Lift Up Your Hearts!

My backblog has once again achieved unmanageable proportions, so it's time to bring back—ta da!—Casting the Net, in which I collect related—or unrelated—snippets of items that have caught my attention.  Today's post was inspired by a series of videos on math education in the U. S. sent to me by my sister-in-law.  (Um, back in March 2011; I told you I'm behind.)

First, Math Education:  An Inconvenient Truth, by M. J. McDermott, who is neither a teacher nor a mathematician, but with a degree in atmospheric sciences it's safe to say she has a pretty good grip on the kind of math elementary and secondary school students should be learning.  And she doesn't like what she sees being taught in schools today, in particular the approaches of Investigations in Number, Data, and Space (aka TERC) and Everyday Mathematics.  (duration 15:27)

Let me make two things clear up front:

1. I'd personally rather the government and other busybodies stay as much as possible out of ALL personal decisions, from health to education to the way we raise our children to the food we eat.  (Inform and educate, yes; regulate, no.)
2. Representative Akin's remarks about "legitimate rape" and pregnancy showed appalling ignorance, there's no doubt about that.

BUT it seems to me that we're always missing the main issue:  Rape doesn't change what abortion IS.  (Or is not.)  Either abortion following rape compounds one assault with another, so that there are two innocent victims of the crime instead of one, or it does not.  If it does not, then it makes not the slightest bit of difference whether the abortion is done on woman who has been raped or on a woman who simply does not want to be pregnant.  On the other hand, if abortion does double the number of victims, then even in the case of rape it is rightly an agonizing decision, and we need to help the woman through it, not somehow think to reassure her by insisting that because she was the victim of violence, the obvious right course of action is to inflict violence on another.

Did you ever wonder if some political ads might really have been created by the opposition?

It's not a typo, because the same mistake is also made—twice—in the text on the reverse.

Certainly one can be a successful, even brilliant, politician without a good grasp of spelling and grammar.  No one can be good at everything; the trick is to surround yourself with a good staff.  As far as I know, John Mica is reasonably good at his job.  I even voted for him at an early point in his career, before he was gerrymandered out of our district.  Now he's back, thanks to more district-line politics, and recently we received this mailing.  I haven't ruled out voting for him again, but I'll admit my confidence in his all-important staff has been significantly diminished.

Where are the writers—and proofreaders—of yesteryear?

Our generation has a problem with permanence.

By "our generation" I mean to cover a large age span:  whenever the seeds were planted, they had sprouted by the 1960's, blossomed during the 80's, and are in full fruit now.

For five quick examples, consider how many of the following are now considered unusual, even weird, and perhaps unhealthy?

• Commitment to one sexual partner, in marriage, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as you both shall live?
• Accepting a job with the intention of remaining loyal to the same company until retirement?
• Taking an employee into your company with the intent of nurturing his growth and supporting him through retirement?
• Joining a local church, determined to remain supportive and active through all the ups and downs, good times and bad, ins and outs, insults and annoyances?
• Living life in one house, one neighborhood, one community through multiple generations?

I could go on.  Although I think these changes signal a societal character defect of great import, I'll be the first to admit that there's a plus side to each of them.   In addition, they are only possible because of a freedom of choice that didn't exist in the past.  It's no great sign of admirable character to do a good thing when you have little opportunity to do otherwise.

However, I'm not here to analyze, bemoan, or extol any part of our commitment phobia.  My purpose is merely to ask one burning question:  In an age so fearful of permanence,

How does one explain the popularity ot tattoos?

My library copy of Quiet:  The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking looks to still be several weeks away, but if you have 19 minutes you can hear a TED talk by Susan Cain, the author.  (H/T DSTB)  I like that she acknowledges the value of both introverts and extroverts, and stresses the need to use the best talents of the entire spectrum in addressing the problems of today.

