The Recovering Materialist

The Divine Office - Night Prayer

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Fri, 02 Oct 2020 19:38:00 +0000

This is the next installment in a series of posts on how to get started with the Liturgy of the Hours, also known as the Divine Office. These posts will be of most interest to Catholics, but may contain useful information for Christians of other denominations.

Hopefully, you've been doing the daily readings from the Office of Readings. If so, you've not only become more familiar with the Proper of Seasons. For the next step, I'm going to suggest adding Night Prayer to your daily routine, but first I want to talk about feast days. Feast days are days we Catholics set aside to celebrate the lives of saints and important events in Christianity. I'm sure you celebrate Christmas and Easter, but there are plenty of other feast days. I think I should clarify something about saints for Christians of other denominations. Saints are simply people who we know have gone to heaven, and the way we know is that the Catholic Church has documented at least of two instances of miracles that have occurred as a result of asking the saint in question to pray for us.

These feast days have three categories:

Solemnities: This is the highest category of feast days, and take precedence over any of the others. By the way, Sunday counts as a solemnity. One unique thing about solemnities is that they actually start the evening of the previous day. This will come into play shortly. This is the only category of feast day that will alter how you do Night Prayer.
Feasts: This is the next category and has precedence over the next.
Memorials: This is the last category, and some of them are optional. The ones that aren't optional have the word "Memorial" listed in the Proper of Saints; the optional ones don't.

Most of these days are listed in the Proper of Saints, but some of them will be in the Proper of Seasons, so you have to look in both places. You're already looking in the Proper of Seasons every day if you're doing the daily readings, so you would just have to also check the Proper of Saints as well.

You can look through the section for Night Prayer in the Ordinary if you have the four-volume Liturgy of the Hours set (there's no section for it in the one-volume Christian Prayer), but I will outline the basic structure here:

Introduction: This is pretty much the same every night. The only thing is you don't say the "Alleluia" after the "Glory to the Father..." during Lent.
Hymn: There are several hymns to choose from. You can just pick your favorite or whichever one you feel like using that day.
One (or sometimes two) psalm(s) with antiphon. An antiphon is just a sentence. Say the antiphon, then read the psalm, say the Gloria, and finally, say the antiphon again. If there are two psalms given, do the same for both.
Reading
Responsory: The important thing about this is the the Gloria is not said in its entirety. You only say "Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit".
Gospel Canticle: The word canticle literally means song, but most of the ones I've seen are really more like speeches. Anyway, the important thing is that for Gospel Canticles, you should stand up before saying the corresponding antiphon and make the Sign of the Cross when beginning the canticle.
Prayer: say the Our Father before this, but do not say Amen, then say the Prayer from the breviary and do say Amen. After that, the ending is: "May the All-powerful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death. Amen.". Make the Sign of the Cross when you say the ending.
Marian Antiphon: There is a tradition of which one of these to day based on the season, but you can just pick one.

There's one more thing before you get started. There's no entry for Saturday in the Night Prayer section. This is because Sunday is a solemnity, so it actually starts Saturday evening. So Sunday has two evening prayers, Evening Prayer I, which happens Saturday evening, and Evening Prayer II, which happens Sunday evening. The night prayers for Saturday and Sunday are labeled "After Evening Prayer I on Sundays" and "After Evening Prayer II on Sundays". Solemnities have the same schedule, so you would use the section "After Evening Prayer I on Sundays" the night before the solemnity, and the section "After Evening Prayer II on Sundays" the night of the solemnity, even if the solemnity occurs on a Saturday. This would be a good time to mention that the instructions say that the Sunday Night Prayer can be used on other days, so if you want you can just do that every night until you get used to the structure.

Speaking of night, what time should you do Night Prayer? Laypeople aren't under any obligation to say any of the Divine Office at particular times. There is a traditional time of 9 pm, so you could do that, or you could pray Night Prayer before bedtime.

So let's get started. If you have the four-volume breviary, Night Prayer will be included in the Ordinary so you should look through that first. Also, the four-volume breviary includes four cards with commonly used parts. One of them will be for Night Prayer, and will save you flipping some pages, as the hymns are in the beginning of the Night Prayer section. Once you are done, you can place the ribbon where you are in the book and it will be ready for the next night, unless it's Friday, in which case you would put it at the beginning of Sunday Evening Prayer I.

Stay tuned for my next post, which will cover Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. That may seem like a lot to cover, but they have almost identical structures.

The Divine Office - Structure and Getting Started

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Sun, 23 Aug 2020 21:19:00 +0000

My last post was about the Divine Office (also known as Liturgy of the Hours), what it is, and why you should, as a Catholic, pray it. But you may need more details about how to get started. This post is dedicated to the Ordinary Form Divine Office. If you go to Traditional Latin Mass and therefore want to pray the Extraordinary Form, that's another post, which I don't feel I know that form enough to write at this moment.

Before I do that, I need to tell you about the daily structure of the Ordinary Form Divine Office, with the approximate time it will take you to complete each section, because it has a bearing on your first step. This is the full list of daily prayer sessions.

