Thoughts at the end of the weekbeginning:

A guy as poor as I am shouldn’t have taxes this complicated.

OK, if I understand correctly, it’s always wrong to identify a terrorist group as a part of a larger group, because that might unfairly stigmatize the larger group and make them feel bad. Does that mean all inquiries into white racist groups are out of order from now on, because most white people aren’t violent?

By way of Joe Carter’s weekly 33 Things post at First Thoughts: 21 Scathingly witty insults by famous people. C.S. Lewis is included, though I think the insult actually refers to a fictional character in The Screwtape Letters. Also I’m quite confident that the picture of Groucho Marx is not actually Groucho, but a later Groucho impersonator.

I’d like to say something profound about Japan, but I haven’t got anything. Prayers are in order, of course. Did you know that when we dropped the Bomb on Nagasaki, we wiped out the center of Christianity in Japan?

I have a Sons of Norway meeting tonight, and one of my fellow Vikings wants me to go with him to a historical reenactment event in New Ulm tomorrow (as visitors, not participants). You know you’re truly Avoidant when your inclination is to stay home and do your taxes, rather than go out and rub shoulders with people who have similar interests.

Have a good weekend!

Photo credit: Wouter Hagens



What was my day like?

Well, it snowed a couple inches last night, so I drove to work using my newly restored four wheel drive, always a pleasure. But the day itself was so warm that the snow is pretty much gone from the driveway this evening. There’s some shreds out there I could shovel out (couldn’t blow it; it’s just slush), but why bother when it’ll be around forty tomorrow?

This is a perfect winter day, by my lights.

My brother in Iowa quotes a member of his church who says, “Once it gets to snow in March, I figure what the Lord giveth He’ll also taketh away.”

That’s not a reliable rule in Minnesota, but it’s working just now.

We had a blood drive at work, and I enriched the national stocks by one pint of rich Norwegian blood. The technicians seemed a little friendlier than usual today. I took that as a sign of bad economic times; the Red Cross is able to recruit a better motivated crop of workers, people who used to have better jobs and haven’t forgotten their people skills. The lady who stuck me was quite friendly, but not, alas, adept with the needle. She even apologized for it. I pretended to feel nothing, needless to say, because that’s the Code of the Walkers.

Bought some strawberries on the way home, and idly checked their calorie value. Wow! I think strawberries are the only thing in the world I really like that are extremely low in calories. Except for popcorn, but I only like that with butter, so it doesn’t count.

From our Practical News Desk: Scientists have learned chimpanzees will laugh at things they don’t find funny. Just like people who will laugh in order to share the moment, even when the moment isn’t funny, chimps will laugh in order to bond with each other and no doubt optimize their evolutionary progress in order to whip us up in the next generation–or two.

Laugh at that, you puny man.

For some reason, the immortal Andrew Klavan’s web site has been down most of the week, but I see it’s up again now. Here’s his report of his attendance at the Tea Party Patriots American Policy Summit in Phoenix.

“Now, this is very high-level intellectual material,” I told the crowd, “and I know you’re just a bunch of knuckle-dragging, Bible-thumping tea partiers who might not be able to understand its subtlties. And some of you may be asking in your simple, silly way, ‘Hey, what’s the difference between post-modernism and lying?’”

What, indeed?

A couple items from Joe Carter’s ever-interesting Thirty Three Things post at First Things blog:

Facebook Blamed In 1 in 5 Divorces in the U.S.

In the end, Facebook is a social tool. For single people, social networks can help them meet that special someone. Even for marriages, social networks can help further along a relationship. Just like with any other social medium, however, even the most innocent of intentions can turn ugly with improper use.

You don’t need to be a psychologist to realize that Facebook can accelerate the process. Stories of people whose marriages were destroyed by affairs that began on social networks abound on the Internet.

You know, I was a conscientious objector in the sexual revolution. Now I seem to be using Facebook and missing all the most… interesting stuff.

