Mark Elrod's Lame-o Weblog

I''m Moving I've Moved

2006-05-25T12:45:00.000-05:00

I 've moved my blog to WordPress.

Eventually, you will be automatically redirected from this blog to the new one.

Reset your bookmarks to www.markaelrod.net

Look both ways before you cross the street.

Thanks to Justin Baeder and Greg Kendall-Ball for the help.

New Harding Seal

2006-05-23T13:30:00.000-05:00

Harding is in the process of updating its school seal. The new seal was unveiled to the faculty yesterday via e-mail. If you are an alumnus of the school, you will immediately recognize that the new design (above) is radically different from the current seal on your diploma.

Don't worry, your diploma is still valid. But you may want to have another form of identification with you at your next class reunion.

It was announced that this change in school seals “is helpful because it ensures that the university’s graphic identity reflects and reinforces the current status of the university. [This seal] incorporates a new type face and the use of faith, learning and living, our official mission statement on the seal itself. The Bible is more explicitly presented as a Bible representing truth.”

The new seal has already been reviewed by the board of trustees and the senior staff. The university anticipates incorporating this seal in the future and using it in the lobby of the Heritage Center as it is completed.

Primary Day

2006-05-23T09:30:00.000-05:00

It’s primary day in Arkansas. I’m going to get to try out our new voting machines at the end of class today.

Arkansas has early voting, so I’ve actually waited until the last minute. As it turns out, early voting may have posed a disadvantage to taller voters in the state – a few days ago, somebody discovered that if you were over 6’, there was a possibility that you mis-cast your ballot if you voted in Pulaski county.

I have a few personal rules about primary voting:

I make sure I've got the right ballot. Arkansas is an open primary start, I can be either a Democrat or a Republican today but I can’t be both at the same time.
I never use church affiliation as guide to candidates. (I’ve known too many politicians who treat church membership like a country club membership.)
Any candidate or poll worker who tries to influence my vote as I make my way into the polling place loses it. So they better back off as I run the gauntlet into the Cloverdale Assembly of God.
In a primary, I never vote for any candidate who does not designate which party they belong to on their yard signs or webpage. It looks to me as if they either forgot to mention it or didn't want to. In either case, it's bad.
I refuse to vote for candidates with “historically significant” names like Jefferson Davis or Pat Garrett.
I always thank the poll workers when I leave, but I never tip them.

UPDATE: I just voted -- no lines, no waiting, no candidates. The new voting machines work great -- it was easier than playing Tetris.

Halfway Home

2006-05-22T07:05:00.000-05:00

We’re at the mid-point with intersession and that’s great. Cutting back the number of class days from 12 to 10 was a good move. I don’t think anybody minds a longer class day if it gets us finished before Memorial Day.

And teaching international relations at 400 mph is a rush.

Note to Congressman William J. Jefferson

2006-05-22T07:04:00.000-05:00

Dear Congressman Jefferson (D-La.) :

Jeremy Bentham once observed that "All government is a trust. Every branch of government is a trust, and immemorially acknowledged to be so."

Even if you've never heard of Jeremy Bentham, as an elected official, you should know that a public office is a public trust. Shame on you for taking bribes – just because you are a member of the opposition party in Congress, doesn’t mean people aren’t watching you. Your constituents in New Orleans deserve better, more now than ever.

If you're guilty, I hope they put you in the same cell as Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.). You two deserve each other.

Montenegro Votes

2006-05-22T07:02:00.000-05:00

Good luck to the people of Montenegro – it looks as if Sunday's referendum to sever political ties with Serbia and to re-establish Montenegro as an independent state is going to pass by a margin wide enough to be viewed as legitimate by the European Union. I don’t know any Montenegrins but I think this is something that many of them have wanted for a long time.

Montenegro has the distinction of being the only nation to fight on the winning side in World War I only to be annexed to another country (Serbia). The only nation with worse luck in a World War was Finland who ended up fighting on the side of the Germans because they were attacked by the Soviet Union in 1940.

So they're dancing in the streets of Podgorica (formerly Titograd) today. Congratulations.

The Da Vinci Code

2006-05-22T07:01:00.000-05:00

Despite the bad reviews that The Da Vinci Code was getting even before its release in Arkansas this weekend, I decided to ignore the critics and the crowds and see it on Saturday night anyway.

My review: 3-1/2 stars out of 5 – The Da Vinci Code certainly isn’t Citizen Kane but it’s not Weekend at Bernie’s II either.

Greek Food Fest

2006-05-22T07:00:00.000-05:00

Tish and I have never missed the Greek Food Festival in Little Rock. We’ve been in Arkansas nineteen years we're now 19-0. The crowds on Saturday were small but the weather was nice. We both had gyros and shared souvlaki, falafel and hummus. Then we listened to live Irish folk music. Go figure.

This Week's Sign of the Impending Apocalypse (#29)

2006-05-20T08:15:00.000-05:00

Four Australian men are preparing to live in a glass box on a downtown mall in Shanghai, China for two weeks in June. Residents of the city will be able to watch them sleep, eat and bathe as if they were in a human zoo.

Urban Dream Capsule is a “performance installation event” that has been held around the world since first appearing in Melbourne in 1997.

The men will live in a 650-square-foot glass capsule that will be decorated in a Shanghai theme. The public will be able to send e-mail or faxes to them, or put messages on the glass.

If this sounds familiar, you probably grew up watching The Twilight Zone.

Harding University, 2000

2006-05-19T07:00:00.000-05:00

People ask me all the time, “Mark, what do you think Harding University will be like in the Year 2000?”

And I answer, “Pretty much like this…”

Harding 2000 (Windows Media File)

Harding 2000 (Quicktime)

(Both are big files; be patient.)

Attention ACU and Lipscomb staff: turn your speakers down.

Swing and a Swiss Miss

2006-05-18T07:30:00.000-05:00

When I open my Harding email account in the morning, it's like opening a box of Cracker Jacks. I always know that there’s going to be something I like way down in the bottom of the box.

As reported earlier, the firewall at Harding does an amazing job in keeping the spam out of my mailbox – but it isn't perfect. And despite my own efforts to block certain addresses and users from filling up my inbox with advertisements for products and services I don’t need, I still get 1-2 a day from folks in Asia, Europe, and Africa. They usually arrive late at night and are the only thing in my mailbox.

So while I am snoring away in the US Central Time Zone, spammers are working hard to develop new ways to get me to open junkmail they are send me. I appreciate their work ethic and their creativity. I don't appreciate how stupid they think I am.

This is what I found in my “inbox” this morning (from the Hotel Park in Switzerland):

From: Damien
Date: Thursday, May 18, 2006 0:36 am
Subject: [SPAM-11.000] want to meet?
To: elrod@Harding.edu

Hi,
Hope I am not writing to wrong address. I am nice, prebbtty looking girl. I am planninag on visiting your town this month. Can we meet each other in person? Message me babck at tax@datetodayy.com

Ok, let’s think about some of the reasons why Dr. Elrod might not want to respond to this invitation for a rendezvous with Swiss Miss (besides the obvious fact that I am already more than happily married) …

“Tax” as a user name in an email address is a dead give-away. If Damien is not actually Swiss, then she may be working for the IRS. Nice try, IRS.
“Damien” is a male surname here in the good old USA. In fact, there is a famous movie about a kid with that name who was the spawn of Satan and that’s why nobody names their kid “Damien” any more – too creepy!
If I were interested in starting an illicit online affair with an anonymous emailer from another country it would be with one who had mastered the mysteries of “spell check”. (It’s possible that Damien has a speech impediment; if that’s the case, I apologize).
Prebbtty girls from the Switzerland don’t just drop into Searcy, Arkansas for a visit.

Damien is up to something illegal here. I just can’t put my finger on it.

Meet the Know-Knothings

2006-05-17T07:00:00.000-05:00

One of our country’s first successful third political parties was the American Party (1850-55) better known as the “Know-Nothings” due to the secretive nature of the group. That may be just about all you remember about them from your history classes.

The Know-Nothings really disliked the Irish and other Catholic immigrants and their political platform included banning all but native-born Americans from holding public office and with a 21-year residence qualification for citizenship. Like the Whigs, the Know-Nothings eventually collapsed as a result of North-South sectionalism and most of them became Republicans. I like the fact that Abraham Lincoln took the time to say that he disliked them.

Nativist groups like the Know-Nothings illustrate that we have never been able to completely divorce ethno-centrism from our debates on immigration. It would seem that as a nation of immigrants, the second thing we learned after arriving in America (after how to speak English) was how to hate the next wave of immigrants.

Modern American nativism is stealthy and sophisticated. It doesn’t manifest itself in the form of Bill “The Butcher” Cutting in the Gangs of New York. It works to divide rather than unite and ultimately fails to appeal to the “better angels of our nature.” Nativism generally brings out the worst in us. It causes us to imagine and believe things that we would otherwise reject as irrational.

Maybe you’ve seen this e-mail that’s been circulating recently that suggests that there was a decline in shoplifting and other crimes on May 1, 2006, the “Day Without Immigrants.” The e-mail states (falsely) that law enforcement officials and retailers in California and other states have reported that while business was down on May 1, shoplifting was down as well. The intent of this spurious story is show that the individuals who are the target of the immigration debate are not worthy of living and working among us because they are thieves and criminals.

I can’t get past the feeling that if the men and women who are harvesting our crops, processing our poultry, and watered our golf courses were white, English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, this debate would not be getting the traction it’s getting right now. Maybe I’m spoiled by the fact that most of the immigrants I meet here in Arkansas seem to be hard-working people who want a better life for their families.

Whether nativists like it or not, the American Dream is multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and ultimately a blend of cultures rather than the triumph of one culture over all of the others. Moreover, the American economy cannot survive without the labor that so many of us want to deport.

