. I presently forgot how near humanity was and relished the sylvan atmosphere.

About ten minutes later I came back in sight of the creek and started to hear what I believed to be the waterfall. The thrill of being outdoors in simulated seclusion, breathing the fresh air, feeling the dirt beneath me, greatly lifted my spirit. I began to see myself like some conquering hero, ruling over the path before me like an Olympian god. Tromping can do that to a fellow. Then I tripped over a protruding root, and my hubris came a’tumblin down like Icarus. Fortunately, metaphoric falls do not often kill.

My pride back in check, I could now tell that I was very near the waterfall. Then the beauteous vision burst through the thick February foliage of bare tree limbs – the falls themselves, tumbling over a mighty precipice into a bottomless abyss, churning and flinging up mist in such quantity as to instantly drench anyone who dared venture near this manifestation of mighty Nature.

I tripped again and decided to keep my romantic side in more control for the remainder of my tromp. In reality, the falls were only about twenty five feet tall, flowing over the remains of the old dam that I believe helped power the Roswell mill in days of yore. Though the scene could not compare to the splendor of natural beauty elsewhere, the eroded dam and the falls were a very pleasant sight in the midst of suburbia. I climbed down a little closer to the water and sat on some rocks to eat my sandwich.

The group of hikers I had seen earlier seemed to have taken a different route than I had, and presently I saw them appear up the trail and come down to look at the waterfall. They lingered for a few minutes and moved on. A troop of boy scouts followed shortly thereafter, and their leaders diligently kept them from the water’s edge. They too lingered briefly and then passed by.

But it was the opposite side of the creek that really kept my attention. There was another path across the way, a paved trail that led down from the mill and the historic part of Roswell, and there was a steady flow of walkers there as well. In fact, there were many more on that side than on mine. That didn’t surprise me much; their side was paved and flat; it had nice viewing areas, and it was only a few hundred yards from parking, shops, and restaurants.

And yet, nearly every walker carried a burdensome load of hiking gear. Many had backpacks stuffed to the brim; most had some form of walking stick, and all looked as if they had been working very hard so far. At first I thought they must have crossed over the creek further down (where there is a bridge) and had been hiking on my side beforehand, but this proved an untenable belief as I watched group after group come down from the parking lot, take off their sacks to view the falls for a few minutes, and head right back up to their cars, leaning heavily on their walking sticks. And even if they were hiking on my side of the river, the gear could not be justified; I doubt there is more than three or four miles of trail in total. I couldn’t help but laugh at one man in particular who had the complete outfit – a steel-framed hiking backpack completely full, two walking sticks, a hat brimmed all the way around, and a variety of other objects dangling from carabiners on his pack.

Such is the regalia of many suburbanites (or, perhaps more accurately, super-urbanites, for Roswell is north of Atlanta). We love to show off our fancy gear amongst our neighbors, even if it is completely unnecessary. And we justify it as preparedness. After all, you never know when you’ll be walking a quarter mile and fall, breaking your face, desperately needing gauze, Neosporin, and a nice side of roast beef with roasted parsnips while you wait for extraction. This desire for security carries over into other parts of our lives all the time.

Risk is always unnecessary; there is insurance for nearly everything. From our health to our lives to our jewelry to our cars to our luggage to our mail to our weddings to our dogs, if we spend money on it, we can buy insurance for it. And we often do. And when there is no insurance available (or even when there is), we have intruder alerts, credit checks, car alarms (which have woken me two nights in a row and never seem to prevent robbery), background checks, smoke alarms, personal references, carbon monoxide detectors, warranties, good faith agreements, never-ending return polices (or just take it to Wal-Mart), rain checks, and – if all else fails – you can always sue.

These same litigious folk have taught us well how to travel. It all comes down to planning. First you plan for the travelling portion of the trip, because it comes first, and we are a people most concerned with the here and now. So break out the entertainment: the computer with a multitude of DVDs, the ipod, the Kindle, the Blackberry, and your portable satellite radio (for sports), and of course you will need a charger for each device.

