Random thought on the I-95 off ramp

That panhandler standing by the side of the road, smelling of cigarettes and alcohol, is potentially closer to the Kingdom of God than the church elder.

Written by a church elder.

And now for something completely different

Cockroaches, Geckos and Robots. . .




via NPR.org

What's the point of beauty?

Jonah Lehrer speculates:

But why does beauty exist? What’s the point of marveling at a Rembrandt self portrait or a Bach fugue? To paraphrase Auden, beauty makes nothing happen. Unlike our more primal indulgences, the pleasure of perceiving beauty doesn’t ensure that we consume calories or procreate. Rather, the only thing beauty guarantees is that we’ll stare for too long at some lovely looking thing. Museums are not exactly adaptive.

Here’s my (extremely speculative) theory: Beauty is a particularly potent and intense form of curiosity. It’s a learning signal urging us to keep on paying attention, an emotional reminder that there’s something here worth figuring out. Art hijacks this ancient instinct: If we’re looking at a Rothko, that twinge of beauty in the mOFC is telling us that this painting isn’t just a blob of color; if we’re listening to a Beethoven symphony, the feeling of beauty keeps us fixated on the notes, trying to find the underlying pattern; if we’re reading a poem, a particularly beautiful line slows down our reading, so that we might pause and figure out what the line actually means. Put another way, beauty is a motivational force that helps modulate conscious awareness. The problem beauty solves is the problem of trying to figure out which sensations are worth making sense of and which ones can be easily ignored.

. . . .

I see beauty as a form of curiosity that exists in response to sensation, and not just information. It’s what happens when we see something and, even though we can’t explain why, want to see more. But here’s the interesting bit: the hook of beauty, like the hook of curiosity, is a response to an incompleteness. It’s what happens when we sense something missing, when there’s a unresolved gap, when a pattern is almost there, but not quite. I’m thinking here of that wise Leonard Cohen line: “There’s a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in.” Well, a beautiful thing has been cracked in just the right way.

Lehrer, always worth reading, is on to something. His musings lead me to ask: What is the missing 'something'? Where is the resolution? Where does completeness lie? And jumping off from Leonard Cohen -- Where does that light come from? All this gives me an excuse to quote C.S. Lewis (and I don't need much of an excuse to do that!).

"The books or music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited." (Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life)

So. What then is the point of beauty?

Why do we let our daughters dress like prostitutes? (Jennifer Moses)

Good question! Though I don't have daughters (yet) it's one I've wondered about myself. Walking through the mall or our local college campus (Christian btw) I'm struck by the similarity of female attire to what one sees on the women plying their trade on Broadway a few blocks from where I live. Short shorts, miniskirts and plunging necklines have become elements of the standard kit. Maybe I'm turning into a middle-aged curmudgeon, but the trend leaves me frequently muttering to myself, "you gotta be kidding."

Author and mom Jennifer Moses writes on this in Saturday's Wall Street Journal:

Why do so many of us not only permit our teenage daughters to dress like this—like prostitutes, if we're being honest with ourselves—but pay for them to do it with our AmEx cards?

I posed this question to a friend whose teenage daughter goes to an all-girls private school in New York. "It isn't that different from when we were kids," she said. "The girls in the sexy clothes are the fast girls. They'll have Facebook pictures of themselves opening a bottle of Champagne, like Paris Hilton. And sometimes the moms and dads are out there contributing to it, shopping with them, throwing them parties at clubs. It's almost like they're saying, 'Look how hot my daughter is.'" But why? "I think it's a bonding thing," she said. "It starts with the mommy-daughter manicure and goes on from there."

I have a different theory. It has to do with how conflicted my own generation of women is about our own past, when many of us behaved in ways that we now regret. A woman I know, with two mature daughters, said, "If I could do it again, I wouldn't even have slept with my own husband before marriage. Sex is the most powerful thing there is, and our generation, what did we know?"

We are the first moms in history to have grown up with widely available birth control, the first who didn't have to worry about getting knocked up. We were also the first not only to be free of old-fashioned fears about our reputations but actually pressured by our peers and the wider culture to find our true womanhood in the bedroom. Not all of us are former good-time girls now drowning in regret—I know women of my generation who waited until marriage—but that's certainly the norm among my peers.

So here we are, the feminist and postfeminist and postpill generation. We somehow survived our own teen and college years (except for those who didn't), and now, with the exception of some Mormons, evangelicals and Orthodox Jews, scads of us don't know how to teach our own sons and daughters not to give away their bodies so readily. We're embarrassed, and we don't want to be, God forbid, hypocrites.

Still, in my own circle of girlfriends, the desire to push back is strong. I don't know one of them who doesn't have feelings of lingering discomfort regarding her own sexual past. And not one woman I've ever asked about the subject has said that she wishes she'd "experimented" more.