The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can leave this debate behind us and get back to being Americans.

President Al Gore

2006-05-16T07:45:00.000-05:00

If you are one of those 31 percenters I keep reading about, don’t watch this bit featuring President Al Gore from Saturday Night Live.

I cannot be held responsible for any damage you do to your computer.

But if you find yourself occasionally daydreaming about the way things could have been, watch and enjoy.

Attention Harding staff: turn your speakers down.

What's Next?

2006-05-15T07:30:00.000-05:00

Graduations are always bitter-sweet. I loved seeing my students graduate on Saturday but I am going to miss them.

I started my Sunday morning adult bible class at West Side on Sunday. I had any choice of topic and I went with "The Intertestamental Period" because that’s what I’m most interested in teaching. Nobody walked out and a couple of visitors said that they wished they could be back next week. So I guess it went well.

Alan gave his mom the appropriate number of hugs yesterday for Mother’s Day before she took off to visit her family in Kentucky for a few days. Tish is a great mom.

We had the first meeting of the group from West Side that will be going to New Orleans for relief work in July yesterday. It looks like we'll be taking at least 24 volunteers for two days over the July 4 weekend.

Alan and I watched the final episode of the West Wing last night and we both gave it a thumbs up. Two best moments: When President Bartlett gives Charlie the copy of the constitution that his father gave him and when the president is given the "Bartlett for America" napkin from his first campaign that he had framed and given to Leo. By the way (Alan), the sixth season of West Wing on DVD would make a great Father’s Day present.

Intersession starts today. That’s where I’m headed right now.

This Week's Sign of the Impending Apocalypse (#28)

2006-05-13T07:15:00.000-05:00

A McDonald's restaurant near Tuscaloosa, Alabama will soon begin displaying a bust of Ronald Reagan and a photograph of him eating a Big Mac.

The bust will commemorate the visit of the former movie star, president, and husband of Jane Wyman to Northport, Alabama on October 15, 1984. Reagan ordered a Big Mac, large fries and sweet tea and spent time chatting with customers. The owners had previously displayed only a small photograph and sign marking the occasion, but it was constantly being stolen.

The new fast-food restaurant shrine to our nation's 40th president will include a bronze bust in a glass case with a halogen light shining on it 24 hours a day. Atop the case will be the words "President Reagan ate here."

Dear Harding Graduate...

2006-05-12T07:30:00.000-05:00

I am very proud to have been your teacher while you were here at Harding and I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to share some things with you. Teachers always learn from their students – I feel very blessed to have a job where I am reminded every day how much there is to learn about the world we live in. Teaching college is a humbling experience but the reward is becoming a collaborator in critical thinking and life-long learning with talented people like you.

By now, you’re probably tired of people telling you that graduation day is a beginning rather than an ending. It’s really neither one. Today is just another day in the continuation of a journey that began on the day that you first realized that you are a thinker.

This short speech by Neil Postman is worthy of reading on any graduation day. If you get a minute today or tomorrow (even during commencement) give it a quick read. I think you’ll like it. If you don’t like it, give it to the first person you see wearing a toga.

Don’t ever stop thinking, don’t ever stop examining every aspect of God’s creation, and don’t ever stop nurturing the beautiful mind that our God has blessed you with. I expect to hear great things about you someday.

Best wishes,
Mark Elrod

Armed and Dangerous

2006-05-11T07:30:00.000-05:00

It was announced yesterday that the Grand Hall at the Governor's Mansion in Little Rock will be named for Janet Huckabee. This photo was taken at the Grand Hall on the occasion of Governor Huckabee's inauguration in January 2003. The First Lady has played an active role in the recent renovation of the Governor’s Mansion and no doubt deserves some kind of recognition for her efforts.

The First Family moved out of the Governor’s Mansion to a 2100 square foot manufactured home while the mansion was undergoing a 1.4 million dollar renovation. For a short time, the Huckabees were the residents of the only “triple-wide” in the state.

But I am far more intrigued by the fact that the Arkansas State Police still carry swords.

Don’t mess with Arkansas.

The $100 Laptop

2006-05-10T07:00:00.000-05:00

It’s hard for me to slip one past the technology gurus at Harding. I am functional and literate when it comes to most of the technology issues that I have to deal with in the classroom but the guys who get paid to keep our campus on the cutting edge are usually a year or two ahead of me on new technologies and issues.

So when I asked my friend Jim Baird, our director of desktop support, if he had heard about a proposal to develop a $100 hand-cranked laptop PC and he laughed at me, I felt like maybe I had been duped by one of those urban legends that I hate so much. So I promised him that I would check it out and now I have…

It turns out that I was not imagining that I heard this – the organization OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) created in 2005 by M.I.T. professor Nicholas Negroponte is in the process of creating a $100 laptop to be used exclusively by school children in developing countries. Negroponte says that his goal is to sell five to 10 million inexpensive laptops and ship them to governments in developing nations by the end of 2006. These governments will then distribute the computers to schools.

According to the OLPC website:

The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, with a dual-mode display – both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data.

OLPC is not without its share of critics, one of whom is Bill Gates. Gates has suggested that the $100 PC's monitor is impractical and the crank feature impractical. On May 3, Intel unveiled a $400 laptop called the "Eduwise" that should be available early next year.

Others have criticized the practicality of introducing cheap computer technology to poor countries ahead of other more important and necessary improvements to basic human needs.

In either case, I didn’t make it up Jim… somebody really is developing a $100 laptop.

It would be perfect for professors on a Harding budget, but I still think I’m going to spring for one with a hard drive.

Who Needs a Lieutenant Governor?

2006-05-09T07:15:00.000-05:00

Arkansas started early voting in party primaries yesterday. With the two major parities in the state fielding only one candidate apiece in the race for governor, most attention has turned to the races for the other constitutionally-elected executive offices in the state such as lieutenant governor and attorney general.

The position of lieutenant governor in Arkansas is a strange office. Back in the old days when I was teaching State & Local Government at Harding (a crime against humanity that has yet to be investigated) it occurred to me that the LG office is even less meaningful than the national office of vice-president and that it should probably be abolished. Warrick Sabin of the Arkansas Times lays out a pretty good argument for doing away with the LG’s office here.

The responsibilities of the LG in Arkansas are to preside over the Senate with a tie-breaking vote, to serve as governor when the governor is out of state, and to serve as governor if the governor leaves office for any reason. Unlike the vice-president, the Arkansas LG has no role in the chief executive’s office and with the emergence of a competitive two-party system in Arkansas, there is a better than even chance that the governor and lieutenant governor could come from different parties. Arkansas’ current governor, Mike Huckabee (R) originally assumed office when his predecessor, Jim Guy Tucker (D) stepped down after being convicted of federal fraud charges in 1996.

Most LG candidates still consider the office as a stepping stone to the governor’s office. Like Huckabee, Tucker became governor upon the resignation of his successor (Bill Clinton) but to find the next most-recent case of any LG becoming governor, you have to go back to 1928. So, it’s still a long-shot.

In either case, the candidates of both parties for lieutenant governor have been hammering away at Arkansas voters for at least a year about what they would do with this largely ceremonial office if elected. I spent a little time yesterday looking at the platforms of the respective Arkansas LG candidates on their webpages and I found that they all make more promises than the job can deliver. Likewise, most of them seem to believe that they will be somehow able to transform the office into a real political office, something that none of the thirteen men who have previously served as Arkansas lieutenant governor since 1926 have been able to do.

If I were running for lieutenant governor in Arkansas, this would be my platform:

Ladies and gentlemen, I am seeking your vote for the office of lieutenant governor. If elected, I promise to do a competent job presiding over the State Senate. I will show up every day and promise to stay awake more often than some of my predecessors.

The day after I am elected, I will ask a member of the legislature to introduce a referred act to the people of Arkansas to abolish the office of lieutenant governor. I will also propose that the savings created by this amendment be used to build a monument to me as the last lieutenant governor of the state.

On the other hand, if the governor dies or leaves office before my job is abolished, all bets are off and you can start calling me “Mr. Governor.” But that's a risk that I'm willing to take.

I’m Mark Elrod and I approve this message.

Battle of the Bands

2006-05-08T09:30:00.000-05:00

The Battle of the Bands (Battle de las Bands) at the White County Fairgrounds was a big hit on Friday night. As a judge in this event, I had special access to the members of some of Searcy’s better-known stage bands such as The Underground House Band, AK and the 47s, and the Michael Douglases. I think all of them must have been pandering to the judges because they played a lot of songs that I recognized.

It was a truly memorable experience, especially the limitless supply of salsa from Mi Ranchito and the smell of the livestock barn at the fairgrounds. But the music was even better and the weather cooperated this time. I could have done without the constant interruptions and bad jokes from the MC (some guy named “Sam” from Harding).

The winning band was a Latino band from Harding (Los Mexicanos) that performed “La Bamba” and “Macarena”, both of which proved to be crowd favorites. And when I say “performed” what I mean is that Los Mexicanos was more than just a musical experience. Attending Harding has not affected their dancing skills in any respect.

Sam: If you are reading this, the comments about your MCing was intended to taunt you into opening that Blogger account you keep threatening me with...

This Week's Sign of the Impending Apocalypse (#27)

2006-05-06T07:40:00.000-05:00

Roy Thomas Chaivarlis, 31 of Yatesboro, Pennsylvania has been charged with numerous crimes after deliberating crashing his delivery truck filled with Boyer’s Potato Chips through the front door of a Pennsylvania state police barracks.

Miraculously, no one was injured in the incident which occurred at 1:38 in the morning in Kittanning, located about 40 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

Police said that Chaivarlis disliked several members of the police force but did not seem to be targeting any particular officer with his 1988 Dodge van when he drove it into the building. He was immediately arrested and held on $200,000 bond in the Armstrong County jail after refusing a Breath-alyzer test at the scene.

