Y aconteció en aquellos días…

Memorial Day

2009-05-26T01:04:05Z

My recommended Memorial Day reading:

http://www.leesandlin.com/articles/LosingTheWar.htm

Close race?

2008-10-02T14:17:04Z

I never post on here anymore, but I do occasionally read my friends page... at some point, someone said a while back that the presidential race is only close when viewed through the lens of the media, who have staggering financial incentives to portray it as such (advertising dollars).

Looks like this is rather well supported by a group of CS and poli sci students at one of my almae matres, who put up this site forecasting the outcome of the presidential election based not on popular vote, but Bayesian estimators of Electoral College outcomes based on continuously updated state-by-state poll results.

You can select various political climate scenarios, from "Strong Democratic" to "Strong Republican," which artificially slants independent voters +/- 10% for either Obama or McCain.

At present, under the Neutral scenario, the model predicts a 1.00 probability that Obama would win, if the election were held today. Under the Strong Republican scenario, that probability drops to... 0.99.

EDIT: Going back through the archives shows that McCain did get a major post-convention bump, and was the predicted winner the week of 9/15 - 9/19. But the overall forecast history from 7/31 to today show Obama winning handily.

Running well

2007-05-19T18:09:01Z

Ran the Cat Power 5K this morning in 22:53 = 7:23 pace. Pretty happy about that, considering I just started running in January. If I can hold a 7:30 pace for the Steamboat 4mi next month, I'll be even happier. Thinking about running the Indy half marathon next year.

Last Friday I got back in email contact with Ed & Denise Aulie, missionaries in Puebla/Veracruz whom I worked with for a few years in a previous life. I found out that, last week, Ed was approached in Texhuacan by a Nahuatl man (poor, marginalized, illiterate, barely even speaks Spanish, etc.) whose wife had just died in childbirth. The village clinic told them that the mother died of tuberculosis, and that the baby (who was born at 3 lbs) had TB and HIV. So now this illiterate subsistence farmer was asking for help with the baby. So Ed, naturally, says, "We'll take her." I mean, that's what you would say, right?

So Ed's driving home, calls Denise from a payphone to say he'll be home in a couple hours, and oh by the way, I have a HIV+ newborn with me, so start making preparations.

I'm reading Denise's email thinking, Wow, I forgot that people like this exist in the world. I used to live and work with these people, and they did stuff like this all the time. (Their eldest daughter Grace, now in her late-twenties, married and living in Portland, is a Ch'ol (Mayan) girl they adopted under similar circumstances.) On top of their already double- and triple-booked schedule.

They decided to get labs drawn in the city, and if the baby was in fact disease-free, the only "just and right" course would be to give her up for adoption to an appropriate couple, but that if it was HIV+, they would keep her "until the end." Labs were done a week later, and came back negative for both TB and HIV, so they arranged to have the baby adopted by a dear friend of mine, Maria Elena, whom I had worked with in that village for 2 yrs. She's amazing; I had seriously considered asking her to marry me. She's married to a Mexican pastor now, and they've been unable to have children... it's all truly divinely orchestrated. That baby couldn't be in better hands.

These are people that are running to win the race that is set before them, and in so doing have experienced the power and presence of God, in a real and on-going way across the decades of their lives. I'm so proud of them, and so encouraged by them. I hope you are too.

Here are some pictures:

The father, talking to Ed in the village about what to do

Improvised baby carseat

Maria Elena, husband Mario, and their new baby

after signing papers in the city

an exhausted Ed, final morning with baby

New toilet

2007-02-26T12:57:36Z

All three toilets in our house have been slow - we've been getting by with occasional plunging. Sammy (& Nathan?) has discovered the joy of dropping objects in the toilet and flushing them away. Ha ha, what fun; let's do that again. We learned about this from finding toothbrushes, coins, spoons, etc. in the bottom of the toilet bowls - items that don't easily get up over the trap wall. We of course explained to Sammy in very stern terms to Not Do That Anymore, but with, shall we say, questionable success. So, lately, the frequency of plunging has been annoying enough that I bought a couple of drain augers - something I should've done much earlier. Yesterday morning, from the downstairs bathroom, it extracted a Leapfrog educational game cartridge - about the size of a PCMCIA card. Wasn't able to get anything out of the master bathroom, but it did clearly dislodge a clog - the toilet sped up considerably, but there's probably still something in there.

In the boys' bathroom, I couldn't get the snake past the trap - it'd go up, and then coil around and come back down into the bowl. So I decided to swap the toilet out, which I've never done before. I'd scratched up the bowl with one of the augers, and it was old and ugly anyway. Monica recruited Von from church (which I had skipped to stay home and play with the toilets) to come help me, for which I was very thankful. I found out later that Von changed his family's plans that day so he could help me. He is such a nice guy. Mike and Robin also came over with their boys, so we had a little septic celebration going on. When we got the toilet off and flipped it over, there was a big Lego-like block wedged tightly up in the backside of the trap. All that plunging had jammed it in there nicely.

So now we have a new toilet that flushes like a dream. I may have to replace the master as well, so I'm glad I know how to do it now. (Apologies to quirky_layne that we didn't do this before she came to visit.)

