Lift Up Your Hearts!

There's a reason the Oxford University Press had to include "common sense" in its new Junior Dictionary.  In 2003, a construction worker, egged on by his boss and co-workers, dived into a shallow river.  The not unsurprising result?  He broke his neck.  Now he is paralyzed, his mother cares for him full time, and the company he worked for is bankrupt.  A tragedy all around.

Another, less heart-rending but no less serious tragedy is the further erosion of the notion of personal responsibility for our actions.  In 2007 a judge ruled that the company was negligent, and this week a jury decided that the man

should receive $1.5 million for past medical expenses, $89,000 for lost earnings, $21.7 million for future medical expenses, $583,000 for loss of future earnings, and a whopping $52.8 million for pain and suffering.

He's not likely to collect, since apparently there is no one with deep pockets to bleed for the man's stupidity and that of his foolish coworkers.  For the jury's stupidity we will all suffer.

Rather than hijacking Heather's post, I'll ask my question here.

The pay toilet has long since disappeared from American public life, but is still common on Europe, a fact which often strikes visiting Americans as barbarous.  I feel similarly about paying high prices to drink water in European restaurants.  Other surprises I have found in my travels—for these are first-world, modern, and wealthy countries—is home refrigerators the size of those in U. S. college dorms (and no separate freezers), severely restricted laundry hours in apartments (sometimes as infrequently as once every two weeks), and the scarcity of clothes dryers.

There are, of course, many more things I've found delightful in all the countries we've visited, but the question of this post is:  What do visitors to the United States find barbarous or bizarre here, that we accept without a second thought?  To some friends visiting from Brazil it was being required to stop at red traffic lights even when there was no visible cross traffic.  To others I'm sure it's the lack of clean and convenient public transportation.  The Swiss must be shocked at the unreliability of schedules here.

What can you add to the list, dear foreign readers and those who have friends from other countries?

What do you expect to find in a public library?  I would like—though no longer expect—to find a large selection of old, unusual, and out-of-print books, music, and videos, the kind I am unable to buy from Amazon or borrow from Netflix.  Shouldn't that be a basic purpose of libraries:  to be a treasure store of valuable materials outside of whatever happens to be popular at the moment, especially those not otherwise easily obtainable?  Unfortunately, most libraries seem to be divesting themselves of these materials in order to make more room for the the latest favorites.  To be sure, this is also a function of libraries, and I appreciate being able to borrow a book when all I want to do is read it; I prefer stocking our own bookshelves with materials I already know are worthwhile.  (One casualty of the libraries' jettisoning old books is that our shelves are overflowing; I can no longer prune our collection of lesser books on the grounds that I can always borrow them from the library if needed.)  Most libraries, I believe, are out of balance in the way they address both functions, and our culture is suffering for it.

Thanks to my sister-in-law, who should have her own blog because she and my brother send me interesting ideas much faster than I can write about them, and to the Percival Blakeney Academy blog, I now know that this phenomenon is not limited to libraries, but has had a major impact on the Oxford University Press Junior Dictionary. (More)

It doesn't really matter that Barack Obama was not my candidate of choice (see my election series, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 for some of the reasons why); as a friend said, "I didn't vote for him, but I hope he's the best president ever."  What boggles my mind is the adulation, ethusiasm, and outright joy that Inauguration Day 2009 brings—it's not all media hype.  I can't imagine any presidential inauguration inspiring that kind of joy in me.  At best I usually manage feelings of relief that the worst candidate did not win.  But perhaps that's just a character flaw:  I find it hard to get that enthusiastic about anything.  We recently returned from our daughter's fabulous wedding to a wonderful man, and though I am pleased and enthusiastic and joyful, even for that event I can't imagine participating in the kind of jubliant demonstration associated with Obama's inauguration.  Be that as it may, I truly wish our new president the best, and pray for him, because he will need it.

And yet my primary commentary on this Inauguration Day is a thank you to outgoing President Bush.  History alone will tell,  but as far as I can see the evidence so far pronounces George W. Bush a good man but an unfortunate and often unwise president, the same judgment I gave to Jimmy Carter.  Nonetheless, he had his successes, and a very important one was highlighted by yesterday's Mallard Fillmore.

I've noticed a disturbing trend in recent writings condemning individualism and independence, from the oft-quoted "It takes a village to raise a child" (best response to date: "I've seen the village, and I don't want it raising my children") to several of the essays on Patrick Deneen's excellent blog, What I Saw in America, to the many Christian writers who are taking pains to distance their religion from currently unpopular, Western—and particularly American—ideas.  Collectivism is in.

Some of this is a much-needed correction.  Basic human sinfulness (there is no better word for the phenomenon) has bent a respect for the rights and responsibilities of every human being into an excuse for me-first, me-only, me-now self-indulgence that has torn apart community on every level, and especially in our families.  Individual rights without individual responsibility is not a workable equation, and the fault must be addressed. (More)

From Conversion Diary:

Want to get to get things done like never before? Try writing a book.

I guarantee you, every time you sit down and see the blank screen with the blinking cursor, you will suddenly feel an urgent need to clean the baseboards, get those crumbs off the kitchen floor, de-lint the couch, Windex the skylight, clean the gutters, do your taxes and mop the garage. If you can swing a contract that puts even more pressure on you to write something good and thus brings out writer's block in its worst form, you can count on having your to-do list cleared off in about a week.