Chaivarlis has been charged with aggravated assault, risking a catastrophe, criminal mischief, criminal trespass, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, disorderly conduct, public drunkenness and driving under the influence of alcohol for refusing a Breath-alyzer test. He was also charged with driving while under suspension (related to a previous driving under the influence charge), careless driving and reckless driving. Police also issued Chaivarlis warnings for a turn signal violation and for not wearing a seatbelt.

It would appear that the only charge that Chaivarlis will not be facing is “reckless endangerment of snack foods.”

!Feliz Cinco De Mayo!

2006-05-05T07:10:00.000-05:00

Today is Cinco de Mayo -- I know it's a bigger holiday among Latinos in the US than it is in Mexico but it’s also the last class day of the semester and that’s cause for celebration anywhere.

My comparative politics class is going to celebrate General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin’s victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862 with lunch at Mi Ranchito in Searcy this afternoon.

Tonight, Tish and I are serving as judges in the twice-postponed “Battle of the Bands” (Battle de las Bands) in Searcy hosted by the Harding Student Association. I’ll give you a full report on Monday but I can tell your right now that mariachi bands are going to have a distinct advantage.

Harding Code of Conduct

2006-05-04T09:00:00.000-05:00

The administration has just completed a study to carefully consider whether we need to make any changes to our current Code of Conduct. As a result of this study, the following changes were announced by Dr. Burks in chapel today:

The first change has to do with our rule pertaining to wearing modest shorts. The 2 p.m. requirement will be deleted and shorts can be worn for casual wear at any time, but they will not be permitted in chapel, classes, or lyceum events.
The second change has to do with body piercing. For women, piercing will be limited to the wearing of earrings and a small nose stud. For men, piercing will be limited to the ear lobes and the wearing of small earrings or studs.
With respect to the use of alcohol, students who voluntarily come to the Student Services office confessing an involvement with alcohol will be afforded an opportunity to submit to a range of possibilities up to but not including suspension or expulsion. Such agreements will only be reached when the student takes the first step in initiating discussion. Once a violation of the alcohol policy has otherwise been reported to the office of Student Services, those involved will no longer have the opportunity for this agreement and the violation will result in suspension. This means a student could talk with Student Services in the same way they can talk with people in the Counseling Center or a faculty member at the present time.
With respect to curfew this next year, curfew will be from midnight until 5:30 a.m. on Sunday through Thursday, and 1 a.m. until 5:30 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. Seniors will be allowed 15 special events per semester to be taken on Fridays and Saturdays.

Good news: I no longer have to ask Bobby to remove his earring or Betty to remove her nose stud when they come to my office for academic advising.

Bad news: Judging whether a nose stud or earring is "small" is a matter of perspective and may be relative to the size of a student’s nose and ears. This means that I'm going to have to ask the dean's office for guidance bef0re I drop the hammer on anybody. Illustrations would help.

Worst news: We still don’t have an Academic Code of Conduct.

Search ME

2006-05-03T07:30:00.000-05:00

It's always interesting to see how denizens of the web find my blog.

Here are the top-ten search terms that brought hundreds of satisfied customers to Elrod's Lame-o Weblog over the last two weeks:

nyquil ibuprofin mix
sexy iranian girl jende
small lizard philadelphia 2006
bill boner
Borneo parachuting cats
attorney hal cook
"burger king" AND (commercial OR commercials) AND football
nancy grace needs logic classes
I hop pecan pancakes
elrod lame

So Dark the Con of Man

2006-05-02T07:30:00.000-05:00

OK, I admit it, I liked The Da Vinci Code and I am reading Angels and Demons right now. But I’m still not sure if I fully appreciate what the fuss is all about.

I suspect that the work-up about the book and upcoming movie stems from the fact that both have the potential for confusing people about who Jesus was. This is something that theologians have been arguing about that ever since somebody first decided that the world needed theologians but for Christians who figured it out, any attempt to re-open the argument is dangerous. I would have said that it was "pointless" but if critics of the book really believed that it was pointless, they wouldn't have brought it up in the first place.

But it could be that since The Da Vinci Code book and movie have the potential for reaching such a broad audience that there is a real fear that readers and viewers will have a more difficult time separating fact from fiction.

Case in point: Nancy Grace. In her interview with Rubel Shelly back in March, Ms. Grace seemed to be most interested in challenging the Church of Christ doctrine (if there is such a thing) on the role of women in leadership positions. This observation has already been made but even at the time, it seemed to me as if that entire portion of her argument came straight out of The Da Vinci Code. There are good arguments to be made on that subject but it’s probably not a good idea to base them on a book you picked up in the fiction section of the airport bookstore.

Like most works of fiction, The Da Vinci Code takes some liberties with historical facts, some of which I was aware of before I read the book. Many of these involve the way in which the canon of the New Testament was compiled by the early Christian church and how the leadership of the early church dealt with heresies. Dr. Erwin Lutzer, who seems to have become the point-man for going after the “deceptions” of The Da Vinci Code suggests that author Dan Brown “blurs the lines between history and fiction.” Moreover, Lutzer and others believe that Brown has an agenda:

Dan Brown’s agenda is not so thinly veiled: this book is a direct attack against Jesus Christ, the church, and those of us who are his followers and call him Savior and Lord. Christianity, according to Dan Brown’s novel, was intended to suppress women and to turn people away from the ‘divine feminine.’ Understandably, the book appeals to feminists, who see a return to goddess worship as a necessity to combat male supremacy.

The upshot of this theory is that Christianity is based on a big lie, or rather, several big lies. For one thing, Jesus was not God, but his followers attributed deity to him in order to consolidate male rule and to suppress those who worshipped the divine feminine. Indeed, according to Dan Brown, at the Council of Nicaea Constantine invented the idea of the deity of Christ so that he could eliminate all opposition, declaring those who disagreed to be heretics. Further, Constantine also chose Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the only Gospels because they fit his agenda of male power. Eighty other viable Gospels were rejected because they taught that Jesus wanted Mary Magdalene to be the real leader of the church. “It was all about power,” we’re told.

Some of these ideas found in The Da Vinci Code have been around for a long time, such as the speculation that the role of the women in Jesus’ inner circle was more important than many modern Christians believe or that even in the earliest days of Christianity there were sharp differences of opinion about the divinity of Jesus. So the idea that some of these ideas were suppressed by some of the followers of Christ or that the canonization of the New Testament was politicized is not that far-fetched for many readers.

I recommend the book for casual reading but not for teaching a Sunday school class. The backlash against the movie is going to be almost as interesting as the film itself.

And at some point, Dan Brown needs to send a thank you note to Dr. Lutzer. I'm sure that all of these this is going to translate into at least another aditional million or two dollars at the box office.

Boycott this Blog

2006-05-01T07:15:00.000-05:00

In support of the hard-working immigrants who have come to the United States in order to find a better future for themselves and their children, I'm boycotting my own blog today and I invite you to do the same. If you are already boycotting my blog, keep up the good work.

El Colossus Nuevo

No como el gigante descarado de la fama griega,
Con la conquista de los miembros a horcajadas de tierra a la tierra;
Aquí en nuestro mar-haber lavado, las puertas de la puesta del sol estarán paradas
Una mujer poderosa con una antorcha, que llama
Es el relámpago encarcelado, y su nombre
Madre de Exiles. De su faro-mano
Brilla intensamente la recepción mundial; su comando suave de los ojos
El puerto aire-tendido un puente sobre que las ciudades gemelas enmarcan.
"guarde las tierras antiguas, sus storied pompa!" gritos ella
Con los labios silenciosos. "déme su cansado, sus pobres,
Sus masas amontonadas que anhelan respirar libremente,
La basura desgraciada de su orilla del vertido.
Envíe éstos, el nómada, tempestad-tost a mí,
Levanto mi lámpara al lado de la puerta de oro!"

This Week's Sign of the Impending Apocalypse (#26)

2006-04-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

A carpenter in Oakland has been arrested after a startled homeowner discovered him working in the nude.

Percy Honniball, 50, claimed that he works with his clothes off at times to keep them from getting dirty. He has been charged with misdemeanor indecent exposure this week for the October incident.

According to police reports, Honniball was caught working naked in Berkeley three times in the last six years and put on probation for violating a city ordinance.

Honniball said he doesn't plan working naked again. "This is very costly,'' he said. "The officers actually arrested me and I spent a whole day in jail before I was able to make bail. It was very unpleasant.''

But not nearly as unpleasant as coming home to find a naked carpenter in your house.

Church Songs

2006-04-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

If you read this blog occasionally, there is a pretty good chance that you grew up in the Church of Christ tradition. What I mean by that is that your parents took you to church three times a week and you spent a lot of time listening to sermons. When you weren’t listening to sermons, you were singing acapella music. And sometimes, when you were singing, you thought to yourself, “Man, who wrote this and why are we singing it?”

I know this is debatable but it seems to me that beauty is not always in the eye of the beholder -- there do seem to be some universal aesthetic standards when it comes to music, art, and literature. I know we develop individual tastes, but those tastes have to be based on something we can all agree on.

My standard for "good" in terms of church music is “The Spacious Firmament on High” – nice tune, nice lyrics, and a bass line that involves more that two notes. The words are a beautiful reflection on the reality of God’s plan and role in the shaping of our universe.

The worst song we sing (and if you know me, you already know what’s coming) is “Mansion Over the Hilltop.” I consider MOTH it to be the “bizzaro” “Spacious Firmament” because it combines a lousy tune and bad lyrics with a dash of revisionism.

In the first place, the term “mansion” in this song is taken right out of the KJV version of the Bible and does not mean “a palatial palace” like “stately Wayne Manor” as we use the word today. MOTH implies that the said that we will all be living in Beverly Hills when we die. In its original context, “mansion” simply means “room” or “space” -- otherwise Jesus’ statement that “in my Father’s house there are many mansions” doesn’t make any sense at all.