Anyway, moral of the story is: if you have slow/stopped drains, unless you know for sure that it's only waste material, auger before you plunge. You may be packing your clog more tightly.

Off to work.

ETA: Just got a call from Joy - turns out that when Sam was over at their house for small group last night, he flushed an undetermined number of their Noah's Ark figures down the toilet. This is a set of old, handmade toys that have been in their family for years. She knows this because, upon plunging, the zebra came back up. My engines are down this AM due to a gas supply pressure problem anyway, so I offered to come over with my newly acquired toilet fixing skills, but she said the plumber was already on their way. She just wanted to know if Sam could tell us how many toys he'd flushed - but he's at daycare, and certainly isn't going to answer a question like that over the phone.

Someone's getting a spanking tonight.

Chronicles of Retching

2007-02-04T01:16:18Z

So, my little family's been sick for most of the last, oh, couple of months. Respiratory illnesses, flu-like symptoms, and... we've been throwing up, shall we say, more than usual. All four of us.

For example, about a month ago when Monica was particularly sick, she took about three different cold symptom medicines and washed it down with a large glass of Crystal Light... and promptly threw it all up. Weird medicinal interactions, we figured.

Day before yesterday, I got up, went downstairs, drank a glass of water from the tap, and had the last of an old bag of raisin bran... and promptly threw up. I remember thinking the cereal tasted kind of moldy.

Then, this morning, on a hunch, I went down to the basement and checked the water softener tank, inside which I found a dead mouse. Floating in the water. That we drink everyday. It had obviously been there for quite some time, given the exquisitely delicate, fibrous mold structures that were radiating up from it, like so much van der Graaf cotton candy. I'm sorry I didn't have the presence of mind to snap a picture for you, but I was too busy saying omigod omigod. And thinking, It's been at least a couple of months since I last added salt or checked that tank.

To all the house guests and dinner guests we've had in the last several weeks, I can only offer my meekest and most heartfelt apologies.

Snow news

2006-12-03T02:29:12Z

Plows still haven't come. Hopefully they'll make it sometime tomorrow.

Spent an hour today walking around the neighborhood, helping to dig out/push stuck cars, etc. One of them belonged to the friend of a friend of a guy who had rented a backhoe (he owns Illinois Cyclery, and was clearing his own parking lots), who I then talked into doing a quick plow of our street, right up to my driveway at the end of the cul-de-sac. That was great. He was in a hurry, so he did a really fast job of it, but with some more shoveling I was able to make it out to Knoxville with the Outback, if not the Passat.

Made a quick run to Krogers to pick up some staples, and soon realized that was a bad idea. Even on Knoxville (the major N-S surface artery), vehicles were stuck all over the place - big jeeps and SUVs - on the side of the road, in intersections, etc. Traffic was horrible. I couldn't believe how many nimrods were obviously out on the road without a compelling reason, when I realized that, hey, I'm one of those nimrods. When I finally got to Krogers, the parking lot (which, after plowing, was functionally less than half its size) was gridlocked, as well as the access road. I queued up for ten minutes and then gave up, managed to bail out and come home.

I hear the Super Wal-Mart's roof collapsed under the snow weight.

I'd post fortress of solitude pictures of the huge mounds of snow around my driveway, but my D80 is in the hospital - Nathan pulled it down off the coffee table and broke the lens mount. Hopefully it won't set me back more than about $150.

In other news, Buber is less inscrutable than his translator makes out. His writing reminds me of Walker Percy's essays.

Ooh my achin' back

2006-12-01T20:09:44Z

Just spent 3 hours shoveling my driveway and front walk, as well as the proverbial little old lady's next door. The snow was up to my knee.

Said little old lady informed me that our street might not even get plowed by day's end TOMORROW. I live on a short cul-de-sac, four streets in from a main artery (Knoxville). A couple hours ago, there was a plow stuck in the snow two streets in.

I mentioned to my neighbor Fox that I was reading Buber, and his eyes lit up. He loves Buber, and he should make a nice conversation partner. I think he likes that I'm his neighbor, here in this world of Bud Light and NASCAR, because I know who people like Gustavo Gutierrez and Martin Buber are (and even occasionally read them).

Brrr

2006-12-01T13:26:33Z

Well, that was stupid.

Attempted to make it to my 5:30A mens group at Perkins this morning, since nobody had said it was canceled and I didn't bother to check myself last night. I opened my garage door onto about 3" of snow on the driveway, and for some reason I thought, "that's OK; I'll be fine once I get out to the main roads." Got down the driveway but couldn't make it out of the cul-de-sac. That's when I realized that the 3" in the lee of my garage door was more like 5-6" on the street, and it was coming down hard. Then I couldn't get back up the driveway. Uh oh.

I hadn't realized how hard it was snowing, because the wind (20mph?) pulverized what was coming down, making it just look like blown snow. Spent the next hour trying to get my car back into the garage, or at least out of the street, frantically digging out the tires and underneath the car with a trowel, and shoveling, and then trying to get back up the driveway, to no avail. Dig, spin tires, back up, repeat. It was snowing hard enough to fill up what I was shoveling. In the intervening minutes. And what a wind; holy cow, it was cold. Eventually had to drag Monica out of bed, and enlist the help of a friendly neighbor (Fox) to help push my car up the driveway, which we were able to do, to my amazement.