This self-confessed "New Millenium Mom" concludes. . .

We wouldn't dream of dropping our daughters off at college and saying: "Study hard and floss every night, honey—and for heaven's sake, get laid!" But that's essentially what we're saying by allowing them to dress the way they do while they're still living under our own roofs.

This is an excellent and honest piece. Read the whole thing. Though I agree with a point made by Justin Taylor -- which is that the missing element in her analysis is the role of men and dads in all of this. Lord knows I'm not a neo-Victorian, but seems to me the spiritual, emotional and aesthetic health of our society demands the "push-back" called for by Moses.

An unusual fast

I just came across a pretty amazing Lenten project. Iowan J. Wilson is following an ancient monastic tradition of fasting from solid food for 46 days while drinking only beer and water. Not just any kind of beer though, Wilson will be getting all his calories from doppelbock beer -- a style developed by Bavarian monks to provide maximum nourishment during their Lenten fasts. For this reason the style came to be known as "liquid bread." This isn't a stunt, and carrying it out will be considerably more difficult than your more typical fasting from meat or sweets. Nor, Wilson makes clear, is it an excuse to go past the bounds of moderation. I think he'd agree with G.K. Chesterton's dictum: "We should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them."

Here's Wilson writing at Diary of a Part-time Monk:

I’m a little torn that I’m sharing this experience with you. Matthew 6:16-18 tells us that Jesus fasted in private and in Isaiah 58, the reader is chastised for unrighteous methods/motives.

I’m sure there will be folks out there that question my motives. I thought I’d take this first post to be clear that I simply find this to be an interesting story. When I realized its dimension and difficulty, I decided to blog so others might follow along in real time.

The other edge of that noble sword is that there are blogs and media outlets all over the world that have really jumped on board in the last couple of days. My ugly mug was on the front page of the Des Moines Register on Sunday, and tonight at 6 p.m., I’ll be on KCCI-Channel 8 talking about the project. I’ve fielded a number of requests for interviews and just got off the phone with DRAFT Magazine a while ago.

So I’m out there. From a beer drinker’s perspective, that’s fun, and I’m glad that everyone seems as intrigued as I am.

But this project isn’t about me. It’s a historical study into the lives of these Christian monks centuries ago. I’m just the vessel. I want to be clear about that. I hope beer lovers’ learn something reasonable about Christianity, and I hope Christians learn something reasonable about beer.

You can follow Wilson's journey here. I've also added his blog to the Top Ten list at right.

America's favorite temperance drink

I've been listening to the latest episode of This American Life, in which Ira Glass & Co. claim to have found the secret recipe for Coca-Cola.

I don't drink the stuff, but I'm fascinated by the history and iconography of this enduring cultural artifact. Much of the mythology of Coke revolves around Coca-Cola's inventor, druggist John Pemberton. Like many Confederate veterans Pemberton became addicted to morphine -- the drug of choice for treating wounded soldiers. After the war he began experimenting with a concoction that contained extract from coca leaves, as in cocaine. The hope was that it would help wean addicts off of their dependence on morphine. His first product was a wine containing caffeine, and yes, cocaine. Must have been quite the energy drink! When temperance mania hit Atlanta; Pemberton realized he needed to adapt to the changing social mores. He removed the alcohol from his beverage, tinkered some more and -- voila! -- the primitive version of Coca-Cola was born. It's his recipe that Ira Glass attempts to reproduce on this week's show.

Interestingly enough; coca leaves are still used in the official formula, but not before they're de-cocainized at a plant in New Jersey. That makes the Coca-Cola Company one of the biggest importers of a Schedule II controlled substance in the country!

Ancient traditions making a comeback in Northern California

Story from Rob Reynolds of Al Jazeera. . .

From lattes to IPA's

USA Today and AP report on the opening of a revamped version of Starbucks that just opened in Seattle. From the AP story:

Something new is on the menu at a renovated Starbucks in Seattle: beer and wine.

The store that reopened Monday is the first under the Starbucks brand to offer alcohol.

Craft beer and local wines go on sale after 4 p.m. The idea is to offer drinks and a wider variety of savory food that will attract customers after the morning espresso rush.

The store closed in July for the renovation, which also includes a circular coffee bar that brings customers closer to the baristas.

The Olive Way store is one of Starbucks Corp.'s percolators for ideas that could someday spread to the Seattle-based chain's other locations. Company officials have declined to say how soon elements from the shop might appear elsewhere.

And from USA Today:

If Starbucks (SBUX) executives have it figured out right, this could be the prototype for the next generation of stores for one of the world's most influential brands.

A very different kind of Starbucks is on tap. It will serve regional wine and beer. It offers an expansive plate of locally made cheeses — served on china. The barista bar is rebuilt to seat customers up close to the coffee.

