[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UbGSPx486E&hl=en_US&fs=1&w=480&h=295]
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/309295/may-13-2010/glenn-to-the-mountaintop
Two words….
GORAN DRAGIC.
http://www.southbendtribune.com/article/20100502/News01/5020310/1129/News
I play softball against and sometimes with this guy.
http://http//laporteassemblyofgod.com/components/com_sermonspeaker/media/041810%20Jeff%20Kling.mp3
God is good.
R. is not an avid blog reader, but he does read one blog religiously. Not many days ago his favorite blogger posted the following brief entry.
"One difference between Glenn Beck and me: while we both assume people are greedy, I happen to think that greed is evil." (http://robbyprenkert.blogspot.com/2010/03/compare-and-contrast.html )
He--that is, R.--has been reading Nietzsche, as well. He thinks that he could write a reply. "One difference between Nietzsche and me: while we both assume people are greedy, I happen to think that greed (the will to power) is evil."
Which leads him to a related and obvious thought, of course. It is not so much the fact that Nietzsche and Beck share a worldview that troubles him. It is the masses of unthinking evangelical Christians who have so blindly devoured Beck's Nietzschean, 'anti-Christ,' rhetoric that worry him.
Four kinds of flowers, two ducks, new leaf buds, and two butterflies.
Morgan took a little dip in the Baugo Creek.
Sydney picked flowers for people she loves.
One difference between Glenn Beck and me: while we both assume people are greedy, I happen to think that greed is evil.
A bee gets nearly 5 million miles per gallon of honey.
If only my 1999 Ford Escort would run on honey.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123289433&ft=1&f=1025
Sydney has been teaching herself to whistle. Every so often I’ll hear an airy whistle from the other room. It usually takes me a second or two to realize that “hey, that was pretty good.”
I like that she keeps practicing and slowly but surely she seems to be getting better at it. Most of the time she just blows air out her (incredibly cute) puckered lips, and there isn’t much of a whistle. But every now and again she nails it. She’s not “working” at whistling–you couldn’t call something that one does with such a spirit of leisurely indifference, work. She’s just learning to do something for the pleasure of it, simply because she can. I don’t know why she decided she wanted to whistle. She never asked to be taught and never announced that she had a plan. She just started trying.
I love that.
Splendid news. A couple days ago I discovered that we actually get the SciFi channel. Call me “Mr. Observant.” Anyhow, the splendid news is that every few days this channel shows reruns of “X-Files.” So now I can DVR “X-files” and get my conspiracy theory/paranormal/“the truth is out there” fix every now and then.
On a related note, I’m also recommending my readers try tuning into this late night talk show called “Coast to Coast” sometime.
www.coasttocoastam.com
Not that I’m a regular listener by any stretch of the imagination–I think I heard a part of the show one time while driving home from New Jersey in the middle of the night many years ago. So “the truth is out there” but apparently so are the crazies.
It was this article that got me intrigued.
www.theatlantic.com/doc/20100…
Pull-ups are hard. Some varieties are easier than others, of course. Reverse grip chin-ups are, for me, easier than wide grip or close grip overhand pull-ups. Corn-cob pull-ups are brutal (pull up, chin to the left, chin to the right, chin away from bar, and then back down again). 
But I like them because they're hard and because after I have done six or eight sets of them I can tell I've done something good for my body.
A professional physical trainer once told me that if you could only do two strength exercises, pull-ups would be one of them.
Squats would be the other.
I can't say anything in praise of squats.
Man vs. Wild
Urban Survivor
TV-PG, CC
In a special edition of Man vs Wild, Bear Grylls finds himself in a new kind of jungle -- a concrete jungle. Bear uses the same wilderness survival techniques to stay alive in a city post-disaster.
So I wake up in the morning and I drink a cup of 1/2 water 1/2 acai berry juice. Eight ounces of this stuff has 1000% (that’s right, 10 times what you need) of your daily value of vitamin B12 and 200% of your daily value of Vitamin C–this among other things. Supposedly this stuff is loaded with antioxidants. Who knows. All I know is that I feel energized within a few minutes of drinking the stuff and hopping on the bike.