So now I'm gonna sit down to a nice hot tea and comfort myself with some obscure German religious philosophy (since I'm apparently not going to work this morning). Picked up Buber's I And Thou on j3npayn3's recommendation.

From the translator's prologue,

The style of Ich und Du is anything but sparse and unpretentious, lean or economical. It represents a late flowering of romanticism and tends to blur all contours in the twilight of suggestive but extremely unclear language. Most of Buber's German readers would be quite incapable of saying what any number of the passages probably mean.

Now does that sound like a good time, or what?

Cleaned a lotta plates in Memphis

2006-11-25T23:39:35Z

I'm in Alice's apartment here in Memphis; the boys are finally napping (as is Alice; she had to work this morning), and as I write this I'm sitting in her dining room, which is furnished with two guitars, a keyboard, a mountain bike, and... no dining room table or chairs. Ah, single apartment life. How the memories come flooding back. :) Although I think I always had some kind of dinette.

Drove down to StL with the boys late Wed night to spend Thanksgiving with my parents. Had a relatively pleasant visit. They're not much for celebration, and are sort of dimly aware that there is a holiday going on around them - I had a bowl of cereal and a peanut butter sandwich for Thanksgiving dinner :/. That evening, though, my mom made some great ma-po tofu, broiled short ribs, and stir-fried cabbage and spinach. Yum. The boys loved it. (Well, not the vegetables.) I'm so glad they like ma-po tofu. We're Taiwanese, dammit!

Like I say, it was a relatively pleasant visit. Had wanted to have some profound, moving, regenerative conversations with my dad about, well, our relationship (largely prompted by our church's Wild at Heart men's retreat last month), but that never happened - owing in part to my dad and I (& the boys) being on radically different sleep schedules, and in part to spending a lot of time with my two sick boys, who were getting over their bronchitis, and Nathan's diarrhea. Traveling with sick kids takes a fair amount of attention, when you're not visiting locations with a robust child-support infrastructure (e.g. Ruby's Bed & Breakfast, to use sjepearson03's moniker). What time I did have with my dad was spent mostly on financials/estate planning, or helping him and my mom with their new wireless network.

At breakfast on Thursday, my dad's lower left incisor broke off as he was eating a nice breakfast of pigs feet (we're Taiwanese, dammit!). I mean, the whole tooth just snapped off at the root. He showed me the tooth afterwards, and we could see how eroded and narrow the tooth had become down near the gumline. My dad is 72, and (growing up on a farm in Taiwan) did not enjoy the best of dental care early in life. He told me that the incisor next to it on the right was already an implant, having broken off sometime last year. The implant is a titanium spike or screw that is driven down into the jaw; a few months are allocated for integration with the surrounding tissue, and then the spike is capped with a prosthetic tooth. An eloquent argument, if you are in need of one, for regular brushing and flossing.

I asked my dad if it hurt, and he replied with a matter-of-fact no. I was sort of reluctant to believe him at first, because a) all subjects of forceful, violent tooth loss that I am aware of consistently express severe pain, and b) my dad is the kind of person who, by long practice, has trained himself to be unimpressed with his own discomfort, particularly physical and intellectual discomfort. It is apparent that matters of comfort factor in much more greatly in my day-to-day choices than in his. There's a nice vignette in there about spiritual formation, and spiritual disciplines. And of course I was struck by the illustration of the decay of the body with age.

Yeah, brush your teeth. And floss. And don't clean between them with sharp, metal implements like push pins or the tips of mechanical pencils (a bad habit I picked up from my dad). I suspect you're eroding the thin enamel at the neck of your tooth, below the crown, when you do this.

After the tooth incident, my dad decided to take a nap, and my mom and I took the boys to a nearby park. Here are some pics of them with my mom:

Thanksgiving 2006 in StL

Friday afternoon we left StL and drove down to Memphis, to visit Alice, who nannied Sam during his first year. People I meet (when I take the boys to a park, or what not) think it's weird that I'm traveling to visit my sister-in-law over Thanksgiving while my wife is in Seattle, but hey - I'm Taiwanese, dammit! Alice greeted us with a nice meal of chicken marsala that she had made, which was very good. The boys liked it and ate quite a bit, even after packing away 16 McNuggets on the drive down.

Alice ended up having to work today :(, so I took the boys to Shelby Farms, a big park/stable/orchard/outdoorsy-fun place just 5 mins from Alice's apartment. We walked the trails (so glad for that awesome double stroller) down to a big playground, where they clambered all over everything. Sam went on the monkeybars kinda-by-himself, and Nathan swang in a regular swing for the first time. Dianne M. (from Champaign, now teaching at the Univ of Memphis) came out to visit with us, and we had a nice chat for a couple of hours.

Well, I was gonna take advantage of the quiet to read Renovation of the Heart, but -yawn- I think I'm just gonna take a little nap myself.