I’m beginning to think I’m kind of clueless.

Yoga Is Not As Old As You Think… Nor Very Hindu, either

The reality is that postural yoga, as we know it in the 21st century, is neither eternal nor synonymous with the Vedas or Yoga Sutras. On the contrary, modern yoga was born in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. It is a child of the Hindu Renaissance and Indian nationalism, in which Western ideas about science, evolution, eugenics, health and physical fitness played as crucial a role as the ‘mother tradition’. In the massive, multi-level hybridisation that took place during this period, the spiritual aspects of yoga and tantra were rationalised, largely along the theosophical ideas of ‘spiritual science,’ introduced to India by the US-origin, India-based Theosophical Society, and internalised by Swami Vivekananda, who led the yoga renaissance.

In turn, the physical aspects of yoga were hybridised with drills, gymnastics and body-building techniques borrowed from Sweden, Denmark, England, the United States and other Western countries. These innovations were creatively grafted on the Yoga Sutras—which has been correctly described by Agehananda Bharati, the Austria-born Hindu monk-mystic, as ‘the yoga canon for people who have accepted Brahmin theology’—to create an impression of 5,000 years worth of continuity where none really exists. The HAF’s current insistence is thus part of a false advertising campaign about yoga’s ancient Brahminical lineage.

Maybe those Christian yoga groups aren’t as dangerous as we thought…

Friday Fight!

Did their mothers never tell them they could poke an eye out with those sticks?

Always nice to hear news from the old home town. This story from Fox News is entitled, “Minnesota Man Allegedly ‘Hunted’ Suicidal Victims.”

William Melchert-Dinkel, 48, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of aiding suicide in the deaths of an English man and a Canadian woman. Attorneys for both sides presented oral arguments Thursday to Rice County District Court Judge Thomas Neuville, who has up to 20 days to decide whether Melchert-Dinkel is guilty.

Prosecutors say Melchert-Dinkel, an ex-nurse from Faribault, was obsessed with suicide and hanging and that he sought out potential victims on the Internet. When he found them, prosecutors say, he posed in chat rooms and in e-mails as a woman, played the role of a compassionate friend and offered step-by-step instructions on how they could take their lives.

Melchert-Dinkel is identified as a resident of Faribault, which is my secondary home town. It’s only fifteen miles from my actual home town, and my mother’s parents lived there. Both my folks eventually took jobs there. Since Mom was a nurse, she might even have known this guy.

I note the hyphenated name, “Melchert-Dinkel.” Although it’s not always true, such hyphenization often indicates (in America) a “progressive,” non-traditional attitude to the world. Which sets me thinking.

If you’re a modernist, a moral relativist, what exactly would you say this guy did wrong? Would you say he did anything wrong at all?

A relativist would never concede that suicide is wrong in itself. Nothing is essentially wrong, for the relativist. If someone wants to commit suicide, certainly that’s their own choice, isn’t it? It might be unkind to their loved ones, but we often encourage people to do things their loved ones don’t like, like marrying people their parents reject, or going into careers they don’t approve of. Why should dying be any different?

You could say he did wrong in deceiving these people, but the relativist can’t say that deception is necessarily bad either. Melchert-Dinkel could argue that these people felt they had the company of a caring friend at the end of their lives, and were never disabused of that belief. He could maintain that he’d actually done them a great favor. And if he got a sexual charge out of the experience, well, who does that hurt? Everybody wins.

I often harken back to the words of Wisdom (depicted as a woman) in Proverbs 8:36: “But whoever fails to find me harms himself; all who hate me love death.”

Just to put your mind at ease—so you can sleep tonight—I’m happy to report that I picked up a new microwave oven today. It’s smaller and more powerful than my old one. Also much cheaper than I expected. What an amazing world of scientific marvels we do live in!