Office of Readings (10-15 minutes)
Morning Prayer (around 10 minutes)
Daytime Prayer (around 5 minutes each)

Midmorning Prayer
Midday Prayer
Midafternoon Prayer

Evening Prayer (around 10 minutes)
Night Prayer (around 5 minutes)

For laymen, all of the above is optional, so how much of it you want to do is your decision, but, like most things, you'll get more out of it if you put more into it.

One option is buying a physical book (also called a breviary) or set of books. There are two basic options for this. You can buy the four-volume set of Liturgy of the Hours books, and that will give you everything you need to pray all of the Ordinary Form Divine Office. There is also a one-volume Christian Prayer, which will give you the complete schedule for Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Night Prayer. If you don't plan to do Daytime Prayer or the Office of Readings, this will be the most economic option. I bought my four-volume Liturgy of the Hours set on Amazon for $130US. I also have the Christian Prayer book that I use when traveling, that I got for $35US on Amazon. Depending on where you buy it, a little booklet called the St. Joseph Guide may be included. This booklet is basically a calendar for a year that tells you what the feast days are, and which pages of the breviary to use to start each office. It's very handy, especially when starting out, so if your breviary doesn't come with one, you may want to purchase one from Amazon for about $1.50US.

If you want to pray the Extraordinary Form of the Divine Office, the 3-volume Roman Breviary set retails for $400US on Amazon and includes everything you will need, plus a little instruction book.

If you don't have the money for a breviary, go ahead with one of the free applications or websites, but there are more resources included with the hard copy books that will help you understand the structure of the Divine Office. If you decide to go with an app or website, you can just do what it says, but you may want to keep reading anyway to become familiar with the structure of the office and understand where what you are praying comes from.

A good first step would be just to open your breviary and look around, starting with the table of contents. You should see 6 major sections:

Proper of Seasons: this contains parts of the office that vary according to the time of year.
Ordinary: this contains parts of each office that are the same every day, along with some brief instructions. Selections from the Ordinary may be duplicated on cards that come with your breviary. If you have them, they can save you some flipping through pages.
Psalter: This contains the variable parts of each office.
Night Prayer: Because it's the same every week (with an exception I'll cover later) and relatively short, the entirety of Night Prayer is given here and you don't have to flip between sections.
Proper of Saints: this contains parts of the office that vary according to feast days.
Common of Saints: this contains parts of the office for feast days that are shared between the feast days of different saints.

You'll also notice that your book has several colored ribbons. Those are very handy for keeping your place when you flip between sections. For now, put one ribbon in each of the sections above except for the Common of Saints. Because which part of the Common of Saints you will use tends to jump back and forth, it's better to use a bookmark or prayer card for that section instead.

You probably noticed when paging through your breviary that there is both red and black type. The red text is indications and general instructions. The general rule for praying the Divine Office is "Do the red, say the black." If you have the Christian Prayer book, there will be more detailed instructions in the front. If you have the four-volume Liturgy of the Hours, the detailed instructions will be in the front of Volume I.

Entire books have been written on how to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, so I won't be able to cover it in one blog post, so I'll just suggest one thing you can do right now if you have the four-volume breviary. What you will do is once a day, read that day's readings from the Office of Readings. You will get a Bible passage and a sermon per day. Some of the sermons (we call them homilies) are over a thousand years old. If you're reading this, and you're not Catholic, the sermons will give you an idea of what we Catholics have always believed. If you have the one-volume Christian Prayer book, it won't have the full Office of Readings, so stay tuned for the next post in which we'll get started on Night Prayer, or you can use one of the apps. The readings will be in the Proper of Seasons.

The first thing you'll need to do is figure out which of the four books you should use.

Volume I is for Advent and Christmas season. Advent starts on the fourth Sunday before Christmas. You will use this book until the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which is the Sunday after January 6. You'll need to pay attention to the days because there you will switch sections in the Proper of Seasons on December 17 and Epiphany (generally January 6, but in the US it will be the Sunday between January 2 and January 8; if you are Catholic, check with your parish and do the Epiphany reading the same day they do Epiphany Mass, otherwise just use January 6 for Epiphany).
Volume II is for Lent and Easter season. You will use this book from Ash Wednesday until Pentecost. There will be section switches on Palm Sunday and the Ascension.
Volumes III and IV are for the rest of the year, which we call Ordinary Time. You can go straight through until you hit the first Sunday of Advent or Ash Wednesday, when you'll need to switch to either Volume I or Volume II. When you get to the end of the Proper of Seasons in Volume III, it will tell you to switch to Volume IV. Ordinary Time is organized by weeks. How do you know what week it is? If you're a Catholic, save the handout from Sunday Mass; it should be on the first page, or you can go to your parish website, or just call and ask. In any case, you can go to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website (http://www.usccb.org/) and look for the Daily Reading section. It will tell you what week you're in there. If it's a feast day, it will give you that instead, so you may need to click through on the "Read More" link and go back or forward a day or two.

