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Weekly Meanderings

Weekly Meanderings

Last updated on: July 9, 2011 at 5:58 am by Scot McKnight

Weekly Meanderings 2011-07-09T05:58:48-05:00 Scot McKnight

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Kris and I are in the Big Apple (for the first time)

at the American Bible Society’s event for the 400th anniversary of the KJB
and it’s been a short work week at home so not as many pictures.

Good story about Kareem and the rabbi: “American basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will visit Israelin July and meet with Rabbi Israel Meir Lau to discuss a film that he is making about World War II, the rabbi said recently. The film is based on the book “Brothers in Arms”, which Abdul-Jabbar co-authored and deals with the American troops who liberated Nazi concentration camps in the end of World War II. Abdul-Jabbar’s own father served on the 761st Tank Battalion, which liberated the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Germany…. Lau said that Abdul-Jabbar’s father, Ferdinand L. Alcindor, had a dying wish: “That his son visit Israel, and meet the little boy that he rescued from Buchenwald and turned into a prominent rabbi.” (HT: TH)

Donald Miller, proud to be an American: “It wasn’t until I visited what we call the second and third world that I realized how amazing it is [that] America exists. Our country is a miracle orchestrated by a genius group of founding fathers. As I travel in and out of corrupt social structures, America really does shine like a city on a hill to show the world a place between heaven and hell.” And E.J. Dionne‘s piece in WaPo is worth reading in this context: “We praise our Founders annually for revolting against royal rule and for creating an exceptionally durable system of self-government. We can wreck that system if we forget our Founders’ purpose of creating a representative form of national authority robust enough to secure the public good. It is still perfectly capable of doing that. But if we pretend we are living in Boston in 1773, we will draw all the wrong conclusions and make some remarkably foolish choices.”

There’s more to conservatism than Rush and Sean with D.G. Hart, one who really does know this subject. [And if you are in Grand Rapids, stop by today to hear him.) And read this by Jon Pott …

Caiaphas’ family bone box authentic: “JERUSALEM — Israeli scholars have confirmed the authenticity of a 2,000-year-old burial box that appears to bear the name of a relative of the high priest Caiaphas mentioned in the New Testament, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Wednesday.”

Eugene Cho on sabbatical. An Irish thinker reflects on Luther’s famous lines.

Working mom calling with April.

I thought the NIV would not raise ire like this: “Southern Baptists repeatedly have affirmed our commitment to the full inspiration and authority of Scripture,” the resolution states. “This translation alters the meaning of hundreds of verses, most significantly by erasing gender-specific details which appear in the original language.” Expressing “profound disappointment” with Biblica and Zondervan Publishing House, who printed 1.9 million copies of the updated Bible in the first run, the SBC “respectfully [requested]” that Lifeway Bookstores not sell the new version in their stores and encouragedpastors to let their congregations know of the translation errors. “We cannot commend the 2011 NIV to Southern Baptists or to the larger Christian community,” the resolution concluded.” [These SBC folks are profoundly mistaken.]

Diane Farr on “Not with a white girl”: “But Seung kept talking and what he was saying didn’t allow me to recoil for too long. He wanted to be with me, no matter what. He had a plan for how he would address this issue with his parents and he wondered if I was willing to take the leap with him. His words shut off the alarm bells in my head and I agreed to follow him into the racially slurred forest where we would attempt to change what his parents, and so many, say in private to their kids about a mixed-race marriage. That turned out to be the most measured discussion Seung and I ever had about his family’s belief that marrying me might degrade them by watering down their culture or bloodline. Because it was the only one in which I stayed silent. Using my words, gently and respectfully, in many, many, many subsequent conversations about how I felt did in fact lead Seung Yong and I to marry — with the full support of all our parents. But it was only through continuous dialogue — at the dinner table with friends who could advise us, and using calm voices in the bedroom with one another, and keeping an open mind on the couch at the therapist’s office — that we were able to find a way to make our familial cultures meet in the middle at our mutual American one. Seven years later and three half-Asian/half-Caucasian children deep, the discussion of race rarely comes up in our home. But only because we worked so hard to make sure the inconsistencies we were both taught in our parents’ homes about what kinds of people were worthy to love would never be a part of our home or life together.”

