Lift Up Your Hearts!

I think maybe I know why no one has commented on my new bookshelves.  They're currently located under "Welcome" in the side panel.  They are on my machine, anyway.  But I just discovered that not everyone can see them.  My question is, can anyone?

Years ago, when a friend recommended Airborne for staving off colds, I was skeptical, as I always am with such claims.  But after reading the ingredients and deciding they wouldn't hurt me (and I'm past the age of worrying that what I ingest will hurt someone else), I tried it.  And it worked.  Repeatedly.  The number and the severity of my upper respiratory tract infections were drastically reduced, even though I was travelling and visiting young children, two definite risk factors.  One year I had none at all.  Zero.  At the time, I exclaimed to all who would hear, "Maybe it really works, or maybe it's just the Placebo Effect.  I don't care.  I'm quite willing to pay a dollar a tablet for something that 'doesn't work' but so obviously improves my health."

The Federal Trade Commission disagrees, claiming there is no evidence for the efficacy of Airborne's products, and requiring the company to issue refunds for the price of up to six packages to those who request them.  That won't include me.  Not only am I not certain that $30 would be worth the paperwork involved, but more importantly, I don't see how I could in good conscience ask for a refund when the product worked.

Even Steven Gardner, director of litigation for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which was part of a class-action lawsuit against Airborne, admitted, ""It is pretty much impossible to prove that it didn't prevent a cold if you don't get a cold."  And that's the point.  Doctors, lawyers, and the government can worry about advertising claims and scientific proof of efficacy, but my concerns have a narrower focus: if I don't get a cold, that's good enough for me.

Speaking of the Placebo Effect, here's an interesting story on how it relates to exercise and fitness.

Okay, I'm being really lazy today and merely posting a link to someone else's post, but there are too many other things to attend to, and John C. Wright has another good one:  Albino Jesuit Assassins ... IN SPAAACE!  I mean, really...with a title like that....

Anyway, enjoy!  I have to get on with life.

When an article from my "to blog" backlog, a recent post from one of my blogging contacts, and an article from the most recent issue of a magazine I respect all converge, I can take that as a good suggestion for today's post.

Jennifer Fulwiler writes the Conversion Diary blog (formerly "Et Tu?"), which I've featured before (here, among other places).  This is her article in America.  John C. Wright is a science fiction writer.  It was his blog post that alerted me to the First Things article.  Read his introduction, but don't settle for his summary of the article.  Instead, read Mary Eberstadt's The Vindication of "Humanae Vitae" yourself.

This is bound to raise the blood pressure of a number of readers...but very thought-provoking.  I can testify from experience to the coercive pressures of the Malthusian movement.  It was the Global Warming of its time:  part valid concern, part bad science and worse economics, all hype and politics, but a nearly irresistable force.

Perhaps it will turn out to be no more than a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy to blame so many of the problems that now beset us on the great sea change half a century ago in societal attitudes toward the purpose, meaning, and regulation of sexual activity, fueled by the availability and use of contraceptive technologies. But it certainly bears investigating, for those who can bear the thought.

Whatever you think about John Edwards, he isn't stupid, and choosing to admit his adulterous affair while our attention was focused on the Olympic opening ceremonies was probably a smart move.

Russia isn't stupid, either.  They couldn't hope to invade another country without generating some controversy, but doing so while the eyes of much of the world and even more of the news media are on events in Beijing gives them a good chance of being ignored, at least long enough to accomplish their purposes.

Jim Balk was my World Cultures teacher in high school.  I don't know what was supposed to be covered in a course with that title, but we didn't learn much about the cultures of the world.  Somehow I would have expected a broad survey course, which this wasn't.  Whatever I've learned about ancient Greece and Rome, Chinese history, African civilizations, and the history and culture of almost anywhere else in the world—which isn't much—I had to learn outside of school.