More pics of Sam

2006-11-12T01:18:51Z

Pretty domestic day today. Got the boys up, changed, and fed; read to them, did the dishes and the laundry. M got up in time for me to turn in the rental and pick up my car from the body shop and stop by Krogers. By the time I got back, Nathan was napping, so I took Sam out to Forest Park for a little hike. He loves hiking, and I love that he loves hiking. Today he said to me, 'Wook Daddy, wook at all the weaves! That's cuz it's fall.' I documented his cuteness in the following pictures.

Sam @ Forest Park

Halloween pics

2006-11-01T02:21:17Z

Select shots of the boys' costumes this evening.

Halloween 2006

Tempting Faith

2006-10-29T06:40:23Z

So much for the Tigers.

This week I read David Kuo’s new book, “Tempting Faith.” If you’ve managed to miss the media onslaught over this book, Kuo is a conservative evangelical who was deputy director of GWB’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from 2001-2003. Kuo has a longstanding interest in the politics of compassion/caring for the poor. His pedigree as a compassionate conservative is both unusual and impressive – he writes of growing up Methodist, having a born-again experience in high school; being spurred into Christian political engagement, as a liberal Democrat, by Chuck Colson; working on the Dukakis ’88 presidential campaign and interning with Ted Kennedy, before becoming pro-life after his girlfriend’s abortion. He joined the Natl Right to Life Committee in 1990, then worked for Bill Bennett, wrote speeches for Ralph Reed and Bob Dole, and drafted Charitable Choice legislation for Sen. Ashcroft as the religious/social conservatives were taking over Congress. Bush asked him to become his speechwriter during the 2000 campaign, and then brought him into his administration in the Faith-Based Initiatives Office. If you think he has interesting stories to tell in this book, you are correct.

A lot of noise has been made about Kuo’s description of epithets and derogatory references to evangelicals and the faith-based initiative by Rove, Card and the White House staff at-large (“the nuts,” “ridiculous,” “out of control,” and my personal favorite, “the f*cking faith-based initiative”), but that’s relatively peripheral. Kuo’s thesis is that conservative evangelicals have been coopted by the Republican party (similarly, as an aside, to how the NAACP - once a powerful force for social and political change - has been coopted by the Democratic party) – have become identified with / defined by a particular political agenda, and are so captive to the owners of that agenda as to have lost real influence, or even an appropriate sense of themselves. He calls for a two-year “fast” from conservative religious political activism, as a time to get back to basics with God, to reorient our priorities, and to wean ourselves from the patronage of our Republican overlords.

He describes how enamored he was of Bush, as a Republican who talked freely about social and economic justice and compassion for the poor, promising $8 billion a year in compassion funding - $6 billion in tax credits for charitable donations to encourage giving, and $2 billion in new funding for specific poverty programs, and $500 million annually for the Compassion Capital Fund, to help small, local, faith-based and community organizations. He makes clear that, to this day, he respects and admires GWB the man as a person of sincere faith and unquestionable compassion, but GWB the president did not have the political will to actually implement the initiatives. After the first year and a half of the Bush administration, the heart and soul of compassionate conservatism – the charitable giving tax credit – had been replaced by the estate tax cut, and only $30 million of compassion funding had actually made it into the budget – one-quarter of one percent of the promised funding at the time. He goes on to describe how politically useful it was for Bush to make these promises, and how politically unnecessary to deliver on them. Christians trust Bush because he is an evangelical, he loves Jesus; if he says he’s gonna do something, he’ll do it – and if not, well, he must have had a good reason. So energy and political capital were spent on politically useful issues, ones that would continue to galvanize votes and dollars, wedge issues like gay marriage and strict constructionist judges, rather than caring for the poor. (Because faith-based, compassion-for-the-poor efforts are functionally irrelevant to Republican fund-raising, as Kuo illustrates with a sad anecdote about Dan Quayle’s donor pool on pp. 98-100.) Church leaders like Dobson/Ted Haggard (NAE)/Richard Land (SBC)/Ken Connor (FRC)/etc. are treated to weekly conference calls with the White House, summarizing what Bush would be talking about that week, soliciting their input, and giving them a list of talking points – which they take back to their people. Which is how you end up with a religious right apparently far more concerned with gay marriage than with loving the poor. Now, I can’t say God doesn’t have an opinion on gay marriage, but I know for a fact that he says he’s really freakin’ serious about loving the poor.

The saddest thing in Kuo’s book, and one I’ve not seen any conservative/religious commentators respond to (they've focused on questioning his motives, dismissing his "fast" idea as silly, and making ad hominem attacks - in fact, the conservative blogosphere response to Kuo's book argues eloquently for his thesis), is that the poor, who have no clout or lobby, were supposed to have two advocates during this administration – the church, and this president. And they were let down by both. They were let down by the political process, in which liberals raised a church-and-state hue over once-bipartisan faith-based initiatives which were essentially identical to those touted by Gore during his own 2000 campaign; and in which Republican legislators (he mentions DeLay and Hastert) were interested not in actually getting compassion legislation passed, but in making it as aggressively partisan as possible (e.g. federal funding of expressly evangelistic organizations), and then using Democratic opposition to paint them as "the anti-God party."