Now that you have the right book in hand, turn to the Proper of Seasons and find the page for the current day. Next, find the Office of Readings section. The first thing there should be the first reading. Read that, skip the responsory afterward for now, then read the second reading. Place one of your ribbons at the Office of Readings for the next day, then come back tomorrow and repeat.

This, of course, isn't the entirety of the Office of Readings, and there will be a couple of other wrinkles later, but it's a good place to start. Stay tuned for my next post, which will cover Night Prayer.

The Divine Office

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 01:41:00 +0000

Disclaimer: this post will be of most interest to Catholics. It describes one of our methods of daily prayer. That said, we don't claim a monopoly on it and there's nothing stopping you from also using this method if you are a Christian who isn't Catholic. In fact, the Anglicans (Episcopalians in America) even have their own version of it. I am a layman, so if you happen to be a Catholic priest or religious reading this, please let me know in the comments if I've left anything out or got something wrong.

In this blog post, I will be talking about the Divine Office, also known as the Liturgy of the Hours. A probably oversimplified description of it is that it's the official prayer book of the Catholic Church. I will describe it in more detail, discuss why you should use it, and tell you how to decide which form to use, and how to get started.

Let's start with more details about the Divine Office. The Divine Office gives you prayers for various times throughout the day. It includes prayers, Bible passages, and writings of the Church Fathers (for non-Catholics, these are prominent early Christians), but is centered around the Psalms. There are two forms in the Catholic version; one will include most of the Psalms every four weeks, the other will include all of the Psalms once a week.

If you're Catholic, you may be thinking "Why do I need this? I already pray the Rosary every day." My short and probably oversimplified answer is that they are two different types of prayer. The Rosary is a personal devotion, while the Divine Office is what I'll call collective prayer. The real term for it is liturgical prayer, but it really boils down to the same thing: you're not just praying by yourself, you are praying with the entire Church. People around the world are saying the same prayers and celebrating the memory of the same saints.

Still with me? Great! Now let's talk about which form to use. There are two if you're Catholic: the Liturgy of the Hours (also knows as Ordinary Form), which is prayed in the vernacular (I have the English version), and the Roman Breviary (also known as Extraordinary Form), which is prayed in Latin. If you're religious, you don't need me to tell you about the Divine Office, but for the benefit of the rest of my readers, some (maybe all, I'm a layman so I don't know) of the religious orders have their own versions. The Liturgy of the Hours is the form that most Catholics should use, but if you go to Traditional Latin Mass, you may want to consider using the Roman Breviary.

If you want to try it, you may want to start with one of the apps that are available in Google Play or the Apple Store that will lay out everything for the day for you. I don't have any specific recommendations for the Liturgy of the Hours, but I can without reservation recommend divinumofficium.com for the Extraordinary Form.

If you prefer working with a physical book, it will be more work because you have to navigate through the book yourself, and the books can be expensive. I have the four-volume Liturgy of the Hours set, which cost $130 US, and the Roman Breviary, which cost $400 US. The Roman Breviary comes with a little instruction booklet, and a set of more detailed instructions at the beginning. The Liturgy of the Hours books also has a set of instructions at the beginning of the first volume, but if you want to use that, I would recommend also picking up The Divine Office for Dodos, which is the book I used when I got started with it last year. You can also ask questions at https://www.reddit.com/r/divineoffice/, and there are both priests and experienced laity who post there and can help you.

That's my introduction. I hope you'll try it, and continue to pray the Rosary. I'll post again with more details about the Liturgy of the Hours.

The Dominicans

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 19:28:00 +0000

I came back to the Catholic Church last year after spending most of my adult life as an atheist. On returning, I found that the Church has many treasures that I never knew about growing up, the most noteworthy for me being the Liturgy of the Hours, Traditional Latin Mass, and a small but vibrant Eastern Catholic tradition including the Divine Liturgy and Saturday evening Vespers. The Dominicans are another group I didn't know about growing up, and I would like to talk about them today. I do want to talk about the Liturgy of the Hours, the Traditional Latin Mass, and the Eastern Catholics, but I will cover them in future posts.

I found the Dominicans when I was learning the Liturgy of the Hours, which is the official Catholic prayer book. The daily prayers include Psalms, which can be recited or chanted, so I wanted to learn about Gregorian Chant. I looked for a video about it. The guy in the video mentioned that he was a lay Dominican. I was intrigued by that, and did a google search. It turned out there was a group of Lay Dominicans that met monthly a few miles down the street from me. I put in an inquiry through there website, and the formation director responded and invited me to a retreat they were having. I'm currently in the process of inquiring with them. If everything goes well in the next year, I will be joining the order as a layperson.

So who are the Dominicans and what do they do? The Dominicans are a religious order. All of the religious orders have a heavy focus on prayer and religious community life, but the Dominicans also specialize in study and sharing what we've learned with others. Famous Dominicans include St. Thomas Aquinas and Fra Angelico.

I'm Back!

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Sat, 30 May 2020 23:51:00 +0000

Hello everyone!