So that's why I accomplish the most whenever something else urgently needs to be done.  I find it especially true when leaving on a trip.  Suddenly all the items that languished contentedly on my to do list for weeks demand to be addressed before I leave, even though they're much less important than, say, packing my suitcase.

A couple more quick takes, as I dig through the backlog.

Think Your Kid's Gifted?  You're Probably Wrong, from Geek Dad.  An unfortunate title, as is the similar title of the article on which he is commenting; I would have said instead, "You're Probably Right."  At long last parents are beginning to realize that children are not mindless lumps of clay, but are nearly all born brilliant.  (You doubt that?  Plunk yourself down in the middle of a foreign country and see how long it takes you to become fluent in the language.)  Finally people are realizing that what they do, or don't do, with their young chldren makes a difference, and that they need better opportunities than most of them get.  Why do some people feel it necessary to debunk the idea?  Probably because, being fallen humans, we tend to focus not on "my child is brilliant" but "my child is brighter than someone else's child."  Geek Dad catches the real issue, however. (More)

This was going to be another set of Casting the Net quick takes, but it got a bit long.

Theodore Dalrymple's The Roads to Serfdom (thanks to Random Observations) observes the effects of socialism on the character of the British people, a warning Americans would do well to heed. (More)

There must be several proverbs similar to this one, but being for the moment unable to find an example, I made one up.  This is a lesson God has apparently decided to teach me recently, given that several opportunities to explore it have appeared in quick succession.  No, not from literal enemies, but why create a proverb if you can't be a little hyperbolic? (More)

One reason I keep this blog is to share with others what I find in my meanderings: large or little, delightful or dreadful, whatever I think someone else might enjoy, learn from, or care about.  Having learned the hard way that providing full commentary for each subject is not the best use of my time, I'm trying a new tactic.  Instead of apologizing each time I can't give what I'd call a proper response to a book, issue, or article, my omission has become purposeful.  "Casting the Net" is the title I'm giving to short introductions to random items of interest to me—and maybe to you. (More)

Marie Winn, in The Plug-In Drug, tells us that it's not enough to substitute good television shows for bad, because the process of watching television has physical and psychological effects that are independent of content.  Andrew Pudewa makes the same point for music, in The Profound Effects of Music on Life.  Most of us are reluctant, for good reason, to believe that harm can be inherent in a particular technology, but take the view that good or evil is a matter of intent:  the question is whether the knife is in the hands of a surgeon, a chef, or a hit man.

The Chinese government, however, understands:

Amid post-Olympics shifts in China's attitude toward the West, the government decided that sacred music should disappear. "Quietly and without publicity, the Chinese authorities have let it be known that Western religious music should no longer be performed in concert halls. It's an unexpected decision, and one for which there is no obvious explanation or trigger," Catherine Sampson wrote in The Guardian. Even things that merely seem like Western sacred music—including Carl Orff's decidedly unsacred Carmina Burana—have been stopped.

Carmina Burana—the gateway drug.  :)

Patrick Deneen has a thoughtful meditiation on the Winter Solstice that is worth reading in its entirety.

Christianity was able to adapt aspects of these ancient practices, given that they were not contradictory to the way in which time was experienced in the life of the church. While there have been many claims that Christianity introduces a linear conception of time, the life of the Church is experienced in a circular fashion—from Advent to the birth of Christ, through the "Ordinary time" in which the words and deeds of Christ are recalled, into the Lenten season of penitence and fasting (during the deadest months of winter and just before the bursting of Spring), to the Triduum and the Easter celebration of resurrection and renewal (coinciding with the beginning of Spring, with all of its images and resonances of fertility), and again into "ordinary time" until the coming again of Advent. The Church's calendar was overlaid on these ancient practices, recognizing the coming and passing of seasons, of planetary motion and of the course of human birth, life, death, and (it was hoped) renewal.

Eric Schultz has done it again.  Never would I have thought a business writer could be so interesting.  Perhaps it's because he's also a genealogist.  :)  Yesterday's post, Leadership in the White Space, is about business, but along the way touches on astrophysics and music, with this idea for a mystery novel:  (More)

I'll admit it:  I've been an A.W.A.D. fan ever since my father signed me up for the daily e-mails over 10 years ago, and I often enjoy the quotations as much as the definitions.  On December 2, however, the quotation was a definition that should have made any dictionary fan cringe:

Democracy, to me, is liberty plus economic security. - Maury Maverick, attorney and congressman (1895-1954)

Huh?  As valuable as liberty and economic security may be, what on earth do they have to do with defining democracy?  If we are going to re-define words willy-nilly, language has no meaning.  It's the Humpty-Dumpty Effect. (More)

The Occasional CEO is on the short list of my enjoyable, regular blog-reading.  Today's offering, I Love the Swiss Watch, struck my funny bone, perhaps because it's a tad sensitive due to a few stresses and the stock market playing How Low Can You Go?

Did I say I'd take the Swiss trains ahead of a Swiss watch?  I really meant I'll take a Swiss son-in-law.  Practical and elegant.