I loved this book. I love how fair-minded he is, despite the above criticisms; he is not shrill, and he refuses to demonize anybody (I like Barack Obama's new book for the same reason.) He takes pains to describe Bush, Rove et al. as well-intentioned men who are operating in a certain political reality. I love the story of his interracial heritage, of how Justice O’Connor manhandled him while teaching him how to flyfish; of what it was like being in the White House on the morning of 9/11, the glimpses into GWB and John Ashcroft as people, and especially the narrative of his own journey of faith, as he moved in and out of wedding his faith to politics. And, most especially, the call to return to the heart of God, and the spirit of Christ:

Instead of sending letters to Congress and engaging in political arguments with friends and listening to political talk radio and canvassing door to door for candidates and volunteering for campaigns, let’s spend our time in different ways. We can start with the things God has commanded us to do – pray, learn, listen to him, and serve a hurting world.

There are so many other things we can and should do.

Thirty-five million Americans are at risk of hunger every day. A million people are released from prison every year with virtually no one to help them productively reenter society. Hundreds of thousands of children are in foster care and will never have a permanent home. More than a million children have a parent in prison. And those are just American snapshots. Every three seconds a child in Africa dies of a preventable disease. There is a tsunami of death equaling the Southeast Asian tsunami in Africa every week. Christian leaders like Rick Warren are largely eschewing politics and are mobilizing churches around the world to tackle this problem. It is more important than any judicial nomination and worthy of far more of our time.

What would the news media say if we ended our nasty partisanship, ceased making political arguments, and instead just relentlessly pursued ways to serve those who are sick, needy, hungry, and hurting? What would “enemies” at the ACLU or the gay and lesbian community or in the Democratic Party say and do?… I believe it would be one of the most powerful witnesses to faith ever.

Can I get an Amen?

Go Tigers

2006-10-25T01:51:33Z

M took the boys to StL to watch the Cards play the Tigers with her sisters and dad. Nate Robertson, who's pitching for the Tigers, is a childhood friend of M's from Wichita. By which I don't just mean they both grew up in Wichita; they actually grew up together, playing tag and stuff. M's dad and Nate's dad were high school buddies. So it's pretty cool for her to see him pitching in the World Series.

Ordinarily we'd root for the Cardinals, but... go Tigers!

White and nerdy

2006-10-16T21:40:35Z

Ripped Weird Al's video off of fdmts :

yes:
1st in my class here at MIT
(No, but I did graduate from Caltech, which I deem sufficient for a yes.)
MC Escher that's my favorite MC
(Clearly.)
Keep your 40, I'll just have an Earl Grey tea
(Plenty fond of good beer and wine, but nothing that comes in a 40 oz bottle.)
My rims never spin to the contrary
(True.)
Stephen Hawking's in my library
(He used to be; haven't seen him in a long time.)
My MySpace page is all totally pimped out
(Well, it ain't bad.)
Yo, I know Pi to a thousand places
(25 off the top of my head. I'll give myself credit for that.)
I order all of my sandwiches with mayonnaise
(M turned me onto mayonnaise on sandwiches, e.g. grilled cheese. Yum.)
At Pascal, well, I'm number one
(I was back in HS, and no one's used it since, so I say this counts.)
I do vector calculus just for fun
(Heh. :) )
I can sure kick your butt in a game of ping pong
(Bring it on.)
I been browsin' inspectin' X-men comics
(I read a lot of X-Men in the 90s, though I never collected.)
Shopping online for deals on some writable media
(Who doesn't?)
Yo I got myself a fanny pack
(And proud of it. I defy you to find a more functional small storage solution while dayhiking, etc.)
They were havin a sale down at The Gap
(I shop regularly at the Gap. Straight fit jeans and M Tall fitted shirts, and don't think it's nerdy at all.)
I was in AV club and Glee club and even the chess team!
(Chess and Glee Club, but not AV. Does being president of the Computer Club make up for it?)

no:
Jock skills, I'm a champion of D&D
(I played a lot in HS, but was never a champion.)
All of my action figures are cherry
(No action figures. What does "cherry" mean?)
Ain't got no grills but I still wear braces
(Did for a year and a half in HS.)
I'm a whiz at minesweeper I can play for days
(What?)
I ain't got a gat but I gotta soldering gun
(I'm no EE, and I do not own a soldering gun.)
There's no killer app I haven't run
(I'm a pretty lousy coder now, actually.)
Happy Days is my favorite theme song
(Nope.)
I'll ace any trivia quiz you bring on
(I'm not bad, but not an ace.)
I'm fluent in Java Script as well as Klingon
(I'm a Fortran man, myself. And can't say I haven't thought about learning Klingon, but no.)
The pens in my pocket I must protect 'em
(I almost always have a pen in my pocket, but no protector.)
My ergonomic keyboard never leaves me bored
(Just standard keyboards, thank you.)
I edit Wikipedia
(haven't yet)
I memorized the Holy Grail really well
(Never seen a Python movie all the way through... although the ROTFLOL line is my favorite)
I got a business doing websites
(Nope.)
When my friends need some code who do they call?
(Like I said, I'm a lousy coder.)
Even make a homepage for my dog!
(No pets.)
Spend my nights with a roll of bubble wrap
(uhh...)
I'm nerdy in the extreme and whiter than sour cream
(I'm pretty tan and like it that way.)
Only question I ever thought was hard
Was do I like Kirk or do I like Picard?
(Picard all the way.)
I spend every weekend at the Renaissance Faire
(Never once.)
Got my name on my underwear!
(What is up with that?)

