OUR 22ND
Twenty-two years ago today Cheryl and I were married in a simple but grand ceremony in Cathedral Grove at Mission Springs. This evening we went to Taste of Little India in Merced to celebrate. As usual the food was fantastic!

INTERVIEW WITH ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN



An excerpt from Joseph Pearce's interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn is on the Catholic Educator's Resource Center site.

A few quotes:
+ "Over the last twelve years I have stopped viewing Russia as something very distinct from the West. Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word "modernity" if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China. With the exception of those areas we should not use the words "the West" but the word "modernity". The modern world. And yes, then I would say that there are ills that are characteristic, that have plagued the West for a long time and now Russia has quickly adopted them also."

+ "I understand the fears of both those in the Orthodox and in the Catholic Church, the wariness, the hesitation and the fear that this is lowering the Church to the modern condition, the modern surroundings. I understand this fear but alas I also fear that if religion does not allow itself to change it will be impossible to return the world to religion because the world is incapable on its own of rising as high as the old demands of religion. Religion needs to come to meet it somewhat."

ON THE ROAD AGAIN
My father-in-law, who has been staying with us for the past month so he can get relief from the heat in Arizona, hit the road this afternoon. His next stop is Walnut Creek where he will spend a few days with Cheryl's brother and family. Then he's headed up to Grand Forks, B.C., where he grew up and Nelson, B.C., where Cheryl's other brother is a dentist. By the way, he is 90-years-old. And he's still driving himself around. So if you see Earl Bickerton along the way say "hi" to him for us.

WE EXPLAIN TOO MUCH
Professor Robert Webber thinks that one of the problems with our worship is that we try to explain too much. Link

LINEA LANOIE
I added Linea's blog to my list tonight. I came across her blog through the weblog of one of my Covenant pastoral colleagues, Randall Friesen (They're both a part of Gateway Covenant Church in P.A.). So how is it that I've ended up with so many Canadians on my blog-roll? Just lucky, I guess.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
The Boston Globe has an interesting article on a fascinating man who lives down the road from us (90 miles or so -- everything in the Central Valley is "down the road"). Victor Davis Hanson is a rasin farmer who also heads up the classics department at California State University Fresno ("Fresno State"). Good thing he has a day job -- raisins are pretty much a loosing endeavor these days. They over-planted in the 90's when the price for raisins was high.

Anyway, a sample from the article: "These are confusing times, and Hanson wields a few simple ideas with blunt force. Western culture, in his view, emanates from ancient Greece and prizes consensual government, private markets, self-criticism, and rational inquiry. Where such values are found, political, economic, and military preeminence follow. The non-Western world lags behind the West because it does not share in the Greek cultural legacy, having opted instead for despotism, theocracy, illiberal markets, and the plain old laziness that has men whiling away afternoons playing backgammon in the cafes of the Middle East."

ASCENSION DAY
Today is Ascension Day on the Church's calendar.

"It was not long after he said this that he was taken up into the sky while they were watching, and he disappeared into a cloud. As they were straining their eyes to see him, two white-robed men suddenly stood there among them. They said, 'Men of Galilee, why are you standing here staring at the sky? Jesus has been taken away from you into heaven. And someday, just as you saw him go, he will return!'" Acts 1:9-11 (NLT)

DEVOTIONAL TOOL
Those inclined toward a more traditional form of devotions -- or "daily office," as it is sometimes called -- will find the site provided by All Saints Anglican Church in Charlottesville, Virginia to be of interest. It's not always easy figuring which section of the Book of Common Prayer is to be used on a given day. But they have taken the confusion out of it with a unique program that will provide for you a daily office based on the 1928 Book of Common Prayer (complete with thees and thous). You choose the prayers you want included and how many of the Psalms. Easy to use. Very cool in its own low key way. Link

LITURGICAL PRIMITIVISM
Peter Toon is quoted extensively in an article which seeks to show that not all the good stuff happened in the first three centuries of the church. Link

GOOD NEWS FOR GAMERS
"Researchers at the University of Rochester found that young adults who regularly played video games full of high-speed car chases and blazing gun battles showed better visual skills than those who did not." Link

But do they retain their skills once they stop gamming?