Next consider your clothing and toiletries. Fortunately, there is a useful volume formula:

(Number of Travelers)(Number of Nights Spent Away + 3) = Bags Needed

For example, if my wife and I are going to Savannah for three days, we would need

(2)(3+3) = (2)(6) = 12 bags!

So fill them up! You just never know when you will need a safari shirt or a ski mask.

I understand that it is a fundamental human need to feel safe. Life does not flourish without security. But I would also argue that some risk and uncertainty is equally important. It pushes us to new achievements; it keeps us motivated; it reveals our weaknesses and hones them into assets. Even the most protected person will one day encounter something completely unexpected and frightening. If they have spent their lives only trying to be safe, they will stumble and fall. But the one who has shunned the secure regalia of suburbia to face reality from time to time will stand beneath the pressure.

The Warning Signs

2010-02-18T21:19:00.003-05:00

Today marks yet another day of failure among Americans. Joe Stack, who was mad at the government, the IRS in particular, flew his plane into an IRS building in Texas, killing himself, injuring several, and perhaps killing one other (who is currently unaccounted for). He had apparently written a note on a website about his plans. Here is what the NY Times had to say about the man and his internet note:

It ended with passages strongly suggesting that its author expected to die on Thursday, including a reference to Feb. 18, 2010, as his date of death.

“I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different,” the note concluded. “I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.”

Source: NY Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19crash.html?ref=global-home

This attack comes while two other similar instances are fresh on our minds. Just yesterday I heard a report on Amy Bishop, the angry woman who killed several colleagues at the University of Alabama at Huntsville recently. And only back in November, Major Hasan went on a shooting spree at Fort Hood, killing many of our nation’s best.

In all of these cases we managed to “miss the warning signs” of aggression. In retrospect, they seem so clear. Hasan had been in contact with radical clerics and had a history of psychological issues. Interviewed students had clearly noticed anger and social problems with Amy Bishop. And Joe Stack left us a note on his website openly saying (apparently) what he intended.

When such things come to pass, we feel that not only is the perpetrator guilty of a crime, but so is the person who failed to prevent the event from occuring in the first place. As humans, we have a sickening desire to pin the blame on someone, and the media feed off of this desire, pushing into every dark corner, turning over every scrap of information until someone is guilty. We say it is about justice, but really it is about revenge. Holding someone accountable for his own actions and rendering recompense to those afflicted is justice. But in these instances, we seek to hold one person responsible for someone else’s actions, even if the connection is tenuous. We are unable to accept the fact that sometimes people do crazy things, and we simply cannot stop the world from containing these people.

But once these events have occurred, it is important to prevent them from reocurring. And that, many will say, is why we ask about missing the warning signs. And yet, the country we live in places high value on the right to express ourselves freely. The note Joe Stack wrote on his website could be described in two ways up until today: an angry rant that would amount to nothing and the active promotion of free speech in a great nation. But when the insane aspect of Joe Stack decided to act on his rant, it became a missed warning sign.

And this is nearly always the case. The observance of our rights today becomes the obvious omen in retrospect. Our rights of free speech are in direct conflict with our notion that someone was wrong for missing the warning signs. Take Amy Bishop as the next example. If you were a college dean, considering her for a position on the faculty, what would you say when you notice she is a little odd, that she doesn’t make eye contact with you, but that her credentials are appropriate and her criminal background check turns up clean? You would probably say that, like the majority of professors, she was simply eccentric, and you would hire her. Despite the fact that the deepest background checks, like those for caretakers of children, would have turned up a few suspicious items, the depth used for this type of job did not. Just like in Mr. Stack’s case, until the day Amy Bishop turned violent, her eccentricity was merely part of her personality, and she, like the rest of us, had the right to be eccentric.

I do not pretend to know how to solve this problem. It has always existed, and it probably always will. But there is one important thing to glean: life is not fair. It’s one of the most unfortunate truths around, but we with access to internet and free time to read blogs cannot say life has been unfair to us. When, on occasion, though, the fact that life is not fair is brought back into our wealthy, secure laps, we seem to be unable to handle it and cast around for scapegoats. On this account we have something to learn from the child with AIDS who, despite the fact that he could easily and justifiably blame his illness on his parents, does not. No, most such children quietly lead their unhappy lives until death, never blaming. The same can be said of many others among the malnourished and impoverished masses around the world. We who have been so fortunate as to be born in the West should learn to accept the unfairness of life when it so happens to brush us by.

