WORLD BEAT: When I bought my Corolla after my Prizm got wiped out back in January, I pretty much ignored the radio that came with it. I didn’t have a radio in my last two cars, so I was pretty much used to driving in silence. But I finally gave in to temptation and started tuning in. To make it seem a bit less wicked, however, I tuned in to NPR. At least there’s some educational value in that; it isn’t purely entertainment. So I’ve become an NPR drive-time regular, listening to Morning Edition on the way in and All Things Considered on the homebound trip. And it’s been good for the most part. NPR definitely has a liberal / politically correct bias to it, but that’s mostly OK with me even though haute liberalism gets kind of dippy at times. That dippiness comes thru loud and clear whenever NPR plays music. If they play it on NPR, you know you ain’t gonna be humming it the next day at the watercooler. I appreciate NPR’s respect for cultural diversity, but maybe there’s a reason why American music is popular in La Paz and Malabo and Kuala Lumpur and Bangafore. Maybe it’s better than the indigent stuff from those places (which NPR seems to like so much). Sure sounds that way to me!
BOOK REVIEW: I recently finished reading Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium by Bard Ehrman. A whole lot of non-academic books dealing with the “historical Jesus” have been published over the past 10 years. Some of the big authors include John Dominic Crossnan, Robert Funk, N.T. Wright, Msgr. John Meier, and Marcus Borg. Each of them seems to be grinding an axe of some sort, despite their purported attempts to present an unbiased historian’s interpretation of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. Some are obviously supporting the traditional Christian interpretation of Jesus as the Christ, as the Son of God, and as the Lord and Savior. Some others paint Jesus as a social and political reformer, someone who was out to promote a secular vision similar to our modern “-isms” (e.g., socialism, universalism, feminism, pacifism, rationalism, communism, or maybe even capitalism!), despite all the God talk.
Professor Ehrman, by contrast, tries to popularize what appears to be the modern academic consensus about Jesus: that Jesus was one of many Jewish apocalyptic prophets who preached and gained a following in Roman Palestine. Like the others, Jesus was convinced that God was angry about the continuing sins of the Jews and about the Romans trampling upon the Holy Lands, and was about to come down from the sky and establish a righteous kingdom of His own. Not a kingdom in the heavens, but one right there in the hills of Galilee and on the streets of Jerusalem. The end and the beginning would come with a mighty reckoning. A mythic figure called “The Son Of Man” would appear in the sky and cast judgement: good people could stay and flourish, but the bad were gonna get cast into a pit of fire or something. It was all about ancient Judaism, all about the fulfillment of scriptural prophecies. And it was all going to happen in Jesus’ time. It had nothing to do at all with later Christian beliefs or Enlightenment-age theories about how the world should be run.
I personally found this book to be monumental. It’s one of those handful of books that you read in your life that opens your eyes and puts a lot of puzzle pieces into place. HOWEVER . . . . . this is not to say that Professor Ehrman has written the definitive biography of Jesus. I still think that he misses some important things and suffers himself from certain biases that distort the picture. The biggest problem is that Professor Ehrman assumes that Jesus was much like his friends in academia: a sober, reasonable fellow with whom you could have a polite, well-informed conversation about worldly matters. Ehrman forgets that if Jesus was an apocalyptic, he was probably much like the modern apocalyptics that are described at the start of his book — i.e., people with fire in the belly, people quite sure of their beliefs even when based on conjecture and fantasy. I.e., someone you might call a fanatic, even a “nutcase”. Jesus was clearly a man with a passion for the holy. So it’s a bit strange when Ehrman strongly asserts that Jesus did not think of himself as the Son of Man (or maybe more accurately, the Son-of-Man-in-training, awaiting the big day). According to Ehrman, that notion had to have been made up by the Christians later on, after Jesus was long gone.
Ehrman argues that within the Gospels, especially Mark, language about Jesus’ preachings seem to refer to the Son of Man in third person; i.e., Jesus was talking about someone else. However, in many other places Jesus clearly refers to himself as the Son. Ehrman reasons that Christians wouldn’t have made up Jesus’ third-person referral to the Son (since it would militate against the view of Jesus as God), but they certainly would have incentive to write about Jesus calling himself the Son. Ergo, any surviving third-party reference must be historical, and the other first-party references in Mark and the later Gospels must be made up.
