Lift Up Your Hearts!

Quiet:  The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain (Crown, 2012)

I waited a long time for my name to percolate to the top of our library's waiting list for Quiet.  In another example of God's amazing sense of humor, I was able to pick up the book on my way home from dropping the Daleys at the airport.  Returning to a house no longer ringing with the sound of grandchildren was at the time altogether too much quiet for me.  Being able to bury myself in the book did help assuage the sense of loss, however.

I'm tempted to say that Quiet is by far the best of all the books I've read on introversion, though that may only be because it's the third, and I have the advantage of having read others.  Introverts in the Church made me cry because it was the first, revealing to me the value of character traits I've been pressured to suppress all my life, but it is not particularly well written, and is a bit strident for sharing with extroverts.

Although I found the second book overly psycho-therapeutic, I learned from The Introvert Advantage some of the physical differences between the brains of introverts and those of extroverts, and some advice for understanding (and helping) both introverted and extroverted children.  Quiet takes that ball and runs a lot further with it.

It helps that the book is well written, enabling me to concentrate on the content without being distracted by the form.  The author is also more even-toned in her approach, highlighting the contributions of introverts, yes, but at the same time emphasizing the value of both temperament types.  She's much easier on extroverts than some writers whose scars from growing up in an extrovert-dominated world are more visible.  Nonetheless, I can't unequivocally recommend the book for all extroverts.  If you're an insecure extrovert looking for affirmation of your own temperament, you won't find much help here.  If you think the problem with the world is that most people are not extroverted enough, Cain is not singing your song.  But if you yearn to understand, appreciate, and support the introverts in your life—especially if you have an introverted spouse or child who frustrates or puzzles you, or if you're an employer desiring to create the most productive work environment for employees of diverse temperaments, don't miss Quiet.

Cain deliberately broadens her use of the terms "extrovert" and "introvert" from the popular consideration of whether one is renewed by crowds or solitude.

This book is about introversion as seen from a cultural point of view.  Its primary concern is the age-old dichotomy between the "man of action" and the "man of contemplation," and how we could improve the world if only there were a greater balance of power between the two types.

Actually, her brush is broader still, which to my mind makes it worthwhile reading "yet another book on introverts":  She covers other, related personality traits, along with how they interact with intro- and extro-version.  This could profitably have been seven books rather than one.  Which is a bit frustrating, I'll admit, as it seems she is just getting started on an interesting subject when she veers in another direction.

Quiet is a popular book, which means I had only two-thirds the normal time to keep this library copy, with no hope of renewal, and it was due yesterday.  So for the remainder of this post you'll get a somewhat random collection of a few of the points that caught my eye.

The 20th century was not a good time for introverted children.  Reading about the development of the Cult of Personality and the psychological concept of the Inferiority Complex helps explain why I provoked comments in my father's journals (which I read many years later) on the order of, "I sure wish Linda were more sociable."  Never mind that my parents were as introverted as I am—they wanted better for their children.

[C]hild guidance experts of the 1920's set about helping children to develop winning personalities.  Until then, these professionals had worried mainly about sexually precocious girls and delinquent boys, but now psychologists, social workers, and doctors focused on the everyday child with the "maladjusted personality" ... The experts advised parents to socialize their children well and schools to change their emphasis from book-learning to "assisting and guiding the developing personality."  Educators took up this mantle enthusiastically. ... Well-meaning parents of the midcentury agreed that quiet was unacceptable and gregariousness ideal for both girls and boys.  Some discouraged their children from solitary and serious hobbies, like classical music, that could make them unpopular.  They sent their kids to school at increasingly young ages, where the main assignment was learning to socialize.  Introverted children were often singled out as problem cases.

Maybe I'd have been better off growing up in Taiwan, as in this quote from a present-day American high school student whose parents are from that country.

It's inbred in us to be more quiet.  When I was a kid and would go to my parents' friends' house and didn't want to talk, I would bring a book.  It was like this shield, and they would be like, "She's so studious!"  And that was praise.

During the New York City transit strike of 2005, Craigslist was the go-to place for ride-share listings.  "Yet another crisis, and Craigslist commands the community," wrote one blogger.  "How come Craig organically can touch lives on so many personal levels—and Craig's users can touch each other's lives on so many levels?"  Here's one answer:  social media has made new forms of leadership possible for scores of people who don't fit the [exceedingly extroverted] Harvard Business School mold.

Studies have shown that ... introverts are more likely than extroverts to express intimate facts about themselves online that their family and friends would be surprised to read, to say that they can express the "real me" online, and to spend more time in certain kinds of online discussions.  They welcome the chance to communicate digitally.  The same person who would never raise his hand in a lecture hall of two hundred people might blog to two thousand, or two million, without thinking twice.