Many years ago our nation decided that free speech tends to make life more “fair” than “unfair.” It leads to progress and reform, the expansion of liberty to those who lack it, the protection of the minority against the domination of a majority. Those nations that have practiced censorship may not have as many crazed shootings, but they often end up trading them for secret police raids in the night and coerced confessions. History has shown us that this often leads to even more death and “unfairness” than we have otherwise.

So it is a trade-off. Recently we have seen the downsides of our freedom in these events, but we have only to look to the room around us to see its upsides.

Llamas and Refrigerators

2010-02-11T20:44:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine recently described the various tattoos she had considered getting in her life, though she had never gotten one. She said she had four main options that she had debated. They were these:

1) “Yes”

2) “?”

3) A circle

4) An elephant

This list made me very happy. There is a certain beauty in completely off-the-wall randomness.

Now I know I am biased on this issue. I have been told by many that I am the most random person they know, and I am no longer surprised when I here this. At work, I am the random fact guy, who occasionally spurts out completely useless, unimportant information. And every time we have a team meeting, I am expected to produce new geographic commentary as we view the wall-sized map in our team room. (I like these duties, by the way. And today I branched out of mere terrestrial geography and discussed Neptune. Did you know that this frigid planet can have sustained winds of up to 1500mph?? Wow.)

But there are many who are not so keen on things random. I have many friends who find peace and joy in the complete ordering of their surroundings. I’ve always been glad there are people like this who can balance out the ones like me.

Recently, though, I have begun to realize that my love of randomness is not so different from a love of order. Many before us have noticed that opposites in their most extreme manifestations often suddenly find themselves rather similar – Communism and Facism being an oft-cited example (I think before long General Relativity and Quantum Theory will become another one). And in some areas, like natural selection, randomness is rather orderly indeed.

But at a more basic level, I’ve realized that the manner in which I judge the merits of any random thing is in fact a logical process. It’s a lot like one of those logic games where you are presented with a group of objects and asked to spot the one that doesn’t fit. Except this time, I want them all to be completely unique, sharing as few traits as possible with all the other items in the list. That’s why my friend’s list of tattoo options was so excellent. The four options have almost nothing in common. “Yes” is a word, whose part of speech I cannot even say I know; “?” is a symbol, only slightly related to yes in that they can both be used in sentences, though “yes” is very definitive while “?” is extremely uncertain. A circle is also a symbol but it has definite physical applications and occurences and is used in math rather than language; an elephant is the only purely physical thing in the list and is obviously unique. And this list would become even better if the items’ small similarities were eliminated, though completely eliminating similarities can only go so far.

I now see that this love of orderly randomness is why I am so fond of a particular, random video entitled “The Llama Song.” I was first introduced to it in college, and it is completely ridiculous and makes no sense. It includes lines like, “I was once a treehouse; I lived in a cake. But I never saw the way the orange slayed the rake,” and lists like “tablet, brick, potato, llama,” and “doorknob, ankle, cold.” That last one is particularly good from a logical perspective. Doorknobs are physical, inorganic, and discrete; ankles are physical, but organic and continuous (who can really say, “the ankle stops here”), and cold is conceptual and subjective, never necessarily present or absent. How wonderful!

So now that I have sapped all randomness of its pleasure, I will leave you with a different sort of randomness, which is equally thrilling, and not of my making:

Haikus are easy,

But sometimes they don’t make sense.

Refrigerator

The End of Sanity - Car Troubles, Part II

2010-02-09T18:12:00.000-05:00

It was a beautiful December day, the type of day that can only be had in the south at that time of year – sixty degrees and sunny. I was coming back from LaGrange, where I had been on business, listening to NPR, as always, and learning some very interesting information about our military interests in the Indian Ocean (specifically, the island of Diego Garcia). I was looking forward to the next piece which had something to do with cooking mushrooms.