It's been a while since my last post. While I was gone I converted (reverted actually) to Catholicism. Now I will be dedicating this blog to explaining basic Catholic concepts and explaining why they are relevant in today's world. Stay tuned.

Oprah, Designer Fashion and Groupthink

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 14:03:00 +0000

I was in the local laundromat a few days ago, and Oprah's talk show happened to be on television there. They were doing a segment where they dress identical twins in the same outfit, one from a top-name designer, the other off-the-rack from wherever, and the audience is supposed to guess which one was designer.

The models were wearing the "little black dress" under a fake fur stole (I guess that's what it's called, it looked like a vest). My eyes were drawn instantly to the model on the right, who looked shapely and confident, as opposed to the other model, whose dress looked, for lack of a better term, flat. Remembering that they were identical twins, it was obvious that I was missing something. I noticed that the shading on the "shapely" model's dress happened to have lighter or darker areas apparently placed for strategic highlights, where the other dress was the same shade throughout. So, you'd think we have a clear winner, right?

Wrong. Oprah then asked the audience to vote by applause for which model was wearing the designer outfit. There was roughly the same amount of applause for each model. The conclusion was that there was no difference, that off-the-rack is just as good as custom design.

At this point, it's all I can do not to start yelling in the laundromat: "You people are nuts! I'm just a guy and I can tell the difference! Look at them! The curves! The shading! Oh, never mind..."

So we have an example of groupthink. It wasn't just Oprah. This was the entire audience deciding that there wasn't a difference, even though the difference was readily apparent. At least that's the charitable interpretation. The worst part is, it's quite possible that all of those people can vote.

I just had to get that off my chest. Thanks for reading.

Whatever Floats Your Boat

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 00:51:00 +0000

Item: a recent article on yourtango.com described things that women wear that annoy men. Apparently single men don't like women who wear outfits that show excessive cleavage, because they're "slutty." Well, I beg to differ. Anyone who has been to a bar more than once knows that what you see isn't necessarily what you get.

Item: I was having lunch in a local sports bar and overheard a conversation between two of the waitresses. They were talking about what types of men they like, and the question arose: "What about chubby?" That this question would even be asked indicates that there's no obvious consensus. That brings me to the point of this article.

We all have our own preferences. Hopefully, we honor those preferences, as opposed to going after what we think we should have. When we deny our preferences in favor of the accepted norms, bad things happen. First, we approach potential partners who don't fit our preferences, but do fit the norms. When this happens, we lose, especially if the potential partners are also interested. Second, because we deny our own preferences, we implicitly deny that others have their own preferences, so we pass up potential partners who would be interested because we assume they wouldn't be, and we lose again.

So what's the answer? Take out your laundry list of qualities you're looking for in a partner, and examine each one to see if it reflects what you really want, or what you think you're supposed to have.

Book Review: The Hundred-Year Lie

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:24:00 +0000

I looked through The Hundred-Year Lie: How to Protect Yourself from the Chemicals That Are Destroying Your Health by Randall Fitzgerald a few times in the local Borders, but was too scared to buy a copy until a couple of months ago. Now, I'm too scared to finish reading it. This book details how during the last hundred years we've industrialized agriculture and made health care more "scientific," but in the process have filled our landscape and bodies with chemicals, some of which are known to be harmful, and others with unknown long-term effects. What's worse, the effects we do know about are based on the chemicals tested singly, so we don't know about how they may act in combination.

As a recovering materialist, I have a different response to the book than most people probably would. I'm not joining an environmental crusade or pushing alternative medicine. I just have this one point: if we're all just bags of chemicals, as the medical industry seems to think, shouldn't we be a lot sicker than we are given the amount of toxic substances we're exposed to? That we are healthy at all points to something missing in our model. See my posts at my other blog for more details.

Thoughts on My Upcoming Tattoo

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 01:06:00 +0000

I have an appointment Saturday with a local tattoo parlor to get the astrological symbol for Vesta permanently engraved on my left shoulder. Vesta is an asteroid that symbolizes devotion to a cause or work. The cause, in my case, is bringing the benefits of spirituality to those for whom organized religion and a literal interpretation of their holy book for whatever reason just doesn't work. I have joined the unnumbered others who are also doing this work. I say unnumbered because they don't look any differently from you or me. You may not notice anything different if you happen to meet one of us, but we're in every city, and we're here to help.

The symbol is a stylized temple flame. The flame burns on an altar on which I will leave the sacrifices of my perceived limitations and my judgements of others. By those sacrifices I hope to clear more space within myself for divine magic to help myself and those around me.

This act represents a major step in my life and I'm really looking forward to it. Thanks for reading.

Here's a Real Health Care Reform: Try Using the Placebo Effect

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:07:00 +0000

At the time of this writing, our friends in Washington are arguing over a new health care plan that will either fix everything or ruin everything, according to which side you want to believe. My opinion is that things will remain basically the same whether the plan passes or not from the standpoint of the people receiving health care. Yes, more people will be included, and most of the people who were already included will pay a bit more, and some will pay a lot more. But the whole purpose of this is health, which includes life expectancy and quality of life. There's room for improvement with the former and we can do a lot better with the latter. I have my own plan to achieve this, and I can guarantee you that it won't cost a penny more than we already pay, and will most likely cost us a lot less.