The New Groupthink did not arise at one precise moment.  Cooperative learning, corporate teamwork, and open office plans emerged at different times and for different reasons.  But the mighty force that pulled these trends together was the rise of the World Wide Web, which lent both cool and gravitas to the idea of collaboration.  On the Internet, wondrous creations were produced via shared brainpower (e.g. Linux, Wikipedia, MoveOn.org].  These collective productions, exponentially greater than the sum of their parts, were so awe-inspiring that we came to revere the hive mind, the wisdom of crowds, the miracle of crowdsourcing.  Collaboration became a sacred concept—the key multiplier for success. ... But then we took things a step further than the facts called for.  We came to value transparency and to knock down walls—not only online but also in person.  We failed to realize that what makes sense for the asynchronous, relatively anonymous interactions of the Internet might not work as well inside the face-to-face, politically charged, acoustically noisy confines of an open-plan office. ... The Internet's role in promoting face-to-face group work is especially ironic because the early Web was a medium that enabled bands of often introverted individualists ... to come together to subvert and transcend the usual ways of problem-solving. ... [T]he earliest open-source creators didn't share office space—often they didn't even live in the same country. ... If you had gathered the same people who created Linux, installed them in a giant conference room for a year, and asked them to devise a new operating system, it's doubtful that anything so revolutionary would have occurred.

[In the 1950's, psychologist] Solomon Asch conducted a series of now-famous experiments on the dangers of group influence. ... His questions were so simple that 95 percent of students answered every question correctly.   But when Asch planted actors in the groups, and the actors confidently volunteered the same incorrect answer ... a staggering 75 percent of the participants went along with the group's wrong answer to at least one question.

[A recent, updated version of the experiment by neuroscientist Gregory Berns, which included brain scans, reveals worse news:  the scans indicated that the participants' perceptions had actually been altered by the group.]

If the group thinks the answer is A, you're much more likely to believe that A is correct, too.  It's not that you're saying consciously, "Hmm, I'm not sure, but they all think the answer's A, so I'll go with that."  Nor are you saying, "I want them to like me, so I'll just pretend that the answer's A."  No, you are doing something much more unexpected—and dangerous.  Most of [the participants] reported having gone along with the group because "they thought that they had arrived serendipitously at the same correct answer."  They were utterly blind, in other words, to how much their peers had influenced them.

[Participants did not always conform.  But when they chose the correct answer despite pressure to do otherwise, their brains showed "heightened activation in the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with upsetting emotions such as the fear of rejection."]

Berns refers to this as "the pain of independence," and it has serious implications.  Many of our most important civic institutions, from elections to jury trials to the very idea of majority rule, depend on dissenting voices.  But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think.

In another famous study, introverts and extroverts were asked to play a challenging word game in which they had to learn, through trial and error, the governing principle of the game.  While playing, they wore headphones that emitted random bursts of noise.  They were asked to adjust the volume of their headsets up or down to the level that was "just right."  On average, the extroverts chose a noise level of 72 decibels, while the introverts selected only 55 decebels.  When working at the volume that they had selected—loud for the extroverts, quiet for the introverts—the two types were about equally aroused (as measured by their heart rates and other indicatores).  They also played equally well.

When the introverts were asked to work at the noise level preferred by the extroverts, and vice versa, everything changed.  Not only were the introverts over-aroused by the loud noise, but they also underperformed—taking an average of 9.1 trials rather than 5.8 to learn the game.  The opposite was true for the extroverts—they were under-aroused (and possibly bored) by the quieter conditions, and took an average of 7.3 trials, compared with the 5.4 they'd averaged under noisier conditions.

The author does not mention the overall superiority of the extroverts' performances, but I'd hazard that "random bursts of noise" at any volume level would be more difficult for introverts to handle.

Once you understand introversion and extroversion as preferences for certain levels of stimulation, you can begin consciously trying to situate yourself in environments favorable to your own personality. ... You can organize your life in terms of what personality psychologists call "optimal levels of arousal" and what I call "sweet spots," and by doing so feel more energetic and alive than before.

Imagine that you're lying contentedly in a hammock reading a great novel.  This is a sweet spot.  But after half an hour you realize that you've read the same sentence five times; now you're understimulated.  So you call a friend and go out for brunch—in other words, you ratchet up your stimulation level—and as you laugh and gossip over blueberry pancakes, you're back, thank goodness, inside your sweet spot.  But this agreeable states lasts only until your friend—an extrovert who needs much more stimulation than you do—persuades you to accompany her to a block party, where you're now confronted by loud music and a sea of strangers.

Your friend's neighbors seem affable enough, but you feel pressured to make small talk above the din of music.  Now—bang just like that—you've fallen out of your sweet spot, except this time you're overstimulated.  And you'll probably feel that way until you pair off with someone on the periphery of the party for an in-depth conversation, or bow out altogether and return to your novel.