TOP BOOKS
Christianity Today has named its Book Award winners for 2003.

STOP THE PRESSES!
Christianity Today's weblog has fun with the cluelessness of the media. Their lead story today is "The New York Times Breaks the News That Christians Evangelize Muslims."

GODLESS EUROPE?
Check out an article by Philip Jenkins in the May/June Books and Culture. Jenkins takes on Andrew Greeley -- a fight you won't want to miss.

MADALYN MURRAY O'HAIR
Scott McLemee has a review of the new Bryan F. Le Beau (editor) book The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O'Hair Link

I once went to a speech by MMO on the campus of Arizona State University. It was a phenominal experience -- the electricity in the room -- the demonstrators -- the outbursts of the crowd. She was probably the most effective communicator I had ever seen. That is, she controled the audience -- punching their buttons and generating the exact responses she desired. I can't say that I agreed with even a word she said but she sure knew how to say it.

CACTUS IN BLOOM



You can see why they call it a Pink Lace Cactus! These blooms are on a small potted cactus in our backyard. The blooms are so big that they hide the 2 inch wide cactus. The Pink Lace Cactus (echinocereus pectinatus v. rubrispinus) is native to south Texas and Mexico.

NEW BABIES



For about a month a dove has been sitting on a nest she made in one of our hanging plants on the back patio. Sometime this morning or last night the eggs hatched and she started feeding the three new babies.

MYSTERY
I was watching one of the Greek Orthodox broadcasts for a few minutes this morning. And it struck me that one of the differences between so-called postmodern forms of worship and the anceint liturgy has to do with mystery. Churches immersed in the "postmodern style" have ACCEPTED the reality of mystery. The ancient churches EMBRACE mystery and revel in it. The postmodern churches are inclined toward mystery because they are trying to relate to a culture which frowns on certainty. The Orthodox are in some ways trying to be counter-cultural and they find certainty in the mystery.

SUNRISE
It was beautiful this morning -- wispy clouds glowing red and yellow -- light radiating from behind the silhouette of the Sierra Nevada.

WORSHIP AND EXILE
Short but significant article by John Goldingay. Link

K-LOVE CONTROVERSY
Roman Catholic Christians are upset with K-LOVE, the giant CCM radio network, because they won't promote RC concerts. Link

ACOUSTIC BASS
I've had my eye on an acoustic bass guitar that's been in one of the local music stores for a couple of years (not a big demand for acoustic basses). The store is closing and I bought the guitar today for half the original price. Now I just have to learn how to play it. It shouldn't be too tough to adapt my regular guitar skills. And then, finally, hopefully soon, we'll have a bass for the music leadership team at church. Don't worry there is not a chance under the sun that this will turn our church into a loud rock-n-roll extravaganza.

HIPPA
This afternoon I went through the HIPPA training at the hospital where I volunteer as a chaplain. Basically the federal government has taken common sense and courtesy and written them up as a complicated set of regulations. I mostly feel sorry for the hospital because this whole thing has added another layer of expensive bureaucracy to an already over-taxed system. And, of course, they have to pass the cost along to the patient.

JIM BLACK'S NEW CD
Jim Black (remember him from Quigley's Village?) has a new album. And his website is pretty decent looking, too -- although it is javascript, which drives me crazy -- especially when you try to back out of it! (hint, hint, Jim) Link

REINTRODUCING GOD TALK
The president of the Unitarian Universalist Association has caused a bit of a stir in his denomination by trying to reintroduce God talk. Link

HOLES
Upon the recommendation of a sixth grader from church, Cheryl and I went to see Holes this afternoon. Intriguing story line, plot development, and music. Definitely not just for kids.