Now wait a minute. If the early Christians were tweeking the text and inserting revised memories (and I agree that they probably were, up to a point), why were they so shy about re-hashing the lines where Jesus seems to envision the Son of Man as someone else (e.g., Mark 13:26-27 and maybe 8:38 — although that line implies some connection between Jesus and the Son)? Ehrman replies, “because it was the truth”. But that fact arguably didn’t stop the ancient Christian re-writers elsewhere.
I’ve got another theory. Some lines in the Gospels infer that Jesus taught his disciples things that he didn’t share with the crowds (e.g., Matthew 13:17). What if Jesus believed that he was the Son (or was coming to believe it over time), but was a bit shy about announcing it to the masses (perhaps for fear of what eventually DID happen to him, i.e. arrest and death)? What if Jesus shared this belief with his disciples, but was slow in proclaiming it to the crowds (until perhaps that fateful week in Jerusalem)? Then his followers would remember him as the Son, but the memory of his preachings might be a bit more circumspect. And that is just what we see, at least in Mark (which again has the most credibility as the earliest writing).
Another little irritation: Ehrman’s homey, jokey, ultimately condescending writing style. He obviously wouldn’t attempt such humor in a paper published in an academic journal. But when he appeals to the masses, he bends over backward to prove that he’s a regular guy. It’s OK at first, but it gets old real quick. Professor Ehrman, it might be better if you didn’t try so hard to prove that although you’re an academic superstar, you still know how to talk to dummies like me. The story about his son’s rebuke for calling him a dude because “dude” also refers to a camel’s gonads is something that should stay in the family. I can readily accept the proposition that words sometimes have two meanings without a sidenote about everyday teenage sarcasm.
Nonetheless, this book goes a long way in explaining who Jesus really was and what he was all about. It seems rather simple and obvious once you understand it, but it will be hard for many Christians to accept it. So maybe that’s why Ehrman tries so hard to be lovable to the average lout; a lot of average louts aren’t going to love him once they get the gist of what he is saying. Despite its various flaws, this is is a powerful and important book.
Conservative columnist David Brooks had an interesting column in today’s New York Times, interesting in that it was cram-packed with good news. Usually conservative columnists are full of doom and gloom about how society is going to hell in a bucket because of what the liberals did to it. But Brooks says that things are getting better; Americans are now living more virtuously, and he has the statistics to prove it. Crime is down, violence is down, drunken driving is down, drug abuse is down, divorce is down, teenage pregnancy is down, abortions are down, volunteerism is up, parents spend more time with their kids, etc. And I agree with Brooks that all of that is good news.
And yet, for all the goodness going on out there, there doesn’t seem to be much joy about it. Brooks says “I always thought it would be dramatic to live through a moral revival. Great leaders would emerge. There would be important books, speeches, marches and crusades.” But in fact, there’s little drama to be found out there: no great leaders, no great books, no rousing speeches, no big marches, and no crusades (thank goodness).
The one thing that there does seem to be a lot of these days is fear. Fear of terrorism, fear of losing one’s job because of some decision made in India or China, fear of being sued, fear of getting sick and going broke because of lousy health insurance, fear of having one’s pension taken away. I can’t help but wonder if all of this good behavior is inspired not by a revival of the human spirit caused by modern progress, but by the many threats and uncertainties associated with our modern dystopia.
Hey, I’m not saying that it’s bad that we’re all acting better. But unfortunately, it appears to be more of a reaction or a side-effect to some other bad things. As Brooks indicates, it’s a paradox that we’re not living in happy, Kennedy-esque times. We’re a long way from Camelot, even if we are behaving a little better these days.
(I certainly don’t see this better behavior filtering down to daily life, however. One example: people seem to drive faster and more aggressively wherever I go, rich neighborhoods or poor. Patience with one another at a crowded Dunkin Donuts check-out line or on a delayed airline flight seems in shorter supply than ever. Back to coffee, manners are even worse amidst the fashionable crowd at Starbucks.)