Secondly, this has to be one of the most crassly materialistic sentiments to appear in any church liturgy ever and I just flat refuse to sing it. It makes Christianity sound like some kind of celestial Individual Retirement Account:

I'm satisfied with just a cottage below
A little silver and a little gold
But in that city where the ransomed will shine
I want a gold one that's silver lined

Finally, compare “our” lyrics of MOTH to those found in the original version which also happens to be the one favored by Elvis Presley and Ricky Van Shelton. Purists will note that the line “I want a mansion, a robe, and a crown” has been edited in CofC songbooks from the original “I want a mansion, a harp, and a crown”. The only reasonable conclusion is that these words were edited in our songbooks so as to not confuse a group of strictly acapella singers.

So please Mr. Song Leader… purge it, take it out, don’t make us sing it again, ever.

They won’t let you do this at church very often, but you can do it here: The worst church song in the history of Christendom is…

Important Announcement from ASI

2006-04-27T09:30:00.000-05:00

Just received from the Harding ASI. Apparently, Zell Miller (D/R, GA) is going to be on campus tonight...

Don’t forget Zell Miller is our final Distinguished Speaker for the American Studies Institute tonight at 7:30 in the Benson Auditorium!!

Zell Miller is the only person ever to have been the keynote speaker in both the Republican and Democratic national conventions. He began his career in public service in 1959 with a term as mayor of Young Harris, Ga. He went on to serve in the state senate and as lieutenant governor, governor and U.S. senator.

The Los Angeles Times called Miller’s HOPE Scholarship Program “the most far-reaching scholarship program in the nation.” His prekindergarten program won an award for innovation from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

He has written six books, including the New York Times best seller, A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat. Miller now serves as a contributor on Fox News.

Co-sponsored by the Young America’s Foundation.

Update: Zell Miller challenges Chris Matthews to a duel, video and transcript.

Snow Daze

2006-04-27T07:15:00.000-05:00

I think I’m going to like this Tony Snow guy from FoxNews working as the president’s press secretary. He certainly seems to have a feel for who he’s going to be working for...

“The newly passive George Bush has become something of an embarrassment.” [townhall.com 11/11/05]
“No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives.” [townhall.com 9/30/05]
Bush “has given the impression that [he] is more eager to please than lead, and that political opponents can get their way if they simply dig in their heels and behave like petulant trust-fund brats, demanding money and favor — now!” [townhall.com 9/30/05]
“When it comes to federal spending, George W. Bush is the boy who can’t say no. In each of his three years at the helm, the president has warned Congress to restrain its spending appetites, but so far nobody has pushed away from the table mainly because the president doesn’t seem to mean what he says.” [The Detroit News, 12/28/03]
“Bush, for all his personal appeal, ultimately bolstered his detractors’ claims that he didn’t have the drive and work ethic to succeed.” [townhall.com 11/16/00]
“Little in the character of demeanor of Al Gore or George Bush makes us say to ourselves: Now, this man is truly special! Little in our present peace and prosperity impels us to say: Give us a great man!” [townhall.com 8/25/00]
“George W. Bush, meanwhile, talks of a pillowy America, full of niceness and goodwill. Bush has inherited his mother’s attractive feistiness, but he also got his father’s syntax. At one point last week, he stunned a friendly audience by barking out absurd and inappropriate words, like a soul tortured with Tourette’s.” [townhall.com 8/25/00]
“On the policy side, he has become a classical dime-store Democrat. He gladly will shovel money into programs that enjoy undeserved prestige, such as Head Start. He seems to consider it mean-spirited to shut down programs that rip-off taxpayers and mislead supposed beneficiaries.” [townhall.com 8/25/00]

The president said yesterday that Snow has "sometimes has disagreed with me." One of those disagreements is about balancing the budget. Another one must be whether or not the president really sounds like "a soul tortured with Tourette’s."

Fathers and Sons

2006-04-26T08:15:00.000-05:00

“Alan thinks you hate him…”

I think that was about the worst thing I’ve ever heard but it got my attention yesterday when Tish was trying to talk to me about Alan. The details aren’t important but Alan had gotten himself into some trouble at school and created a situation that's going to take some time for him to resolve. It also resulted in me displaying a distinctively un-fatherly attitude towards Alan. I was about as mad at him as I've ever been in my life.

Alan knows that his dad loves him. I try to tell him that every day and most of the time I try to show him as well. Like a lot of sons, Alan puts his dad on a pedestal that he doesn’t deserve to be on. Like many sons, Alan realized a long time ago that his dad is not perfect but he still keeps thinking of me in those terms.

Yesterday, I was a bad father because Alan wanted to tell me that he was sorry and I wouldn’t listen to him. I was mad at him for exercising poor judgment and damaging his reputation but the worst part was that I knew that Alan really was sorry and that he was ready to accept his punishment.

The good news is that by the end of the day, we were able to have a serious talk about his situation and came to the conclusion that it was not the end of the world.

But it also gave me an opportunity to reflect a little about fatherhood and how fortunate I am that the Lord deals my setbacks in a more consistently manner than I deal with Alan’s. If my Father were as impatient with me as I am with Alan when he messes up I would have been finished with Him a long time ago.

It’s also pretty obvious that all of those father-son metaphors in the Bible are no accident – like a father, the Lord wants me to be happy, independent and wise but He also wants me to never stop leaning on Him for guidance.

Father-son relationships are tricky.

Breakfast With a Fast-Food Mascot in Your Bed

2006-04-25T10:00:00.000-05:00

I went public with my disdain for the "Wake Up With the King" advertising campaign by Burger King at GKB’s blog last night. I was under the mistaken impression that BK was no longer running these ads featuring a man waking up with a freakish Burger King mascot in bed next to him.

I’m not sure what demographic BK was going for here but I guess I’m not it.

If you haven’t seen this commercial or just want to be reminded of how weird it is you can see it here. The ad has since spawned a couple of spin-offs including one in which the King hands a cup of coffee to a construction worker at the top of a skyscraper and several spots where the King is playing football. Both seem to have a voice-over by Tommy Chong.

NPR did a piece on the "Breakfast with the King" campaign a couple of years ago. It's worth a listen too.

I only mention all of this because right after I posted at GKB last night, I saw a new ad featuring a man in bed with the King but with a twist – this one features a bedroom full of spectators. It ends with the King dancing in bed with this guy who still doesn’t mind waking up with the fast food equivalent of Billy the Marlin.

Burger King must be building on the success of the original but this whole "waking up with a mascot thing" still creeps me out and I haven't been really comfortable sitting in a BK since.

BTW: I just noticed that this is my 200th post; sorry its not something a little more memorable but its a slow week.

NYC

2006-04-24T09:45:00.000-05:00

I’ve got to make it quick today because I slept in this morning and now I’ve got classes to teach. Here are the seven best things about our trip to New York:

Seeing my mom and dad in Delaware. I took dad to his cardiologist on Friday and he said that dad is in great shape for an 85-year old. Mom is as well as she can be but gets confused more and more often about things like why I’m in Delaware and why Alan is singing in New York.
Seeing the boardwalk at Asbury Park, New Jersey. I didn’t think that finding Madam Marie’s would be so easy. I was ready to pay for a reading but she wasn’t there. Asbury Park has seen better days and I can understand now why Bruce Springsteen wanted to get out of there so bad when he was a teenager.
Driving in New York. It’s always a rush and cheaper than Six Flags. If you ever drive in Manhattan, remember that traffic lights and lines on the street not rules, they are suggestions.
Seeing Ground Zero. I could write an entire post about this part of the trip but I don’t think I could say anything about it that hasn’t already been said. It’s kind of weird to think of the sight of a horrible tragedy as a tourist destination but I got the impression that there were just as may people there who want to pay their respects rather than gawk at a hole in the ground. After Tish and I look around the site, we sat in St. Paul’s Church across the street of the WTC complex. I don’t think it’s an accident that there’s a beautiful place of prayer and peace in the midst of all the ugliness from 9/11. It really is a sanctuary.
Hooking up with Alan for dinner at the Brooklyn Diner near Carnegie Hall. In the middle of dinner, Alan announced that’s he’s ready to move to New York. But I think that’s only because he wasn’t the one paying for dinner in Manhattan.
Watching Alan and the Searcy High School Choir perform at Carnegie Hall. The choir performed Mozart’s Missa brevis in B-flat Major, K.275 and Hayden’s Te Deum with three other school choirs. Both pieces were performed with orchestra and sung in Latin and I thought it was pretty good but I'm biased and I like Mozart. Alan and his group got home last night around midnight and then he had to get up early to get ready for an exam and finish his homework. The show must go on at school as well.

This Week's Sign of the Impending Apocalypse (#25)

2006-04-22T07:00:00.000-05:00

A retirement brochure sent to 50,000 Arkansas public school teachers describing the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System includes a toll-free number that connects the caller to a phone sex line.

The brochures were sent to retirees and active teachers explaining how to name beneficiaries in the event of their death, said David Malone, the association's executive director.

Some of the pages listed the correct toll-free number associated with the program but one page lists a toll-free number that brought callers to a recording of a woman's voice advertising “foot fetish fun” for only 69 cents per minute” and another number to call “for all the hot, one-on-one triple-X toe talk you can handle.”

Malone said that his office had gotten “a few calls about it” but that almost everybody who’s called had been pretty good natured about it.

On the other hand, this means that that the majority of retirees didn’t call Malone’s office to complain at all.

Laura Gets an Award

2006-04-21T07:31:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Laura Kaiser for being named the top scholar in the department of History and Social Science at Harding University for the academic year 2005-06.

One of my few regrets about being out of town this weekend is that I will not get to see Laura and the scholars from our other academic departments receive their awards in chapel today. Laura probably knows that she's part of one of the most talented graduating classes our department has ever produced and that makes her award even more significant.