Imagine how much better you'll be at this sweet-spot game once you're aware of playing it. ... People who are aware of their sweet spots ... can hunt for homes based on the temperaments of their family members—with cozy window seats and other nooks and crannies for the introverts, and large, open living-dining spaces for the extroverts. ... [I]ntroverts function better than extroverts when sleep deprived, which is a cortically de-arousing condition. ... Drowsy extroverts behind the wheel should be especially careful—at least until they increase their arousal levels by chugging coffee or cranking up the radio.  Conversely, introverts driving in loud, overly arousing traffic noise should work to stay focussed, since the noise may impair their thinking.  [This was an aha! moment for me.  I cannot stand to have the radio on when I'm in a stressful driving situation.  Because I always defer to the driver when it comes to radio station and volume, I've more than once been exceedingly stressed by trying to navigate on the fly, through an unfamiliar city, with my brain on half power.]

One personality trait that often, though not always, combines with introversion, is "high reactivity."  It is inborn, though as with all such traits is sensitive to environmental factors, too.  And it complicates a neat division of the world into introverts and extroverts.

Highly sensitive people tend to be keen observers who look before they leap.  They arrange their lives in ways that limit surprises.  They're often sensitive to sights, sounds, smells, pain, coffee.   They have difficulty when being observed (at work, say, or performing at a music recital). ... The highly sensitive tend to be philosophical or spiritual in their orientation. ... They dislike small talk.  They often describe themselves as creative or intuitive....  They dream vividly, and can often recall their dreams the next day.  They love music, nature, art, physical beauty.  They feel exceptionally strong emotions—sometimes acute bouts of joy, but also sorrow, melancholy, and fear. ... They tend to notice subtleties that others miss—another person's shift in mood, say, or a lightbulb burning a touch too brightly. ... [S]ometimes they're highly empathetic.  It's as if they have thinner boundaries separating them from other people's emotions and from the tragedies and cruelties of the world. ... They avoid violent movie and TV shows; they're acutely aware of the consequences of a lapse in their own behavior. ... [But] when they're overwhelmed by negative emotions like shame or anxiety ... they can be positively oblivious of other people's needs.

Introverts are not smarter than extroverts.  According to IQ scores, the two types are equally intelligent.  And on many kinds of tasks, particularly those performed under time or social pressure or involving multitasking, extroverts do better.  Extroverts are better than introvertts at handling information overload.  Introverts' reflectiveness uses up a lot of cognitive capacity. ... Extroverts appear to allocate most of their cognitive capacity to the goal at hand, while introverts use up capacity by monitoring how the task is going. ... Extroverts are more likely to take a quick-and-dirty approach to problem-solving, trading accuracy for speed, making increasing numbers of mistakes as they go, and abandoning ship altogether when the problem seems too difficult or frustrating.  Introverts think before they act, digest information thoroughly, stay on task longer, give up less easily, and work more accurately.

Then there's "buzz."  Some people are more "reward-sensitive" than others; it appears to have something to do with the brain's dopamine pathways.

[Buzz] fires us up to work and play hard.  It gives us the courage to take chances.  Buzz also gets us to do things that would otherwise seem too difficult, like giving speeches.  Imagine you work hard to prepare a talk on a subject you care about.  You get your message across, and when you finish the audience rises to its feet, its clapping sustained and sincere.  One person might leave the room feeling, "I'm glad I got my message across, but I'm also happy it's over; now I can get back to the rest of my life."  Another person, more sensitive to buzz, might walk away feeling, "What a trip!  Did you hear that applause?  Did you see the expression on their faces when I made that life-changing point?  This is great!"

[But buzz has its downside.]

Financial history is full of examples of players accelerating when they should be braking.  Behavioral economists have long observed that executives buying companies can get so excited about beating out their competitors that the ignore signs that they're overpaying.  This happens so frequently that it has a name:  "deal fever," followed by "the winner's curse."  The AOL-Time Warner merger, which wiped out $200 billion of Time-Warner shareholder value, is a classic example.  There were plenty of warnings that AOL's stock, which was the currency for the merger, was wildly overvalued, yet Time Warner's directors approved the deal unanimously.  "I did it with as much or more excitement and enthusiasm as I did when I first made love some forty-two years ago," exclaimed Ted Turner, one of those directors and the largest individual shareholder in the company.

Indeed, although the causes of our recent financial troubles are many and diverse, Cain makes a good case for casting significant blame on a personality imbalance in our financial institutions.  Their culture had for years rewarded the "extrovert" (in Cain's more broad sense, which includes the reward-sensitive risk-takers with a goal-oriented, quick-and-dirty approach to problem-solving).  These are the people who made things happen, who chose the high-risk, high-reward approach to investing.  All businesses need people like that.  But what they also need is balance:  other people who will notice the warning signs, sound the alarms, and put on the brakes.  And this few of the major players had.  Enthusiastic, aggressive deal-closers were the ones who made the big money and received the promotions.  The more cautious were passed over, or learned to squelch their natural cautiousness and act like those who were reaping the rewards, making even riskier decisions than those they were attempting to imitate.  "And great was the fall of it."