What Mr. Balk did instead was cover in detail two areas of the world of special importance in the late 1960s:  the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.  No doubt he figured that if his students were going to have opinions on the events of the day they might as well be informed by the history, religions, customs, and politics of the region.  He was also big on current events, and tried to make us lazy, self-centered teens pay attention to events of significant import, such as the American civil rights movement, and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

I wasn't one of Mr. Balk's greatest successes, I'm sure.  Oh, I got A's in his class—I knew how to do homework and take tests—but didn't develop an appreciation for history until long after I graduated, and am not much better than I was back then at paying attention to the news.  (To be fair to myself, I think I might do better with the latter if news reporting were less about hype, gossip, entertainment, sensationalism, and trivia.)  But I actually learned in his class, learned both facts and ideas that are with me to this day, which is a lot more than I can say about any other of my history classes.

Therefore it is not surprising that the Russian invasion of Georgia made me think of Mr. Balk.  If I were in his class today I know he'd be making me keep a diary of the event.  He'd force me to turn my eyes from the Olympic glories and pay attention to an event that may turn out to be as significant as Germany's pre-World War II acquisition of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.

John Stackhouse has another perspicacious post, this time on the homogenization of music in contemporary churches.  I know nothing about the "white gospel" style he laments in Disappearing (Musical) Languages but his experience strikes a sympathetic chord, since my musical "mother tongue" for worship is equally endangered.

[T]he Welsh, among others, would tell us to keep alive the languages we love. Those who still speak them must take them up as sacred causes, maintaining these vital ways of perceiving and articulating the world without which humanity is diminished.

That's much more encouraging than being told to get over it and learn to like the new languages.  It's helps to realize that when it comes to church worship music I am a Native American child forced to speak only English in school, a deaf child forbidden to sign, or a Scot required to use the language of his conquerors.  Prudence tells me the value of learning the dominant tongue, but a higher wisdom calls me to preserve that which is in danger of perishing.  Call it the genealogical impulse.

It's been harder than I thought to write the "why I blog" post that's been on my backlog for ages.  So I'm just going to do it.

I suppose my blog can most charitably be called "eclectic."  Some blogs are political, some personal journals, some accumulate interesting articles and news stories, some keep far-flung families in contact, some are formed around a specific cause or issue.  I aim to be jack-of-all-trades, and if that means being master of none, I see nothing wrong with that. It depends on your audience.  Five-star restaurants require highly-trained and gifted chefs, but I'd take my mother's home cooking and the family dinner table any day.  Fine.  But why?  Why do I put so much time and effort into blogging?  What do I hope to accomplish?

I post first of all because I can't stop my mind from writing, and it's helpful to give concrete expression to the phrases, paragraphs, and essays that are constantly churning within my brain.  See the story of Li'l Writer Guy.  The blog is a particularly satisfactory way of getting my thoughts into print:  the primary audience may be small, but they're loyal readers, and occasionally people stop by from all over the world and find something useful.  I can write what I want, when I want, with no pesky editors, stockholders or advertisers to interfere.

Because I write primarily for family members and friends who actually enjoy hearing about the details of our lives, there are a number of posts that are personal and of no interest to the general public, whoever that may be.  I make no apology.  You don't like it?  Don't read it.  This is not high school English class.  There will be no homework grade and no final exam.

Then there are the random posts of odd bits of news, posts from other blogs, and anything else good or ill that has struck me as worth sharing.  There's a lot of data, and a very poor signal-to-noise ratio, out there.  If I find something good, important, or thought-provoking, I want to increase its visibility.

Years ago I overheard one woman speaking derisively of another, saying, "She's the kind of person who gives books to other people."  This puzzled me at first, since I find books to be among the best possible of gifts.  What I eventually learned was that the complainer felt the gift books were being used as weapons, a means for pointing out the recipient's faults.  Perhaps that was true, but as one who loves to give books at least as much as to receive them, I suspect the giver was misjudged.

It is obvious to me that most of the best ideas I've had, and the good decisions I've made, especially in the areas of childrearing and education, came because someone else was willing to share them.  I take some credit for implementing and expanding ideas, and for having a few of my own, but I'm keenly aware that most of what I've done right I owe to someone's book, someone's conversation, someone's example.  What's more, there have been many, many ideas about which I've thought, "Why didn't I know this years ago, before it was too late?  Why didn't someone tell me?"  For this reason I have not hesitated to pass on good ideas when I think the recipient might be receptive, or at least interested.  I love to give books that I've found helpful, though I almost always add the caveat that I don't necessarily approve of everything the author has to say.  Sometimes there's much I don't like, but always there's at least something I find so valuable I want to share it.  Do I expect everyone to appreciate what I find valuable?  Of course not.  Am I offended if they ignore what I find important?  No.  Do I direct certain books or articles at specific people because I think they "need" them?  Believe it or not, I don't.  I share what I find good, useful, enlightening, or helpful.  I want to make information available, in hopes that fewer people will look back and say, "I wish someone had told me about that before."