Before I tell you about my plan, I would like to talk a bit about how we got into this mess. I mentioned in a prior post that health insurance actually makes health care more expensive in the long run because it hides the cost from the consumer. Nationalized health care is even worse because it hides the cost from everyone. I may have also mentioned that we give monopolies to corporations who develop new drugs, and put into a place a testing system that costs billions of dollars and still doesn't keep out all of the harmful drugs, but does give the pharmaceutical companies an excuse to earn windfall profits while their patents last. Also, we've replaced natural substances in our diet like animal fat and cane sugar with processed substances like corn syrup and canola oil, in the former case to lower costs, in the latter for health reasons. These things are all true, but none of them are the root cause of the problem.

Here's the root cause: our medical model implies that the human body is a machine. We've taken the position that only pharmaceutical drugs and medical procedures can fix our problems. Yes, diet and exercise are said to be helpful, but that only supports my point, which is this: all of these things reduce medical problems (and their prevention) to issues of chemistry and mechanics, and completely leave out (by design) the role of the mind and emotions. The worst part is that we all know about something that proves that our model is incomplete at best.

If you haven't guessed by now, I'm talking about the Placebo Effect. The effect is so well known that no study of new pharmaceutical drugs is considered to be valid unless it is double-blind. Not only is the patient not allowed to know if he's really getting the new wonder drug instead of a sugar pill, the person giving the pill isn't allowed to know either!

So my idea is this: instead of treating the placebo effect as something to be eliminated through controls, why not find out how it works and how to use it to our advantage? If sugar pills will work in some cases and we can find out why they work, then we have a solution that works for less money and with fewer side effects. I'm sure I'm not the first person to have this idea, but maybe if enough of us mention it they'll actually try it.

The New Camelot? I Sure Hope Not!

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:07:00 +0000

I've seen a few references this year about the Obama Administration being the new "Camelot," referring of course to the JFK Administration which had that nickname. When I hear that, I wonder to myself if the person using the expression has actually read the King Arthur story. Those of you who have read the story will know where I'm going with this; for those who haven't, it's not pretty. The story ends with a dead King Arthur and a kingdom collapsed in ruins. The story is really about the end of the Golden Age.

At the time of this writing, unemployment is approaching double digits, and the deficit is above a trillion. The national debt is in the trillions. Sooner or later, if deficit spending at the current rate continues, and there's no indication that the budget can be balanced any time soon, the interest on the national debt will exceed the tax revenue that can be collected. At that point there will be two options: default on the debt or print money to pay the interest. Either option would be disastrous. So maybe there's something to this Camelot analogy after all.

On Tobacco and Health Care

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:13:00 +0000

I briefly watched our President speak about the new tobacco law. I was surprised to learn that peer pressure wasn't the driving force behind teen smoking, as it was when I was a teenager. No, the driving force is advertising, combined with candy-flavored cigarettes that make smoking more accessible. I also learned that, unlike the traditional warning printed on cigarette boxes, which no one pays any attention to, the new graphic details of the effects of smoking that will be prominently pictured on the sides of the new cigarette packaging will be much more effective in scaring would-be smokers.

All sarcasm aside, I really wanted to talk about the new government health plan instead. First, it's a good indicator of how bad things are that people with health insurance are filing bankruptcy due to medical bills. I'll talk about an implication of that later. An even better indicator of how bad things are is that the very idea that the people who brought you Medicare can do a better job of providing health insurance than private industry is spoken in public with a straight face. What's even worse is that those people are most likely correct.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. One thing I expect to happen is that the government health plan will come out at a much lower price point than the private plans, eventually choking them out. One thing I don't expect to see happen is a re-evaluation of the process and the underlying model of the body. But you never know. We could throw out the model of body as machine and replace it with the model of body as garden. We could question whether the patent-protected new drugs with horrific side effects are really worth the money we're spending on them. Or it may be more effective to daydream about winning the lottery and retiring in Hawaii.

Bring Back the Double Edge

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:10:00 +0000

Continuing on the theme that sometimes the old ways really are best, today I want to talk about shaving, and specifically the double-edged razor. I started using a double-edged razor back in college in the late eighties on the recommendation of a roommate, who said I'd have fewer razor bumps. It was also cheaper, which was a big plus for a student. After college, I added a brush and soap to the process, also cheaper, but more time-consuming. After losing the razor holder in a move in the nineties, I went back to shaving cream and twin-blade razors.

Recently, after buying a new razor holder on Amazon, I decided to give the double edge another try. I'm here to tell you that it's even better than I remembered. The blades are cheaper, and the shave is much more comfortable, and my razor bumps have gone away. By the way, I don't know how long it takes stainless steel to rust, but plastic is estimated to take a thousand years to break down in landfills (not sure how they know that, however).