If you're a buzz-prone extrovert, then you're lucky to enjoy lots of invigorating emotions.  Make the most of them:  build things, inspire others, think big.  Start a company, launch a website, build an elaborate tree house for your kids.  But also know that you're operating with an Achilles' heel that you must learn to protect. ... Teach yourself to pause and reflect when warning signs appear that things aren't working out as you'd hoped.  Learn from your mistakes.  Seek out counterparts (from spouses to friends to business partners) who can help rein you in and compensate for your blind spots.  And when it comes time to invest, or to do anything that involves a sane balance of risk and reward, keep yourself in check.  One good way to do this is to make sure that you're not surrounding yourself with images of rewards at the crucial moment of decision.  [Studies] have found that men who are shown erotic pictures just before they gamble take more risks than those shown neutral images like desks and chairs.  This is because anticipating rewards—any rewards, whether or not related to the subject at hand—excites our dopamine-driven reward networks and makes us act more rashly.  (This may be the single best argument yet for banning pornography from workplaces.)

So, what drives those who are less reward-sensitive?  One possibility is the concept of "flow" (available to extroverts as well).

The key to flow is to pursue an activity for its own sake, not for the rewards it brings. ... If you're an introvert, find your flow by using your gifts.  You have the power of persistence, the tenacity to solve complex problems, and the clear-sightedness to avoid pitfalls that trip others up. ... [Y]our biggest challenge may be to fully harness your strengths.  You may be so busy trying to appear like a zestful, reward-sensitive extrovert that you undervalue your own talents, or feel underestimated by those around you.  But when you're focussed on a project that you care about, you probably find that your energy is boundless.  So stay true to your own nature.  If you like to do things in a slow and steady way, don't let others make you feel as if you have to race.  If you enjoy depth, don't force yourself to seek breadth.  If you prefer single-tasking to multitasking, stick to your guns.  Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way.  It's up to you to use that independence to good effect.

The chapter entitled "When Should You Act More Extroverted than You Really Are?" introduces us to Professor Brian Little, a lecturer and former Harvard professor whose enthusiastic and engaging talks would apparently belie his decidedly introverted nature.  You can find samples of his lectures online, although the ones I've found on YouTube, and even on his own blog,  are frustratingly incomplete.  According to Little's Free-Trait Theory, "we are born and culturally endowed with certain personality traits—introversion, for example—but we can and do act out of character in the service of "core personal projects."  Seems obvious to me, but it must not be, since it's a new field of psychology....  The story of his annual lectures at a military college near Montreal is too long to quote in full, but it's too funny to leave out altogether.  His first speech was a resounding success, but afterwards he was horrified when the was invited to join the top brass for lunch.

Little had to deliver another lecture that afternoon, and he knew that making small talk for an hour and a half would wipe him out.  He needed to recharge for his afternoon performance.  Thinking quickly, he announced that he had a passion for ship design and asked his hosts if he might instead take the opportunity of his visit to admire the boats passing by on the Richelieu River.

This dodge worked for years—until the college moved its campus away from the water.

Deprived of his cover story, Professor Little resorted to the only escape hatch he could find—the men's room.  After each lecture, he would race to the restroom and hide inside a stall.  One time, a military man spotted Little's shoes under the door and began a hearty conversation, so Little took to keeping his feet propped up on the bathroom walls, where they would be hidden from view.  (Taking shelter in bathrooms is a surprisingly common phenomenon, as you probably know if you're an introvert.) [Nursing mothers were finally able to come out of the restrooms; perhaps the introverts' day will come.]

Many introverts, like Professor Little, have learned to put on a persona of "pseudo-extroversion" in order to accomplish something important to them.  Such motivation is what enabled my very introverted parents to take leadership roles in the PTA when I was in school.  The critical difference between this and a harmful self-negation is attitude:  one person will tell himself, Ï'm doing this to advance work I care about deeply, and when the work is done I'll settle back into my true self," where the other is thinking, "The route to success is to be the sort of person I am not."  One "acts out of character for the sake of worthy tasks that temporarily require a different orientation," while the other "believes that there is something fundamentally wrong with who she is."

Perhaps the most important chapter is "The Communication Gap:  How to Talk to Members of the Opposite Type." This goes 'way beyond introversion and extroversion to explain how deeply divergent personalities can lead to disastrous communication problems—and how they might be avoided.  Expanding on this chapter should be Susan Cain's next book.

In one study, introverts and extroverts were asked to play either a competitive or a cooperative game.