DAY OFF?
Tuesdays are usually my day off. But I have another memorial service tomorrow morning (I had one this afternoon, too). Sometimes it just works out that way. No complaints -- I have more than enough flexibility in my schedule to make up for such times.

TITHING DOWN 62%
As unbelievable as it sounds, George Barna says that, "The proportion of households that tithe their income to their church – that is, give at least ten percent of their income to that ministry – has dropped by 62% in the past year, from 8% in 2001 to just 3% of adults during 2002." Link

I wonder why the drop – but more so, I wonder what we’re made of if anything or any set of circumstances can cause so many of us to abandon the practice so quickly. One more sign of the mile wide inch deep syndrome?

SACRAMENTS



I've been having a bit of a discussion on one of my email lists about sacraments. Why is it that all of the modern books on Christian living pretty much ignore the whole area of sacraments? Case in point being the otherwise fairly decent book The Purpose Driven Life.

Historically, the church has seen communion as a fundamental and basic source of spiritual nourishment. The Reformers even defined the validity of a church by its faithfulness to nourishing the congregation through "Word and Sacrament." But we have relegated this source to an embarrasing back burner. We certainly don't treat sacraments as essential and fundamental to spiritual growth.

RETRO SEXISM
Even the pagans are figuring out that something is wrong. From David Brooks article in The Atlantic (not Christianity Today, mind you: "The women's movement is something that happened in Mom and Dad's time. Now the attitude is, Gather up the boys and girls, and let's all be sexist pigs together. Women are allowed to be as open about their sexuality as men; 'hooking up' is common; and we're all free to treat one another as sex objects. We men can leer at your breasts, and you women can leer at our buns. We can all be Bob Gucciones, and we'll call it gender equity." Link

APATHEISM
The domient religious attitude in America? "In America, as Thomas Byrne Edsall reported... the proportion of people who say they never go to church or synagogue has tripled since 1972, to 33 percent in 2000. Most of these people believe in God (professed atheists are very rare in the United States); they just don't care much about him. They do care a bit; but apatheism is an attitude, not a belief system, and the over-riding fact is that these people are relaxed about religion." If you care check out Jonathan Rauch's article in the Atlantic

THE CLERGY LAITY GAP
is responsible for a lot of tension in the mainline churches -- as well as the loss of 600,000 Latinos from the Roman Catholic Church, every year. "The exodus from the church may be more pronounced among non-Latino Catholics. One alienating factor is what Appleby calls 'xenophobia' among American Catholics — others might call it patriotism — that conflicts with a church overwhelmingly internationalist and pacifist in outlook. 'The fundamentalists are perfectly prepared to take advantage of this,' Appleby says. 'They can take advantage of special-interest politics and people's worldview.'" Link

So, does the church have to be parochial in order to survive? To what extend should the church's values be determined by the surrounding culture?

IS THERE A LOST SHIP BURIED IN THE MOJAVE SAND?
"A pioneer party reported seeing an ornately carved Spanish galleon, complete with crosses and broken masts, mostly buried in the sand several miles from the nearest water." Native Americans from the area told a similar story. Link

OREO COURT CASE CRUMBLES
Just when things were starting to get interesting... "San Francisco attorney Stephen Joseph said his move to outlaw the tasty cookies has crumbled. He is withdrawing his lawsuit against Kraft Foods. Joseph said he only wanted to get the word out about the dangers of unlabeled trans fats in the chocolate-cookies-with-white-stuff-in-the-middle." Link

GIRL TURNS IN KNIFE...
but not fast enough -- so she is suspended from school. Once again it appears that we've lost our common senses. Link

BRIAN McLAREN STORY
The Associated Baptist Press has a story on Brian McLaren which is worth reading. Link

AMISH DOUBLING IN SIZE
Their number doubles every 20 years. Link

NO NORMAL PEOPLE
Dick Staub has an interview with John Ortberg. Ortberg: "There's a deep theological issue going on. We tend to think about normal in terms of statistical averages. So if something is common, we think it's normal. But there's deep sense in which, from God's perspective because of the Fall, nobody is normal. Nobody lives up to the norms that God had in mind when he first created human beings."