Most conspicuously, the place looks less like a Starbucks and more like a cafe that's been part of the neighborhood for years.

I'm not sure what to make of this. I have something of a love/hate relationship with the world's most famous siren. I'm down with the whole regional thing, but my cynical side thinks Starbucks should figure out how to serve up a consistently good cup of coffee (or a latte for under $3) before they branch out into beer, wine and cheese. Nevertheless expect to see this trend coming to a store near you. Like the USA Today story says: "When Starbucks sneezes, global pop culture feels the draft."

Gladwell on the limits of social media

Malcolm Gladwell, the man who came up with the "tipping point" hypothesis, is someone worth listening to. Writing in The New Yorker he challenges the conventional wisdom that social media is effecting a revolution in social and political activism. Gladwell presents the civil rights movement as a case study of how revolutionary change happened before e-mail, Facebook and Twitter -- and uses it to illustrate the weakness of social media in getting people to take action beyond clicking the "Like" button on Facebook.

As Gladwell see it effective movements of social change -- like the one led by Martin Luther King in the 60s -- require the kind of commitment fostered by the "strong ties" of close personal connection. For example if you had a best friend who was going to Mississippi during Freedom Summer you were more likely to go and risk your neck than if you didn't have that kind of connection. The same principle holds true whether you're talking protest movements or terrorist groups. On the other hand what social media does best is foster "weak ties" which are great for a lot of things, but not for rousing people to take action that requires real commitment and sacrifice.

He explains:

The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life.

This is in many ways a wonderful thing. There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.

. . . .

[Social media} makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact. The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo.

I'm interested in what the implications of this critique are for the church. I'm an avid user of Facebook and I administer our church's Facebook page so obviously I'm not against social media. It can be a beneficial tool, but I think the talk about it revolutionizing the way we "do church" is overblown. A cool Facebook page does not an effective church make. If the New Testament tells us anything it's that "strong ties" are just as integral to building the Kingdom as they are to toppling governments. The recipe for creating those ties hasn't changed much in 2000 years. I mean, how did the Apostle Paul plant all those churches without Twitter?!


Jonah Lehrer's friendly critique of Gladwell's conclusions is worth reading too.

Why babies see more than you

Jonah Lehrer explains @ The Frontal Cortex

The poverty of human greatness

A penetrating observation from John Wesley's journal:

I was in the robe-chamber, adjoining to the House of Lords, when the King put on his robes. His brow was much furrowed with age, and quite clouded with care. And is this all the world can give even to a King? All the grandeur it can afford? A blanket of ermine round his shoulders, so heavy and cumbersome he can scarce move under it! A huge heap of borrowed hair, with a few plates of gold and glittering stones upon his head! Alas, what a bauble is human greatness! And even this will not endure.

via Collin Hansen

Should every sentence be easy to read?

When it comes to technology I'm a late adopter. Whether it was getting a cellphone, switching from VHS to DVD, or making the jump from analog to hi-def, I've always been several years behind my peers. I don't have a smartphone and have no plans to get one, nor do I feel the need to get a Kindle or Nook. I'm still buying books at a good clip, which lately have been accumulating in ever taller stacks around our crowded bungalow.

Yet, I suspect in a few years I'll have one of those e-reading devices (maybe I'll get one for Christmas). And perhaps then I'll wonder how I lived without it, as I now wonder how I ever watched sports on my old analog television set. If my buddy invites me over to watch the Gators game and he doesn't have HDTV -- I ain't going! Even if he does have chicken wings.

Jonah Lehrer is one of my sharpest tacks out there and today he writes about the future of reading. He points out that consumer technology moves in one direction.

[Toward] making it easier for us to perceive the content. This is why your TV is so high-def, and your computer monitor is so bright and clear. For the most part, this technological progress is all to the good. (I still can’t believe that people watched golf before there were HD screens. Was the ball even visible? For me, the pleasure of televised golf is all about the lush clarity of grass.) Nevertheless, I worry that this same impulse – making content easier and easier to see – could actually backfire with books. We will trade away understanding for perception. The words will shimmer on the screen, but the sentences will be quickly forgotten.

What's interesting, Lehrer explains, is that there's a neural reason for his worry that making books easier to read could have baneful unintended consequences. He cites the work of French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene who discovered "two distinct pathways" for making sense of what we read.

Most of the time when we read we're using the "ventral pathway" of our brain. This route enables us to easily slip into a sort of autopilot when we're reading familiar words and sentence structures. But when we encounter something unfamiliar, even bad handwriting or an unusual font, this activates the "dorsal stream" of our literate brain forcing us to sit up and pay attention. We're no longer on autopilot. In Lehrer's phrase "the automatic act has lost its automaticity." If that experience of struggling with a hard-to-read text is taken away Lehrer worries that. . .

before long, we’ll become so used to the mindless clarity of e-ink – to these screens that keep on getting better – that the technology will feedback onto the content, making us less willing to endure harder texts. We’ll forget what it’s like to flex those dorsal muscles, to consciously decipher a literate clause. And that would be a shame, because not every sentence should be easy to read.