The introverts assigned to the cooperative game rated all players—not just their competitors, but also their teammates—more positively than the introverts who played the competitive game.  The extroverts did just the opposite:  they rated all players more positively when they played the competitive version of the game.  These findings suggest something very important:  introverts like people they meet in friendly contexts; extroverts prefer those they compete with.

In another study, introverted stroke patients worked harder when given gentle, positive reinforcement, such as "Very nice, keep up the good work," but extroverts were more inspired by more aggressive talk, such as "You can do more than that!"

Much of the chapter is the story of Greg and Emily, a couple with extremely different approaches to conflict.

When Emily lowers her voice and flattens her affect during fights with Greg, she thinks she's being respectful by taking the trouble not to let her negative emotions show.  But Greg thinks she's checking out or, worse, that she doesn't give a damn.  Similarly, when Greg lets his anger fly, he assumes that Emily feels, as he does, that this is a healthy and honest expression of their deeply committed relationship.  But to Emily, it's as if Greg has suddenly turned on her.

John, an introvert I interviewed who has a great relationship with his fiery wife, describes how he learned to [remind himself that she's not really as aggressive as she seems]:

When Jennifer's after me about something, she's really after me.  If I went to bed without tidying the kitchen, the next morning she'll shout at me, "This kitchen is filthy!" I come in and look around the kitchen.  There are three or four cups out; it's not filthy.  But the drama with which she imbues such moments is natural to her.  That's her way of saying, Gee, when you get a chance I'd appreciate it if you could just tidy up the kitchen a little more.  If she did say it that way to me, I would say, I'd be happy to, and I'm sorry that I didn't do it sooner.  But because she comes at me with that two-hundred-mile-per-hour freight train energy, I want to bridle and say, Too bad.  The reaons I don't is because we've been married for twenty-five years, and I've come to understand that Jennifer didn't put me in a life-threatening situation when she spoke that way.

So what's John's secret for relating to his forceful wife?  He lets her know that her words are unacceptable, but he also tries to listen to their meaning.

The most astonishing revelation to me was that the very definitions of "rude" and "caring" can differ so much between individuals living in the same era and place.  It is one thing to realize, for example, that there are differences in negotiation style between the Chinese and the Israelis (explained in the book), and quite another to accept that when someone you love is slapping you in the face he really believes he's expressing loving concern, and when you think you're being polite he interprets that as indifference.

And yet, it brings to mind my own relationship with my mother-in-law.  It was cordial all along, but we only became friends near the end of her life, when I finally took a stand and stood up to her.  Could it be that what I considered respectful behavior she saw as rejection?

Truly only love and the grace of God can save us bizarre mortals!

I remember when Google was the new kid on the block, and I deliberately chose to use it as my primary search engine, simply because Google was the underdog.  (Does anyone else remember AltaVista?)  Well, no more.  Now, I'd gladly eschew Google simply because the company is so powerful.  But I can't.

Because Google is the best.  Hands down.  (Bing's not bad, but there's no point in avoiding one big company just to support another.)

When my husband has a question about one of his company's products, and searches the official company sites, sometimes we'll race:  Usually I can find more information, faster, through Google.  More and more often, if I need help on an issue I'm having with a particular piece of hardware or software, I skip the product's manual and official "help" feature and go straight to Google—because it does a better job.

Today we wanted the address of a friend from a previous church.  We had been told that there was a directory online, but after a frustrating, fruitless time on their website, I resorted to Google, which quickly led me to the needed information.

It's not a comfortable situation, being so dependent on one, powerful company, be it Microsoft or no-longer-the-underdog Google.  Mac and Linux users are a vocal and proud "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers" against Microsoft, but who provides a similar challenge to Google?

We need a paradigm shift, if only to provide some competition.

I have so many things to write about, but am feeling a time crunch at the moment.  Just so you know I haven't forgotten you altogether, you get someone else's comments on homeschooling, in the form of a First Things article by Sally Thomas.  (H/T Conversion Diary).  Warning:  it may be a little intimidating if you happen to be feeling a bit insecure about your own homeschooling days.  But it's worth reading for the inspiration.

In recent years, as homeschooling has moved closer to the mainstream, much has been said about the successes of homeschooled children, especially regarding their statistically superior performance on standardized tests and the attractiveness of their transcripts and portfolios to college-admissions boards. Less, I think, has been said about how and why these successes happen. The fact is that homeschooling is an efficient way to teach and learn. It's time-effective, in that a homeschooled child, working independently or one-on-one with a parent or an older sibling, can get through more work or master a concept more quickly than a child who's one of twenty-five in a classroom.

To my mind, however, homeschooling's greatest efficiency lies in its capacity for a rightly ordered life. A child in school almost inevitably has a separate existence, a “school life,” that too easily weakens parental authority and values and that also encourages an artificial boundary between learning and everything else. Children come home exhausted from a day at school—and for a child with working parents, that day can be twelve hours long—and the last thing they want is to pick up a book or have a conversation. Television and video games demand relatively little, and they seem a blessed departure from what the children have been doing all day.