GOOD NEWS FROM KARINA
Our good friend, Karina Whitmarsh just called from Southern California where she is visiting with her parents. Through a long series of events her parents ended up in San Diego at the Billy Graham Mission on Friday. And her father made a commitment to become a follower of Christ. Karina is obviously pretty excited. PTL!

ARE MINISTERS UNIQUE?
I’ve been catching up on some reading. This is from D. G. Hart’s book Recovering Mother Kirk: the Case for Liturgy in the Reformed Tradition (Baker Books, 2003). What do you think?

In this scheme, preaching functions almost as a ritual, obviously without a set form, but still carries the liturgical weight of other elements because the sermon itself is the time when God speaks through his under servant to his people. Preaching is not simply a common act of speech through which the minister tries to get across a particular moral or doctrinal truth. It is a holy activity that God has ordained to reveal himself in worship.

A high view of the Word (preached) and sacraments, in turn, leads to a different picture of the minister than the one that commonly prevails in contemporary Presbyterian churches. Indeed, the subject of special office and ordination is where low-church Presbyterianism comes full circle and reduces the work of the pastor to one of the many ministries that God’s people conduct in all stations and walks of life. Here the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers and the Great Commission have been perverted to mean that ministers render service that are no different from what other believers so, except that pastors do it full-time, while the laity does it as an avocation. Yet if preaching really is the Word of God and if the sacraments really communicate the benefits of redemption, then the people who perform such acts are clearly different from other believers and should be set apart (ordained) to perform such holy tasks. What is more, Christ’s call in Matthew 28:18-20 to go into all the world and make disciples is not a legitimate basis for every Christian to think that he or she is called to minister the Word. Christ’s instructions make clear that the means of discipling the nations are Word (teaching) and sacrament (baptism). If evangelicals or low-church Presbyterians are going to cite the Great Commission as proper warrant for challenging the uniqueness of special office, then they will need to make sure that in addition to their Bibles they also carry some water for baptizing converts won through all manner of witnessing. (pp. 29-30)

OREOS UNDER LEGAL FIRE
San Francisco Chronicle: "Oreo cookies should be banned from sale to children in California, according to a lawsuit filed by a San Francisco attorney who claims that trans fat -- the stuff that makes the chocolate cookies crisp and their filling creamy -- is so dangerous children shouldn't eat it..." Complete story

WHAT'S SO REAL ABOUT THE MATRIX?
Frederica Mathewes-Green: "I believe there's one big flaw in the Matrix's theology. It's the idea that the beauty of creation is a deceptive lie, generated by evil forces. Real reality, the way Neo and the others discover it, is ugly, dirty, and gray. The temptation they must resist is the desire to return to the illusory world of flowers, birdsong, and sizzling steaks. Courageous humans instead must remain resolutely in their muddy realm, wearing their dingy clothes. (Not to be a pest, but if the struggling liberated humans can have clothes that are brown and gray, why can't they have clothes that are purple and green? And if they can whisk all around the time-space continuum, why can't they locate a Laundromat?)" Read all of Frederica Mathewes-Green's right-on analysis of the Matrix's world.

However, I'm still planning to see the reloaded version -- not just for the effects -- but because this is how a good portion of the people I meet are viewing reality. It all started with Star Wars and went downhill from there. The story lines are great if you can separate fantasy from reality.

YET ANOTHER SOLUTION TO SPAM
"Imagine a system that lets you set up a kind of electronic guard dog that would police incoming e-mail. Using a set of user-defined rules, e-mail from preprogrammed domain names, such as yourcompany.com, would be sniffed and automatically approved. So would messages from friends, family, prior correspondents and known mailing lists.

"Unknown correspondents, on the other hand, could contact you only if they paid for the privilege. Without bothering you, your guard dog would reply and tell the sender how much "postage" he owed. It's likely that a polite custom would arise: If the message you received from an unknown sender was sufficiently interesting, you'd return the payment or simply not deposit it.