Blogging provides many more opportunities than giving away a few books, and that's another reason I write.  This is the one area where I think of a wider audience; someone, somewhere out there may care about what I have learned about xylitol, or epidurals, or math curricula.  Again, I don't apologize for writing what some may not find interesting; if you don't like it, skip it.  But if you find something valuable in it, and especially if you have something to add to the discussion, I greatly appreciate comments.  From the beginning I had hoped this blog would be "a forum for spirited—but polite—discussion and the exchange of ideas," and I still mean that.

One thing all my posts have in common is commentary.  You get my opinion on politics, education, and health; on books and movies; on bike trails and genealogy.  More often you get my opinion-in-progress, as writing is as much my way of forming thoughts as of expressing them.  What you won't get is something directed as a weapon against you—certain public persons excepted, although even then I prefer to challenge ideas, not people.  I write from my own accumulated knowledge and experience; whether you agree or disagree, your own experiences are more than welcome.  My best work still comes from those who are willing to share.

This is a joke, right?  It doesn't surprise me that some crackpot with "Dr." in front of his name should decide that we could solve the widespread problem of students' appalling inability to spell by merely accepting their mistakes as "spelling variants."  After all, professors of education have promoted weirder ideas, and Ken Smith is only a lecturer in criminology who is fed up with wasting his time trying to correct the failures of his students' spelling teachers.  It's not our children's fault they had the misfortune to be born into an era of standardized spelling.  Dr. Smith's frustration can't be much more than mine as I try to decipher the writings of my intelligent, well-educated, and highly respected colonial American ancestors, who couldn't even spell their own names consistently.

What makes me sure of the intended humor is this passage in the article: Dr. Smith said there was no reason many commonly misspelt words were configured the way they were. The word 'twelfth', for example, would make more sense as 'twelth', he said.  'How on earth did that "f" get in there? You would not dream of spelling the words "stealth" or "wealth" with a[n] "f" (as in 'stealfth' or "wealfth") so why insist on putting the "f" in twelfth?'.  Since a moment's thought about both the origin and the pronunciation of "twelfth" would reveal the answer, Smith must be pulling our legs, perhaps making his point in the spirit of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal.

As the story spreads, however, some folks are finding the idea of this Irish baby fricassee more palatable than not.  All I can say is that my friends who teach college math should have thought of this years ago.  Instead of complaining that your students can't add two and two and get four, much less construct a simple proof, why not simply accept 2+2=5 as a variant sum?  And who are you to decide what's "true" and "proven," anyway?

Holcomb Farm has posted the winning photographs from its 2007 Photo Contest.  My favorite is the third prize winner.

Last night our neighbors called to ask if we had noticed a terrible odor.  They had just returned home after a few hours away and smelled something awful as soon as got out of the car; it was so strong they couldn't tell if it was widespread or localized.  We stepped outside of our house and smelled no more than the normal hot-and-humid Florida vegetation smells.

Until we approached their house, that is. We were then hit with what was, indeed, a foul odor.  But not, I was certain, a what-died-in-here? odor; it was something chemical rather than biological.  Don't get started on the truth that biology is also chemistry; I'd say it was an inorganic smell rather than organic, but that's not true either.  I know what I meant, and you would, too, if you'd smelled it.

But where was it coming from?  Although the house and the yard were permeated with the smell, it seemed pretty clear that the garage was the source, not that that narrowed the possibilities down much.  Diligent dog-like sniffing could not pinpoint the origin.  Well, not really "dog-like"; our noses were not in danger of physical contact with anything, and we made frequent retreats outside for fresh air.  I did more thinking than sniffing, myself, in an effort not to complicate the scents by vomiting on the garage floor.