Meanderings in the News

1. The rise of micro-farming in the Congo: “KINSHASA, 28 June 2011 (IRIN) – Urban farming in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is providing a livelihood for thousands of city dwellers, with vegetables bringing in good money for small growers and helping to alleviate high levels of malnutrition nationally, agricultural officials say. The demand for vegetables and the high prices they command in DRC cities – up to US$4 per kilo – has pushed many jobless residents into becoming small-scale growers. Most of the green spaces along the roadsides of the capital, Kinshasa, have been transformed into small farms. City farmers now grow 122 percent more produce than they did five years ago, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The FAO is supporting gardeners in five main DRC cities with a $10.4 million urban horticulture project to increase their productivity and improve their farming skills.” (HT: BB)

2. Brandon Scott Gorrell creates his top five (new) religions.

3. Reed Johnson on Hemingway: “Boozy, boorish and self-besotted, the world-famous writer in Woody Allen’s current hit film, “Midnight in Paris,” is kind of a clown. And, as played by actor Corey Stoll, he’s an instantly recognizable replica of the author of “The Sun Also Rises” and “The Old Man and the Sea.” He is, of course, Ernest Hemingway. Or rather, he’s the Hemingway caricature handed down to posterity: a hard-drinking, womanizing, big-game trophy-hunting, fame-craving blowhard who pushed his obsession about writing in a lean, mean prose style to the point of self-parody. But exactly 50 years after the Nobel Prize-winning writer committed suicide at his home in Ketchum, Idaho, on July 2, 1961, there’s another, more serious and respectable Hemingway still duking it out with this comic imposter in the ring of public perception. Marty Beckerman says that he had both Hemingways in mind while writing his just-published book, “The Heming Way,” a combination of loving tribute and tongue-in-cheek how-to guide for what Beckerman, 28, sees as today’s Facebook generation of timid metrosexual males. “I think that everybody knows the Hemingway cartoon character, even guys who’ve never read ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ and ‘Farewell to Arms,’ ” says Beckerman, a writer for Esquire magazine whose book is subtitled, “How to Unleash the Booze-Inhaling, Animal-Slaughtering, War-Glorifying, Hairy-Chested, Retro-Sexual Legend Within… Just Like Papa!” But Beckerman also wanted his book to remind people of the other Hemingway: intrepid war correspondent, colorful bohemian and virile man of action, whose muscular short stories and novels define modern writing the way Picasso’s paintings define modern art.”

4. Steven Stosny on stress: “Stress gets a bad press in this country. Blame for stress-related health problems is everywhere: time pressures, insecure jobs, congested commutes, information overload, fragmented social schedules, complex financial worries, and so on. It’s certainly a tough world out there. Yet much of what is labeled “stress” is actually resentment for not getting entitlement needs met. Resentment enhances stress by breaking down concentration and draining off energy that would otherwise serve the task at hand. The report you need to write will take longer and have more errors if you feel that it should have been assigned to someone else. It might have been an interesting task, if you didn’t regard the production quotas placed on you as unfair. You might enjoy driving your kids to the soccer game, if you didn’t ruminate about your spouse expecting you to do it. Traffic congestion would be easier to bear if you enjoyed the music or audio book you’re hearing.

Here’s a little test to see if your stress is inflated by resentment. Write down the five main things that cause stress in your life. On a scale of 1-10, rate your average ability to cope with each item on your stress list. Now take a moment to imagine that all traces of resentment have been removed from your stressors – there is no unfairness or injustice involved. Everyone pulls his or her weight; all live up to their responsibilities. You have all the help, understanding, appreciation, consideration, praise, and reward you deem appropriate. Now reevaluate your capacity to cope with the stressors you listed. On a scale of 1-10, rate your average capacity to cope with each item on yourresentment-free stress list. Once resentment is removed from the mix, most people notice a significant increase in their capacity to cope with their stressors. Resentment increases stress by lowering the capacity to cope with it. Chains of resentment, not stress, overwhelm and ultimately dispirit us.” [Da Cubs.]

5. Kim Wombles reports that our memories are not like good wines: “An article on Science 2.0 addresses a new study on just how easy it is to create false memories. According to the article, researchers “show a unique pattern of brain activity when false memories are formed – one that hints at a surprising connection between our social selves and memory.” The conclusion of the article is that “social reinforcement could act on the amygdala to persuade our brains to replace a strong memory with a false one.” (video on study available here.)”

