Fragments and Links 5

From time to time I post brief thoughts on a range of topics that do not warrant their own post. This is one of those times.

I was listening to an MP3 by NT Wright on the historicity of the gospels the other day. During the Q&A someone in the audience questioned the historicity of the ‘I am’ statements in John. Wright’s response:

“I feel about the Gospel of John the same way I feel about my wife. I love her very much, but I don’t understand her.”

Can someone please explain to me why I am watching ‘Mad Men?’ I have heard it called, important, ground breaking, brilliant and the best show on television. I gave up on it after the first three episodes. But after more adulation and awards I tried the next three. I still don’t get it. I don’t care a bit about any of the characters and simply cannot vest in a self loathing, philandering lead with a devoted, if heavily sedated, wife.

The other day an engineer asked me where I went to under grad. I told him I went to a small SUNY school[1]. “Really,” they responded “You studied Islam?” Never connected SUNY and Sunni.

From The Economist[2] “Mr. Bush’s tax cuts raised the proportion of American families that pay no federal income tax (or are net recipients of tax credits) from 33% to 38%; Mr Obama will raise it to 44%...It certainly makes sense to keep poor people off the income-tax rolls, but removing a sizable chunk of the middle class weakens the political bond between the tax payers and government, and will lead to pressure for more spending.”

Now, to be fair, I am a fiscal moderate leaning liberal. I back a wide range of taxes. I fully support Obama’s restoration of the top marginal tax bracket (which we fall in) to its reasonable pre-Bush numbers. The death tax would be my favorite tax[3] if it wasn’t for the gasoline tax (which I also think should be twice what it is). And I think that it is unconciable that the primary income stream of the country’s very rich (capital gains) is only taxed at 10%. But I had no idea that such a high percentage of Americans paid no taxes. I agree that it creates a dangerous disjunction between populism and spending.

Speaking of economic politics: If you tell me your policy is a panacea for all ills and applicable regardless of situation, I will not believe you. This happens on both sides of the aisle. In a recession conservatives want to restart the economy by ‘giving people more of their own money’ while liberals want to restart the economy by large packages of government spending. In good times (budget surpluses) conservatives want to ‘give people their money back’ while liberals want to assure that everyone enjoys the prosperity by applying the surplus to large packages of government spending. Really? Seriously? They say that when you only have a hammer a screw looks like a nail. And it seems each party has a single tool[4]. Surely there is a sound economic theory that finds the appropriate application of tax cuts and government spending. Let me know if you find it in Washington.

Still reading Augustine’s City of God. I’m 390 pages (or about 1/3rd into it). I’ll write a post on it if it ever ends up deserving one.[5] Until then, here is another quote. This one isn’t actually by Augustine at all but a citation of one of the neo-Platonists he is arguing against. But I am not sure I have ever read a better description of the human condition:

“And so we come to men, rejoicing in reason, endowed with great power of speech; with immortal souls, but with physical frames destined for death; with minds unstable and unquiet, and bodies clumsy and vulnerable; diverse in character, but alike in error, persistent in daring, pertinacious in hope, ineffectual in their striving, dogged by ill-luck[6]; individually mortal, yet perpetual as a whole species, one generation taking the place of another in continual exchange; their life a fleeting span, their wisdom slow in coming, but their death swift; their life full of complaining. Such are the inhabitants of earth.” COG IX:9

So my life is officially full. Therefore, in order to fit a 1100 page book of questionable utility and a extremely fun, over beers, discussion group in despite work, school, ministry and a new baby…I made a trade. I have traded Augustine for Jon Stewart. I used to watch the Daily Show twice a week on my lunch breaks…now I read Augustine. But in his absence, I think I finally figured out why I like Stewart so much despite his bitterness, caricatures and sarcasm.

Stewart is the quintessential example of the 1st amendment self correcting. His absolute best pieces are not his mockeries of politicians or community leaders…it is his deconstruction of his fellow pundits. Until recently, ‘news’ personalities had virtual immunity. They could say whatever they wanted, the more outlandish and bombastic the better, with relative impunity. But now they run the risk of showing up in a TDS ‘not only are the media outlets stupid but they are uniformly so’ montage or, worse yet, receive their own dedicated segment. The public interest façade of most ‘news’ entertainment companies cannot abide the dry, withering, sardonic gaze of Stewart’s deconstruction. And so there is at least one person with a voice who is holding them to a standard of fact and manipulation.