There are some things you need to know if you want to try it. First, the blades are extremely sharp and you'll have to put them in the holder by hand. Be careful, as you'll probably see the blood before you feel that you've been cut. Once in the holder, you don't have to worry about getting cut as much, but you still need to be careful. Next, a brush and soap isn't essential, but if you have the time for it, your patience will be rewarded. The most important thing is to use a light touch. Since there's only one blade, you won't cut all the way down to skin level on the first pass, so don't try. As long as you're patient, you can go over the same area two or three times without any irritation.

A good holder will cost you about twenty dollars; mine included ten blades. You can get the blades at Kroger or Meijer for under three dollars for a ten-pack. You can get the brush and soap with a little bowl for about ten dollars. At five to ten dollars for a five-pack of multi-blade razors, you'll break even in under six months. But the improved shaving experience will be more than worth it.

Bring Back Craftsmanship

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:35:00 +0000

The biggest current worry right now in my area is whether GM and Chrysler can survive the current recession. As we all know, it's not just the auto industry that's affected, and some are wondering if we aren't living through the second Great Depression. No one really knows for sure what's going to happen. We could get deflation, or rising national debt could send us into hyperinflation if not handled properly. Some of us even have the idea that the whole thing was built like a house of cards to begin with.

That's what I want to talk about today. Let's start with the auto industry. Obviously, the industry relies on people buying new cars. The problem is, people don't necessarily need new cars; they need reliable transportation, which can also be provided by a well-maintained used car. So steps are taken to encourage people to buy new cars they don't really need. Customers having extra money and available credit are just two of the cards in the foundation of the house of cards.

Now let's talk about the stock market. In theory, stock prices are based on things like P/E ratios, but in practice the biggest influence on prices is the ratio of people who want to buy to people who want to sell. The long-term upward trend that lasted up until about a year ago was therefore largely driven by incoming investments being larger that withdrawals, which turned out to be the load-bearing card of the lower layer.

Now let's move on to quality. A trip to the local supermarket, electronics store or auto dealer will put you in front of a variety of products, all of which are attractive-looking and have a base level of quality. The food is tasty and usually won't make you sick (at least not right away); the electronics are fast and flashy; the cars as well.

Closer examination reveals a different picture. Many of the food products have ingredients like MSG and corn syrup, which are thought by some to be harmful, and are in any case not as tasty as the ingredients they substitute for: in the case of MSG, more flavorful base ingredients, herbs and spices; in the case of corn syrup, cane sugar. The electronics and appliances generally work well, but they are often sold along with an extended warranty, almost as if the manufacturer expects them to break just after the normal warranty expires (this actually happened to me with a dryer). The situation with cars is similar, though a lot better than it used to be.

Now compare this to life before the Industrial Revolution. Food was all organically grown, and corn syrup, MSG and canola oil nonexistent. Tomatoes were eaten fresh only when they were harvested; the leftovers were canned. Metal tools were handcrafted. Houses were built with timber frames instead of two-by-fours with just enough wood to prevent the house from falling over.

I'm not suggesting, however, that we undo the Industrial Revolution and go back to hand-woven clothes and horse-drawn carriages. Instead, I put this question to you: how can we combine modern prosperity and medieval craftsmanship?

I Understand You're Tired, but a Tax Revolt's not the Right Answer

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:11:00 +0000

Don Cooper has a good post on LewRockwell.com expressing general disgust with government and recommending a tax revolt. I wholeheartedly agree with his sentiments, but a tax revolt is the wrong answer. Not because it wouldn't work, but because it addresses the problem at the wrong level. While it's true that government couldn't exist without our financial support, our ideological support is much more important. What's worse, we can see our money going to taxes (or at least some of it), but most of us have no idea that our beliefs and values are the foundation of government.

The primary question of politics is this: should decisions be made by individuals for themselves, or by a smaller group of individuals for everyone? Most people claim to believe the former, but when push comes to shove, invariably favor the latter. This is the core of the problem. Government exists and is powerful because we want it to exist and be powerful. Until we change our minds on this, tax revolt, "throw the bums out", etc., won't work.

There's also quite a bit of denial surrounding this issue. For example, some of us believe that everything would be O.K. if only we put everything back the way it was in the 50's. Others believe that everything would be all right if only we got the right people into office. Both groups of people really believe in government; they just disagree with the current implementation.

Really fixing things requires as a prerequisite withdrawing our beliefs and not just our tax dollars. If this is done, a tax revolt is irrelevant except that it may speed up things. If it is not done, a tax revolt is irrelevant at best.

Re: I'm not Joining the Strike

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:25:00 +0000

Brian Hurt recently made a post on Enfranchised Mind about the proposed refusal of internet authors to support candidates for office who aren't in favor of public campaign financing. He's against the "strike" for the obvious reason that it won't work, and seems to have a good understanding of the reason why: it's rather foolish to look for a solution to a problem from the people who created it in the first place.