Hear, hear! The future of books and reading may be digital, but I'm in no hurry to trade my pages for megabytes. The idea of settling down with a beverage in one hand and a Kindle in the other doesn't give me as much pleasure as the lo-tech alternative. Then again, with another baby on the way we sure could use the extra space!

Happy Labor Day

Do more kids mean more happiness?

I hope so since we're expecting our second in January! A debate has broken out in the blogosphere over just that question. You can read a synopsis here. I guess it all depends on one's definition of "happiness." I don't know if becoming a parent has made me happier or not. I do know it's brought more joy and sense of purpose, and it's had a refining effect which (I trust) has made me a better person. If your definition of happiness is being independent and avoiding pain and aggravation then having children won't make you happy. I think this blogger daddy gets it right:

My 17-month-old woke up a few minutes ago and interrupted my writing. She does that kind of thing a lot. Indeed, pretty much every morning. And when she does, I have to stop what I’m doing, usually at an inopportune time. And that makes me unhappy!

Is this momentary inconvenience outweighed by the joy she brings me? Of course.

But having kids means constant diversion from doing what you want to be doing at any given moment. And having multiple children, I’m reliably told, tends to increase that phenomenon geometrically. Indeed, parents the world over agree: Kids are a giant pain in the ass!

Those of us who are reasonably intelligent and had children by conscious decision knew all this going in. Indeed, one of the amusing things about impending first-time fatherhood is the number of people who dispense the advice “It’ll change your life!” But that doesn’t make the sacrifices and trade-offs less real.

While I’m a social scientist by training, I’m not a sociologist, much less steeped in the literature in question here. But I don’t know that it’s possible to develop measures to quantify the thousands of instances of “unhappiness” that come from the annoyances of parenthood and the less frequent but far more potent joys. And I certainly don’t think it’s possible to do it in a way that satisfies an economist’s notion of “happiness.”

I often think of parenting in terms of Dickens' classic line from A Tale of Two Cities -- "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." For example, having a second child right now is going to cause my wife and I considerable economic pain, but we wouldn't trade this journey for going back to the financial security and comfortable lifestyle we enjoyed before our firstborn came along. Sure, I wish we were well off or lived in a society where raising children was made easier by government and business. Although the funny thing is those societies where it's the easiest (think Western Europe or Japan with their generous healthcare, maternity leave and childcare benefits) are also the places where fertility rates are the lowest on the planet. Maybe the hardship is one of those unquantifiable factors that paradoxically make people want to go through it again. The pain is part and parcel of the joy.

Whatever the case may be I'll go out on a limb and say that in the context of a loving marriage having children is always a good idea. Economic considerations and "happiness quotients" be damned. That's why when people ask me if we're going to have more kids my answer always is . . . "I hope so."

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
the fruit of the womb a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.

Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!

Psalm 127

Words to remember by

To get a sense of how these words sounded to the original audience, read them slowly. Abraham Lincoln reportedly took two minutes to deliver this masterpiece of concision.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Gettysburg Address (1863)

Imago Facebook

@ Slate

When inspiration strikes

I don't consider myself to be a very creative person. I'm a "plodder" and I gravitate toward established structures. When I was in grade school the sight of construction paper and glue sticks gave me cold sweats. They still do. I was one of those kids that hated arts education. My wife, on the other hand, almost went to art school and my 14-month old is already fascinated by crayons and colored paper. Does that mean he wants to write words like daddy? Or draw pictures like mommy? Time will tell. That being said, I do have the occasional creative moment -- usually in the context of problem solving -- and they almost always come when I least expect them. How do I get across a difficult concept in Sunday school? What's the most efficient way to introduce a new process at my workplace? Often a creative answer will pop into my head when I'm staring out the window, ostensibly wasting time.

Here's Jonah Lehrer on the value of daydreaming.

Why we love Costco

@ The Frontal Cortex

A couple of housekeeping items

First off, I thought it was time for a facelift here at the ol' blogspot. Nothing major. Just a different masthead and a few tweaks here and there. Special recognition will be due to the reader who can name the movie, character and actor pictured in the new masthead.

Secondly, I've been suffering from an attack of the killer Chinese spam. To combat this I've reluctantly set all comments to be moderated. I know this can be annoying for legitimate commenters, but it's even more annoying having to go back and delete spam from several years worth of posts. My deepest thanks to all of you who read this blog, and I hope you won't be dissuaded from commenting if the fancy strikes you.

Ta-Nehisi Coates on the shrinking Civil War battlefields of Virginia

@ theatlantic.com