6. Francois Furstenberg: “In the wake of the economic crash, which has led to soaring budget deficits, Democrats and Republicans are negotiating “to move forward to trillions of spending cuts,” as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said recently. A report from House Speaker John Boehner’s office called for “eliminating [government] agencies and programs” and “reducing transfer payments to households.” These changes would result in unprecedented reductions in the size of the welfare state and the American social compact as it developed over the last century. Lost in this debate is an appreciation of the historical origins of the American welfare state — long before FDR and the New Deal, after another epochal financial crash. Much like our time, the Gilded Age was an era of economic booms and busts. None was greater than the financial crisis that began in September 1873 with the collapse of Jay Cooke & Co., the nation’s premier investment bank. Like many other firms, Cooke & Co. overextended itself by offering risky loans based on overvalued real estate.”

7. WaPo reporters are now using social media — by mandate: “A sign of the times is that Vernon Loeb, Post Local editor, has begun mandatory social media training for the reporters and editors on the Metro staff. This means that most editors and reporters, if they haven’t already, will be setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts and using other social media tools to monitor, report and convey the news from around the Beltway. In terms of keeping up on a beat, Twitter can be hugely helpful. This week, for example, by following two of The Post’s leading Twitter stars, bloggers Chris Cillizza at The Fix (82,000 Twitter followers, according to the Web site Muckrack), and Ezra Klein at Wonkbook(78,000 followers), I learned on Thursday afternoon that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner might resign after a debt ceiling agreement is reached, if it ever is.”

8. George Will: “Put on asbestos mittens and pick up “Reckless Endangerment,” the scalding new book by Gretchen Morgenson, a New York Times columnist, and Joshua Rosner, a housing finance expert. They will introduce you to James A. Johnson, an emblem of the administrative state that liberals admire. The book’s subtitle could be: “Cry ‘Compassion’ and Let Slip the Dogs of Cupidity.” Or: “How James Johnson and Others (Mostly Democrats) Made the Great Recession.” The book is another cautionary tale about government’s terrifying self-confidence. It is, the authors say, “a story of what happens when Washington decides, in its infinite wisdom, that every living, breathing citizen should own a home…. Although Johnson left Fannie Mae years before his handiwork helped produce the 2008 bonfire of wealth, he may be more responsible for the debacle and its still-mounting devastations — of families, endowments, etc. — than any other individual. If so, he may be more culpable for the peacetime destruction of more wealth than any individual in history.” [Anyone want to review this book for the blog?]

9. Katherine Rosman on the importance of friends: “When I first got married I had a vision of a union of two people who realized that they needed nothing in the world but each other. As I’ve grown older, I see more nuance. A full life, which is what Joe and I each aspire to live, is a complicated life. I have a career, kids, a home, siblings and all the attendant dramas. I can’t rely on Joe to be my sole counsel for all that, just as I cannot be his. Some weeks ago, I faced an upsetting situation related to a story I had written. Joe and I talked it through. “I’ve got your back,” he told me, and I knew it to be true. But I needed to vent further. I called my friend Lisa. It was a warm day. We took a long walk around the lake by which we live. When I got home, I began to make dinner. “Thanks for being a good wife amid this chaos,” Joe said. He probably should have thanked Lisa.”

10. Facebook and Sheryl Sandberg: “In 2007, the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, knew that he needed help. His social-network site was growing fast, but, at the age of twenty-three, he felt ill-equipped to run it. That December, he went to a Christmas party at the home of Dan Rosensweig, a Silicon Valley executive, and as he approached the house he saw someone who had been mentioned as a possible partner, Sheryl Sandberg, Google’s thirty-eight-year-old vice-president for global online sales and operations. Zuckerberg hadn’t called her before (why would someone who managed four thousand employees want to leave for a company that had barely any revenue?), but he went up and introduced himself. “We talked for probably an hour by the door,” Zuckerberg recalls.”

Meanderings in Sports

The life of the minor league umpire working his/her way up: “(CNN) — Minor league coaches and players spit in their faces, red dirt embeds itself in their skin, and until they make a newsworthy call, probably not a single baseball fan knows their names. Don’t ask these umpires if they’ve been hit by baseballs. The question is how many. “You don’t get to triple-A without bruises,” said Art Thigpen, 43, a ninth-season umpire. “You’ve probably been hit so many times in the same place, you don’t even feel it.” They’re officiating minor league games in the hope they will move up to umpire on Major League Baseball fields, with a comfortable salary and high-stakes games. There are 70 possible spots in MLB, but they come available one at a time as umpires retire.”

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