But before I could start salivating, my tire exploded. There’s really no other way to describe it. One minute I was in the Indian Ocean thinking of fungus, the next I was listening to a terrible grinding noise and seeing large chunks of my car flying out behind me on GA-400. Needless to say, when one is going 60 or 70 mph, tires do not explode in a merciful manner.

Somehow I still had complete control of the car, so I turned on my blinkers and pulled over three lanes to the shoulder through a sudden gap in the traffic. One thing I will say for Atlanta drivers: while they can be real jerks sometimes, they are very obliging when you are throwing metal at them. On the side of the road, I collected myself, counted all of my digits, and then swung my head around to look for other cars that I hit with my car body buckshot. Surprisingly, there were none, though I could see small remnants of my car flapping around in the road a few hundred feet back.

Sitting there in my car on the side of the highway, cars whizzing by, I was surprised that my car had not erupted in flames (see previous post), but this was a very pleasant surprise. So I was in a much more jovial mood than many probably would have been. But fear not, it would not last.

I hopped out of the car to inspect the damage to my front left tire. It looked a lot like a scene from Terminator, so I figured I should get a tow truck. The tread had become disattached from the rest of the tire all the way around except in one spot. So rather than just falling off and me needing to get a new tire, the tread had whipped around in the wheel well and mutilated everything in its path. Unfortunately that included my lucky “Smith and Sons, Locksmiths” sticker that previously graced the splash guard. I’m afraid that family went all to pieces.

I had it towed to the Toyota dealership where the attendant gave me one of those awful pained looks that says “We are going to get so much money out of this.”

“Looks pretty bad,” says he with aforementioned grimace. “You’re gonna need new brakes, new struts, new splash guards, new wiring, new headlights, a new hydrophobic water pump, a kryptonite windshield, a red paint job, hydraulics for the back, and at least three oversized Singing Billy Bones wall hangings.” You know – those mounted singing fish that you see at Cracker Barrel.

After inspecting it more myself and realizing just how perfectly those wall hangings would fit on my dash, I had to agree with the attendant.

So my wife came and got me and we left my car with the dealer. That night we worked it out so that we could share her car for the next few weeks. It was near Christmas, and we were traveling with my family for a week anyway, so it was not too much trouble. I went to sleep that night tired, but glad to have the episode behind me.

I woke up to frollicking birds the next day and my wife and I got in her car to take me to work. Everything was great for about thirty feet; then we hit a small dip in the road: “Ka CHUNK – GRRRRrrrrrr”

“Did you hear that?” I asked frantically.

“Hear what?”

“That chunking, grinding noise.”

“…No.”

I made her turn off the radio and we both listened intently as we drove to my work. Every time we hit any sort of bump, I would be at it again, “There it is! I heard it – all grinding and chunking, just like my car before it exploded.” But my wife just didn’t hear it.

A few days after this new issue arose (at least, I thought it was an issue), I took the car to a party at Dave and Buster’s, about half an hour away. I got on the highway and started hearing the noise and proceeded to go 45 mph the rest of the way. I was convinced that these tires were going to explode as well. And without Smith and Sons, Locksmiths, I knew my fate would be less lucky than before. Fortunately I survived the evening. But after about a week of enduring me always turning down the radio just as they were getting to those mushrooms on NPR, my wife told me I should just take it in to get looked at. So I did:

“It’s your struts,” they said. I nodded, feigning understanding. “You’ll probably also want these diamond-encrusted windshield wipers.”

So many dollars later, I took her car back home much more sparkly than it was before. But now having endured an exploding tire and messed up struts, I was beginning to go crazy. We took my wife’s car to Augusta for a wedding just a few days later, and I was so tense going above 60 mph that I basically just didn’t. And by the time we got home again, my back was so tight I could barely stand up properly. Then we went to visit family in Ohio, we took my brother’s car, and at one point when I was driving it, I thought his car was also going to explode, so I slowed down to about 40 mph on the highway and seriously considered pulling it over. It wasn’t for about 5 miles that I finally felt comfortable enough to bring it back up to speed. I thought I might never see the sunny borders of Georgia again.