My first reaction was "propane," but a brief opening of the valve of a known propane tank proved that the scents were not the same.  There's no gas line to the house, so it couldn't have been a gas leak. Finally, my eyes lit on a container of weed killer, and I had a "Eureka!" moment:  Insecticide.  The smell was the chemical reek left in the wake of some pest control operations.

With that in mind, it was not long before our neighbors found—behind closed doors, in a box, on a shelf in the back of a cabinet—a leaking bottle of malathion.  They carefully bagged it up, removed the wooden shelf onto which it head leaked, and set it all outside to be taken on the morrow to the county's toxic waste facility.  Mystery solved, and the garage and house could begin to air out and detoxify.

The atmosphere in the neighborhood, on the other hand, deteriorated rapidly.  Even bagged up, the permeation of the malathion was amazing.  After returning home, opening either the front or the back door immediately let in an overwhelmingly foul odor.  We turned off the air conditioner so as not to bring outside air into the house.  I, worried about what harm our exposure might have done, and whether or not our neighbors should spend the night with us instead of in their polluted house, turned to Google.  I was somewhat reassured that malathion is not one of the banned pesticides, but still in use, and that we'd probably already received far greater exposure through mosquito-control spraying.

We had planned to go to bed early, but the adventure had already scotched that idea.  Furthermore, since I'd read that symptoms of malathion poisoning can take 30 minutes to a couple of hours to appear, we decided to stay up a bit longer and watch the final episode of Season Two of Monk.  (Monk is our latest Netflix TV show venture about which I intend to post at some point; we tried it at the recommendation of a friend, and because Season Four of Numb3rs is not yet available.  So far we have found it very enjoyable.)

If the point was to keep us awake, it succeeded.  If the point was to distract us from worrying, it was the wrong show to watch.  The lyrics of the theme song,  in case you don't know it, are thus:

It's a jungle out there
Disorder and confusion everywhere
No one seems to care
Well I do
Hey, who's in charge here?
It's a jungle out there
Poison in the very air we breathe
Do you know what's in the water that you drink?
Well I do, and it's amazing
People think I'm crazy, 'cause I worry all the time
If you paid attention, you'd be worried too
You better pay attention
Or this world we love so much might just kill you
I could be wrong now, but I don't think so
It's a jungle out there

When they got to "poison in the very air we breathe," I took notice, and by "if you paid attention, you'd be worried to" I'd decided to make a call to Poison Control.  Our neighbors were going to call the fire department, which in the past has been very helpful with oddball situations (including the time an insect set off our smoke alarm), but there is no longer an off-hours phone number, and it didn't seem like something to bother the 9-1-1 folks about.  Fortunately, Poison Control is a different system, and they were not only avaiable, but very helpful.  We were able to sleep well, and our neighbors were glad to know that they didn't have to evacuate.  Here's a tip from Poison Control that I woudn't have thought of:  Today's kitty litter is very useful for cleaning up liquid chemical spills.

This morning when we awoke a sniff out the back door revealed nothing but a chlorine smell from the pool, but the front yard was as bad as ever.  I find that pretty amazing.  That's powerful stuff!  We're fine now, though, as the offending substance has been properly dealt with.  I'm very glad it all happened in a situation in which it was discovered quickly—no more than a couple of hours from leak to clean up.  What if our neighbors had been on vacation, or even just gone for a normal work day?

I's a jungle out there.

Whenever I despair about unnecessary governmental interference in our lives and families, it's good to be reminded that we could be educating our children in Germany or giving birth in Israel.  Think about the Israeli system next time you're tempted to believe the government should be more involved in our health care.

I've often noted that there is a significant generation gap between my siblings and me; even seven years makes a big difference.  Not that it keeps us from being a closely-knit and loving family, but it's noticeable.  Although for a number of reasons my upbringing was somewhat different from theirs, that's not what I'm talking about, but rather changes in the surrounding culture and "conventional wisdom" between my formative years and theirs.  Perhaps change always happens this way, and I only noticed it because there is that half-generation gap between us.  It does serve as an interesting bridge between our generation and that of our children.  It was a bit of a shock when I realized that certain customs...that our children thought of as "the way it's done" were those of my siblings' era, and quite different from my own views of "normal."