KIDS TODAY: A side note to Mr. Brooks’s “moral revival” theory regards America’s youth. Mr. Brooks cites statistics from the US Department of Justice indicating that teenage violence went way down over the past decade. I’ve also read that alcohol, drugs and cigarettes aren’t as popular with kids these days either. But are kids really living better lives? We hear a lot more about teenage depression these days, and the problem of bullying seems to get more and more attention. Many kids are overweight, which you wouldn’t expect if they were living healthy, balanced lives. SAT scores don’t seem to be trending upward. And the number of wacko crimes that affluent kids commit is rather scary.
Sure, we always heard about kids from the slums and barrios getting into trouble, but when I was growing up I don’t recall any shockers from the suburbs. OK, the Colombine High School situation was sensationalized by the press and is still fairly rare. However, the Jeremy Wade Dell stuff really isn’t. We just had some teenagers from an average family in northern NJ decide to kill an unpopular girl just for the heck of it, then hack her body apart and attempt to dump it in a river (just a half mile from where I grew up). And then there was a local crime in ritzy Upper Montclair last week (where a lot of people actually take David Brooks seriously); somebody trashed a garden full of historic, one-of-a-kind iris bulbs. There’s a local debate going on about whether it was the work of some bored, nasty rich kids (and there are a lot of them in Upper Montclair, I can tell you; they didn’t seem as bad 10 years ago), or some adult vendetta going on. If you want to check out the local debate about the state of Upper Montclair’s youth, here’s the townie blog coverage.
Virtue . . . still a tough sell, David Brooks notwithstanding.
WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE SPACE SHUTTLE: The most intelligent suggestion I’ve heard so far is that if we have to keep the Space Station going to save face, then at least we should stop sending people up in the Shuttle (from Prof. Alex Roland on the PBS News Hour). Use the Russian Soyuz to bring people back and forth; it has a better safety record than the Shuttle. Convert the Shuttle to total automatic control, as to bring the heavy equipment up and down.
It would take some money and technology to covert the Shuttle to unmanned operation, especially for the docking maneuvers at the Space Station. However, to fix the foam problem on the Shuttle’s fuel tank so as to make it safe-enough for people is also going to take a big chunk of money and technology. If they get the thing patched up and send people up in it again, NASA anticipates getting another 15 to 18 missions out of the Shuttle before retiring it in 2010 (and there’s still that 1-in-50 to 1-in-100 chance of another deadly catastrophe on each flight). If they covert it to freight-only, they can take more chances and maybe get 25 flights in before the last one goes boom or crash. Hey, there’s always that Enterprise mock-up vehicle for the Smithsonian.
It’s going to be 2015 or so until the next manned American space ship gets going. That will be the “Crew Exploration Vehicle”, which Boeing and Lockheed are now competing for. But stay tuned – NASA and Congress seem to change their minds every couple of years on what the replacement for the Shuttle will be. Two years ago it was the “Orbital Space Plane”. Before that there was the X-38, the X-37, the X-34, the X-33 . . . . . . But OK, let’s not rush. Let’s try to get it right next time. Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the Shuttle. NASA is trying to get a modular, flexible vehicle that can be adapted to a variety of missions through rearrangement of its ‘building blocks’. I’m glad to say that the early designs for the CEV keep the people-vehicle far away from the rockets. That was the inherent design-flaw of the Shuttle, the one that will go down in the “worst engineering decisions” record book.
Maybe in 20 years or so, they’ll have the orbital tether in service, totally eliminating the need for 3-2-1-0-blast off! You just get in a slow elevator, and in a couple of hours you’re up in the final frontier. For now, though, I’m glad that I satisfied my blood-voyeurism urges and listened to the Discovery blast-off last Tuesday, because it’s probably going to be the last space-gladiator show here in the USA for a long, long time. Maybe forever (which would be a very good thing, as I’m now mature enough to realize).
Hope the Discovery and its crew make it home just fine on Monday.
I went to see Patti Austin give an outdoor concert at the local county park the other night. She was pretty good, still a diva at age 55 (and not ashamed to admit her age either). Maybe she talked a little too much, trying hard to be “personal” with the crowd; if she had cut it back by 3 minutes, she could have gotten another song in. But hey, when you pay zero for admission and get up pretty close to the stage, you can’t really complain.
