Lift Up Your Hearts!

A week ago we paused in the middle of grouting our new entrance tile to turn around and watch the Space Shuttle Discovery sail through the clouds.  This morning the twin sonic booms informed us it was time to turn on the television to watch Discovery's return home.

And you thought the thrills of living in Florida had something to do with not shoveling snow.

Ireland's 3 million voters will decide on a document representing the 490 million people in the European Union.

You can look at it that way, and when you do, it sounds unfair that the success or failure of the Lisbon Treaty, which would create a new governing treaty for the European Union, should stand or fall based on what the Irish decide.  But so it is with democracy; in a close race, one person's vote can decide the fate of an entire country.  Not that it ever does, but it could.

I don't know enough to judge the Lisbon Treaty itself; it may be good or bad in the main, but I can say I am pleased that Ireland is standing by its own constitution, which requires that anything affecting the Irish constitution be decided by the Irish citizens themselves.  The Dutch and French people have already been railroaded by their own governments.

After voters in the Netherlands and France rejected a previous EU constitution in 2005, no other EU country dared to put such matters to their voters, instead pushing it through their national parliaments. Dutch and French voters have no direct say on the current treaty.

Certainly there are advantages to EU membership, but I'm glad that Switzerland has maintained its independence.  I first saw some of the negative consequences of joining the EU on a visit to France, where I learned that the culture of the small, independent French farmer is under attack by the EU.  The French government, appreciating the value of local, independent farms for both cultural and national security reasons, has been subsidizing the farmers.  I know government subsidies can introduce unfortunate market kinks—and I don't appreciate our own government's subsidies of large agribusiness corporations—but even a "small government" person such as I can see the importance of spending money to protect a valuable, endangered species.  But the EU says French farm subsidies are unfair to other member countries, and would rather have France import its food from Eastern Europe.

I know that some are hoping the EU will put a stop to Germany's draconian laws against homeschooling, and no one (except the German families) would like more than I to end that repression, but even I can't help feeling queasy at the thought of an external government dictating their laws.

The new treaty may be a good one for all I know, but I'm glad the Irish government has the courage (and constitutional responsibility) to let their own people vote on matters that will so greatly affect their future.

Not that democracy is everything.  People can all too easily be beguiled into voting against their own best interests, to say nothing of the best interests of their neighbors, their country, and the world.  That's probably the reason I hate to see the European countries giving up their independence.  Many freedoms can be more or less guaranteed by a governing body, or not, but when push comes to shove, true freedom rests on being able to say, "No, thanks" and walk away from a repressive situation, be it a job or a country.  That's why it's said that economic freedom is one of the most basic human rights there is, because it enforces the others.  A German homeschooling family can currently escape German's persecution by moving to England, as some have done.  They shouldn't have to do so, but they can.  But what if they couldn't?  What if the UK and France and Switzerland and Germany and Hungary and Lithuania were all subject to the same rules?  Well, they could come to the United States. Unless we, too, put ourselves under the authority of another governing body that might have different views on the rights of families.

Homeschooling is just an example, which I use because the right to educate one's own children is especially dear to me.  But there's a lot more to this issue than that.  Alliances among nations are tricky things.  Or among states; in the U.S. we have seen state laws gradually subsumed more and more by national regulation, so that fleeing to Pennsylvania from a repressive law in New York is not as easy as it once was.  I'm not saying this is always bad, but it can be, and bears watching.

In any case, I'll be eager to see how the Irish people decide.

I've never heard the American Public Media program Speaking of Faith, but somehow (I've forgotten whom to credit) came upon this transcript of Quarks and Creation, an interview with the physicist/priest John Polkinghorne.  If you can ignore the annoyances of a word-for-word transcript of an audio program, it's a fascinating interview.  (For those who prefer an audio format, that's also available.)  Polkinghorne touches on subjects as diverse as beauty, truth, quantum physics, prayer, free will, and the dangerous brilliance of creating a world that creates itself.

In 1997, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, though, as tradition dictates, Polkinghorne does not take the honorific title "Sir" because, as an ordained minister, he would not be expected to wield a sword.

And we're expecting Sir Elton John to use a sword?   Hmmm.

[B]eauty is a very interesting thing, and a form of beauty that is important to me is mathematical beauty. That's a rather austere form of aesthetic pleasure, but those of us who work in that area and speak that language can recognize it and agree about it. And we've found in theoretical physics that the fundamental laws of nature are always mathematically beautiful. In fact, if you've got some ugly equations, almost certainly you haven't got it right and you should think again. So beauty is the key to unlocking the secrets of the physical world.