The "best student award" is one that is based both on a student’s GPA and the faculty’s assessment of a student’s contribution to the department and university. Laura was selected by the faculty this year because she combines all of the features that you would expect to find in a scholar-servant. In addition to working as an RA for several years, Laura has been active with the student association and our college class at West Side. She seems to be one of the busiest people I know and still has still to be a good student.

Laura has been one of my favorite students ever since she first stepped into my classroom four years ago. I tease Laura (justifiably) about her lack of punctuality and I’d be willing to bet that she was late on that first day, but I can’t prove it. Most of the time, Laura has good reasons for being late, especially that semester she was working as an RA in the freshman door and dealing with a freshman crisis or two every day.

And, as you can see from Laura's picture, she really dislikes penguins. Laura has never really explained this to my satisfaction but at least her dislike is consistent -- it applies to real penguins, stuffed penguins, penguins on coffee mugs and (especially) marching penguins.

Despite this single character flaw, I’ve told Laura several times that if I ever had a daughter, I would want her to grow up to be like here. I expect to hear good things about Laura in the future and I’m going to miss her a lot when she graduates in a few weeks.

BTW Laura: Commencement exercises begin at 10:00 AM on Saturday, May 13. We expect you to be on time or maybe even a little early to get your diploma.

Our Delaware

2006-04-21T07:30:00.000-05:00

I think I've only actually heard someone sing the Delaware state song once, but I remember that it has an awkward melody but nice lyrics. It also mentions the name of my home county (New Castle) in first the stanza and I think that's pretty cool. Delaware may be the only state with the courage to mention the name of every county in the state it its official state song. But since there are only three counties, it’s not that courageous.

Tish and I are going to hang out here for the day and then drive to New Jersey tomorrow. I've talked her into making a pilgrimage to Asbury Park, the "hometown" of Bruce Springsteen. I've always wanted to do it and since we need to end up in New York City eventually for Alan's concert, I figured this was a good time. It's not too far out of the way.

If there's a Panera Bread in your neighborhood, I highly recommend the asiago cheese bagel and the free WiFi. Now that Searcy has an IHOP, Panera may be the next thing I campaign for.

The Reading List

2006-04-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read" - Groucho Marx

Ray Muncy, my first department chair, once encouraged me to read a book a week. I’m sure he thought that this was a reasonable suggestion for a first-year teacher who was supposed to be working on a dissertation but it wasn't. If you knew Ray, I think you'd agree that he seemed to eat books for breakfast.

Unfortunately, even in the post-dissertation phase of my teaching career, I’ve had a hard time keeping up that particular quota but I still try to read at least one or two books a month and usually try to get to a few each year that have nothing to do with what I teach.

I keep a stack on books on a corner of my desk that I need to get to eventually. Some of them sit in the stack longer than others but I eventually get to most of them. This is what's been in the stack this semester:

Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, Graham Allison & Robert Zelikow (2002). Graham’s original account of the Cuban missile crisis published in 1971 is a classic but I haven’t been real crazy about the second edition. I re-read it with my American foreign policy class this semester and we all agreed that it could have been shorter and more to the point. It’s still worth reading if only for the details about the crisis that have now been made available through declassified American, Soviet, and Cuban records of the decision-making process during the CMC.

How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, Franklin Foer (2005). The title is misleading because Foer’s book is more of an illustration of globalization rather than a theory but this is a great book. Because the rules of soccer are the same everywhere but the game is played differently in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, the "beautiful game" is a good illustration of the tension between globalization and localism.

The Ionian Mission, Patrick O’Brian (1981). I got hooked on O’Brian’s Aubry-Maturin series of books on naval warfare and political intrigue during the Napoleonic wars after seeing the movie Master and Commander. This is the 8th book in the series of twenty books and they’ve all been good.

America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975, George Herring (2002). If you’ve never read a book on Vietnam, this is the one that I would recommend. This is another one that I’m re-reading with my American foreign policy class and we agreed the other day that the parallels with Iraq are eerie – not so much about how we got there but how hard it was to get out once the commitment was made.

Jewish Backgrounds of the New Testament, J. Julius Scott, Jr. (1995). Great book so far. I'm teaching a Sunday class at West Side this summer on the intertestamenta period and I think I'm going to use this one for much of my material.

The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003). I'm sure that Mark Elrod is the last person alive who hasn’t read this book -- I'm not even sure why it is still for sale in bookstores since everyone seems to already own a copy. I know I’m going to look like the biggest cliché in America this weekend reading it in the airport and on my flight to Philadelphia and back this weekend but I’m going to do it anyway.

How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?

2006-04-19T07:30:00.000-05:00

Alan and the Searcy High School choir are headed to New York this weekend for a performance at Carnegie Hall. The choir has been pretty stoked about this for the better part of the school year. On Saturday night, they’ll be performing works by Mozart and Haydn with the New England Symphonic Ensemble in the Isaac Stern Auditorium.

There are still plenty good tickets available if you’re going to be in the city on Saturday.

The answer to the old joke “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” is “Practice, Practice, Practice”. In the case of Alan and the other members of the SHS choir the answer has been “Practice, Practice, Practice, and get a check for $200 from your parents or grandparents every two weeks.”

Tish and I will be flying to Philadelphia tomorrow and then driving up to New York from my parents’ home in Delaware. We're going to do some sightseeing on Saturday in New York and then go to the performance that night.

We’re excited about seeing Alan in New York, but it’s going to be good to see my mom and dad and my brothers again. Part of the original plan was to take my parents to the show, but I don't think they're going to be up for it.

I may not be able to moderate as frequently as I normally do this weekend, so bear with me. Of course, I may not have much to post anyway.

There She Is... Miss Iraqi Queen of Beauty

2006-04-18T07:30:00.000-05:00

Or, more accurately, "there she goes." The winner of the 2006 'Iraqi Queen of Beauty" contest was forced to surrender her title last week after a reign of only four days.

Iraq, a nation beset with insurgents, unable to form a government and teetering on the brink of civil war found time to hold a beauty contest on April 5. From a field of eleven contestants, the judges selected Tamar Goregian, to be the first Armenian Iraqi to win the Iraqi Queen of Beauty contest. The contest itself was held at a heavily-guarded secret location on the outskirts of Baghdad but even the increased security did not eliminate the fears of many participants.

In the week leading up to the pageant, several Iraqi women withdrew from the contest after religious leaders condemned the event as a "taboo competition". On April 9, Ms. Goregian was forced to relinquish her title in the face of death threats attributed to a group of religious extremists who have called her "the queen of infidels" who were apparently not happy with any contest that would select an Armenian Christian as the hottest woman in Iraq.

Most Iraqi beauty pageant enthusiasts know that if for any reason "the queen of the infidels" is unable to perform her responsibilities, she is normally replaced by the first runner-up. Unfortunately, both the first and second runner-up have also resigned from the contest. It now appears that Silva Shahakian, a Christian and the winner of the Miss Teen Iraq contest has agreed to also accept the title of Iraqi Queen of Beauty. The lastest news from Iraq is that Ms. Shahakian has now also started receiving death threats and has gone into hiding in Iraq.

The contest itself has been held for many years but this is the first time since 2002 that it has actually been held on Iraqi soil. And while many Iraqis may see beauty pageants as inappropriate, others consider them to be a step towards normalcy in an otherwise violent society. In her acceptance speech, Ms. Goregian said, "Maybe beauty is the final step to end violence and preach world peace after all... The power of beauty surpasses the ugly face of politics and greed."

Moral of the story: If your country can’t form a government, then you probably don’t have any business trying to hold beauty contests.

A(nother) Modest Proposal

2006-04-17T08:15:00.000-05:00

In case you forgot, your federal taxes have to be in the mail by midnight today. I don't want to tell you how to live your life, but if I had taxes due, I sure wouldn't be wasting my time reading a blog today.

I had my state and federal taxes finished a couple of weeks ago. Well, not exactly; the guy I pay to do them for me had them finished a couple of weeks ago. I started paying a tax preparer to do my taxes about five years ago and it was the best decision I ever made and worth every cent I pay for it. He does taxes for a lot of teachers at Harding and he sure seems to be good at it although I often wonder why he has so many travel posters from the Cayman Islands in his office.

The only real problem is that every now and then something slips up on me. This year, it turns out that while I was happily celebrating the 17th birthday of my son in December, the IRS was happily removing my $1000 Child Tax Credit. This makes no sense at all to me – Alan now uses more of the gas in my car and eats more of the food in my house than ever before but he’s worth less as a dependent.

The worst part is that nobody warned me about this. I don’t mind paying my taxes (except for the money that they use to make bombs) but I needed more advance notice that my deduction was being reduced.

So I’d like to make the following modest proposal: All persons born in the United States should come stamped with an IRS expiration date like they put on cartons of milk and cans of tuna. Those stamps would look something like this:

The expiration date should be tattooed in a conspicuous place of the parent or attending physician’s choosing (I suggest the posterior). It wouldn’t have to be a very large tattoo but it should be made with expandable ink.

You may think it's barbaric now but you’ll thank me when that little moppet turns seventeen.

This Week's Sign of the Impending Apocalypse (#24)

2006-04-15T07:30:00.000-05:00

An Iowa couple has been arrested for falsely reporting the death of the mother's 17-year old in order to cover unexcused absences from work.

James Ralph Snyder, 36, and Mary Jo Elizabeth Jensen, 33, of Waterloo, Iowa participated in the scam by saying Jensen's 17-year-old son had died, police said. The conspiracy began in December when the couple told their employers at Tyson Foods in Waterloo that Jensen's son was on life support at the Mayo Clinic. When they missed more work and the company asked for proof, Snyder produced an obituary from the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. It is alleged that Snyder wrote and submitted that obituary in December.