Speaking of ‘news’ entertainment, I think it is pretty cool that bands as different as Pennywise and The Decembrists have great lines about the horrific cult of personality that has facilitated a culture of Voyeurism:

And the anchorperson on TV goes...
La de da de da de-dadedade-da
La de da de da de-dadedade-da
-The Decemberists - 16 Military Wives

We are the dregs of the western world
The steroid boys and video girls
We are the viral internet stars
And the anchor man can't stop lying
-Pennywise – The Western World

I think 30 Rock is a pretty watchable show. Not one of my favorites but not bad. But they won my award[7] for most memorable line of dialogue in 2008 in the final weeks of the year. Alex Baldwin’s Character was describing his feud with the postal service over their decision to print a Jerry Garcia stamp and finishes his tirade with this gem:

“If I wanted to lick a hippy I’d return Joan Baez's phone calls.”

Our friends the Gierhearts are expecting their second baby and are going through the unenviable process of selecting a name. They told us about a tool that will give you the top 5 sibling names if you type in the name of your first born. For fun, they typed in Charis, and Aletheia popped up as one of the popular sibling names.

I was hanging out with a group of college students the other day and related this story. They were as surprised as I was until I told them that it was probably other nerd parents like me. Without missing a beat, Rachel, the only girl in the conversation, said something like, ‘I think it’s nice that they are reproducing.’

Non Dairy Creamer is totally a gimmicky song. It will have a short life cycle. But the first time I heard it I laughed out loud for, like, 30 seconds at the final refrain:

And two gay guys got married

And brought the family to its knees

How did they blow us to smithereens

Just a couple of queens

How did they do it

I'll tell you now

They brought marriage to an end

And I've found myself some culprits
Its two young gay…REPUBLICANS
YOUNG GAY REPUBLICANS, YOUNG GAY REPUBLICANS’

But here’s the thing, I don’t really think it is a song about gay marriage. It is a song about things that aren’t really things (‘They call it KFC, cause it’s not really chicken’ ‘you can buy yourself some implants but you can’t buy a soul that never launched,’ ‘The guy in the pulpit is a bigot and a lie’). They ask in the refrain:

What's it gonna be?

Are you real to me?

Or are you non dairy... creamer?

It is as if they are asking the church (among others), ‘Do you really want to be a thing that is not really the thing? ‘

I have been following Joss’ new show Dollhouse on Hulu. Joss has earned my patience after Buffy and Firefly. From a purely mechanical point of view the show has a couple of interesting aspects. First of all, it runs 50 minutes instead of the normal 42. As part of the negotiations Joss nearly halved commercial time (which, I can only expect, makes the remaining spots premium). Second, he cast Fred (Amy Acker from the later seasons of Angel). Of all the characters Joss has allowed us to love and then summarily killed, I forgive him[8] for all but Fred. Third, they skipped the pilot and put the money into elaborate sets. This demonstrates a network commitment to the show and is a bit surprising after Firefly’s completely undeserved failure. But I think the reason the network got behind the show is that it has much more of a network TV feel. I’m not sure if that means Joss is maturing or if the failure of Firefly changed him. So far, apart from a couple recent cringe worthy back stories, Dollhouse is, at the least, good network fare. But I am concerned that the story arc has a limited horizon.

So I traded Dollhouse for Heroes. It took me a long time to admit it, but Heroes is dead. Too many of the characters have become morally ambiguous. This is a common plot device to generate more episodes (J.J. Abrams does it all the time with limited success) but it undermines what I enjoyed about the first season of Heroes…the Heroes. The series’ death rattle was the moment in episode 13 of season 3 when Peter Patreli gets in Mohinder’s cab and they reprise the scene from the pilot where Peter asks Mohinder ‘do you ever feel like you are meant for something extraordinary’ deep in the throes of irony. Mohnder says ‘I used to.’ Yeah, back when the show didn’t suck. It was the innocent passion for heroism of those two characters (and Hiro, of course) that made the show endearing and worth watching. But now Mohinder is dark, Peter is bitter and Hiro is powerless. Oh, and (SPOILER ALERT) the Veronica Mars character is dead (just like her far superior series).