[I]t's very hard, of course, to describe any form of beauty....In some sense you have to perceive it. And it's more difficult with mathematics because you have to be able to speak the language. It's a bit like saying, "This is a wonderful Icelandic poem," but if I don't understand Icelandic, I won't get the gist of it. So mathematical beauty is connected, first of all, with things being elegant and economic. You don't write a great sprawling equation that takes half a page to write down. It's very concise, just perhaps a line with only a few symbols in it. But it turns out that it's also very deep, so that when you explore its consequences, you find this very simple-looking thing. It implies this, it implies that, all sorts of surprising and unexpected things. And if it's a successful part of mathematical physics, of course, it will imply all sorts of phenomena happening in the world. And that's what we mean by mathematical beauty.

Equality means everyone gets to run the race. It does not mean everyone comes in first.

John C. Wright and I may not agree on Prince Caspian, but we saw the same message in The Incredibles: the loss of excellence, enthusiasm, and initiative that results when we foolishly favor equality of outcome over equality of opportunity.

The inspiration for Wright's post was a soccer trophy won by his five-year-old son.  Well, "won" is stretching quite a bit, and that's Wright's point.  Everyone on the team received the same trophy, just for showing up.  Or even not showing up; the coach also wanted to give a trophy to Wright's other son, who had quit the team mid-season!

One can argue that five-year-olds should not be competing for trophies.  One can even argue, à la Alfie Kohn, that getting trophies will actually decrease the children's enjoyment of the game.  But if you're going to have a competition, make it a contest, not a sham.  Don't give out hunks of plastic or cheap metal that waste resources, take up space, gather dust, and have no correlation whatsoever with accomplishment.  I like to think that the child who has done well does not need an award to tell him so, and the child who has done poorly will not be fooled by the award into thinking he has done well; unfortunately, my college professor friends won't let me keep that illusion, since they've had plenty of experience with students who have been given (not earned) A's all through high school and nearly break down when they discover they're not the academic whizzes they thought they were.  If their parents, teachers, and coaches had not, in effect, lied to them for years, they might have learned to buckle down and work and actually become highly capable students.

Wright found the problem on the soccer field; I've seen it time and time again in the educational system, from the principal who out-and-out told me that the purpose of kindergarten was to get everyone on the same level, to the elementary school "contests" that were rigged so that every student won at least once, to similarly-rigged "Teacher of the Year" awards, to the school board that took a monetary award away from the school that earned it and gave it to a poorly-achieving school.  No matter what a school district may say in principle, "making everyone great" means holding down those who are capable of exceling more often than it means raising those who are struggling.

None, least of all the winners, likes a situation in which the same few people win all the awards again and again.  Dash would soon lose interest in racing, and possibly in running itself, if he blew away the competition every single time.  But a coach or a teacher, for example, who wants to reward every student can, with a little creativity, devise competitions where the outcome is by no means certain, and yet in which the winner knows he has truly earned his victory.  (John Holt did this with some of his classes, but I've forgotten in which of his books he discusses it.)

Muscles, be they physical, mental, or spiritual, grow with use, and atrophy if left unchallenged.  Wright is right to be worried about his sons.  Fortunately, awareness of the problem is half the solution.

For two quite different yet effective views of the consequences of "anti-elitist" policies, see Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron and C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Proposes a Toast.

So. Studies have shown that length of life can be extended by eating a very low calorie diet, twenty to thirty percent less than a "standard diet." Whatever the standard diet is, you can bet it's significantly less than the average American diet, so we're talking severe calorie reduction here.

Thanks to the University of Wisconsin-Madison (my nephew's current college of choice), the National Institutes of Health, and DSM Nutritional Products of [ahem] Basel, Switzerland, there is a better way. Drinking red wine apparently has similar effects and works by nearly the same mechanism. (If you're ambitious you can read the full report.)

Let's see. To drink, or not to eat...is that a question? I don't care much for wine and even then I prefer whites to reds, but I could manage this.

The article doesn't say what happens when you combine the starvation diet with drinking red wine, though the picture it evokes in my mind is not exactly one of robust health....

The spectre of mercury poisoning from dental fillings has made the leap from alternative medicine/tabloid fodder to official health concern, as the FDA now acknowledges the possible danger to children, unborn babies, and other sensitive populations.  I doubt it's worth having fillings replaced (which I'm guessing could release more mercury than leaving them alone), but certainly a good idea to check with your dentist.

I'd much rather get my mercury from eating tuna and swordfish. 