Here’s the downside of waking up each day, drinking a big cup of watered down acai berry juice, and then riding a bike for a half hour. Riding a bike in the morning makes me very thirsty, so I drink a lot of water while and after I ride the bike–which is healthy, yes, but drinking that much makes me pee a lot. A lot.
Like, I went to the bathroom four times between 7:30 a.m. and the start of my class at 9:00 a.m. In fact, I went to the bathroom at Syd’s daycare after I dropped her off around 8:25. I went to my classroom to log on to the computer and double check if the song I wanted to play would work from that computer, and by the time I finished that little test run and started to walk to my office I had to go again. After a few minutes in my office, I headed back to the classroom. On that walk I felt the urge again. Fortunately, this rate of bathroom visits does not continue throughout the day.
And so I would like to give a shout out to acai berry juice, a morning bike ride, and a lot of water. Flush the system, loosen up the creaky joints, crank up the metabolism, and energize my aging body.
Playing basketball at 40, some days are better than others. And probably that’s not even true. It’s not that some days are better than others, but that some days I have brief stretches where I feel that all is right with my game. Not whole days, just brief, fleeting, moments. These moments are fewer and farther between, but they still happen on occasion.
Today I had a few moments on the court where I felt I could do no wrong. The moment passes, but while your in it–at 40–you relish it more than you once did. No one watches; no one cheers anymore. And yet, somehow, I find these moments–at 40–even more satisfying than moments I had in jam packed gyms at 18 or 21.
I keep playing basketball for moments when it all comes together–feathery light on my feet, a step-and-a-half faster than the game, my thrown-together team, the ball, and I as one.
I ride a stationary bike for half an hour every morning right after I get out of bed to make it more likely that moments like these can continue happen. I go to the gym by myself for 45 minutes on Tuesday and Thursday, to see if I can manufacture moments like these. I do more pull-ups, and push-ups, and crunches, and arm curls, and so on and so forth (they call it “P90X”–maybe you’ve seen the infomercial, too) then I’ve ever done in my life, to prepare my body for moments like these.
Is this pathetic?
I don’t care. Live a moment or two like these and you won’t care if anyone thinks its pathetic. Instead, all you’ll know to do is thank God you’re alive and well enough to cherish them.
Today we got new light fixtures in the basement and a new motion sensitive outdoor light in the back of the house. We got the leaky drain pipe under the kitchen sink replaced, and the clothes washer drain that always backs up, snaked and repaired. We got Sydney’s dresser drawers adjusted so they don’t stick anymore, and a bunch of worthless electrical outlets replaced.
You must be thinking, “Wow, what handyman you are."
Nice thought, but, no. Rob–Jeanie’s sister’s boyfriend–is a handy man. I am mostly worthless when it comes to making simple updates and repairs.
On the upside, I’m smart enough to know that the people who owned the house before us were also worthless when it came to making simple updates and repairs, too; and smart enough, besides that, to stay out of the way of someone who knows what he’s doing.
Nevertheless, I have to tell you that I do feel a bit less “manly” for my inability to make simple electrical and plumbing repairs around the house.
p.s. The other day I did 79 pull-ups and 342 push-ups.
40
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjtpplE39_g&hl=en_US&fs=1&&w=425&h=344]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWYtkn_8D-g&hl=en_US&fs=1&&w=425&h=344]
“Too many steps; that’s just too many steps.” (Sydney, after watching Bethel Lady Pilots basketball on Saturday, and apparently listening carefully to Bobby Morton as P.A.)
“Papa, I wanna go down stairs and watch ‘The Office.’ I like Michael Scott."
What's a papa to do but drop everything and fulfill such a worthwhile wish?
A man, standing in front of classroom full of MBA students, rips pages from an economics textbook.