Quotes are too hard to pull from a talk, but here's a short one from the introduction, where she describes her first summer camp experience:

In my family, reading was the primary group activity. ... [F]or us it was just a different way of being social. You had the animal warmth of your family sitting right next to you, but you were also free to go roaming around the adventure land inside your own mind.  And I had this idea, that camp was gonna be just like this, but better.  I had a vision of ten girls sitting in a cabin, cosily reading books in their matching nightgowns....

The world lost a wonderful writer today, though at 98 you can hardly say she died young.  Dora Jessie Saint, aka Miss Read, was one of my favorite authors.  Her stories, almost all depicting English village life, were written between 1955 and 1996.  As you can imagine, there was a great deal of societal change over those years, and Miss Read did not ignore it, but demonstrated that good character and old-fashioned virtues never change.

Her stories are not exciting, they have little action and less plot.  Yet they are delightful, a refreshment to the soul, like a long walk through the countryside with spring all around, or a cool breeze through a garden on a warm summer day.

Miss Read has been described as the Jan Karon of England.  I enjoyed reading the Mitford books, but that comparison is wrong on so many levels.  Not only do Fairacre and Thrush Green predate Mitford by decades, but as a writer Miss Read is immeasurably the superior.

(H/T to DSTB for the news.)

... and also why it's great to be attending a church close to home.

Sunday:  Palm/Passion Sunday Service

Tuesday:  Stations of the Cross

Wednesday:  Tennebrae Service

Thursday:  Maundy Thursday Service, Agape Meal, Stripping of the Altar, Prayer Vigil

Friday:  Good Friday Liturgy

Saturday:  Easter Vigil, Baptisms, Kindling of New Fire, joyous ringing of bells, First Eucharist of Easter

Sunday:  Easter Sunday (singing Rutter, Vivaldi, Handel, and much, much more!)

And these are only the services we attended/plan to attend; I've left out quite a few.

30 Reasons Why You Light Up Our Lives
(It was hard to stop!)

1. From early childhood you have loved God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”
2. You were the sunniest, most joyfully enthusiastic preschooler I’ve ever known, full of smiles and laughter.
3. Your positive, happy attitude is, and always has been, quickly turned to wrath in the presence of perceived injustice, to others at least as much as to yourself.
4. You love your family intensely, all generations and collateral branches, and work sacrificially to promote family relationships.
5. All your life you have maintained a close, loving, and respectful relationship with your parents.
6. You were a totally delightful, respectful teenager, growing more and more independent without ever rejecting your parents and their values in any important way.
7. You have always found learning to be the “best game of all,” whether begging for math lessons as a preschooler, crafting your own educational program as a teen, or reading and researching voraciously as an adult.
8. You developed the most important skill needed to fuel a lifetime of learning (also useful for excelling in ordinary academic life):  the ability—and desire—to teach yourself using whatever materials are available, from textbooks to teachers to life experiences.
9. Your favorite mode of education has been what you call “learning to swim by drowning”—throwing yourself into a new situation, a new instrument, a new language, a new country; putting yourself in a situation where the alternative to learning is failure.
10. Your razor-sharp intellect and grasp of logic can be counted on to ferret out faulty or slip-shod reasoning.
11. Likewise, you readily admit when you are wrong, if presented with a clear, rational argument.
12. You are always asking thoughtful, important questions. (And always have, much to the annoyance of certain Sunday school teachers.)
13. Unlike most of us (your parents being chief offenders), you can never settle for plugging numbers into a formula or regurgitating the answer expected by a teacher, but with a dogged determination you wrestle with your studies until you truly understand the material.
14. Equally determined in your relationships, you will not gloss over problems, but wrestle with yourself and others to understand and resolve difficulties.
15. You are a very creative thinker; being self-taught in so many ways has made thinking outside the box second nature.
16. You also live outside the box:  You have become the "granola mom" I never knew I always wanted to be.
17. You never conform for the sake of conforming, following the crowd only if convinced by the evidence that the crowd is right, and  unhesitatingly taking the road less travelled if the evidence points in that direction.
18. And you are happy to blaze a new trail cross-country if there is no road at all!
19. Your sense of adventure and love of new experiences have taken your from an (unauthorized) solo exploration of the docks of Key Largo at age three, to travelling through Italy on your own, to spending a year in Japan teaching English to high school students, to graduate school (and eventually a home) in Switzerland.
20. You are a talented, skilled, and highly-trained musician who demonstrates with your life that music comes alive when it is made with and/or for others.
    