The way I look at it, the first question that should be asked is: How prevalent is corruption in government? If it's just a small percentage of elected officials, the answer is to get rid of them. No finance reform necessary. If the problem is more pervasive, and a belief that it is is implied by the belief that campaign finance reform is needed, it won't work for the reason Mr. Hurt mentions: the solution will be implemented by people who are part of the problem. Any laws they pass will contain loopholes.

Mr. Hurt has a good answer to this dilemma. Everyone who blogs has a free press because they have a press. Decentralization of the media is absolutely a good thing.

However, there is a deeper problem. It's not just politicians who are corrupt. The system as it stands involves people voting themselves into other people's pockets. Anything government does beside set ground rules that apply equally to everyone, or provide infrastructure, inherently favors one group of people at the expense of others. This is corrupting by nature, and corrupts everyone involved. In the case of welfare-type provisions, the corruption is even worse because the people involved believe they're doing the right thing.

In the end, there's only one way to get money out of politics, and that's to get politics out of money.

Gullible or Cynical?

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 01:08:00 +0000

The title of this post links to an article by Paul Hein on lewrockwell.com about the current economic situation and what's being done about it. Mr. Hein has an idea about the situation which has also occurred to me, although in a different context:

Moreover, the Keynesian idea of stimulating the economy via government spending is not new. It’s been tried before; it never works. Doesn’t the current generation of whiz kids know this? Do they never talk to anyone save themselves?

An answer presents itself to me, and I should probably keep mum about it, but I won’t. Here goes: the powers that be WANT the economy to fail. Why? That’s a good question, but I can only speculate about the answer. What is clear, however, is that economic collapse seems guaranteed if the stimulus package is implemented, and those advocating it must surely know it.

I suspected the same type of thing at the inception of the Iraq war. I noticed that our current enemies were people we had supported in the past, and noticed a trend. I concluded that if our leaders consistently pursued policies that led to results that were the opposite of their stated goals, then they must have a different set of real goals.

That idea may appeal to the "tinfoil hat" crowd, but after thinking about it, I realized that the failed policies could be explained without conspiracy theory. Ideology alone was sufficient to explain everything. People can be controlled far more effectively with ideology that anything else, because they think that whatever they do as a result is their own idea. Also, because most people would rather be right than solve their problems, ideology insulates people from the effects of opposing evidence. If you don't believe this, try pointing out to a fundamentalist Christian that there are two conflicting Noah's Ark stories in the Bible. Or try mentioning to a climate-change believer that Greenland was warm enough to support farming in the Middle Ages.

Of course, all of this isn't to say that there isn't a conspiracy. There may be, but even if there is, it's really ideology that's running the show.

Paved with Good Intentions

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:29:00 +0000

It has been a very common belief among liberals that if only we could get the right people into office, everything would get better. Now that Obama, who by consensus is "the right person," is in the White House, we'll get to find out if that belief is true. If the new equal pay law is any indicator, the answer is "No."

On the surface, the law seems like a good idea. Why should men get paid more than women for doing the same job? It is a good intention, but there are a couple of problems with it. The first law of economics is that people respond to incentives. So let's look at some incentives.

At a typical company, some of the workers are very dedicated. They care about their job, learn as much as they can about the business, and go the extra mile to make sure the job gets done right. Other workers, on the other hand, just want to get paid and do just enough and just well enough not to get fired. In a perfect situation, the dedicated worker gets paid more than the slacker, and gender has nothing to do with it. In real life, sometimes there are discrepancies, and if this new law gets strictly enforced, some companies who happen to have skewed pay distributions for whatever reason will face fines and/or lawsuits. Some other companies will see this happen and decide that it's easier and safer to just pay everyone the same for the same job, with maybe some allowance for length of time worked and education. So the dedicated worker will get the same pay as the slacker and both will know it. The only way for the dedicated worker to be rewarded is to seek a job at another company with a higher pay scale. So now we have different companies with different pay scales, and there's bound to be some uneven distributions here too. The next step, if government really wants to pursue the matter, is to set pay rates by profession. Now some bureaucrat in Washington is deciding what you get paid, and ability and dedication have nothing to do with it. Is that what you want? And what happens to productivity among the dedicated workers who can't move up to the next pay scale at another company?

Next problem: laws are enacted congressmen with good intentions (let's be generous), but implemented and enforced by a different set of people. The people implementing and enforcing the laws don't necessarily have the same intentions. And, as you have seen from the example above, intentions can't always be implemented because people have the annoying habit of pursuing their own best interest to the extent allowed. It's not a "slippery slope," it's just unintended consequences.

So what's the answer? Well, if women are really paid less than men for the same work, they should be in greater demand from a profit and loss standpoint, and the discrepancy will be corrected by employers who naturally want to get the best employees for the least amount of money. The answer is to ask the question: what is it that stops this from happening?

A Better Economic Stimulus Package

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:55:00 +0000

At the time of this writing, we here in the U.S. face double-digit unemployment and record national debt and budget deficits, with no sign of any of the above ending any time soon. An economic package that will ease the near-term pain is being discussed. Justin Raimondo, the antiwar.com guy, has made an excellent suggestion for a stimulus package that won't increase the deficit. But we're not advocating that here because it's reactionary, and we're in tune with modern economics.