Snyder has been charged with tampering with records and Jensen is accused of being an accessory after the fact. Apparently, one of the sources who tipped off the police was Jensen's son himself.

I tried this once in high school but I misspelled my mom's name on the excuse.

Open Thread: Spring Sing 2006!

2006-04-13T08:00:00.001-05:00

Where has the year gone? It's time for Spring Sing on the Harding campus again. The parking lot by the football field is filling up with RVs and by Friday, we'll be standing in long lines at the IHOP again.

It's hard for me to evaluate Spring Sing because *I've never seen a show but I've heard a range of opinion about this production since I came to Harding in 1987. My alma mater, David Lipscomb has a similar show called "Singarama" and there are similar musical extravaganzas at other Church of Christ-affiliated colleges. I think there's probably enough material available now for a good dissertation on the phenomenology of CofC-related "rites of spring" productions.

I'll have to miss the show again this year because I'm going out of town but I've heard that the 2006 Harding Spring Sing Production is going to be the bestest one ever.

If you have any thoughts that you would like to share with the class about Spring Sings past or present, this is your chance. There are a lot of important people here on campus who read my blog who are anxious to hear what you think.

*At age 1, Alan (son) was used as a prop baby bumblebee in the 1989 Ko Jo Kai/Sub T-16 show and I snuck in to see his performance. That lasted about five minutes. Other than that, I've only seen video tapes but I'm familiar with the general plot.

Happy Anniversary, ICJ!

2006-04-12T07:15:00.000-05:00

Unless Wednesday is a really slow news day, the commemoration of sixtieth anniversary of the International Court of Justice (World Court) probably won’t get much attention today.

The ICJ is the post-World War II successor to the Permanent International Court of Justice (PCIJ) founded under the League of Nations. Like the PCIJ, the ICJ is headquartered in The Hague, the Netherlands and serves as an arbitrator of legal disputes between nations. The word "court" in the ICJ's name is misleading because it doesn't have the power to compel states to appear before the court and its power to impose punishment is limited.

The court consists of 15 justices drawn from the members of the UN. In its sixty-year history, the ICJ has adjudicated only 92 cases between states and handed down 25 advisory opinions. Its relatively light workload can be explained by the fact that the court moves slowly and by virtue of the fact that its jurisdiction and power are limited.

Some have argued that the ICJ is too powerful because it can actually find states guilty of violating international law while others have argued that because the court has no real subpoena power that it lacks teeth and is too weak. I think the court is probably no stronger or weaker than the states of the international system want it to be.

The biggest weakness of the ICJ is the fact that great powers like the US can often ignore the decisions of the court as the US did in the case of Nicaragua v. US in 1986. But its greatest strength is serving to advance the rule of law among nations. More and more nations, particularly from the developing world, now rely on the ICJ to resolve disputes.

It’s easy to dismiss the work of international organs like the ICJ because their work seems so abstract to us and doesn’t really have much of a direct impact on our daily lives. But the fact that institutions like the ICJ do their work without much fanfare or attention probably means that they are doing what they were intended to do.

Come and Get It!

2006-04-11T07:30:00.000-05:00

The free and "almost free" offers (including typewriters) that I get in a typical month via the Harding colleague's e-mail are too good to keep to myself. Here's a typical sampling.

If you see anything you like, let me know. If it's still available, I'll pick it up for you in my truck.

I have a box of 52 cassettes of sermons and lectures that someone might be able to put to good use. These are free -- if you would like to have the box, call _____ or come by American Studies _____.
Anyone who can use any of the following items in your work area is welcome to come and pick them up: Small, 2-shelf table – first attached picture, Small desk with keyboard drawer – second attached picture, Brother GX-6000 typewriter, Harding Academy yearbooks – years 98 and 99, University yearbooks – years 98, 97, 91 and 90.
We have three secretarial chairs in (department office) that are available for the taking. They are currently in the hallway outside our main office doors. Please come and take them if you want them!
We purchased a male SNIFFON puppy (Toy Schnauzer/Brussels Griffon, custom breed) for $400.00 about 1-month ago. We have not been able to give it the attention it needs and would give the puppy FREE to any individual or family that is willing to accept it.
If you would like coupons to Six Flags Over Texas, please let me know by email how many you are wanting and your HU box number.
We have a 4-square-foot glass-top coffee table for office use. Please call Ext. ____ or respond to this e-mail.
I have two Spring Sing tickets for Saturday afternoon for sale. $12 per ticket. They are in section 200, row D.

NAQT Nationals

2006-04-10T08:15:00.000-05:00

I’ve always like those interviews with coaches and players whose teams are Davids in a field of Goliaths. They have to say something that reflects the fact that they were overwhelmed by the competition but still managed to keep their heads held high. They also have to do it in a way that doesn't make it sound like they've lost their grip on reality.

The Harding Academic Quiz Team finished the National NAQT tournament at 5-9 and placed in middle tier of the undergraduate teams at the tournament. We beat Williams College (B), Georgia, Wisconsin, and Minnesota (2x). We lost a couple of close matches that we might have won if things had gone just a little better for us and we got beat pretty bad in a few games by teams from Cal-Berkley, Chicago, and Rochester. But we didn't lose a match that we thought we should have won, the team has happy they had a chance to go to nationals for the second year in a row, and they never gave up. On the way home, we started talking about how to make improvements next year.

Here's our biggest problem: When we moved up to D-1 this year, we not only moved out of the rookie league but also into the division that allows teams to field graduate students. Several of the teams we played had three or more players who have been playing in NAQT college tournaments for seven or more years. There were even a few players who have full-time jobs and are taking enough college courses to be eligible for competition in NAQT. As a small college with few graduate programs, our team has the chance of working our way up the “undergraduate” ladder but we’ll never beat teams made up mostly of graduate students.

Mike James and I are lucky to have the opportunity to work with David, Jason, Andrew, Brett, and Malina as well as the other members of the Academic Team who didn’t make this particular trip. We'll get back to nationals next year.

If you are a Harding student and you're interested in playing on the team, please get in touch with me or one of the players. No experience is required but we're looking for someone who can answer questions about the Simpsons, the Byzantine Empire, and polymers in the same match.

This Week's Sign of the Impending Apocalypse (#23)

2006-04-08T07:20:00.000-05:00

The Nigerian Soccer Federation has ruled that soccer referees in Nigeria can accept bribes but are not allowed to let the bribes affect their calls in games.

Fanny Amun, acting Secretary-General of the Nigerian Football Association, has said that "Referees should only pretend to fall for the bait, but make sure the result doesn’t favor those offering the bribe.”

Bribing public employees has a long tradition in Nigeria, which usually ranks near the bottom in measurements of public corruption among nations. Soccer referees have an expectation for bribes that makes the problem a difficult one to solve.

But in exchange for your mother's maiden name, power of attorney and your PIN number, I will be happy to divulge to you how we can fix this problem. Please send this information and a cashier's cheque for $100 to:

Mark Elrod, Esq.
PO Box 12219
Lagos, Nigeria SW22

NAQT Nationals

2006-04-06T14:30:00.000-05:00

I’m leaving in a little while for the NAQT National Quiz Tournament at the University of Maryland. I haven't been to the UofM campus since my big brother dragged me there for a wrestling tournament at Cole Field House when I was about 12.

But this time, instead of sweaty college wrestlers, I’ll be watching the Harding Academic Quiz team toiling for academic glory. You can see the field of teams we will competing against this weekend here. This is a big step up for Harding; last year, we competed in the D-II division (which is basically ‘rookie league’) and this year we're moving up to D-I. The schools aren’t any bigger but the competition in D-I is tougher. The team won the D-I South sectional in January in Tulsa.

The Harding players traveling to this tournament are Jason Loy, Andrew Ferren, David Ashley, Malina Thiede, and Brett Keller.

I’ll try to drop in some reports about the tournament over the weekend. When we have some real free time, Coach James and I want to take the team to Washington or Baltimore but I may just leave all of them at College Park on Saturday night and run down to Baltimore to catch the Orioles-Red Sox game. I haven’t seen one of those since I was about 12 either.

Welcome to IHOP

2006-04-06T06:30:00.000-05:00

Well, it’s here at last – the new International House of Pancakes opened in Searcy this week. I missed the grand opening on Monday but I don’t think I missed too much. I heard that the lines were long and the service was slow.

We got our first taste of the IHOP last night. When we got there at 5:30 for dinner, it looked like a premier at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. The parking lot was packed, the staff was confused and, sure enough, the lines were long and the service was slow. You know you live in a small town when there's a 1-hour wait for dinner at a new pancake house.

I had plain pancakes and bacon, Tish had pecan pancakes, and Alan had French crepes. We all liked our food, but mine was a bit cold. Tish appreciated the sugar-free maple syrup but we had to ask for a lot of things that you shouldn't have to ask for in a restaurant, like silverware. The most uncomfortable part of our meal was our table – for some strange reason, this IHOP has one table directly next to a window that overlooks the waiting area. There’s nothing quite like eating a meal while people you know are standing in a long line waiting for you to vacate. Next time, I’m taking a newspaper and a roll of duct tape with me.

I normally give new restaurants at least three shots before I give up on of them but in the case of IHOP, I may give them a little longer just because it’s IHOP.

Even considering the fact that we had a nice dinner with Julie and Laura, the new IHOP gets only 3 stars out of 5 for right now. But that's not going to stop me from meeting a friend there for breakfast in the morning.

Ooops! I almost forgot to thank Laura for letting me use her camera and Julie for modeling in front of the IHOP (above). Julie is also available for helping with the grand openings of shopping malls and would be happy to work at your next RV show.

Homeland Insecurity

2006-04-05T07:00:00.000-05:00

Let me see if I’ve got this straight...