21. You waited patiently until God revealed the right man to be your husband and the father of your children;  you love him intensely, respect him enormously, and delight in being the “helper suitable for him.”
22. You have made your home into a place of hospitality, welcome, grace, beauty, joy, and peace (even though your lovely and lively children ensure that nothing is ever too peaceful for too long).
23. You are a loving, giving, thoughtful, disciplined, and inventive mother.
24. You have proven that you have the nerve and determination to push through physical and emotional pain for the sake of those you love and what you believe is right.
    
25. You are a great teacher, with a demonstrated ability—rare in someone for whom understanding often comes quickly and easily—to see a problem from the student’s point of view, whether helping kindergarten students as a third-grader, tutoring high school students, inspiring Japanese students to enjoy the English language, coaxing enthusiasm out of young piano students, showing your mother the virtues of a “tickler” system, or feeding your own children’s “happy hunger” for learning.
26. You have a good eye for seeing work that needs to be done, and a good will for jumping in and doing it.
27. You are honest and trustworthy in word and in deed.
28.  You are careful and wise in financial matters.
29.  At the same time, you are generous and giving:  of your money, your time, and your emotional energy.
30. Your heart’s desire is to become more and more like Christ each day, and to demonstrate his love in all you say and do.

What more could parents desire?

Happy Birthday!

With lots and lots of love,
Mom & Dad

This morning's news brought two articles that illustrate the truth that our world is never as simple as we want to make it.

Sickening Tea?  I've read and reviewed Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools, and believe his Central Asia Institute (CAI) is doing wonderful work, promoting "peace through education."  The Montana Attorney General's office agrees, even while concluding, after a year-long investigation, that Mortenson "mismanaged [CAI] and personally profited from it."  He has been ordered to repay $1 million in mis-spent funds to the charity.  (H/T DdR)

This is not the only organization I know where the founder and leader enjoys luxurious living while taking donations from those who can least afford to give.  I absolutely don't believe such people should live in poverty themselves—one of my most-quoted Bible verses is Deuteronomy 25:4, You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.  But I think those who work for non-profit organizations, especially charities, and whose living is supported by the sacrificial donations of others, have a special responsibility to live moderately.

The larger fault lies with our star-struck, personality-worshipping society, however.  We breed such problems.  Porter once spent a summer in Bangladesh, back when merely being white automatically sent you to the front of a line.  In fact, that was his chief duty while working for a charitable organization there:  to accompany the Bengali workers on their errands, thereby ensuring that they could purchase bags of cement, for example, before the supply ran out.  It does not take many such occasions of deference, he reported, to begin to take them for granted, and to believe, even against your will, that you somehow deserve them.  How much harder must be the temptation for big-name personalities to absorb the idea that they deserve, or even require, special treatment, and luxuries inappropriate to their calling?

Human nature longs for heroes to worship.  But doing something great does not mean a person is great.  We can do much good without being truly good.  Which is a very good thing indeed, because even the best of us are frail, fallen humans.  Mortenson's sins do not make the work of the Central Asia Institute any less valuable, though they do clearly underscore the critical importance of financial safeguards and accountability.

Helpful Pollution?  As one who remembers filthy rivers—that sometimes caught fire!—and the choking, sickening smell of toxic smog, I'm the first to hail the dramatic reduction in industrial pollution that has been accomplished in my lifetime.  However, a recent study of the effects of aerosol pollutants on clouds indicates that the climate equation is—surprise!—a bit more complex than we want to believe.

"When industrial pollution peaked over the Atlantic, this effect played a big role in cooling the ocean beneath," Paul Halloran, a study co-author and ocean scientist with the British government's Met Office weather service, said in a statement accompanying the study. "As pollution was cleaned up—for example after the clean air legislation of the '90s —the seas warmed."

