Category Archives: Social Science

Not Worth the Paper It’s Printed On?

What newspaper do you read?

  • The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
  • The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
  • The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.
  • USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.
  • The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country, if they could find the time, and if they didn’t have to leave Southern California to do it.
  • The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.
  • The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
  • The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who’s running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
  • The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores.
  • The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy provided, of course, that they are not Republicans.
  • The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.
  • None of these are read by the guy who is running the country into the ground.

unattributed, via an email list

[lifted boldly and unapologetically from MacRaven]

Everything Has At Best

hearst castle garden path

It struck me as odd and sad that man could for centuries have so effortlessly graced the landscape with structures that seemed made for it — little arched bridges and stone farmhouses, churches, windmills, winding roads, hedgerows — and now appeared quite unable to do anything to the countryside that wasn’t like a slap across the face. These days everything has at best a sleek utility, like the dully practical windmills slipping past with the scenery outside my train window, or else it looks cheap and temporary, like the tin sheds and concrete hangars that pass for superstores on the edge of every mid-sized town. We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.

–Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe

Christian Iron John

According to the article linked below, on any given Sunday women outnumber men 61% to 49% at Christian services.

Murrow, a 1983 Baylor University graduate and author of “Why Men Hate Going to Church,” contends that the modern church is too chatty, too touchy-feely and full of hokey rituals that don’t affirm a guy’s manhood. In short, the faith founded by one man 2,000 years ago needs a testosterone shot.

—Modern Churches Don’t Suit the Macho Man

However, the article also mentions a 1910 YMCA survey found that two-thirds of church attendants were female. So I’d say this problem is more deeply rooted; 1910 isn’t ancient history, but neither does it qualify as modern to my thinking.

As one who belonged to a charismatic, evangelical church for several years, I do concede one point to Murrow. He says, “Praise and worship services are 20-30 minutes of love songs to Jesus Christ in words no man would say to another.” Services are, and while some of the songs are lovely, they may not suit all personalities. However, Murrow also says church services have become “a time and place for mush, emotion and sentimentality.” This has not been the case in all denominations (Roman Catholic comes to mind, as do other churches with more formal, ritualized services). The atmosphere Murrow bemoans is a key trait of the evangelical charismatic style, which aims to heighten a person’s awareness of his unsaved condition by making him aware of his wretchedness and sinfulness, and by then appealing to fear (of damnation) and hope (of salvation) by calling him to “be born again.” It is a highly emotional style that has been a component of evangelicalism for many, many decades. Perhaps less focus on emotional manipulation and more education on what it means to follow Jesus is in order?

Interesting article.

[via MacRaven]

Unassuagable Little Frailties

caltrain

There is this curiously durable myth that European trains are wonderfully swift and smooth and a dream to travel on. The trains in Europe are in fact often tediously slow, and for the most part the railways persist in the antiquated system of dividing the carriages into compartments. I used to think this was rather jolly and friendly, but you soon discover that it is like spending seven hours in a waiting room waiting for a doctor who never arrives. You are forced into an awkward intimacy with strangers, which I always find unsettling. If you do anything at all — take something from your pocket, stifle a yawn, rummage in your rucksack — everyone looks to see what you’re up to. There is no scope for privacy and of course there is nothing like being trapped in a train compartment on a long journey to bring all those unassuagable little frailties of the human body crowding to the front of your mind — the withheld fart, the three and a half square yards of boxer shorts that have somehow become concertinaed between your buttocks, the Kellogg’s corn flake that is unaccountably lodged deep in your left nostril. It was the corn flake that I ached to get at. The itch was all-consuming. I longed to thrust a finger so far up my nose that it would look as if I were scratching the top of my head from the inside, but of course I was as powerless to deal with that as a man with no arms.

–Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe

Heat-Related Public Service Announcement

With a heat wave gripping the nation, please remember:

NEVER LEAVE CHILDREN OR PETS IN A PARKED VEHICLE

The website Kids and Cars shows that 24% of of non-traffic, non-crash fatalities involving children under 15 years of age are due to leaving the child in the vehicle during hot weather.

Studies show that when the temperature is 85 degrees outside, the temperature inside a parked car can rise to 90 degrees within 5 minutes, 100 degrees within 10 minutes, and 120 degrees within 30 minutes. With temperatures rising even higher, the car can heat up to 140 within minutes. Children and animals trapped inside cars, especially during seriously hot weather, may experience heat exhaustion or heat stroke, leading to permanent disability or death in a matter of minutes. Heat stroke can cause shock, seizures, irregular heartbeat, heart attack, and damage to the brain, liver, and kidneys.

Remember, cars are not babysitters!

The Perfection of the Disguise

When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, “What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person. He would probably laugh at the thought that the Lord sent him to you for your benefit (and his), but that is the perfection of the disguise, his own ignorance of it.