The comic strip Baby Blues, like Dilbert, often frustrates me because of its negative views.  Its depiction of family life does not usually reflect my experiences, and the recognition of one's own situation is a key ingredient in good humor. But whenever I begin to decide it's not worth reading, Baby Blues (again like Dilbert) comes up with a priceless strip.  Today's says so much on several levels that futher commentary would be foolish.

We've lived in Florida more than 20 years and haven't yet mastered the art of gardening in this climate.  After a year or two of being defeated by nematodes, giant grasshoppers, and the need for daily attention, we pretty much gave up, until inspired to try again by Heather and Jon, who managed to get a few good things to grow even at their zero-yard city apartment.

Our biggest (and nearly only) success from last year was a hot pepper plant.  As I wrote last year, it had been labeled as a sweet green pepper but was clearly not.  The first couple of peppers were quite mild, with just a little bite, but I think they were just testing the waters—subsequent fruits have been the fabulous "don't touch your eyes after chopping them up even if you've washed your hands three times" variety.  This is the only plant to have survived from last year, and it has been blooming and bearing continuously.  Here it is with its new companions, sweet basil (left) and Thai basil (right).  Thai basil is that wonderful anise-like herb served with Vietnamese pho, and often in summer rolls.

The radishes, lettuces, and carrots were just starting eight days ago; now they're filling the pot and ready for some thinning.  On the right is our parsley and stevia, along with a left-over Christmas poinsettia and some aloe and coleus plants.

Last year's tomatoes never did very well; these heirloom plants look much more promising.

With all due respect for everyone's personal choices, and with free acknowledgement that in our diversity of educational options lies our strength, here's an excerpt from today's Frazz for a moment of homeschooling joy:

I did place an order on Amazon.com this morning...but somehow I doubt that's what brought down the system.  Whatever; it has been unavailable for a few hours now:  "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable."  Just another reminder that we are too dependent on infrastructure over which we have little or no control: water, sanitary services, electrical power, grocery deliveries, police protection, mail, phone, and Internet services.  Our ancestors had plenty of worries that we don't, but they dug their own wells, buried their own sewage, grew and/or hunted their own food, and protected their families with their own weapons, and lived among neighbors who could help out when needed.

Communities still share what they can during times of trouble, but for the most part, if we lose one or more of the basic services, so do our neighbors.

Thanks to John C. Wright for bringing to my attention Story Time by Andrew Klavan, in City Journal.

Read it. It may frustrate you, it may make you despair, it may inspire you; it will certainly break your heart.

Where there is no vision, the people perish. (Proverbs 29:18)

Let me write a nation's songs, and I care not who writes its laws. (various attributions)

As I said before, I'm not always curmudgeonly.  Here, for your morning's delight, is an inspiring story from the blog, "Et tu?"  What happens when an introverted mother of three children under four, whose only much-needed time for solitude comes when all three kids are napping simultaneously, finds this time interrupted again and again by neighborhood pranksters who repeatedly ring her doorbell and run?  No, this is not a sordid tale of mass murder; I said it was a happy story.

Read the What first, then the How (with further details).

The curmudgeonly protective part of my nature wants to warn her to keep her eyes open, and let the girls help around the house but never leave them alone with her children; I've heard too many horror stories of irreparable damage done to innocent children by street-wise kids from troubled homes.  With that caveat, it's a wonderful story, and a glimpse of what neighborhoods used to be like, back in the day when "that house" was "those houses."

Though it's hardly the main point of the story, I love this paragraph:

A while back I took a Birkman test, a personality inventory renowned for its accuracy, and on a scale of 1 - 100 with 100 being most extroverted, I was a 1. One. Uno. It doesn't mean that I don't like people, but that being around others is exhausting for me. As the test administrator put it, "You need introvert time where you don't have to be 'on' like normal people need air."

I've quoted many times the statement that both extroverts and introverts like people and enjoy their company, but for the latter, interacting with a crowd (even a small one) is usually a net loss of energy, while for the former it is generally a net gain.  We introverts like being with people, but it drains us, and we need time alone to recover.  When challenged on a source for that idea, I couldn't come up with a source, but here's evidence that it wasn't just my own invention.

Here's a scary article for you:  Emily Gould's Exposed, from the May 25, 2008 New York Times Magazine.  Andrew Keen (The Cult of the Amateur) would definitely appreciate this story of one woman's venture into a world of publishing unfettered by editorial oversight and subsequent free-fall into the Dark Side of Blogging.