At home we can do what's nearly impossible in a school setting: We can weave learning into the fabric of our family life, so that the lines between “learning” and “everything else” have largely ceased to exist. The older children do a daily schedule of what I call sit-down work: math lessons, English and foreign-language exercises, and readings for history and science. The nine-year-old does roughly two hours of sit-down work a day, while the twelve-year-old spends three to four hours. But those hours hardly constitute the sum total of their education.

[W]hat looks like not that much on the daily surface of things proves in the living to be something greater than the schedule on the page suggests, a life in which English and math and science and history, contemplation and discussion and action, faith and learning, are not compartmentalized entities but elements in an integrated whole.

I've been experimenting with Memrise for several days—long enough to conclude it merits a mention.

Memrise is a vocabulary review system that specializes in languages, of which there are an incredible number, from French to Quechua to Klingon!  (Alas, no Swiss German, no doubt hampered by the lack of an official written form.)  There are other subjects, as well, but not many yet, and they are not well developed.  The Periodic Table course, for example, would do better not reversing the "o" and the "u" in fluorine, and settling on either of the two acceptable spellings of the element Al, instead of compromising with "Alumnium."  (Or is that a new element, named after all college graduates?)

I'm loving the Introductory German!  My favorite language course is still Pimsleur, which along with Hippo gets the correct sound and feel of the language and its structure into my brain.  But I also need a way to build up vocabulary, and Memrise is the best I've found so far.  The vehicle is a simple "garden" system:  new words are seeds, and through practice you sprout them, help them grow, "harvest" (more like transplant) them to long-term memory, and water them to keep them healthy.  E-mail reminders bring you back to your "garden" at varying intervals—short for recently-learned words, longer for ones you know better—so you don't lose what you've learned.

It's easy to use and kind of fun.  I find that I'm picking up vocabulary pretty well so far, though I do wonder who decided which words to introduce first.  I mean, die Bundesrepublik?  "Federal Republic" is not exactly a term I use every day.  Or how about der Mülleimer?  Dustbin?  Dustbin?  Dustbins are things people in the English novels I love to read are always "tipping" things into, but I'm sure I've used the term fewer times than Federal Republic.  And is blöd (stupid) really an essential vocabulary word?  Still, in addition to these oddities there are more useful terms, such as das Haus (house), vielleicht (maybe), and der Name (name).  And I've finally caught the difference between der Staat (state) and die Stadt (city).

Unfortunately, I can't make the audio work in Firefox, and so must use IE or Chrome if I want to hear the words pronounced.  That's something I find very valuable, not only for understanding and speaking, but because having heard the sound of a noun I'm much more likely to be able to remember whether it's die, der, or das, something I always have trouble with.  I'm beginning to think of the article and the word as one entity, which of course will get me into trouble when I have to worry about inflection, but I'll climb that hill when I get to it.

It's also German German, and so uses the Eszett instead of the Swiss double "s."  However, it accepts the double "s" when I have to type in an answer, so I'm fine with it.  Letters with an umlaut are easy to enter, via either a mouse click or the Windows U.S. International keyboard (which I prefer because it is faster).

Here's hoping I manage to stick with the program, and not lose everything when I go on vacation....

So, the CDC wants all of the "baby boom" generation tested for hepatitis C, in a move reminiscent of school teachers who punish the whole class for the misbehavior of the few.  I was planning on simply refusing the test, should our doctor suggest it, but now I have a better answer.

The Big Red Bus was at our church today, so we hopped on and donated, after the Eucharist.  (Blood in, blood out.)  As it happens, testing for hepatitis C is part of the "mini-physical" you get when you donate blood.  Now if the doctor asks, I can say, "been there, done that."  Several times over, as a matter of fact.

Study finds coffee-drinkers live longer

The bad news?  Lots of cream and sugar could negate the effect.

The good news?  Enjoy your coffee guilt-free.  At least the coffee helps negate the effect of the cream and sugar.  :)  And remember, stress and guilt are bad for you, too!

Florida gets all too much press for crazy happenings, so it's about time another state took the spotlight.  Was it another school shooting that put Cascade High School in Hendricks County, Indiana, in the headlines?  Nope.  The newsworthy offense was a senior prank involving the deadly ... Post-It note!  (H/T Free-Range Kids)  Actually, the offense was on the part of the school administrators, who so far have suspended over 50 students, either for participating in the prank or for protesting the school's draconian response.

For years, MIT and Caltech have known that inventive, harmless pranks are a sign of an intelligent, creative student body.  I think we can guess what schools the administrators did NOT graduate from—though maybe the helpful janitor (Frazz?) did. 