It turns out more aerosols make clouds brighter and longer lasting, thus reflecting sunlight back up and cooling seas. Less do the opposite, warming seas.

Among the consequences of a warmer Atlantic?  The end of our 40-year respite from intense hurricane activity.

Not, of course, that increasing pollution is the answer.  According to Ben Booth, the study's co-author,

"While cool phases correspond to periods with lower hurricane activity in the North Atlantic, "they are also linked with widespread persistent African drought (1970s and 1980s)—with all the associated food and mortality related impacts."

The moral?  If a situation appears simple, clear, and easy to analyze, we're probably missing something important.

Given that the events occurred not far from home, yet have become international news, I'll say a few words about the Trayvon Martin case.  Not many (by my standards), because, frankly, no one knows enough to say anything definitive, though that's not stopping everyone and his sisters and his cousins and his aunts from speaking out.

I won't say, "it's not about race," because it may very well have been—who knows what was going on in the mind of George Zimmerman.  Or Trayvon Martin, for that matter.  But from where I sit, it's about a lot more than race.  "Walking while black" was only one of three strikes against him, though it may have been the fatal one.  He was also walking while male, and walking while young.

I've written before of the frightening, and abusive, encounter that a young friend had with the police, a young man whose only "crime" was biking while young, and male, and (legitimately) in his own neighborhood at a time when the deputy thought he should have been sitting in a school classroom.  Certainly it was wrong of Zimmerman to consider Martin to be suspicious based on race, if those were indeed his thoughts, but it is equally wrong to suspect someone of ill intent based on sex or age, and I believe that happens frequently, insidiously, under the public radar, and without going viral on social media.

In Travon Martin's case—as in O.J. Simpson's, and Casey Anthony's—it's the public uproar that has me the most concerned, however.  We the People believe we know better than those who have seen the evidence and heard the arguments, and want "justice" done without any respect for or patience with the due process guaranteed every one of us.  Yes, the system sometimes fails, sometimes makes mistakes; I've seen it fail our own family.  But vigilante "justice" is a terrifying prospect.  Remember A Man for All Seasons?

What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? ... And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide ... the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast ... and if you cut them down—and you're just the man to do it—do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

Without implying comment one way or another on the Second Amendment issue, I'll end with a quotation from Robert Heinlein's science fiction book, Tunnel in the Sky, in which a seasoned military officer expounds on the dangers of guns in the hands of the untrained:

One time in a hundred a gun might save your life; the other ninety-nine it will just tempt you into folly. ... I know how good a gun feels.  It makes you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, three meters tall and covered with hair.  You're ready for anything and kind of hoping you'll find it.  Which is exactly what is dangerous about it.

Such folly took away Trayvon Martin's life, and destroyed George Zimmerman's.  There's a reason police officers receive intensive training—and even so they occasionally make fatal mistakes when threatened.  That our young friend was merely abused, rather than shot, may have had less to do with his not being black than with being accosted by a real sheriff's deputy rather than a wannabe.

We are the Folk Song Army
Everyone of us cares.
We all hate poverty, war and injustice,
Unlike the rest of you squares.
(Tom Lehrer, 1965 or earlier)

With all the publicity given to the Kony 2012 social media campaign, this looks like a good time to bring back Tom Lehrer's wonderful Folk Song Army. (Brief, mild, visual grandchild warning at the very beginning.)

Seriously, there is good reason to worry that this popular campaign will do more harm than good.  As this Guardian article explains,

There is no question that the LRA has been one of the most horrifying armed forces in the past half century. But while the video urges spreading the word, signing a pledge, buying an action kit of Kony 2012 bracelets and posters, and of course donating to [advocacy group] Invisible Children, it's hard to understand how this will aid the current slow chase of Kony and his forces through some of the most intractable terrain in the world.

US military advisers have been helping the Ugandan army track the LRA since October, and Invisible Children wants to keep pressure on the US to maintain or improve that assistance. But as there has not been a whisper of possibly withdrawing this support, raising it as the reason for urgency seems slightly odd.