"...Then again, the postage would not have to be paid in legal tender. Any activity that cost the sender enough would do the trick. One scheme that's been proposed uses computation instead of currency. Called 'HashCash,' it requires the sender not to send money, but to instruct his computer to perform an arbitrarily complex calculation that would take a few seconds even on a fast microprocessor. Think of it: If a would-be spammer had to perform even three seconds of computation for each person she spammed, the pace of spam would slow to glacial."

Link to Declan McCullagh column

Sounds complicated. Perhaps we could just all agree to never do business with spammers and they'd all stop because it wasn't worth their efforts. I suppose, though, that someone will always waffle. Maybe we could figure out a way to shame people for responding to spam. We could get all of the email reading programs to include a pop-up that would say nasty things to people who open possible spam messages. "This looks like it might be spam! Conscientious people don't read spam. And they certainly don't buy from spammers. Be real friend. Hit the delete button!"

LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE KJV!
The Washington Post carries a fine review of Adam Nicolson's book God's Scretaries: The Making of the King James Bible: "The King James Bible is the greatest work ever written in English, period. That alone is quite enough to inspire awe, but there is more. The King James Bible is not the work of a single inspired genius -- a Shakespeare, a Milton, a Dickens -- but of a committee. Too many cooks made it the most splendid broth imaginable. Translated from the Hebrew and Greek in the early 17th century by order of the newly crowned James I, it is a work of such majesty, passion and literary power that even the greatest of Shakespeare's tragedies must bow before it."

RE:GENERATION
The spring 2003 edition of re:generation (not yet online) sports a new look and a new publisher -- and several really good articles.

From Race to Taste: Wealth and Status in the Postmodern World -- "A sense of 'taste' (as expressed by our stuff and how we exhibit it) may be the postmodern equivalent of skin color. Having the wealth to consume and display certain sorts of 'taste,' even a taste for packaged ethnic diversity, makes anyone acceptable..."

Small Worldview: How Walt Disney's Neurosis Became Our Reality -- "Christianity's claim, of course, is exactly the opposite of Campbell's -- that the historic appearance of Jesus in Galilee two thousand years ago was the myth finally made real, the hopes and fears of all the years finally incarnated in a God willing to humble himself to save the absurd species made in his image. Thus Christianity, which has as one of its central metaphors the idea of marriage as the basis for community and cultural life, always gets short shrift by Disney, whose constantly moving business goal of 'creating the mythology of the future' means an endless redefinition of family away from its traditional heterosexual and monogamous roots and toward the farthest fringes of whatever political cultural will allow."

Practicing the Discipline of Place -- "The renewal of our culture depends on our willingness to love particular places and people."

What L'Abri Means -- introduces a new generation to the ongoing ministry established by Francis and Edith Schaeffer.

And there is a lot more that I just haven't gotten to yet.

RANDY McROBERTS
I discovered Randy's blog today. It appears that he, too, likes green AND he we have a lot of common links. I'm surprised I haven't come across him before.

BILLY GRAHAM MISSION IN SAN DIEGO
I talked with Kirk this afternoon and he said that he went to one of the Billy Graham meetings. His first comment was that it seemed a little heavy on patriotism. They sang patriotic songs and at one point Michael W. Smith was running across the platform waving the flag. In an era when Christianity and American patriotism are so often confused it seems less than wise to be punching that button at a meeting where the goal is to get people to make a commitment to Christ. The subtle (or maybe not-so-subtle) message is that if you're going to follow Christ you've got to be a hyper-patriot. Obviously with such a strong military presence in the area patriotism is a big deal. But the city is also home to a large international community that isn't going to relate to the flag-waving. And when you consider that it is right on the Mexican border and that there is a large Mexican population... For a lot of reasons this kind of syncretism seems inappropriate.