Until Janet wrote a post that tops everything, this celebration of mothers from Lenore Skenazy was my favorite Mother's Day article.  It's still great.  I present some excerpts, with love, for all of my favorite mothers.

Time out from America’s favorite spectator sport: Mommy bashing. Mommies who “ignore” their kids. Mommies who “smother” their kids. Mommies who do what mommies have done since the beginning of time—their gosh-darn best. And yet, according to some onlooker somewhere (often one with air time to fill), that’s just not good enough.

We worry that one false move—a harsh word, a broken promise, perhaps a non-Paul Newman sandwich cookie—could cause a lifetime of pain. This worry is reinforced by a tsunami of parenting “resources” telling moms how to do everything just right: the right books, words, classes. I’ve seen whole articles on which sand toys to buy.  The corollary is blame:  If moms don’t do all those things (and spend all that time and waste all that money), their kids will be losers. And it’s all their fault.

That message is why mothers are getting the short end of the rattle. It’s a message that says there’s some secret recipe for raising great kids and anyone not following the recipe is doing it WRONG.

But you know what? Most moms, whether working or not, breastfeeding or not, are doing a great job. They hug their children. They kiss the boo-boo, they get the kids fed. And if it’s a Hot Pocket instead of broccoli rabe…so what?

There ISN’T a secret recipe for childrearing, there’s only the basic ingredient: Love. Most moms have it in spades. It’s who they are. So don’t keep telling them what they’re doing wrong.

Thank them for getting the biggest thing right.

Luke's Story by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (Putnam Praise, 2009)

Luke's Story, the second book of LaHaye and Jenkins' Jesus Chronicles, uses the Bible, extra-biblical sources, and a lot of imagination to tell a reasonably credible story about the author of the Gospel of Luke.  I found it more interesting than Mark's Story, though it suffers from many of the same defects.  It's still seems like cheating that the authors get so much of their word count by lifting passages straight from the Bible, and their denominational slant is annoying.  Worse, it lacks a first-century feel.  I'm not sure I'd recognize an authentic setting, but I know the characters are spouting modern language, theology, and attitudes.  Somehow I doubt that first-century worship looked quite so much like a modern American Baptist service....

However, there's more "story" to this book than there was to Mark's Story, which made it more enjoyable to read.

It was almost an idyllic scene:  Three adults, eight children—four boys, four girls, ages 9, 8, 7, 5, 3, 3, 14 months, and 6 months—and one playground all to ourselves.

Well, almost all to ourselves.  As the children happily ran back and forth across the grounds, it was more than a little annoying to remind them to watch out for the maintenance cart that came back again and again to ... to what?

The first time, the driver was apparently cleaning up branches from a recent storm, though he spent most of his time making worried comments about the exuberantly-climbing 14-month-old and glaring at the three adults who clearly weren't doing their duty in keeping her off the dangerous equipment.  "There's an open space up there she could fall through, you know!"  Yep, she could have fallen, I suppose, but she's part monkey, part mountain goat, and part bulldozer, so none of us saw any reason to spoil her fun.  "Open space" or not, this playground is as safe as it can get without being of no use at all.  Since the days when our children played there, we've lost the merry-go-round, the high, curly slide, and a lot of climbing equipment that was far more interesting ("dangerous") than that which replaced it.

The boys had ridden their scooters into the park, and dropped them right on the sidewalk as they ran off to play on the equipment.  We'd left the scooters where they lay, because no one else was in the park to be bothered by them.  When the maintenance cart came by, I quickly moved them out of his way.  "Do you know whose scooters those are?"  "Yes; they're ours."  "Riding scooters in the park is forbidden."  "Okay, I'll let the kids know."  We meekly obeyed, though I can't imagine why he found it necessary to enforce the rule.  Did I mention we were the only ones in the park?

Finally, the man drove away.  But like the famous cat, he kept coming back.  Driving slowly through the park, peering suspiciously at the children's antics, then leaving, only to repeat the process a few minutes later.  In other circumstances I would have been tempted to call the police!  But I'm sure he only meant well, and just wanted to be available when one of the frolicking youngsters suffered an injury, since the adults were clearly irresponsible, chatting away among themselves while the children chased each other up and down and all around.

Everyone had a wonderful time—except possibly the maintenance man, and who knows? maybe he was satisfied in a perverse sort of way for having prevented a scraped-knee scooter injury.  But the experience did leave me slightly disturbed.

Reading the Free-Range Kids blog, I've heard plenty of stories of how schools, governments, playgrounds, social service agencies, and other institutions have joined "helicopter" parents in a culture of fear that deprives today's children of the opportunities they need to develop into strong, competent, independent adults.  But this was my first personal experience with the phenomenon, and it was somewhat of a shock.

The materials:  We bought a couple of posts and a second hammer, but the rest of the materials were scrounged or donated by neighbors.

