Lift Up Your Hearts!

Wild at Heart, by John Eldredge (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee, 2001)
Captivating, by John and Stasi Eldredge (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee, 2005)

When a good friend lent me Wild at Heart, it took a long time for me to steel myself to read it, for I expected it to make me angry. I've had more than my fill of books, especially from Christian authors, telling men to be authoritative and women to wear makeup and Saran Wrap.

After the first few pages, I was sure I was right, and I was going to hate the book. But I kept reading—something I'm not sure was true of many of those who wrote the negative reviews I read—and became convinced it's a worthwhile book. Oh, there's plenty I found exasperating, a lot I disagree with, and much that's expressed poorly, but Eldredge is asking important questions and has a few good answers. Although it deals with much more than just the church, the book is worth reading if only because it dares reveal church as a place where, all too often, the men are bored and the women are tired—and offers a remedy. Captivating attempts to do for women what Wild at Heart does for men. It is not as good, but still valuable.

(I wonder why it is almost all of my reviews these days seem to boil down to, "This book has some good things to say even though it requires a lot of work to get past the way in which they are presented.") (More)

Economists are accustomed to drawing conclusions from statistical studies and aggregations of data. It's hard to reduce economic behavior to controlled, double-blind studies, and laboratory rats aren't necessarily a good model for corporate rats. So it came as no surprise to me that some Cornell University economists thought they might get a handle on the elusive cause of childhood autism by studying rainfall and the availablity of cable television. Working from the assumption that children spend more hours watching television in households that have cable TV, and in locations where high rainfall keeps them indoors, and observing significantly higher rates of autism in communities with a confluence of those conditions, the researchers suggested early television viewing as a possible trigger for autism spectrum disorders.

When I first read about the study, I was reminded of a story Peter Drucker tells, in his marvelous, autobiographical, historical commentary, Adventures of a Bystander, about an outstanding statistics teacher at the University of Minnesota. (More)

So, Porter delves into the dark recesses of an accumulation of objects, lifts up an old keyboard, and shouts, "I see a mouse!"

Perfectly logical. Janet had discovered that not one but both of her computer's mice are malfunctioning, and I knew we had a spare one somewhere. Unfortunately, this was the wrong kind of mouse.

It was PS/2 instead of USB.

But at least we didn't have to figure out a way to trap it.

I try not to make this blog too personal unless I know the person doesn't mind, so the honoree shall remain nameless, but nonetheless I wish to say

Congratulations!

On attaining the lofty and venerable

Half-Century Point

One of Janet's friends from Japan needs as many responses as possible for a survey that will become part of her senior thesis. Please take a moment to help her out. The survey is below; you can respond in a comment, or e-mail me if you'd prefer a less public venue, and I'll send her your answers.

My own response is here, if you're interested. And here's a succinct Baldo commentary on the American Dream. (More)

In the past few decades, the number of college-bound students has skyrocketed, and so has the number of world-class schools. The demand for an excellent education has created an ever-expanding supply of big and small campuses that provide great academics and first-rate faculties.

So says Newsweek, which procedes to list 25 top schools it calls the "New Ivies," rivaling the traditional powerhouse schools in excellence. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you might find your alma mater on that list, which includes Carnegie Mellon, Colby, Kenyon, Vanderbilt, Davidson, RPI, and my own University of Rochester. (More)

Many years ago the folks who were then our medical practicioners strongly urged me to go on hormone replacement therapy drugs, stressing that it was the best thing I could do for my heart, even more effective than losing weight and getting in shape. I declined, having no wish to take any drugs that were not absolutely necessary. Now that HRT has been linked with serious problems—especially for the heart!—I feel justified in my reluctance.

No one has yet suggested I take Fosamax or any other drug that targets osteoporosis, but I foresee it coming, given my age and sex, and find myself skeptical once again. So I was not surprised last week during a visit to the dentist, when I was handed a paper with the impressive title, Bisphosphonate Medications and Your Oral Health, which I was able to find online as well. The article begins with the following warning:

If you use a bisphosphonate medication to prevent or treat osteoporosis (a thinning of the bones) or as part of cancer treatment, you should advise your dentist.

It seems that in rare instances these drugs can cause osteonecrosis of the jaw, severe loss or destruction of the jawbone. No doubt these drugs do much good in many cases, but it's important to understand the risk that something we take to strengthen our bones just might have the opposite effect.

There's nothing like good news in the morning! Stop a moment, go fix yourself a nice cup of tea, then come back and read yet another news story about the benefits of drinking tea.