Mitch Berg at Shot In the Dark is upset—rightly—by this appalling story from KDVR TV, Denver Colorado:

ARVADA, Colo. — Arvada Police are defending the way they handled the arrest of an 11-year-old boy.  The Arvada boy was arrested and hauled away in handcuffs from his home for drawing stick figures in school – something his therapist told him to do.

His parents say they understand what he did was inappropriate, but are outraged by the way Arvada Police handled the case. The parents did not want their real names used.

They say “Tim” is being treated for Attention Deficit Disorder and his therapist told him to draw pictures when he got upset, rather than disrupt the class. So that’s what he did.

Mitch says:

Do you think a charter school, responsible to a board elected by the school’s parents and stakeholders, just might have come up with a solution that wouldn’t have embarassed a Soviet komissar?

It’s time to bring back public humiliation – stocks and pillories – for public officials who so utterly transgress the boundaries of sanity, decency and morality itself.

And if the Arvada, Colorado school board doesn’t fire every single party involved, and the voters don’t in turn erase every single member of that school board from any contact with children forever, and the people can stand for that sort of priggish idiocy from their police department, they deserve what they get.

I’m pretty sure “Tim” does not.

You know, I’m getting kind of sick of hearing from educational experts who warn us constantly that if a Muslim child or a “gay” child hears a single word that could possibly be offensive to them, they have probably suffered irrevocable harm, and will have to be put on suicide watch.

But handcuffing an already troubled kid and dragging him off to jail—that’s just part of the process of growing up. Good for ’em. Makes ’em tough.

The whole point of the Zero Tolerance movement is that common sense is inadequate. We need rigid rules, enforced in a draconian manner.

Well, common sense has certainly left the building.

On a more pleasant note, I recommend this new blog: Man Of the West.

It’s written by my friend Ian Barrs, an English transplant to the U.S.

You may possibly recall that I mentioned having a splendid discussion with an expatriate Englishman last spring at the Tivoli Fest in Elk Horn, Iowa.

That Englishman was Ian Barrs. Not long ago we became Facebook friends, and I discovered to my amazement that we have a mutual friend, a guy who’s involved with the U.S. L’Abri Center in Rochester, Minnesota (and sometimes comments on this blog).

Phil will be happy to learn that Ian is a Presbyterian.

Here’s an interesting set of letters between two critics of video games, one prioritizes personal experience and story, the other views the games in the context of all games since the beginning of civilization.

Tom Bissell writes about his approach: “I do, however, like to write about how games cross over into affecting, enriching, or profoundly messing with one’s life outside of game-playing.”

By contrast, Simon Ferrari explains: “It’s my contention that games are systems of rules and artificial spaces before they’re stories. And if we want to foster creativity, depth, and breadth in the design of future games, then we need to begin by teaching the reading, writing, and critique of rule systems at an early age.”

Chad at Fraters Libertas quotes today from a Wall Street Journal column by Mark Helprin. He celebrates the glory and worth of winter:

And this may be the heart of it, that winter even as we fight it is both a measure and cause of our vitality. That though it may exist as an enemy, it is something of extraordinary beauty. And that though in representing the last season of our lives it symbolizes our death, year after year experience teaches us that, miraculously and invariably, after winter’s inescapable conquests the new life of spring comes nonetheless.

Wonderful stuff, and just the sort of thing you’d expect from the genius who wrote Winter’s Tale (and if you haven’t read Winter’s Tale, what are you waiting for?). Even I, the world’s champion heat lover, resonate a little bit with that. I’ve written before that I never felt right living in Florida. I need my spring, and you can’t really have spring without chopping your way through winter first.

Speaking of which, winter’s back in these parts. You may have heard about it on the news. A few days back it was almost 50 degrees. Last night and today we picked up about a foot of snow. But there was a good side and a bad to that, in my case. Continue reading Winter's Toil →

Anthony “Doktor Luther” Sacromone describes the reasons “Sling Blade” is a great Christian film.