THE MATRIX



For those who still think you have to figure out the Matrix in order to understand the meaning of life -- "'Matrix' world is all-consuming in mythology, mysticism" in USAToday... And even better - "The Gospel according to Neo" in the Christian Science Monitor.

"FUNDAMENTALISTS"?
In the Washington Post Alan Cooperman wrote about the NAE meeting where certain evangelicals were encouraged to govern their coments about Islam: "The conference at a Washington hotel represented the first organized effort by fundamentalist Christian groups to rein in their rhetoric and agree on guidelines about what -- and what not -- to say about Islam..." Link

Good job, Alan! You've managed to tick-off the evangelicals by equating them with fundamentalists -- and, of course, the fundamentalists want nothing to do with the evangelicals -- whom they perceive as liberal. So you've made them unhappy, too. This is one more indicator that much of the mainstream media is clueless about religion in America. See related story by Fred Barnes in the Daily Standard

EVANGELICALS URGE SOME TO CHILL-OUT
"Evangelical leaders meeting here today denounced as 'dangerous' and 'unhelpful' the anti-Islam remarks made in the last year by leaders in their own movement and proposed new guidelines for churches to follow in relating to Muslims..." Link to NY Times article

Link to NAE

In Matthew 10:16 Jesus says "Stay alert. This is hazardous work I'm assigning you. You're going to be like sheep running through a wolf pack, so don't call attention to yourselves. Be as cunning as a snake, inoffensive as a dove." (MsgB)

Proverbs 29:9 says -- "If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool only rages and laughs, and there is no quiet." (ESV)

IOW, there are times when wisdom dictates that it is best to not go shooting your mouth off -- regardless of the validity of what you're saying. There are times and situations when you get a lot more done for the kingdom of God when you're running in stealth mode -- or at least when you're a little more low key. For example, Jesus never preached against the evils of the Roman empire. However, what he did say was a subversive time bomb that eventually brought the empire down.

ARE BRITS REALLY SHOCKED BY GOD-TALK?
"It is a shock to know that the Prime Minister believes in God. It means that Britain is led by a member of a quite small religious minority - the Christian believers.

"Christian believers are tolerated in Britain, for this is, after all, a tolerant - some would say an indifferent - country. But they are not much emulated. All of the main Christian denominations - the (Protestant) Churches of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales; the Catholic Church, the Methodists, the Presbyterians the Baptists, the Congregationalists and others - are in decline. Perhaps the evangelical sects are growing: but that’s it." Link to Scotsman article

A LITTLE DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE...
on the various religious traditions in Iraq. Link

I'M SO DISAPPOINTED (NOT!)...
Arizona State University has been bumped from the list of top party schools in the US. Suddenly I'm a graduate of a school known more for academics than partying. The value of my college degree just went up a few notches. This Michael Crow guy is alright! Link

THE BEAUTY OF GLOBALIZATION
It ain't all bad -- and it's not all a matter of exporting American culture to every corner of the earth. It goes both ways.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

"The beauty of globalization is that it can free people from the tyranny of geography. Just because someone was born in France does not mean they can only aspire to speak French, eat French food, read French books, visit museums in France, and so on. A Frenchman -- or an American, for that matter -- can take holidays in Spain or Florida, eat sushi or spaghetti for dinner, drink Coke or Chilean wine, watch a Hollywood blockbuster or an Almodóvar, listen to bhangra or rap, practice yoga or kickboxing, read Elle or The Economist, and have friends from around the world. That we are increasingly free to choose our cultural experiences enriches our lives immeasurably. We could not always enjoy the best the world has to offer.

"Globalization not only increases individual freedom, but also revitalizes cultures and cultural artifacts through foreign influences, technologies, and markets. Thriving cultures are not set in stone. They are forever changing from within and without. Each generation challenges the previous one; science and technology alter the way we see ourselves and the world; fashions come and go; experience and events influence our beliefs; outsiders affect us for good and ill."

A LOST & FOUND DAY
Last night I left my wallet in the car. My son, Kent, noticed it about the time he got to school this morning. He drove all the way back home and dropped it off before I even knew it was missing.