I could have stood to the side of the stage and had gotten a really close look at Patti at work. But I decided to step back about 200 feet, so that I could also watch the backup singers. Those three girls were singing their hearts out. They did a soulful round of “shu-bop-shu-bops” during Ms. Austin’s cover of Little Anthony’s “I Only Have Eyes For You”. And they were out-of-this-world during the encore, supporting Patti’s cover of Aretha Franklin’s “Rock Steady” with a machine-gun barrage of “what-it-is” refrains.
Backup singers always go unappreciated. Whenever I watch a concert now (mostly on TV, unfortunately), I always keep an eye on the backup singers. They’re the ones that make the star sound good. To all you backup singers out there, you’ve got a fan right here.
Oh, as to the Space Shuttle – I’ll be back about that later in the week, once they’re getting ready to come home.
SPACE VOYEURISM: I decided to tune in and listen to the Space Shuttle launch last Tuesday (via the NASA web site). I was hoping for a replay of the old drama that accompanied the space program launches back in the 1960s. I wasn’t disappointed. As the count approached five minutes, there was hushed silence broken by staticy techno-talk. There was the final polling of the controllers (“Range Safety is go”, “Houston Flight is go”, “Guidance is go for launch”, etc.), then the final countdown, then “engine start”, “lift off”, “Discovery has cleared the tower”, “Discovery is at an altitude of 25 nautical miles, downrange 27 nautical miles, flight path nominal”, “30 seconds to booster separation”, etc. It brought back memories of the old Mercury, Gemini and Apollo moon flights from my youth.
A few days after that I read a quote from some guy who works for an aerospace contractor, to the effect that they’ve got to eliminate the drama of getting into orbit. That shook my neurons up a bit. Yes, by now you would have hoped that manned spaceflight wouldn’t be such a risky venture. I just read something else to the effect that riding the Space Shuttle is a good bit more risky than being on a bomber mission over Germany during the height of World War 2. But after the Columbia disaster (same as after the Challenger disaster), we the public came to realize that the Shuttle is still a crude experimental vehicle. (Actually, so did NASA; most people there were locked into a fit of wishful thinking, to the effect that the Shuttle was a safe and cost-efficient way of getting people and stuff into earth orbit. They’re scratching their heads about that now.)
And so the voyeurism was back this past week. There again was the great spectacle of brave Americans strapped into a huge bomb with a hole in the bottom, poised upright along the sunny Florida coastline. If all went well, they’d be shot up into the sky and come home in a few days or weeks. But there was a pretty decent chance that sooner or later the bomb would go off the wrong way and kill everyone on board (as finally happened with the Challenger). Or they’d get up there and not make it back (as with Columbia, almost with Apollo 13). Great entertainment, right up there with the old Roman gladiator shows. It sure made the career of CBS newscaster Walter Cronkite.
Back in the 60s, there at least was a sense of purpose to the space program and all the risks and expense it entailed. We wanted to explore the moon and show the Russians that we were better than they were. What is our sense of purpose today with the Shuttle? Basically, to finish the Space Station. And what is that up there for? It’s in the wrong place to repair the important satellites we have up in orbit; ditto for building, lauching and recovering missions to and from the planets and beyond. It’s a pretty good microgravity lab, but if that were so valuable and necessary, then why isn’t private business helping to pay for it?
I hope that the US will continue its efforts to explore space using both robots and people. However, we need to admit that the Shuttle and the Space Station are a dead end. Space exploration is a new neighborhood, and when you’re driving around in a new neighborhood you sometimes go up the wrong street. You cruise along for a while, until that funny feeling down in your gut makes you stop. NASA has had a funny feeling for a while now, but they keep on driving (and keep on burning up taxpayer money).
More on the Space Shuttle next time.
I’ve worked at the local county prosecutor’s office for the past 3 ½ years, and have noticed that many of the people there aren’t terribly fond of me. Not that we have any great ideological differences (although certainly we do have some!). I have nothing against punishing people who commit crimes, within reason, of course; we all commit technical crimes, but very few of us rape, murder, steal, distribute illicit drugs, defraud the government for big $$$, etc. It’s just that a lot of the assistant prosecutors (i.e., trial attorneys) and investigators (i.e., cops) get hardened from dealing with criminals all the time. Or alternately, they’re fairly tough, aggressive people from the start, the kind who are attracted to this kind of work. People like that have little use for an intellectual daisy-picker like me.