I slumped to the kitchen floor and lay there in the fetal position. I didn’t want to exist. I had made my existence so public in such a strange way, and I wanted to take it all back, but in order to do that I’d have to destroy the entire Internet. If only I could! Google, YouTube, Gawker, Facebook, WordPress, all gone. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for an electromagnetic storm that would cancel out every mistake I’d ever made.

Another sad story about a naïve teenaged girl molested by someone she met on MySpace? Not at all. Just an imprudent adult woman seduced by the delights of seeing her thoughts in print.  Scary.

In a previous post, which was primarily about something else so I won't link to it here, I said:

Having experienced the higher-level coinage of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, and the European Union, I wish the United States had the sense to supplant (not just supplement) the dollar bill with dollar coins.  (And maybe the $2 and $5 bills while we're at it.)  But the mountain of paper used to print dollar bills comes from Massachusetts, where the Crane Paper Company has a stranglehold monopoly on the business.  The $1 bill has a lifespan of under two years and represents about 45% of the U. S. currency production, so it's no surprise that Massachusetts politicians don't like dollar coins.

I've mentioned the idea of getting rid of the lower-denomination bills in favor of coins, and while women generally don't seem to mind, I am likely to get a negative reaction from men.  I think this is because women's wallets almost always have a place for change, but men's wallets rarely do.  Porter carries his change in a small coin purse (something like this) which keeps the coins handy and protects his pocket.  But most men I've talked with tend to keep their change loose in their pockets and then dump them in a jar or on a dresser at the end of the day.  This system works because our coins are worth so little.

(Back when I was little and our coins were worth a lot more, this system was a boon to children, who would comb couches and chairs for change that had fallen out of men's pockets.)

Needless to say, these men are less than happy with the thought of heavy coins jangling in their pockets instead of light, thin bills in their wallets.  I can see their point.  However, I know that Europeans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders (and no doubt people from other countries) manage quite well with higher denomination coinage instead of bills.  So my question is, What's your secret?  How do you handle change?

(I'll admit I only know of one European male who regularly reads this blog and can be counted on to be generous enough to comment, but there are others who occasionally stop by, and I figure the women probably know something about it, too.)

Then again, eveyone else seems to have been able to adjust to the metric system and we still haven't managed that, so maybe I shouldn't hold out too much hope.... 

My feminism tends to be of the on-again-off-again sort.  As a child—thanks to parents who encouraged me—I never considered any good character trait, activity, or occupation to be off limits because of my sex.  I didn't think much about feminism back then; I just acted, becoming the first girl to break the sex barrier in my high school's stage band, and the only or one of just a few girls in some of my science classes.  This sounds tame and silly from a 21st century perspective, but it was a big deal back then.

When Feminism became a movement, however, I soon had to distance myself from it, largely because it distanced itself from me.  I was (and am) all for equality of opportunity—as much as is physically possible; I don't ever want to see men getting pregnant—but when Feminism veered into being anti-man and pro-abortion, when it denigrated the role of homemaker and made the two-income family first common and then in some cases necessary, and when it invoked "political correctness" over the very words we speak and even started calling God "Our Mother," that's when I turned away.  Not from my beliefs, which hadn't changed, but from the movement and the label.  Women were now included, and succeeding, in nearly every possible opportunity; it was time, I believed, to give feminism a rest.

Until I found myself for a few years in the company of some people (mostly men) whose view of women was more oppressive than anything I'd known growing up nearly half a century earlier.  Then I realized that even a necessary correction to the movement's faults and excesses (great though they were and are) could send us back too far.  I actually worry less about those men now than I do about the Princess infatuation that little girls are embracing as they did Barbie dolls.  (And still do? I've been out of the scene for a while.)  We're still encouraging our boys to be smart and strong and our girls to be...pretty.

How does one raise boys to be men and girls to be women and all to be intelligent, strong, and competent people?  The impetus for this post was an article I read yesterday in a church bulletin insert, which included this paragraph.

A godly father has a profoundly positive influence on the life of his son or daughter.  He teaches his son the importance of self-control, respect for women, the value of work, and healthy risk taking.  He affirms his daughter's femininity by expressing his appreciation for her as a woman.  Dads, keep these thoughts in mind as you nurture healthy gender identity in your children.

Excuse me? The best a father can do for his daughter is to appreciate her as a woman?  I thank God my father did a lot more for me than that!  Self-control, respect, the value of work, and healthy risk taking are things we all need to learn—not just half of us.

I do believe boys need to be taught how to be good men, and girls to be good women, and that these roles are not identical.   But could we please find a way to make boys into men without putting down girls?  It must be possible to nurture in boys fatherly and protective characteristics without appealing to pride, which generates worse problems.

Any ideas?