–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

My Own Quiet Little World

I was sitting on the wrong side of the train to look at scenery — outside my window there was nothing but a wall of rock — but a pleasant, bespectacled lady sitting across the aisle saw me straining to see things, and invited me to take the empty seat opposite her. She was Swiss and spoke excellent English. We chatted brightly about the scenery and our modest lives. She was a bank clerk in Zürich, but was visiting her mother in a village near Domodossola and had just spent a day shopping in Locarno. She showed me some flowers she had bought there. It seemed like weeks — it was weeks — since I had held a normal conversation with someone, and it was wonderful. I was so taken with the novel experience of issuing sounds through a hole in my head that I chattered away about any little thing that flitted through my mind, and before long she was fast asleep and I was back once again in my own quiet little world.

–Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe

Blog Discoveries & Trivia

I found out about Blogpulse from Euan’s blog. I’ve been trying to wean my ego from paying attention to the number of visitors here or finding who links to me. This program, of course, taps into that vein, but it promises to be an interesting way to track topical trends in blogs. I found myself listed and looked at the blogs considered to be my “neighbors.” A few were appealing, and I shall make a point of visiting more:

  • Pages Turned. A reading journal and commonplace book–a book in which ‘commonplacesÂ’ or passages important for reference are collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement. Offers an impressive booklist and other snippets.
  • Coffee and Varnish: With Enough Coffee I Could Rule the World. DEFINITION – “Jane Smith”, circa 1969: coffee whore, internet junkie, canine lover, devourer of books, movie fiend, creative, flirt, lazy-ass, smart-mouthed, potato-chip-eater. An interesting collection of reflections.
  • Nothing To Do With Arbroath: No real issues. Just stuff and nonsense. Fun links to interesting tidbits. I especially enjoyed the European Geography quiz, although I admit with chagrin I scored only 56%.

I also, lately, have hopped on the silly quiz bandwagon. This blog has not featured many, but every now and then I give in and take some. Results are below:
Continue reading →

A Little Willingness To See

aura

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance — for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light. …But the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?

–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Can’t Talk Now… Reading

Being unemployed provides swaths of time that beg to used, and lately, I’ve been sprawled across the hammock or sofa with my nose in a book. I finished Gilead, a novel written in the form of a letter from elderly father to young son. It was lyrical. I’ve tucked about a dozen quotes away for use on the blog.

I’ve begun dipping into Bill Bryson’s Neither Here Nor There, which has already delivered to my expectations. His chapters are concise and make for pleasant bedtime reading — unless you’re my husband, attempting to fall asleep to occasional spurts of muffled laughter. Bryson really tickles me.

And of course, I’ve hopped onto the Harry Potter bandwagon. We own books one through five, but we stalled out in the middle of book four a couple years ago. (While I enjoy the stories, I’m not bitten that severely by the mania.) Since the fourth movie will come out in November, though, I thought I’d best get up to speed. Besides, I’ve heard so much murmuring about the darkness of the latest volume that my interest is roused.

Being immersed in books has quieted my urge to write. I haven’t posted my own thoughts, because I’ve nothing but very mundane things to say about my very ordinary days. I’m not feeling creative, loquacious, or disciplined. Of course, I would love to write about what I did today — writing is a way I process — but this blog, while somewhat personal, isn’t the place for such run-of-the-mill writing.

I am reading and healing. As soon as my body is ready, we will again attempt to kindle life. Talk about creative! It amazed me, what my body had begun. To make something out of almost nothing, to participate in a complex process that unfolds with such order and precision. How do certain cells know their job is to become eyes, or skin, or nerves, and how do they know in what order to manifest? It made me wonder, and I felt involved in something important, eternal, and magnificent. I feel a bit of fear; I could be unsuccessful again.

To dream, to hope, to strive — all this creates attachment, and attachment carries the risk of loss and pain. But that’s okay. I accept this as part of life. It became clear to me, within a day of confirming that I was pregnant, that there would never again be a time when I could sigh and say, “All done! No more risk!” If anything, having a child increases risk. I was tempted to say, “Once I get past the first trimester, I’m in the clear.” But no, this is not guaranteed. “Once I have the child, and it’s healthy, we’re all set!” Again, no. A debilitating disease might occur, or an intellectual disability, or any number of misfortunes may await. “Once my child graduates college and has a good job, I’m done!” A parent isn’t at liberty, ever, to be “finished with” caring for a child. Even during my abbreviated pregnancy, I grasped this. That scared me too. So to try again, I think, is evidence of true grit, and perhaps a dash of insanity.

Making the decision to have a child — it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

— Elizabeth Stone

In for a penny, in for a pound. As I see it, we can try again, and we might fail. There will be sadness and even anger. We can try again, and we might succeed, and then there will surely be sadness and anger, but also joy and amazement, and laughter and vitality. We can decide, instead, that the risk scares us and continue with life as we have been. A life without one’s own children will also contain sadness, anger, as well as joy, amazement, laughter, and vitality. All three paths are similar in this way. So the driving force is curiosity. Which path most intrigues me? One question I ask myself over the years is: Is the decision I am about to make based on fear? For me, a fear-based decision is the incorrect one. Fear is valid, no dispute there. I give it its due. I just won’t (or try not to) let it shape my life. The risk of being a parent scares me most of all, and this is the very reason I will choose to try again.

Gee, for someone who protested an absence of words, I apparently tapped a hidden spring.

In Every Important Way

In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable — which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us.

–Marilynne Robinson, Gilead