I have been working my way through the lectures from MIT’s intro psychology (brain science) class.[9] I’ve learned some pretty interesting stuff…like Guy Pierce’s character from Memento is based on a real person, someone Professor Wolfe called “the most famous psychological subject of all time.” But recently the class has covered love and sexuality in the context of economic theory and it has been riveting. Here is the description from my favorite study that empirically validates some of the implicit assumptions that I made in a recent post where I strayed into the topic of the sexual revolution being an unequal gender benefit. A researcher described as ‘an attractive member of the opposite sex’ approached random individuals, expressed that he/she found the random individual attractive and asked one of the following three questions:

Would you like to go out on a date?
Would you come back to my apartment?
Would you like to have sex with me?[10]

Women answered the questions this way:

1. Date: Yes 50%
2. Apartment: Yes 7%
3. Sex: Yes 0%

Men, however:

1. Date: Yes 50%
2. Apartment: Yes 65%
3. Sex: Yes 75%

David Swanson, and acquaintance who would best be described as a friend of a friend, recently gave this blog its first shout out from his very good blog Signs of Life. I’ve been following his blog for a while and seem to comment on it with surprising frequency. But one exchange has really stuck out in my mind. David and his wife are about to adopt their first child and he simply asked for tips on keeping up with a passion for reading.

There is an annoying phenomena where people who have undergone a given life transition (marriage, getting a job, loss, and, especially, a first child, subsequent children, teenage children) condescendingly speak to those who are about to undergo it as if they have no idea what is coming. It is a social power play and I hate it.[11] I have enjoyed marriage and parenthood so much more than I expected to because people who wanted to justify their sad lives by blaming their bitterness and lack of motivation on their circumstances , warned us that we could not possibly understand (or survive with our basic commitments of life) the impending hardship. What I love about the comments on David’s blog is that they largely lacked this quality. There was very little ‘forget about reading, you are going to be a parent’ from people who have given up on reading and blamed their children. There was a lot of creative problem solving by those who celebrated BOTH David’s decision to become a parent and his love for the reflective life. THIS is how we should welcome new parents.

OK, I’ll say it…I love Hayley Williams voice. Some of Paramore’s themes can tend to be high schoolish (they are like 12…or maybe I’m older than I think) but Riot has demonstrated that they can write some of the catchiest songs in the pumo[12] pop genre. On straight aesthetic evaluation, ‘Crushcrushcrush,’ ‘Fences’ 'Misery Business’ and ‘Decode’ can hold their own with any lineup released last year.

So, a couple weeks after I wrote the above paragraph…I found out that Hayley and the guys are Christians. There seems to be a serious wave of bands that are skipping the ‘cross-over’ thing including Flyleaf, Breaking Benjamin, Page France (though none are even close to the notoriety of Paramore). They were never ‘Christian bands’ but they have always been and remain bands composed in part-or in whole – of Christians. It is an encouraging model. There does seem to be an inverse relationship between the quality of Paramore's themes and the quality of their music. Their aesthetically stand out songs (listed above) have pretty middling pop themes[13] but their more weighty lyrics (‘We Are Broken’ and ‘Miracle’) tend to be forgettable musically. But that is a minor critique. On the whole Paramore’s emergence is a really encouraging development. To hear a band on QWOD,[14] love them, and THEN find out they are Christians…that is the way I want it to work.