The era of "immorality" in politics came to a screeching halt in 2001 when the GOP sent Bill Clinton and his intern-groping yahoos back to Arkansas. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen in Washington anymore in the new era of decency.
The Department of Homeland Security was created in an effort to protect our borders from evil doers both foreign and domestic. Presumably, everyone who works for DHS has been chosen on the basis of both intelligence and moral character. (Note: The phrase "evil doers" does not actually appear in the Constitution or any Act of Congress; the president and I just like the way it sounds).
In July 2003, the DHS announced the "Operation Predator" initiative to protect American children from internet predators.
State and federal agencies are empowered by the USA PATRIOT ACT to monitor communications activities in such a way as to make any person who sits down at a computer or uses a cell phone to think twice about committing either an terrorist act or an act of perversion.

So what kind of person would be dumb enough to use government phones at the Department of Homeland Security to seduce a teenage girl? Apparently, this guy.

Brian J. Doyle, 55, the Deputy Press Secretary for the US Department of Homeland Security was arrested at his home in Maryland yesterday on charges of using a computer to seduce a child and transmission of harmful material to a minor. Doyle apparently thought he was seducing a 14-year old girl when he was actually arranging a tryst with an undercover agent with the Polk County, Florida Sheriff’s Department. Doyle will be placed on administrative leave starting today.

During his online conversations with the undercover agent, it is alleged that Doyle not only revealed his name but also that he worked for the Department of Homeland Security. He also offered his office and government-issued cell phone numbers, the sheriff's office said.

If the charges are true, Doyle’s administrative leave should last for the rest of his life. Try to imagine how American security would have compromised if the object of Doyle's affections had turned out to be an al-Qaeda operative who in turn used this information to flip Doyle. The only thing worse than a pervert is a pervert who threatens national security.

And the biggest problem with seizing the moral high ground from the other guys in an election is that you’ve got to hold onto it. Otherwise, you just end up looking like a bunch of hypocrites.

Tornado Relief in Dyer County, Tennessee

2006-04-04T11:10:00.000-05:00

White County got its first tornado activity of the spring this weekend. Unfortunately, the storms on Sunday evening shut down the Student Association’s Habitat for Humanity fundraiser at the athletic fields. It was probably a good idea; we had at least one tornado touch down north of Searcy at about 5 pm. Fortunately, nobody was injured by the storms here and there was only a little property damage.

I didn’t appreciate tornadoes very much until I moved to Arkansas. In all of the other places I’ve lived, they were only an occasional nuisance. In central Arkansas, they are a daily reality this time of year as they are in other parts of the Southeast.

There were at least twenty-four people killed in West Tennessee by the storms on Sunday night and fifteen in Dyer County alone. The destruction caused by tornados is never really reflected in photographs and video images. Whenever I see an image on TV or in a newspaper, I normally try to magnify it about ten times to get a true picture of what really happened.

My friend and Harding colleague Jack Shock left Searcy yesterday morning to go to Dyersburg, Tennessee to work as a volunteer for the American Red Cross. Jack is a skillful communicator and is working with victims and the media to find out what people need and how to get it to them. He has two Harding students with him (Andrew Leaper and Rebecca King) and he sent me these photos of the work and assessment they are doing there. Jack said that the little girl in the photo above was okay but that the house next door was destroyed and all three of her neighbors died, including an 11-month-old. Jack gave her the bag of candy.

The people in the affected areas obviously need your prayers and support right now. Jack will undoubtably be reading my blog later in the day so any messages you want to convey to him can be posted here.

Jack would also want you to know that you can make contributions to the Red Cross at their website.

UPDATE: Jack snuck back into town this morning and didn't tell me.

True, False or "All of the Above"

2006-04-04T07:00:00.000-05:00

A colleague of mine at Harding has a student who is applying for an internship in Washington, D.C. this summer. As part of the application process, the student has to take this "quiz" to determine if she qualifies for a scholarship with the organization.

We both had two questions about this quiz: 1) Do these really seem like True/False questions? and 2) Isn't this exactly the kind of thing that a cult would want to have its members complete?

Don't ask for the name of the organization; all I can tell you is that it is "very conservative" and it's not FoxNews.

Pencil and papers ready? You may begin now...

II. True or False (If you are not certain about the answer, you may choose to leave it blank.)

___ The U.S. Constitution is an evolving document that must adapt to today's needs.
___ The Bible is a reliable standard for citizens to use to make public policy decisions.
___ All public schools have a responsibility to teach students to be tolerant of alternative sexual orientations.
___ Federal hate crimes legislation is necessary to stop violence against homosexuals and lesbians.
___ Homosexuals are born that way.
___ RU-486 is a positive medical advance that will help women control their fertility.
___ Physician-assisted suicide is the most merciful solution for someone who is suffering from a terminal illness.
___ The Constitution says that there must be separation of church and state.
___ Pornography harms men, women and children, and society suffers from its widespread availability.
___ Abortion should be legal until the fetus is viable.
___ Partial-birth abortion is never necessary.
___ It is illegal for pastors to discuss political issues from the pulpit.
___ Women who stay at home to raise a family are missing out.
___ Right and wrong is never black and white; it is important to recognize the shades of gray in every decision.
___ The Bible is the infallible Word of God and is applicable in all ages for all people.

Stop, put your pencils down and give your quiz to the person sitting next to you. We will grade them in class.

Nancy Grace DVD: The Director's Cut

2006-04-03T09:30:00.000-05:00

Someone contacted me late last week about purchasing a DVD version of the Nancy Grace interview with Rubel Shelly on March 29. I have also been advised that the production of this DVD may violate copyright laws because it contains material that has not been released by CNN. It has been further suggested that the sale of such material may make us (the Church of Christ) look cheap and petty.

As I write, the two sides are trying to reconcile the legal and ethical problems associated with the production of the DVD. But you shouldn't buy this DVD anyway, but not for the above reasons. You should wait for the release of the un-rated enhanced director’s cut this summer.

It's full of bloopers and out-takes such as Nancy Grace appearing without her makeup and scaring the hooey out of Rubel Shelly at the beginning of their interview.

There is also a segment featuring a charming Nancy Grace interrogation of a historical re-enactor dressed as the Roman Emperor Nero who actually does describe the Church of Christ as a cult.

The "Nancy Grace Person-to-Person" segment with Tom Cruise makes this DVD well worth the extra $11.95 you'll pay for what has to be one of the great moments in religious dialogue.

Our operators are standing by.

By the way, I've noticed from my sitemeter that a lot of people have found my blog over the last few days by searching for information about Nancy Grace and the Church of Christ. While I take the case she is addressing very seriously, I absolutely refuse to take her or her comments seriously. If you're looking for serious discourse about her, you'll have to try another blog. I highly recommend either Travis Stanley or Mike Cope.

Let's Play Ball, Mr. President!

2006-04-03T07:00:00.000-05:00

It is an established fact that all real baseball fans are obsessed with statistics (well, at least 93.24% of them are) and that they are more superstitious than other sports fans. Even those of us who consider ourselves to be rational in every other sense of the word believe in things like "bad mojo" and "luck" when it comes to what happens on a baseball field. Go figure.

So I started getting a little nervous a couple of weeks ago when I heard that President Bush will be throwing out the first pitch when the Cubs open the 2006 season against the Reds in Cincinnati today. But upon closer examination of the president’s record on Opening Day, all signs point to a Cubs win at the Great American Ballpark.

Sixteen presidents have thrown the first pitch on Opening Day since 1910. This includes every president since William Howard Taft with the exception of Jimmy Carter. Franklin Roosevelt threw the most Opening Day pitches (8) and Richard Nixon was the first to throw an Opening Day pitch in a non-Washington Senators game (Anaheim, 1973). This is a perfect example of what I mean by "bad mojo" in baseball; just a few months after this event, Nixon was forced to resign as president.

The two worst presidential Opening Day pitches probably came from Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt. In 1986, Reagan delivered a pitch to Orioles’ catcher Rick Dempsey (from 30 feet away) that went 10 feet over Dempsey’s head. In 1940, FDR actually hit a Washington Post photographer with his pitch. Reagan’s throw has to be considered worse however because Roosevelt was wearing about 30 pounds of steel on his legs at the time.

In making his fourth mound appearance on Major League Baseball’s Opening Day, President George W. Bush brings with him the following record:

2001 – Cincinnati Reds at Milwaukee Brewers (Brewers, 5-4)
2004 – Milwaukee Brewers at St. Louis Cardinals (Brewers, 8-6)
2005 – Arizona Diamondbacks at Washington Nationals (Nationals 5-3)
2006 – Chicago Cubs at Cincinnati Reds

As you can see, home teams have a 2-1 record in games in which President Bush delivers the ceremonial first pitch but have only outscored visiting teams 16-15. National League Central Division teams are 2-2 in games in which President Bush throws out the first pitch (they would have to be) but the best news for the Cubs is that the Cincinnati Reds have never won a game in which President George W. Bush throws the first pitch.

As the eternal Cubs optimist, I see this as the most important statistic going into the game today. I could add to this the fact that Vicce-President Dick Cheney delivered the first pitch in Cincinnati in 2004 when the Cubs beat the Reds, 7-4 but I'm "old school"; I do not believe that the stats for VPOTUS should not be kept in the major league record books.

So let’s play ball. I'm really counting more on Carlos Zambrano’s arm today more than the president’s anyway.

Coming Clean

2006-04-02T07:30:00.000-05:00

I normally don't post on Sundays, but I can't go to church today without purifying myself first.

Yesterday, at the end of my post about wanting to play for the other team, I wrote "All political reasoning is learned from our own limited senses." So what does that mean? Not much; I made it up...

All political reasoning is learned from our own limited senses. Yeah, April Fools.