Case in point: the boss Prosecutor was officially sworn in the other day, so they had a little party for her afterward. I generally don’t do well at parties. At parties full of lawyers and cops, I only do that much worse. I wasn’t exactly in demand for chit-chat. I mostly drifted about on my own, and cut out by 6:30PM.
It’s a miracle, then, that anyone other than my peers in the administration section talk to me at all (other than necessary business). But believe it or not, there are some friendly assistant prosecutors and investigators. They manage to give me a hello and maybe even a good word or two, even after dealing with some of the most dangerous, violent and anti-social people out there. Or they at least manage a nod and a polite attitude toward me, the office’s lowly grants coordinator. For example, as I was leaving the office party the other evening, one of the supervisory attorneys (who was also leaving) gave me a smile and made a little joke about my leaving early, and then about her own early departure.
Unto those AP’s and detectives who yet share the milk of human kindness, you will be at my side when I enter my kingdom. But woe unto those who have dissed me, including my boss (another supervisory assistant prosecutor) . . . . . NOT. I hold no hard feelings against the tough crowd. I understand that it’s a nasty job and that folk like you need to stay within your own world of strength. I knew that the job was going to be a lonely one for me when I took it. I take no offense at your disdain for my introverted, nebbishy character. It’s just that when I find any un-forced friendliness whatsoever amidst the warrior brethren, I consider that to be cause for a smile. Maybe even reason, however small, for the restoration of faith in the human race, despite its often pitiful condition these days.
Being an informal observer of science and natural phenomenon, I always enjoy finding small examples of large-scale phenomenon. For example, when you open the drain on a bathtub filled with water, sometimes you see a little air spout getting sucked down through the water, like a mini-tornado.
Today I found a mini-volcano right there in a pot of lentils that I was cooking. A volcano-like funnel formed in the middle of the pot, with bubbling, boiling lentils coming up from the bottom. The side of the lentil mountain remained cool and crusty, like a true volcano. In a true volcano, heat comes up from the center of the earth and boils the rocks lying just underneath it; in my cooking pot, heat comes up from the stove burner and boils the water and lentils at the bottom. As with the volcano, a spout of lava-like material from the bottom started rising up through the cooler layer of lentils at the top. Yes, indeed, earth science in action, right there in my kitchen. Need proof? Here’s the picture:
STEVE, THE MAN WITH THE PLAN: I have new next-door neighbors in the apartment house where I hang my hat. Well, not exactly new; they moved in last September, when the old man and woman who used to live across from me sold the house to an investor. The new neighbors are a married couple with three small kids.
Oh goodness, just what a quiet guy like me needs.
(Hey, I don’t hate kids. Back when I was married I would have been open to having one around, had my X not gone off to pursue other romantic interests. After the divorce I did some volunteer youth ministry in an inner-city church for a few years. So I’ve done my time with America’s next generation. But still, I’m not one of those people who just love to have kids around. For me, it was always work. It was often good work, but work nonetheless.)
I guess that for Steve and his wife, having three kids is also work. A lot of work. But they must like it, because they’ve signed-on into the world of kids in a big way. Steve and Heidi don’t have real jobs; they spend their days running a small business empire. And that empire is built around kids. They run an after-school tutoring and enhancement center for kids, and they’re trying to get a book publishing company going that specializes in books for kids and about kids. So, these are people on a mission. They obviously have a dream, and they’re taking many chances to make it real. They’re obviously putting up with some genteel hardships; an educated, two-earner couple at their age (late 30s / early 40s) should have their own house by now. Instead, Steve and Heidi are packed into a small apartment, and have to put up with seeing me most every day.
But they seem to be making the best of it. Steve’s best friend (who is also named Steve) now lives here in the building, in the basement apartment; he moved in a couple of months after they did. He drives a beat-up Dodge Neon and doesn’t seem to be doing all that well financially either. I’ve heard that he’s a substitute teacher and that he makes a few bucks working part-time at Steve and Heidi’s after-school center. Around 9 pm, once the kids go to sleep, the three of them gather on the porch and shoot the breeze long into the night. Oh yea, and play chess. They’re chess fans, and not surprisingly they teach kids chess at their center.