“Papa, what is Michael Scott doing?” (Sydney)
Beginning in 1959, Umberto Eco contributed a monthly column of wit and parody to an Italian literary journal. In the 1960’s the columns were collected and went through two editions. Some of them have now been translated by William Weaver and will be published in paperback in May by Harcourt Brace & Company as a Helen and Kurt Wolff Book under the title “Misreadings.” The excerpts below are taken from a piece titled “Regretfully, We Are Returning Your . . .” – reports from professional readers of manuscripts submitted to publishers by agents or hopeful authors.
“The Bible.” Anonymous.
I must say that the first few hundred pages of this manuscript really hooked me. Action-packed, they have everything today’s reader wants in a good story. Sex (lots of it, including adultery, sodomy, incest), also murder, war, massacres and so on.
The Sodom and Gomorrah chapter, with the transvestites putting the make on the angels, is worthy of Rabelais; the Noah stories are pure Jules Verne; the escape from Egypt cries out to be turned into a major motion picture. In other words, a real blockbuster, very well structured, with plenty of twists, full of invention, with just the right amount of piety, and never lapsing into tragedy.
But as I kept on reading, I realized that this is actually an anthology, involving several writers, with many – too many – stretches of poetry, and passages that are downright mawkish and boring, and jeremiads that make no sense.
The end result is a monster omnibus. It seems to have something for everybody, but ends up appealing to nobody. And acquiring the rights from all these different authors will mean big headaches, unless the editor takes care of that himself. The editor’s name, by the way, doesn’t appear anywhere on the manuscript, not even in the table of contents. Is there some reason for keeping his identity a secret?
I’d suggest trying to get the rights only to the first five chapters. We’re on sure ground there. Also come up with a better title. How about “The Red Sea Desperadoes?”
“The Odyssey.” Homer.
Personally, I like this book. A good yarn, exciting, packed with adventure. Sufficient love interest, both marital fidelity and adulterous flings (Calypso is a great character, a real man-eater); there’s even a Lolita aspect, with the teen-ager Nausicaa, where the author doesn’t spell things out, but it’s a turn-on anyway. Great dramatic moments, a one-eyed giant, cannibals, even some drugs, but nothing illegal, because as far as I know the lotus isn’t on the Narcotics Bureau’s list. The final scene is in the best tradition of the Western: some heavy fist-swinging, and the business with the bow is a masterstroke of suspense.
What can I say? It’s a page turner, all right, not like the author’s first book, which was too static, all concerned with unity of place and tediously overplotted. By the time the reader reached the third battle and the 10th duel, he already got the idea. But this second book is a totally different thing: it reads as smooth as silk. The tone is calmer, pondered but not ponderous. And then the montage, the use of flashbacks, the stories within stories. . . . In a word, this Homer is the right stuff. He’s smart.
Too smart, maybe. I wonder if it’s all really his own work. I know, of course, a writer can improve with experience (his third book will probably be a sensation), but what makes me uncomfortable – and, finally, leads me to cast a negative vote – is the mess the question of rights will cause. In the first place, the author’s nowhere to be found. People who knew him say it was always hard to discuss any changes to be made in the text, because he was as blind as a bat, couldn’t follow the manuscript, and even gave the impression he wasn’t completely familiar with it. Did he really write the book or did he just sign it?
“The Divine Comedy.” Alighieri, Dante.
Alighieri is your typical Sunday writer. (In everyday life he’s an active member of the pharmacists' guild.) Still, his work shows an undeniable grasp of technique and considerable narrative flair. The book, in the Florentine dialect, consists of about a hundred rhymed chapters, and much of it is interesting and readable. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of astronomy and certain concise, provocative theological notions. The third part of the book is the best and will have the widest appeal; it involves subjects of general interest, concerns of the common reader – salvation, the Beatific Vision, prayers to the Virgin. But the first part is obscure and self-indulgent, with passages of cheap eroticism, violence and downright crudity. But the greatest drawback is the author’s choice of his local dialect (inspired no doubt by some crackpot avant-garde idea). We all know that today’s Latin needs a shot in the arm – it isn’t just the little literary cliques that insist on this. But there’s a limit, after all, if not in the rules of language then at least to the public’s ability to understand.
“Critique of Practical Reason.” Kant, Immanuel.