15/37 = 0.405405...

Picasa Web

2006-10-15T15:02:32Z

Now that I have a real camera again, I've started a Picasa web album (part of the sprawling technoconglomeration by which Google will take over the earth). Yesterday we caught the tail end of the Fuel Systems PumpkinFest, my department's fall picnic thingy. We didn't get there til early evening, but I did get some shots off before we lost what little cloudy light there was left. My D80's kit lens, a 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6, is great for framing, but doesn't stop up wide enough for shallow depth of field, so I bought a (relatively) cheap Nikkor fixed 50mm f/1.8 that both slurps up the available light and isolates subjects nicely. A little too nicely, as you can see in this shot where Sam's in focus but even Monica, who's only a foot more distant, isn't.

LJ's Scrapbook navigation/UI is a little cumbersome, and Picasa Web autogenerates code snippets that easily insert pics and links like this:

From Fuel Systems ...

So I recommend Picasa Web. You can download individual pictures or whole albums at a shot.

Anyway, this will be a nice way to keep family and friends current in pictures.

Sermon mp3

2006-10-09T01:47:59Z

After three nights of four hours of sleep, finished writing at 2 AM this morning. Preached three services, and had some great times praying for people after the services. Slept four hours this afternoon, and then Mike, Robin and their kids came over for a wonderful beef stew that Monica made. It's been a good week.

Here's the sermon, on solitude.

Feedback welcome, particularly critical feedback.

Solitude

2006-10-02T14:03:31Z

Crossposted from a comment I left on sjepearson03's lj:

I decided to preach on solitude next week. Don't know what to say yet, just a bunch of other people's ideas rolling around in my head. I'm taking a personal day today (grateful that I have the freedom to do that) to listen and read and think and write, but firstly to listen. Have you heard about this interview with Mother Teresa? Some say it was with Dan Rather, some say Bill Clinton, which just goes to show, you can't trust everything you read on these here internets. :) But I do believe the exchange happened, though, since the Archbishop of Canterbury refers to it in an address posted on his own website:

She was being interviewed by a journalist who asked her what she said to God when she prayed.

‘I don’t say anything’ she replied, ‘I just listen.’

‘And when you listen,’ said the journalist, ‘what does God say to you?’

‘He doesn’t say anything,’ she replied, ‘He just listens.’

And before the bewildered journalist could say anything more, she added,

‘And if you don’t understand that, I can’t explain it to you.’

If you know what she means, could you please pray that, today, I would know what she means, too? And that next Sunday, in some way, I would be able to explain it?

Preaching opportunity

2006-09-22T10:19:49Z

We had a retaining wall put in this week, comprised of 76 landscaping timbers (6"x6"x8'), and backfilled with 18 tons of gravel and 68 tons of fill dirt. They just finished it last night. Now we have a little backyard, and our house will not fall off the hill. Yay.

Late yesterday my pastor called me and asked if I was interested in pulpit-fill preaching on Oct 8, as he'll be in CO at a spiritual direction retreat led by Larry Crabb [jealous]. I'm gonna let him know this Sunday. It's a good opportunity to preach on, say, the Kingdom of God, but I don't want to say yes unless I really have something to bring, you know? I don't feel as if just pulling out some old sermon I once preached is gonna work for me here.

Please pray that God and I would have a good conversation about this between now and Sunday.

Off to men's group. Egads, I'm still not used to meeting this early.

Nouwen

2006-09-19T16:46:56Z

From an email I sent to a friend yesterday:

For our anniversary, M got me a book about one man's healing and transformative friendship with Mr. Rogers, entitled "I'm Proud Of You." It was the perfect gift. I read the first chapter out loud to M on Sat AM and we were both crying by the end.

Five years ago I was a Catechist and worship leader at an Anglican church in Chicago under William Beasley (formerly the Rector of Church of the Resurrection in Glen Ellyn), who did his MDiv at Yale and studied under Nouwen there. When I found that out, I thought, "well, that makes perfect sense" - the stamp of Nouwen's influence on a person, particularly a man, I think is unmistakable. When I found out from M's book that Mr. Rogers and Nouwen were also good friends, I had the same reaction.

Mr. Rogers and Henri Nouwen are reminding me that hospitality is about creating, in our own hearts, a space for other people to explore who they are and what God is saying to them, how he is reaching out to them - and how, when they explore that with us, they are giving us a precious gift. And believing that is what makes welcoming, active listening a part of real ministry and Christian community, rather than just some kind of technique or salesmanship.