...

The arc of the video tells you that before, no one cared but, thanks to technology and Invisible Children, everyone can now take the necessary action to earn Kony the infamy and arrest or death he deserves.

But since Invisible Children as an organisation began with a few north Americans stumbling into a conflict they didn't know existed and then resolving to help the child victims by making a movie, the base level of great white saviourdom is already high. Implying that finally now, by getting the word out about Kony via celebrities, bracelets and social media, can the LRA be ended plays into this narrative of white rescuers coming to help poor Africans and totally ignores the efforts, good and bad, by Ugandans to fight the LRA for 25 years. I belong to a discussion group of hundreds of Ugandan journalists, and so far only one has been willing to stand up and say this campaign is a good thing (and mainly because it might help more people find Uganda on a map). Nearly everyone else finds Kony 2012 self-aggrandising, patronising and oversimplified.

Remember the war against Franco,
That's the kind where each of us belongs.
Though he may have won all the battles,
We had all the good songs!

So join in the Folk Song Army,
Guitars are the weapons we bring
To the fight against poverty, war, and injustice.
Ready, aim, sing!

The following headlines were presented as the top three on my Orlando Sentinel news feed this morning:

Transgender woman denied drinks during  ladies night

Florida suspect accused of eating brain due in court

Mom accused of strangling 2-year-old with bra returns to court

The Sentinel is a mainstream, respected newspaper, with several Pulitzer prizes to its credit.  Apparently, supermarket tabloid fare has become the new normal.

Which is worse, losing your technical edge, or losing your technical edge and pretending you didn't?

When I was young, "Made in Japan" implied useless, cheap, junky.  I'm thrilled that it now means quite the opposite.  Excellence is a good thing, and I see no reason to mourn when other countries compete at our level or even best us in some areas.  A little competition keeps us on our toes.

But why does it take innovations from Japan so long to cross the Pacific?

When Janet lived and worked in Japan for a year, she noted that home computers were much less common than in America.  I was surprised this was the case for such an advanced nation, but then again, most people don't have clothes dryers there, either.  What did surprise me was to learn that in this Japan was not behind America, but ahead.  Most Japanese did not need personal computers because they did nearly everything they wanted to on their mobile phones.  They accessed the Internet; they paid their bills; they read and composed their e-mails.  This was in 2005, years before smartphones took America by storm.

Then there were the toilets.  Ever since we visited Janet in Japan I have been wondering why Home Depot doesn't sell Japanese toilets.  Now, finally, the National Association of Home Builders includes one in this years showcase home.  But why does this review from the Orlando Sentinel pretend it's a new, American invention?

I cannot get the toilet in the master bath out of my mind. Kohler clearly has some smart woman on its design team, because, ladies, this commode is for you.

At the touch of a wall-mounted LED pad that looks like an iPhone, you can auto-magically raise and lower the lid without touching it. That right there is better than a European vacation. And you can heat the seat (men, you will never understand), and play music. Not only that, this smart piece of plumbing sprays, dries and has adjustable flushing. From what I can tell, this toilet of tomorrow does everything but send a urine sample to the lab.

I"m glad American companies are catching on.  But what took them so long?  And why do we pretend things are new and amazing when they've been around elsewhere for years?

Still famous after all these years.  Check out the news about the light a copy sheds on da Vinci's masterpiece.  (Just a quick post for those interested in art.  Those interested in Joseph & Vivienne updates will have to wait, sorry.)  (Thanks, Aunt Karen.)

We interrupt the Life with Joseph series to bring you this very important post from the Occasional CEO:  Lowell on the Yangtze.

Whenever I read about the Industrial Revolution—or watch a movie like How Green Was My Valley, I can't help thinking that it could have been done better.  Couldn't we have had automation and factories without all that dislocation, degradation and filth?

Of course we could have.  Raping the landscape, tearing families apart, and keeping workers in virtual slavery are not essential to production—if businesses are willing to take a little less profit, and consumers to pay a little more for the product.  But that's not how it happened. (More)