I asked Susan to take a look at this, and she tells me that after Barthes there’s no point translating this Kant. In any case, I glanced at it myself. A reasonably short book on morality could fit nicely into our philosophy series, and might even be adopted by some universities. But the German publisher says that if we take this one, we have to commit ourselves not only to the author’s previous book, which is an immense thing in at least two volumes, but also to the one he is working on now, about art or about judgment, I’m not sure which. All three books have more or less the same title, so they would have to be sold boxed (and at a price no reader could afford); otherwise bookshop browsers would mistake one for the other and think, “I’ve already read this."
There’s another problem. The German agent tells me that we would also have to publish the minor works of this Kant, a whole pile of stuff including something about astronomy. I would advise against getting involved with a man like this; we’ll end up with a mountain of his books in the warehouse.
“The Trial.” Kafka, Franz.
Nice little book. A thriller with some Hitchcock touches. The final murder, for example. It could have an audience.
But apparently the author wrote under a regime with heavy censorship. Otherwise, why all these vague references, this trick of not giving names to people or places? And why is the protagonist being put on trial? If we clarify these points and make the setting more concrete (facts are needed: facts, facts, facts), then the action will be easier to follow and suspense is assured. Genuine writing has to keep in mind the old newspaperman’s five questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? If we can have a free hand with editing, I’d say buy it. If not, not.
“Finnegans Wake.” Joyce, James.
Please, tell the office manager to be more careful when he sends books out to be read. I’m the English-language reader, and you’ve sent me a book written in some other, Godforsaken language. I’m returning it under separate cover.
This week’s column is written by Alvera Mickelsen, a founding member of Christians for Biblical Equality.
“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24, TNIV).
Genesis chapter 2 begins by telling how God created the garden of Eden; how God created man from the dust of the ground, giving him the work of caring for it and the command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil lest he die; and how God brought the animals he created to Adam to be named. This is followed by the account of God creating Eve from the side of Adam and bringing her to Adam, who said, “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman for she was taken out of man” (v. 23).
Then comes an astonishing statement that has been ignored from the beginning of time. Genesis 2:24 says “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (emphasis added). This seems to imply that the husband will become part of the family of his bride which, in the society of biblical times, probably meant joining her community.
Yet, beginning after the fall in Genesis, the woman was expected to leave her parents and become part of her husband’s family. In the story of Isaac and Rebekah, for example, Rebekah left her family to go to the land of Isaac. This pattern is repeated over and over in the Bible and carries on today. Consider our contemporary wedding ceremonies, which often include the line “Who gives this woman to be married to this man?” The bride’s father then answers “I do” or “Her mother and I.” The implication is that the bride leaves her family and the protection of her father to go with her husband and become part of his family.
Most of the world follows a patriarchal social order—where a male is recognized as the head of the family and kinship is traced through the male line. Inheritance of material possessions usually follows the male line. The stronger this pattern is, the greater the prevalence of wife abuse and violence toward women. For evidence we need only examine strongly patriarchal societies such as those in India and in the Middle East.
But this is not what God designed. Suppose that our world practiced the command in Genesis 2:24—given even before sin entered the world. How would marriages look different? Wouldn’t a married couple who came under the care and supervision of the bride’s family be much less likely to experience wife abuse? Her family, including her father, would be nearby to protect her!
Interestingly, the command in Genesis 2:24 was important to the Apostle Paul, who quoted it in Ephesians 5:31 directly after his instructions to husbands to love and care for their wives as they do their own bodies (v. 29). Yet, this command in the creation story is rarely mentioned in our churches. In my scores of years going to church, I have never heard it discussed—even though it is repeated in the chapter of Ephesians that talks at length about submission. I have heard dozens of sermons on the importance of a wife submitting to her husband but never once about a husband leaving his parents to be united with his wife!
We all need to try to read the Bible with fresh eyes—not assuming that whatever interpretation we have heard in the past is the only valid one. Romans 12:2 reminds us, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world [such as patriarchy?], but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (emphasis added).
Alvera Mickelsen