Instead, I say that the economic stimulus package being discussed doesn't go far enough. If we really owe the money to ourselves, and China, Saudi Arabia and Japan will really loan us as much as we need, why stop there? Why not go all the way and give every household in America a million dollars? That would really stimulate the economy. Consumer spending would skyrocket. It's not real money right? Like my friend at work says, it's all abstract anyway, and worst case, we just repudiate the debts and start over with a new currency. It could work, couldn't it?

If you've been following along, you could reasonably conclude that you've been led down the garden path. Let's not talk about the obvious hyperinflation this program would cause. After all, nobody I talk to about this seems to believe that it could happen here. Let's talk about the recipients of the stimulus money. If they do the right thing with the money, namely pay off their debts and invest the rest, they will be in position for a modest income for life. They won't work any more, and, talk all you want about jobs being moved offshore, there is still plenty of work here that needs to be done. On the other hand, they could do what most people who win the lottery do: spend all of the money and end up broke again. In this case, the economic stimulus will be temporary at best, and the money will end up in the hands of the wealth as usual.

Now you may think that it's harmless to do these things as long as they're not done to such an extreme level. Most people would agree with you. But at what point does it become extreme enough to be harmful? Is a trillion-dollar deficit really moderate enough to be harmless?

Tilton's Law: Not Just for Computers

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:23:00 +0000

The post linked above is an excellent programming war story which may not mean much to you unless you work with computers for a living, the story has some lessons that can be applied with profit to life in general.

First: whenever you spend hours or days wrestling with a difficult problem, the answer is invariably some stupid little thing that you either forgot or didn't know about, so you may as well check for that first and save some time.

Second: as Mr. Tilton says in his post, "You can run, but you cannot hide." This is especially true when it comes to marriage, as most of the people I know who are divorced broke up as a result of issues that were readily apparent before they got married.

Finally, Tilton's law: "Solve the failure first." Failure provides an excellent opportunity for learning. Take it.

You Don't Have the Right to Your Opinion

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:48:00 +0000

If you're like most Americans, you were told many times that "everyone has a right to their opinion." In a legal sense, that's true, although expressing that opinion can sometimes have negative consequences for your career: for example, if you're a meteorologist, expressing skepticism about the human-induced climate change theory is essentially career suicide. But it's not really accurate.

If you research a subject intensively and get information from multiple independent sources, then you do in fact, have a right to your opinion because you've earned it. But what if you haven't done the research? Or what if all your sources draw the same conclusion and you haven't considered any alternative viewpoints? Or if your opinion is just "common sense?" In that case, you do have an opinion, but it's not really your own. Especially if it's just common sense, because that usually means that it's so obvious to you given what you've seen and heard that any opposing viewpoint is simply inconceivable.

So do you have the right to your opinion? Yes, but sometimes "I don't have enough information to know for sure" is the correct answer.

Haskell Names Considered Helpful

noreply@blogger.com (Larry Coleman) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:44:00 +0000

I've been working on a SQL parser and pretty-printer in Haskell to help me in my duties as a DBA. After using Parsec, I will never go back to lex and yacc if I can help it. Like most Haskell newbies, I had a hard time with monads at first. I also struggled with the type system, but now I find that it actually makes things easier, especially refactoring.

There's a very active thread going on at fa.haskell about a blog posting linked to in the header. It's a very good article, especially the bit about data being code. But I have to take exception to this part:

One thing that does annoy me about Haskell- naming. Say you’ve noticed a common pattern, a lot of data structures are similar to the difference list I described above, in that they have an empty state and the ability to append things onto the end. Now, for various reasons, you want to give this pattern a name using on Haskell’s tools for expressing common idioms as general patterns (type classes, in this case). What name do you give it? I’d be inclined to call it something like “Appendable”. But no, Haskell calls this pattern a “Monoid”. Yep, that’s all a monoid is- something with an empty state and the ability to append things to the end. Well, it’s a little more general than that, but not much. Simon Peyton Jones once commented that the biggest mistake Haskell made was to call them “monads” instead of “warm, fluffy things”. Well, Haskell is exacerbating that mistake. Haskell developers, stop letting the category theorists name things. Please. I beg of you.

My feeling on this is that using a name like "Appendable" instead of "Monoid" because Appendable is more intuitive is exactly the wrong thing to do. If you see the name "Appendable" for the first time, you think you know what it is. Unfortunately, in this case, the definition you would assume the name has is incomplete at best. However, you don't know that because the name is intuitive, so you don't look it up. Not yet. But you may have to later when you find out that it doesn't exactly do what you want, or you may never have to, which is worse because you won't find out what else it can do.

This is actually an example of a larger trend in computing: making things intuitive and easy to understand for beginners is given a higher priority than developing in-depth knowledge and making tools that are fast and efficient to use for experts. And that's O.K. for the mass market. If you're just writing CRUD screens in VB, C# or Java, then just knowing enough to get by is fine, but you wouldn't be interested in Haskell anyway.