As you might guess, I haven’t exactly become part of their circle. Steve (the original Steve) actually did reach out to me when they moved in. I tried to respond in a friendly fashion. But after a while, I couldn’t think of what to talk about with him and his retinue. It’s all I can do not to complain about how much they’ve changed the peaceful environment that I once had here; before they blew in, I would grow basil and other spices on the front porch. But now the kids own the porch, and they have a swinging chair right in front of my kitchen window. I’m serenaded by the joyful squeals of children’s laughter while I eat dinner – at least until I tune in the local rock station and crank up the volume.
Steve and his wife have taken on some big assignments; raising three kids in suburbia today is a huge undertaking in itself (or so I’m told). Then there’s the issue of making two businesses succeed. From what I’ve read, about half of all small business ventures are shut-down within 4 years, and that goes up to about 2/3 by the end of the sixth year. (Steve and Heidi are completing their second year in business). And the book publishing business is especially risky; the competition is brutal, and the cash flow is awful. You can sink money into such a venture for years and not make a nickel. I hope that the three of them have their resumes ready just in case.
Right now, I’m sort of like Homer Simpson is with his neighbor. Still, I take my hat off to Steve & Company, despite my petty discomfort about the changes that they’ve caused to my habitat. Even though I myself can’t relate to what they’re doing, they’ve got a dream and they’re trying to make it real. They’ve got a true sense of companionship going for them; i.e., the feeling you get when it’s “you and me against the world”. I envy them for that. They’re an interesting story, and who knows. Maybe one day I’ll actually be glad that I crossed paths with them. Hey, I’ve been wrong before.
PBS INFECTED BY REALITY: I was watching “Cooking Under Fire” on PBS tonight, a “haute cuisine” version of a reality show. Yes, unfortunately the reality trend has also infected PBS. Sort of like Night of the Living Dead. You’d have hoped that PBS would have held out and would have stood up for something higher in terms of television quality. I thought that’s what PBS was there for. Guess not.
If you haven’t watched C.U.F., it’s a restaurant version of the Trump reality show. The winner gets a kitchen job in a fancy New York City restaurant. Tonight they were down to three candidates, all women. Before they set ‘em loose in the kitchen, the big guys made each of the young chefs say why they were better than the other two. So the first two went into the testosterone mode, “I’m the best; the other two stink, they’re too weak, too cutesy”.
The third one was named Autumn. Autumn Maddox from Seattle. She told the inquisition that she wasn’t better; she was different. The biggest of the big men – the guy who would hire the winner – did a double take. During the cook-off he asked her, what did you mean? She stood her ground – different, not better. Then came the inevitable judgement; sorry, babe, you wouldn’t last 5 minutes in my kitchen with a lame attitude like that. But the big man gave her one last chance – and she stuck to her story: different, not better. You can guess the rest.
For the past 35 years, I’ve known a guy named Ray. Ray drove fuel trucks and fixed engines most of his life. In a lot of ways, he’s awfully crude. But deep inside, Ray still has a soft heart. He still wants to see a better world. As I watched my girl from Seattle get trashed, I imagined Ray’s reaction: he’d get up from a deep slouch and with righteous indignation he’d shout “go **** yourself” at the judges. Ah, dear Autumn from Seattle; just another Cordelia, the Antigone of the reality shows. I shan’t forget you. I hope to get out to Seattle some day, and hope to get a table at your restaurant. I’m sure it will be a very civilized place, a place with very good food, and a place where a regular guy like my friend Ray could also feel comfortable.
And to PBS: next time you have your fund drive beg-a-thon, I’ll probably have a reaction similar to Ray’s.
ANOTHER IRONY: The Space Shuttle launch was cancelled yesterday because of a faulty electronic sensor. So far, NASA engineers can’t figure out the problem; they don’t know if the sensor itself crapped out, or has a wire or connection gone bad, or is it something wrong in a computer chip. Hey, I once had a car with a problem like that; the kind of problem that a dealer charges you a grand to work on, and after six months the problem comes right back again. Glad to know that even NASA can’t deal well with faulty sensors. Also glad that I’m not gonna be in the Discovery when they finally do send it up!