This afternoon I dropped my cell phone when I got out of a car downtown. Mark Morphy, a realtor in town, called to say he had found it -- before I even knew it was missing.

Thank you!

WHO IS THAT MASKED MAN?
"LONDON (Reuters) - A masked and caped do-gooder has been sweeping through an English town, performing good deeds and scattering terrified bad guys, a local newspaper reported.

"The Kent and Sussex Courier said Friday it had received letters from 'stunned residents' of the town of Tunbridge Wells, southeast of London, who saw the man in a brown mask and cape scare off hooligans and return a woman's dropped purse." Link

Film at 11.

The Swedes aren't nearly as excited about superheroes. Link

OVERLOAD
The blogger servers seemed to be overloaded tonight -- at least that's what the error messages keep saying.

GETTING AHEAD IN ORDER TO SERVE
Beth Henary has a short review on Hugh Hewitt's book In, But Not Of: A Guide to Christian Ambition and the Desire to Influence the World.

One thing Prof. Hewitt does is encourage his readers to maintain a blog.

MORE ON MY PET PEEVE -- SPAM
"'Things are worse than we imagined,' said Eileen Harrington, the Federal Trade Commission's director of marketing practices. 'There is consensus that the problem has reached a tipping point. If there are not immediate improvements implemented across the board by technologists, service providers and perhaps lawmakers, e-mail is at risk of being run into the ground.'" Link to AP story

However, Congress is "moving" to fix the problem. Link to AP story

WILLIAM BENNETT'S GAMBLING
Will William Bennett's (author of the Book of Virtues, former education and drug czar) gambling make him persona non grata on James Dobson's Focus on the Family radio show? The Washington Monthly is reporting his total losses to be more than $8 million. Link to NY Times article

Mr Bennett says that gambling helps him to relax. I can understand that. I can even understand how people might occasionally drop a few dollars into a machine for fun (not a lot more expensive than going to a movie) -- but $8 million! That sounds like an expensive (non-virtuous) way to relax -- even if you can afford it. Just because you can afford to spend money that way doesn't mean that you should. If he's interested I'm willing to teach him about how to relax while gardening or riding a bike. And I won't charge him a penny.

ETHICAL QUESTION
Is it ethical for the record companies to plant a trojan horse in their recordings that would wreak havoc in the computers of people who pirate their music? Apparently such software is in the pipe. Link NY Times article

Do two wrongs make a right?

CHATTING WITH PAGANS
Karl Thienes, an Orthodox Christain, reflects on a conversation he had with a pagan: "Two quite paradoxical impressions from this encounter yesterday afternoon struck me:
1) Although it almost goes without saying, New Age Pagan spirituality has hardly *anything* in common with the ancient patristic/monastic/Eastern Christian spiritual Tradition.
2) New Age Pagan spirituality has more in common with the Orthodoxy than much of contemporary American Christian spirituality."

I'm sure that in some ways Karl is correct -- emphasis on wholistic approach and energy for mystery -- but it seems to me, that as weak as American Christian spirituality is, it is at least in the same ballpark as historic expressions of Christianity. We may be the popcorn vendors but we're at least in the same ballpark.

THE LANGUAGE POLICE
Interesting LA Times review of The Language Police, How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn by Diane Ravitch and Alfred A. Knopf. Link

"What makes this form of censorship so insidious is that it has not been imposed by the federal government but has been voluntarily embraced by textbook publishers who, quite naturally, want their books to be adopted by schools and by states like California and Texas, where statewide adoptions are the rule. The publishers have voluntarily adopted "bias and sensitivity" guidelines, which echo the guidelines of test development companies, which reflect the guidelines of various state and city agencies, which in turn reflect the concerns and sensitivities of ... well, just about anyone who cares to raise a stink about anything."

DANISH COMPANY CONVICTED OF SPAM
A small Danish software company was convicted of sending 156 unsolicited advertising emails and fined $2,200. Link