Paramore and Linkin Park are a little more popish than I usually listen to…but I have decided to borrow my guiding principals for music consumption from my friend Tyler the winemaker.[15] Tyler has two Masters Degrees: one in botany (Colorado State) and one in Viticulture (from UC Davis – the top wine school in the country). He had worked and studied wine in Germany and New Zealand and is currently a big shot head winemaker in Sonoma. So, when we first became friends and had them over for dinner, I would always make him bring the wine. I was terrified that my middling taste would be found wanting. But one day he said ‘no.’ He told me that he was a wine nerd, but not a wine snob, and that he drank as much two-buck-chuck as any one else. So that has become my guiding principal for musical consumption and discovery. I want to be a music nerd but not a music snob. I refuse to accept that just because music is popular it can not be good.[16]

Finally, here are some things I am working on or thinking about for future posts:

-Why Christian Music Sucks: And Why it Doesn’t Have To
-8ish Thoughts on 1 Clement (the earliest extra-biblical Christian writing)
-Implications of Theories of Early Warfare on Christian Anthropology
-The Spiritual Arc of Modest Mouse
-Excerpts and Commentary from Perelandra
-A Few Thoughts on Co-Parenting

This post was prepared while listening to Riot by Paramore
_________________
[1] In NY telling someone you went to SUNY Geneseo gets raised eyebrows of ‘impressedness,’ out hear they think you went to a ju-co. On the west coast, the only value my undergrad has is the education, because the degree is almost meaningless.
[2] I started getting the economist as the result of my frustration with the discourse in the last election. I simply need to be more educated to vote. I chose the Economist because they are European conservatives (so they are moderates by American perspectives), tend to take the level of discourse to a level seldom seen in stateside outlets and they reflect on the global implications of our policies. Oh, and for the basic subscription price you can download the whole magizine as a podcast read in intellgent sounding British voices.
[3] I have never understood why conservatives are opposed to the death tax. If the heart of conservative values is self reliance, personal innovation and individual responsibility, then why wouldn’t they support a generational reset…requiring each generation to forge its own way.
[4] If by ‘tool’ I mean ‘hammer, wrench, etc…’ not if you use the dictionary’s fourth definition : ‘a person who is controlled by others and is used to perform unpleasant or dishonest tasks for someone else.’
[5] I have heard a rumor that most of its value is in the second half so I still have hope that it is not a 1100 page waste of time…but I get to discuss it each week at a pub with 4 really smart, cool guys so 1100 pages turns out to be a small price to pay.
[6] I have never met anyone who thinks that, on the whole, they have above average luck

[7] I don’t really give an award like this…but wouldn’t stuff like this make the Emmeys and Oscars far more watchable?
[8] This is one of the things that makes the Jossverse more compelling than other SciFi constructs. In Buffy, Angel and Firefly, people you cared about actually died…and stayed dead. Anyone could die at any time (apart from the main character – though there were serious thoughts about ending Buffy after season 5 which would have ended the series with a panning shot of her tomb stone) which amped up the dramatic stakes. Joss purchased our dramatic tension at the price of some of our favorite characters, and that is why some of us are fans…but Fred? Really? That was too far.
[9] A couple years ago MIT pledged to put all of their course materials online. Most of these are just class notes, but a few actually have audio or visual content.
[10] Professor Wolfe expressions curious confusion about a couple aspects of this study including 1) how did it get past the ethical review board and 2) what happens after the documented exchange?
[11] I wrote a whole essay (which is far to bitter for this blog, as you might pick up from the tone of the fragment) about people who told me ‘your life is going to change’ when Amanda was pregnant. The gist is, "Really, wow, becuase I am such an unreflective, unobservant, dullard that it would never occur to me that becoming responsible for another person 24 hours a day would have the slightest impact on my daily routine.”
[12] I think I just made that genre up. I am referring to slightly off mainstream pop music with discernable punk and emo (pu(nk)(e)mo – get it, like screamo – I am very clever) influences, but cannot, in good conscience, be called either.
[13] To the point where one wonders if a ghost writer/slick producer got involved at some point.
[14] Sacramento’s alternative rock station, and pretty much the only radio I listen to any more.
[15] If you don’t think that Don Miller wishes he had a friend called Tyler the winemaker you simply have not read Blue Like Jazz.
[16] Populism can surpise you. If I decided that music can not be both popular and good, I’d miss out on one of the great works of my generation…’Nevermind,’ which got plenty of pop radio play in the mid 90’s.