I've had the good fortune over the years to be exposed to some wonderful followers of Jesus who were also good thinkers, and who did the hard work of articulating their ideas and experiences in an accessible way for dullards like me. In some ways I can see the exposure translated into real influence, actual transformation and growth. For example, I learned to be generous, to value people over possessions, to use the latter to serve the former and not vice versa, from people like St. Francis and Rich Mullins, and Amy Carmichael and John Piper, and Jesus and the Apostle Paul, and Henri Nouwen, and the Inter Varsity community I was a part of. And I really did learn that, to the point where M and I shed money and possessions in a manner which could at times be described as irresponsible. Similarly, I learned to love the poor, to value them, to be drawn to them, to want to spend time with them and hang out with them, and grow with them - which I lived out most fully during my time in Mexico, less so in Chicago, still less in Urbana and Peoria. But I still feel like that's part of me, and while working at Caterpillar and doing the suburban life thing constitutes something of an assault on it, I don't think it's in mortal danger.

Much more often, though, my exposure to such incredibly valuable ideas remains largely at the level of ideas - ideas that are celebrated and cherished, but never get put into practice very far. Nouwen is a good example: his three movements of the spiritual life - of reaching in to oneself (from loneliness to solitude), reaching out to others (from hostility to hospitality), and reaching up to God (from illusion to prayer) - are laid out invitingly in his writings, where he makes clear that, while these movements are cyclical and interactive, at any stage the first one has a kind of logical priority:

When our loneliness drives us away from ourselves into the arms of our companions in life, we are, in fact, driving ourselves into excruciating relationships, tiring friendships and suffocating embraces... No friend or lover, husband or wife, no community or commune will be able to put to rest our deepest cravings for unity and wholeness. And by burdening others with these divine expectations, of which we ourselves are often only partially aware, we might inhibit the expression of free friendship and love and evoke instead feelings of inadequacy and weakness. Friendship and love cannot develop in the form of an anxious clinging to each other. They ask for gentle fearless space in which we can move to and from each other. --Reaching Out, pp. 29-30.

So as I reflect on how bankrupt my own heart usually feels of hospitality and grace to offer others - say, for instance, my wife - it requires no great insight to see the connection with my preoccupation with myself, my own fears of failure and inadequacy, my own sense of being at risk, my craving for others' approval and validation, all of which drive me to require that others be something for me, play a role, provide a resource, fill a void. No wonder there's so rarely any room in my heart for them. Likewise for God.

To which the obvious response is, OK then, practice the first movement that Nouwen describes, cultivate a healthy solitude, that my heart might be softened. (This complements what Steve Nick said to me two years ago about learning to hear my own voice.) But I never did anything with this. I read Reaching Out eight years ago when I was in seminary and thought there was some great stuff there, which I'm sure I thought would be great to live out, but I never did a thing with it. I can't remember one thing he says about how one would go about doing so.

Isn't that ridiculous? I'm such a poser.

I don't know that anything is different now from that time, but maybe there is. Maybe I'm more desperate. I've certainly seen a lot more of my own depravity in the interim. Maybe I'm just lonelier. Who knows. In any event, I'm going to Do Something this time. I'll start by rereading Reaching Out - I've seen something online about a Henri Nouwen reading group in central Illinois, which might be a good forum. And hopefully I'll be led to some disciplines or exercises or revelations that will help turn my heart into less of a gaping maw.

I'll let you know how it goes.

OtR

2006-09-08T03:33:39Z

Anybody out there interested in seeing Over the Rhine in St Louis (Blueberry Hill) tomorrow night? M and the boys are going to Nebraska for the wknd.

Vacation

2006-07-11T04:05:29Z

I've taken the week off, and M and I are going to a Vineyard regional conference in Chicago Tu-Fr. We've been general fans of Vineyard conferences since the late 90s, when I got to tag along with Steve Nick to the national pastors conference in Anaheim (and became a devotee of Don Williams and Dallas Willard), and M began what has since become her yearly pilgrimage to the Chicagoland womens conferences. Good teaching from leading-edge thinkers, great people, and personal ministry of, at times, surprising power. It'll be such fun to hook up with old friends from Chambana/Minneapolis/Chicago/et al. But mostly, I'm going for the ideas, having been in something of a theological wasteland of late. Big-picture teaching on kingdom theology/inaugurated eschatology and Christian community, at once theologically robust and in-the-trenches practical. Particularly looking forward to Don's workshops on addictions, and Rick Olmstead's on developing pastoral leaders.

By way of catch-up... my parents came up from StL for a couple of days last week. It was the first time they've come to visit us in Peoria, and indeed only the 2nd time they've visited us since the wedding, so it was kind of a big deal. It actually went rather well. My mom brought me copies of three of Dale Carnegie's books (!), which I was glad to have - she just took one of his courses and enjoyed it a lot. In return, I bought them a copy of Cloud's Integrity, and we actually had a long and spirited discussion about it, comparing his and Carnegie's approaches to "success." We concluded that, while they address similar relational mechanics (e.g. how to win others' trust), Carnegie is more Machiavellian, "this is how to get people to do what you want," whereas Cloud covers a lot of the same dynamics but situates it in a broader context that might be called spiritual, and which I call part of my Christian discipleship.