And yet, I sit in Georgia now, writing this blog. Who would have guessed?

I’ve learned a lot from my recent car troubles. I learned how struts work. I’ve learned that it always takes longer to fix than you expect (nearly a full month for my car). I’ve learned that even the best insurance company can have some incompetent employees. And I’ve learned that I’m paranoid, or at least, this fact was confirmed.

But most importantly, I’ve learned just how nice diamonds can look on windshield wipers. My geologist friend told me they are rhinestones, but I didn’t believe him. I paid way too much for them to be rhinestones.

Car Troubles, Part I

2010-02-06T13:48:00.000-05:00

When I was a child, cars were rather mysterious to me. My first car memories are from when I was about four years old. I had still not begun school myself, but I remember riding with my mother and siblings in the car every morning to take my two older brothers to school. I was still too short to see out the window, but I remember looking up at the tops of trees flying by at break-neck pace.

I also remember the old Pontiac station wagon we used to have. It had wood trim down the side, and the car was so long it would not fit in the garage. The hood was about six feet long and it was followed by two rows of panel seating and a mammoth trunk with a rear-facing seat. Rather than pile into the front two rows, one or two of the kids often ended up in the trunk (which was open to the rest of the car). My sister and I often sat in the trunk and waved to the occupants of the car behind us, who often smiled and waved back. Unfortunately, similar good nature today is often returned with a lone-fingered salute. Why this is the case, I am unsure. People are just grumpier than they used to be, I guess.

These memories come before I remember the specter of driving dangers ever rearing its ugly head. I was oblivious to the real power of cars until I was a little older, despite my mother’s constant reminders about wearing seat belts and other safety measures (she was very diligent, and still is, when it comes to safety). Then one day we were all headed somewhere in Atlanta for some sort of doctor’s appointment for one of my brothers. I remember the scene vividly:

The family Waldroup was unaware of the calibre of disaster represented by a winter storm in the Atlanta area. The mother, a Clevelander in years past, was wonted to the salted and plowed roads of the North. In fact, the whole family, having recently called the mountains of western Massachusetts home, was in no way surprised by snow or cold. Now leaving their home in Georgia, they never expected the events that were to befall them on this peaceful, though chilly, day.

They piled into their red Caravan and joyfully lilted toward their destination in raucous song, no doubt led by Psalty the Singing Songbook. It had rained earlier in the day, and as they neared their objective, which was off a small two-lane road in Atlanta, the mother Waldroup began to exercise more caution, as she sensed the worry in the fellow drivers on the road, perhaps indicated by the glaring white knuckles of tense grasps on the steering wheel that beamed through the windshield of every passing car.

The Caravan came to the top of a hill and began to descend. Suddenly Mother Waldroup saw it, a patch of black ice right in front of her, just when the hill became steepest. She veered precipitously, causing the Psalty cassette to skip, throwing the whole car into a panic. The car wheels clenched with lack of friction and the once mighty Caravan began gently sliding down the hill without regard to Mother Waldroup’s turning of the wheel. The littlest one began to cry, no doubt because of the lack of Psalty, and young Jonathan Waldroup gasped in realization. As the car turned slowly to the point that he was facing up the hill from whence they came, he knew his life was about to end. He expected the car to burst into flames any second, as the gas tank spontaneously ruptured and then ignited.

(Excerpted from The Chronicles Waldroup, Book XLVII, Chapter IV)

Fortunately, I was fated for at least seventeen more years of life. Through all the crying and the shouting, the car slowly came to rest without a scratch. All the other drivers had paused to watch. But such near-death experiences cannot help but have an impact. And so for many years, my young fears of gas tank ignitions led me to believe that nearly all car wrecks led to instant, apocalyptic explosions, from which car occupants seldom walked alive. I have yet to be in a car wreck (knock on wood) of any significance, so I am not yet convinced that I was wrong. But I did recently have an interesting experience with my car that troubles me to this very moment.

(To be continued…)