That's what I wrote in a comment on a previous post. Now I've learned that I'm not the only one to notice the half-generational difference.  Apparently those born between 1954 and 1965 are now being differentiated from the rest of us Baby Boomers by their own designation:  Generation Jones.  I don't set much store by this idea of naming generations; as with many attempts to classify people, I believe individual characteristics are more important than mere demographics. Still, patterns are interesting, especially when they relate to something I've observed myself.

Today's Drabble comic, suitably modified, is for our friend Johnny Montroll, a.k.a. The Origami Guy.

I have my doubts about the statement in the Wikipedia article that his initial book was "the first origami book where each model is folded from single square sheet and no cuts," though I know that was a passion of his, and his innovations were many, including a realistic, rather than symbolic, style.  Be that as it may, John is a remarkable polymath whose accomplishments are more understated by the article than not.  How many other people can honestly say that they wake up in the morning eager to go to work?

Any family members who have learned to love Settlers of Catan through us can thank Johnny, for it was he who taught us to play, during a delightful visit when it was much more fun to play games together than face preparing for our imminent move to Boston.

Although we have a large collection of his origami books, Janet is the one of us who most appreciates them, having mastered the techniques well enough to make some impressive models.  Perhaps Jonathan will one day, since at age four he designed and folded his own origami bat.  :)

The Drabble strip was the immediate inspiration for this post, but I had been thinking about John anyway, thanks to my recent trip on Southwest Airlines, and this article in their Spirit on-board magazine.

By the way, Johnny really can whistle in five octaves!

During the 18 months we lived in the Boston area, we experienced three deaths in our immediate family.  This, as I realized how much vital information was being lost, was half the reason I developed an unexpected and almost obsessive interest in genealogical research.  The other half was inspired by the proximity of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) library on Newbury Street.  Although I am now over 1200 miles away from that treasure trove of information, I maintain my membership in the Society, and their eNews letter arrived at my inbox this morning.

Normally I can skim the newsletter quickly, maybe click on a link or two and read associated articles, bookmark an occasional new resource, then liberate my inbox.  This time, however, the missive included a link to a new (to me) blog that is only tangentially connected with genealogy.  Over an hour has since elapsed and I am still on the course begun when I opened that e-mail, now making my own post about The Occasional CEO.

Eric Schultz is the Chairman of the Council of the NEHGS, and The Occasional CEO is his blog.  The link that took me there was to Genealogy, the Idaho Russet, and Innovation, his speech at their recent annual meeting.  Here are a few other interesting posts I found:

I'm Going Crazy...But So Are You — the way we use the Internet is rewiring our brains.

Hey, That's Mine!: When the Other Side Adopts Your Innovation First — what do the telephone, Facebook, King Philip's War, Swiss watches, and IBM have in common?

A Plague of Dead Squirrels, (a.k.a. The Unintended Consequences of Innovation) — what we really have to fear from electric cars.

It's a Messy, Messy World (or, "How the Web Was Won") — the importance of knowing history, and how AT&T (among others) got to be where it is instead of where it could have been.

There's more, but you'll have to find it for yourself.  I need to get on with Real Life (and those e-mails).

I hate to give such horrors any more publicity, so if you already view Planned Parenthood as evil incarnate, don't follow any of the links on John C. Wright's post, Footnote to Modern, Ever-Changing, Ever-Evolving Moral Standards.  If, on the other hand, you still cling to the hope, as I did for a long time, that the omni-present organization might not be utterly irredeemable, you owe it to your children to take a look (with them out of the room, of course—preferably out of the house).  I wish I could cleanse my brain of those cute, Sesame Street-like videos, but sometimes it's useful to know just how bad the situation really is.

I like the idea of socially responsible investing, but this has reminded me that whatever harm might be done by an undesirable gnat stock amongst those in our mutual funds is dwarfed by the camel damage paid for with our tax dollars.

Oh, by the way.  In case you miss it (which I recommend), take my word for it that when the folks at Planned Parenthood use the word "abstinence," they mean something entirely and disturbingly different from what you, I, and the dictionary do. So define your terms carefully (and make them define theirs) before conceding agreement on any point.