At one point I got my laptop out to google something, and they were admiring its new-fangled wireless capability... Mom mentioned that she was interested in getting one, but there's a fair amount of inertia on their part when it comes to adopting new technologies. So I used my Cat employee discount to buy them a nice Dell Inspiron E1505, a wireless router, and such. Spent a painful half hour trying to explain what a wireless router was, and how they could set up a wireless home network. It took us that long to figure out that my dad didn't know that the words "desktop" and "laptop" mean two different things... which was the death knell for that particular conversation, and I said I would just go over and set it up for them when their hardware arrived.

Isn't that something... here's a guy, a world-class researcher, did his PhD in medical physics at UC Berkeley in 1.25 yrs, former Stanford professor, speaks four languages, chaired international congresses on nuclear medicine and MRI... ask him some random obscure question about biochemistry or radiopharmaceuticals and he'll lecture you effortlessly for hours, and yet he doesn't know the difference between a desktop and a laptop. I mean, who doesn't know that? It's illustrative of why we have to keep learning - you can't rest on what you already know, or already did. The world will leave you behind. If you want to maintain competence, if you want to continue to have an impact, you've gotta keep growing.

Hence, this conference.

Erik Mongrain's "Airtap"

2006-07-10T23:55:40Z

File this one under "realizing I have no idea what a guitar is."

I'm speechless before this guy...

Any guesses as to what tuning he's in? I say open-D or DADGAD...

ETA: Well, I was way off: he's in FACFCF. Props to him for replying promptly to comments left on his YouTube.

This, gentlemen, is a cherry tomato!

2006-07-03T15:01:15Z

I know you've been wondering what they've been up to at the Siberian Institute of Plant Physiology and Biochemistry, since they obviously haven't been wasting time spiffing up their website. With a hat tip to chanchal's post, I am happy to assuage your curiosity:

After introducing certain HIV and Hepatitis B gene fragments into tomato plants, the tomatoes produce corresponding proteins which lead to antibody production in the body. Mice fed the tomatoes were found to have high levels of antibodies to both HIV and HBV - a promising result, evocative as it is of a potential oral, unrefrigerated vaccine for humans.

Here's a link.

Whoop whoop for 4-day weekends

2006-07-02T14:11:12Z

So M's painting the front room (e.g. office / music room / adult room) this awesome mustard gold color. It looks fabulous. Pictures to come upon completion.

Went to see A Prairie Home Companion last night. Haven't loved a movie that much in quite a while - since LotR, I think. I cried almost every time Meryl Streep sang. The movie is such a home-spun Midwestern take on loss, longing, death, pressing on when Things Fall Apart. I've been just fondling this movie in my mind since I saw it; that's the best word for it, absent weird sexual connotations.

I was a little surprised, and pleasantly, that Keillor didn't make himself out to be more of a hero in the script; he's a heart breaker, detached, and yet also the astute, perceptive master of ceremonies who keeps everything running smoothly. Loved the banter amongst him, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, and Lindsey Lohan. And Dusty and Lefty were hilarious. Kevin Kline never quite does it for me, but his Guy Noir is goofy-likable enough.

M just informed me, You're not my favorite person right now, because I'm not helping get ready for church, so I'll bid you farewell.

Wanted to be a Pepper, but...

2006-07-01T21:33:33Z

Went running again this morning with Mike, and then biked over to the James Henry trail behind ICC for a little hiking. This trail was cleared and developed by the late, eponymous bio prof at ICC, which duly impresses me - how many profs do you know develop nature trails for their students in their spare time? On our way back to our bikes, we cut through a new subdivision they're putting up near ICC - 60 little postage stamp lots; some of them no more than 40 feet from curb to treeline (above the ravine). Can you imagine, a 40' lot front to back? Craziness.

Robin went over to our house to help M paint, while Mike and I did the Mr. Mom thing at their house with our boys. Spent a lot of time outside with the slip 'n slide, and with a hose running down the playset slide. Fun stuff. We so need to get a slip 'n slide. Although, Sam is so tentative; Andrew and Collin are going down the slide and the slip and slide, and Sam wouldn't do either. He just stood up at the top and sprayed the water all around the place. I finally half dragged him down the slide, thinking he might get into it, but instead he informed me in no uncertain terms "I'm not going down the slide. No more. I'm not going down the slide again. No thank you." He did try going across the monkey bars though, which was cool. And a little scarier for me.

So Kerkorian is trying to talk GM's board into merging with Nissan and Renault, which probably means Wagoner would cede control to Ghosn, the guy who turned Nissan around a few years ago. GM shares are up 9% on the news. Would be interesting - I wonder how it would impact GM's engine business with Caterpillar.

In other news...

You Are Root Beer

Ultra sweet and innocent, you have a subtle complexity behind your sugary front.
Children love you, but so do high end snobs... when you're brewed right.

Your best soda compatibility match: Dr. Pepper

Stay away from: Diet Coke

What Kind of Soda Are You?