The results of a double-blind experiment conducted by researchers at the University College of London indicate that drinking black tea helps people recover more quickly from the stresses of life. Volunteers were given either a tea-laced concoction or one that was identical but without the tea ingredients, and subjected to stressful situations. Stress levels, both subjective and measured, rose for all participants, but the tea drinkers recovered significantly faster. For example, their blood cortisol (stress hormone) levels had dropped an average of 47% after 50 minutes, compared with 27% for the non-tea drinkers.

Next step: researching my own favorite form of relaxation: a cup of tea, a comfortable chair, and a good book.

There's not much I can—or want to—add to the story of the latest school shooting, the tragedy in Amish country. There are a few unusual things about this event that are worth paying attention to, however. Some quotes from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story that randomly showed up in my mailbox this morning (thanks to the Google news alert I have set for "midwife Pittsburgh") highlight some of the differences between this and your run-of-the-mill (ghastly thought) school shooting. (More)

I mentioned local pastor Joel Hunter once before, when the Orlando Sentinel published an article he wrote on Christians and politics. Today's Sentinel mentions him again, and so will I.

Hunter has accepted the (unpaid) position of president of the Christian Coalition of America. The author of Right Wing, Wrong Bird: Why the Tactics of the Religious Right Won't Fly With Most Conservative Christians plans to take the Coalition in a new direction, moving its headquarters from Washington, DC to Central Florida, and seeking to broaden its approach and appeal.

"There ought to be more than just gay marriage and pro-life issues, because the Bible is concerned with all of life. We need to do everything we can to relieve poverty, to heal the sick and to protect the Earth."

Much remains to be seen, but it sounds like a positive change.

Advocates of home birth complain that doctors and hospitals view childbirth as a medical procedure rather than a natural event. Today's Orlando Sentinel adds to the evidence for their position, reporting that photographing a birth is now forbidden at most local hospitals.

"You don't go into the operating room and take pictures of surgical procedures," said Pat DuRant, Florida Hospital's assistant vice president of women's and medical-surgical services.

Not only do they consider childbirth to be akin to surgery, but apparently their primary concern is that there not be any video evidence to bolster a malpractice suit if someone makes a mistake.

At our children's elementary school, the administration made it clear that parents were not particularly welcome to visit their children’s classrooms, although occasional visits would be possible if special arrangements were made several days in advance.

Not long afterward, the school sent home a pamphlet about choosing daycare, in which it was stated that under no circumstances should children be in a daycare situation in which parents could not drop in at any time, without warning. If such visits were not allowed, the pamphlet warned, parents should suspect that the daycare provider had something to hide.

As far as I know, no one in the school’s administration appreciated the irony.

Hospitals: You can't live with them, and you can't live without them. A trip to a hospital can add years of health and wholeness to your life. Or, it might shorten your life dramatically, thanks to errors, incompetence, and hospital-acquired lethal infections. The decision as to when to seek medical care and when to trust a less interventionist approach is tricker than it once was. "Wait and see" can save you from huge medical bills, needless pain and suffering, and maybe even from death. But that attitude can also kill you.

Today's news highlights another disturbing piece of the puzzle. Hospitals, doctors, and government agencies are not just offering medical services, but compelling them, as in this story of an Irish hospital that forced a Congolese immigrant to undergo a blood transfusion against her will. It is tragic enough that others have the authority to force medical procedures on children against the wishes of their parents, but this case show that even conscious, cognizant adults are at risk.

The Coombe, one of Ireland's major maternity hospitals, said its policy was to do all it could to save a patient's life—and to go to court if necessary to do it.

Caveat emptor.

Even young children can benefit from music lessons. I knew that, but it's nice to read about this McMaster University study of twelve four- to six-year-old children, half of whom took Suzuki violin lessons. The tiny violinists performed better on both a general memory test and on a measurement related to attention and sound discrimination.

Twelve students is a small sample, so I'll add one more. When I administered early kindergarten "readiness" tests for our local elementary school, the one little boy I knew was a Suzuki violin student showed a marked superiority on the tests of listening skills and auditory processing.

Back in 1990, just before we took the plunge into homeschooling, I sat down one day and typed out every reason that came to mind for our decision. My purpose was not to make a reasoned argument for homeschooling, but to have something written down to which we could refer when the going got rough, to remind ourselves why we had made that choice.

At the time, I posted the list on the good ol' GEnie Education Round Table, my online support group. Now that I have my own blog, I thought it would be fun to publish it again. The list is specific to our particular school situation in places, and somewhat dated, but most of the reasons would still be valid were we beginning our homeschooling journey today.

At the time of writing, we had one child going into sixth grade and another going into third, both at our local public school. The elder had completed kindergarten and first grade in a private, Montessori school. (More)