The labor force:  Jonathan, Noah, Faith, and Dad-o.

The experience:  Priceless.

Video tour of the fort.  Even Faith can climb up the ladder to the top, though she hasn't tried the Jump Line yet.

No, We Can't:  Radical Islam, Militant Secularism, and the Myth of Coexistence by Robert Stearns (Chosen, 2011)

I received this book for review under false pretenses, but it was my fault entirely.  This was the blurb that caught my eye:

The world is shifting, and a war for world domination is raging between radical Islam, militant secularism and Judeo-Christianity. But what does it mean for you—and why should you care?  With clarity and astonishing depth, Robert Stearns lays out the dire ramifications of this coming culture clash for Christians. Based on years of global outreach, he shows what believers can and must do. The tipping point in global culture is upon us. What role will you play?

Normally, words like "a war for world domination" wouldn't encourage me to pick up a book.  But I thought this would be a word from the trenches, from one known for his care for the poor, the downtrodden, and the marginalized all over the world.  I was eager to hear about "radical Islam" from one whose organization has experienced tragedy at the hands of the Taliban, yet continues to provide humanitarian aid to "all people, regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, or gender."  I was expecting "he shows what believers can and must do" to focus on the need for more church involvement in fighting the causes of poverty and injustice worldwide.  I was hoping to hear about World Vision International's experiences dealing with culture clashes, and was especially interested to hear the warnings of such a man about "dire ramifications of this coming culture clash."  I wanted to know what led such a man, who claims we have the knowledge and ability to end most extreme poverty if only we had the will, to write a book entitled, "No, We Can't."

My mistake was in not checking up on the author.  It turns out that the president of World Vision is Richard Stearns, while the author of this book is Robert Stearns.  As far as I know, they are not related, and they certainly have different perspectives.

Having agreed to review the book, however mistakenly, I was obligated to read it.  It's a pity that Robert Stearns' language is so strident and his logic sometimes shaky, because I think he has some good points; it's just too hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.

The author's basic premise:

[F]rom the stage of world history have arisen three primary houses of thought, three perspectives of the world, three cultural kingdoms that are currently contending for global ascendancy:  Radical Islam, Militant Secularism and the Judeo-Christian worldview.  They are not the only three houses in existence today, but as we survey the landscape of global affairs, we see that their pervasiveness is uncontestable, and their shaping influence beyond doubt.

The author's point of view:

[W]e can plainly see that the Judeo-Christian worldview is the best possible means of providing a platform of liberty for the human race.

I happen to agree with him in this, but his book fails to make this point convincingly.  Part of the problem lies in his over-broad classifications, e.g. viewing all Islam as Radical Islam, and treating "Judeo-Christianity" as one religion, instead of two, albeit with common roots and many important interlinkages.

The heads of state in Germany, France and the United Kingdom have each done an about-face on the subject of multiculturalism.  Just recently, these distinguished leaders have, one by one, publicly stated that their nations have erred in promoting segmented multiculturalism with their borders, particularly in light of the dangerous advancement of Radical Islam in Europe.  All three leaders pointed to the need to uphold their national identity and values among all who immigrate, so as to guard against the rise of these destructive patterns in their communities.

I sympathize with both Stearns and the heads of state he mentions, and grant that immigrants have a "when in Rome" obligation to respect their host culture.  But this swing of the pendulum is a two-edged sword, and has been used to persecute homeschoolers in Germany.

There are no easy answers, and Stearns is right that ignoring problems does not solve them.  An easy, "Why can't we all get along?" approach severely underestimates the differences in how different cultures view the world, and as Stearns points out, Westerners—and especially Americans—are peculiarly prone to assuming that deep down, everyone thinks like us.  Or that they will, as soon as they are sufficiently enlightened.

Hear what Dr. Taj Hargey, chairman of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford and imam of the Summertown Islamic Congregation had to say in an article entitled, What Has Britain Come To When It Takes a Muslim Like Me to Defend Christianity?  (My quote is from the book's excerpt (ellipses in the original), but you can read the entire article here.)

Christianity is under siege in this country:  Britain's national religion has never been so marginalized and derided, especially by the public institutions that should be defending it. ... [A] new form of virulent secularism is sweeping through society—and its target is Christianity. ... It is no coincidence that as Christianity is repeatedly attacked, so the social fabric of Britain becomes increasingly frayed.  As we lose our strong moral compass, family breakdown and violent crime are at record levels, while our once famous sense of community spirit is evaporating.

No, We Can't may be a feel-good, inspirational book for those who already share Robert Stearns' philosophies, and it might be convincing for someone leaning significantly in his direction, but it's too alarmist to be a tool for drawing in the mainstream audience I think he's hoping for.  That's a pity, because some of his points are worth considering.

I still want to read the same book as written by Richard Stearns.