I stole that particular part of my blog from an article by George Plimpton that appeared in Sports Illustrated on April 1, 1985. The article touted the baseball powers of one Sidd Finch, a NY Mets prospect who could allegedly throw a 168 mph fastball, pitched while wearing one shoe, and played the French horn. Plimpton's article contained the subheading, "He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga -- and his future in baseball." SI didn't come clean about the hoax until April 15.

My all-time favorite April Fools gag was when my first college roommate in Nashville left me a message to call to "Call Mr. Jackson ASAP at 889-2941." It turned out that this was the number for The Hermitage, the home of Andrew Jackson. I'm sure the woman who answered the phone when I called said something like "Good Afternoon, this is the Hermitage, the home of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States and hero of the Battle of New Orleans." But I just went ahead and asked to speak to Mr. Jackson. They must get that a lot at the Hermitage because her response was a very gentle, "Darlin', I think someone is playing a joke on you..."

It wasn't funny then, but sure was funny a year later when I pulled it on my next roommate.

But thanks to those of you who played along with me, although I think Greg went a little above and beyond the call of duty.

And I got a call from the Republican National Committee yesterday. Turns out that they don't want me back anyway.

This Week's Sign of the Impending Apocalypse (#22)

2006-04-01T07:00:00.000-06:00

If you’ve read my blog before, you know that I reserve Saturdays for a post about things that I think are either really weird or out of place in society. Most of these posts about the “impending apocalypse” are not intended to be taken seriously. They are just little visions of what some people might see as the beginning of the end of the world.

But I’m going to use this post today to say something that will undoubtedly cause many of my close friends to start thinking that the world really is coming to an end. After a long period of thought, I have made the decision that I no longer want to be considered a "liberal" in any sense of the word and that I want to be a Republican (again).

Like many people, it is really hard for me to admit when I am wrong about something, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. But this particular change in my life is a bit of a “homecoming” -- the first ballot I ever cast in an election (1976) was for a straight Republican ticket. By this time, I had enlisted in the Navy and I was certain that Gerald Ford and Bob Dole could keep American strong at home and abroad. You have to remember that in 1976, there was still a Cold War to wage and I was on the frontlines. I believed then (and I believe it now) that the GOP stood for everything that was good and decent in America, even in the wake of Watergate and Nixon's resignation.

I can’t put my finger on what it was that pulled me away from these values. I do know that in my time studying political science at both Lipscomb and Vanderbilt that I was exposed to many liberal ideas and values. By 1984, I was voting for Democrats and actually worked in a Democratic congressional campaign in 1986.

I am surrounded by such a "great cloud of witnesses" here in Searcy and at Harding University. One of my biggest regrets is that I have wasted so much time here not taking advantage of the opportunities presented to me by the local Republican Party and the American Studies Institute to develop real conservative values. Besides the emphasis on patriotism, two of the other things that I have always appreciated about the GOP are its emphasis on “traditional values” and on making America a real Christian nation again. These are things that I should have been working on over the years instead of listening to the misplaced teachings of liberal teachers and the pronouncements of the liberal media.

I also want to apologize to my former students who read this blog. While I've tried my best over the years to keep my personal views out of the classroom, I know that I probably influenced a few of you and I feel bad about that. I hope that you too will reconsider where you are with your life at this moment and make a "right" turn.

The scripture teaches us that “The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left”. (Eccl. 10:2) I am convinced more now than ever that the path to true enlightenment and understanding begins with rejecting the practices of liberalism and embracing right-thinking.

All political reasoning is learned from our own limited senses.

Busy Weekend

2006-03-31T12:22:00.000-06:00

The Harding Student Association is holding a fundraiser this weekend for the local Habitat for Humanity project. It is hoped that the event will raise the remaining funds necessary to start work on White County’s first Habitat home. If you're in the area, go by the athletic fields and give them some money. This is a worthy cause and I know they've worked hard to make it happen.

The Harding Academic Quiz team is hosting the 2006 Arkansas State High School NAQT tournament on Saturday in the Science and Mabee Buildings. We’ll have about 16 high school teams here for that event. Next weekend, the academic team will be traveling to the University of Maryland for the NAQT College Nationals.

Read this post on the Abdul Rahman thread if you get a chance. The poster (Deb) lived in Afghanistan when she was young and has some interesting thoughts to share. Sometimes, good comments like hers get buried because I’ve moved along to something else. In case you hadn’t heard, Mr. Rahman has left Afghanistan and has been granted asylum in Italy.

And don’t forget to set your clocks forward this weekend. There’s nothing more embarrassing than being one hour late for a one hour church service.

UPDATE: Except for posting before you go to class and not checking that all of your links are working properly. Sorry about that.

Day of Service

2006-03-31T08:59:00.000-06:00

On Wednesday, the university held its annual Day of Service to the Searcy community. The original idea for the DoS was that the student body would take a day off from classes to do service projects but that has been amended to about half a day. But other than the fact that classes are no longer cancelled or shortened for the DoS, the program has remained the same. According to announcement made in chapel yesterday, about 1000 of our students participated in cleaning up around town and giving a hand to people in the community who need one.

For the last two years, the students from the College Class at West Side and our Wednesday night home bible study have worked together to help a single mom from West Side get her yard cleaned up. She lives outside of town, has a big yard and a lot of trees. The students worked for about three hours getting things cleaned up and with as many hands as we had, we finished everything we needed to do in that time.

Harding students participated in similar projects around town. The social club that Tish sponsors (Ko Jo Kai) spent their time filling prescription bottles for a medical mission to Zambia.

I try to tell them this as often as I can but I want to share it with the world now: The college students at the West Side Church of Christ in Searcy are some of the greatest people in the world.

I Watched Nancy Grace Tonight And I Feel Like I Need a Hot Shower

2006-03-29T23:00:00.000-06:00

Not just a regular hot shower, but a hot shower with a scrub-brush and a can of industrial strength Bon-Ami cleanser. Nancy Grace gives tabloid journalism a bad name – and that’s no easy task. I want to burn my clothes and bury them in my neighbor’s backyard.

Tonight was the longest amount of time that I've spent watching her show on CNN Headline News. I suppose that it will also be the last time I watch her show as well. Grace seems to be very passionate about a number of things but “reason” is not one of them.

Having grown tired of exploiting tragedies involving missing teenagers in Aruba and mysterious deaths aboard cruise ships, Grace has turned her attention to making sure that everyone in America knows that the murder of Matt Winkler, the minister of the Church of Christ in Selmer, Tennessee, is a tragedy of monumental proportions. I know that Grace has had a fair share of tragedy in her own life and that she has exploited it to no end herself. I guess that’s only fair – if you are going to exploit the lives of people you don’t know, you may as well exploit the tragedies in your own life while you’re at it.

The fact that any television network has the money to pay Nancy Grace for her journalistic services is disturbing. And, as I mentioned on the blog this morning, I have never cared for her show -- I remember asking myself the first time I heard her, “Why is this woman screaming at me? Did I cut her off in traffic or something?”

I only tuned in tonight because I heard that Rubel Shelly was going to appear as a representative of the Church of Christ to respond to the suggestion that was made on last night’s program by a Baptist minister that we are in fact a cult. I have a lot of respect for Rubel and I had the privilege of taking him for a class when he taught at Lipscomb. There is nobody more qualified to talk about what the members of the Church of Christ believe.

In her interview with Shelly, Grace focused on the church’s doctrinal positions on church leadership and salvation – two of the more controversial issues in the Church of Christ right now. But she seems to have a talent for getting as little information out her guests as possible which results in an interview technique that is more appropriate for a courtroom than a talk show. During one of Shelly’s answers, Grace cut him off to say that she did not need a history lesson. Actually, she did need a history lesson -- she just didn’t want one. She also needs to drop by the theology and oral communication departments while she’s at it.

But their exchange also served to illustrate the point that two of the Church of Christ’s more distinct characteristics – congregational autonomy and the priesthood of all believers – are difficult concepts for non-members to grasp. On a good day, they are difficult enough for most members of the church to grasp themselves. As Shelly attempted to explain these concepts (and how he and many other members of the church have different opinions about them) Grace grew impatient and went on to another expert.

It was all very weird and I’m glad I watched it but I’m not going back to that horror show again.

Come to think of it, if I was actually in a cult, wouldn’t it be consistent with the characteristics of a cult for me to deny that I was in one? So maybe I’m so brainwashed that I don’t know that the elders at my church are controlling me. And why do we have so much money in our church budget for Kool-Aid when VBS is three months away?

Tune in for tomorrow’s post: “Cult Secrets of Church of Christ Summer Youth Camp: You CAN Sing Amazing Grace to the Tune of Gilligan’s Island!”

Ten Things I've Learned Within the Last 48 Hours

2006-03-29T06:00:00.000-06:00

My 17 year-old is fully capable of traveling long distances without me to places like Russellville, Arkansas to attend concerts by bands like Dashboard Confessional with his friends.
CNN's Nancy Grace is an even bigger piece of work than I thought she was. It addition to being an exploiter of missing teenagers in Aruba she also thinks my church is a cult. Back off, Nancy… you’d hate to see the Church of Christ when we’re unified about something. Besides, we haven't been called a cult since the first century.
According to Graham Allison and Robert Zelikow’s Essence of Decision (1999), the word ‘acronymphomania’ refers to “the practice prevalent in Washington, especially in the Pentagon, of using acronyms that many participants in discussion did not understand but are afraid to ask about lest they expose their ignorance.”
George Mason University has the highest enrollment of any school in Virginia (29,000) and is ranked by Princeton Review as having the most diverse campus in America. Desprite these facts, nobody expected their basketball team to make the NCAA Final Four.
While the administration struggles to find a way to control illegal immigration from Mexico, Congressional investigators smuggled enough radioactive material through border checkpoints in Texas and Washington State to make two "dirty bombs."
John McCain (R-AZ) is going to be the commencement speaker at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in May. McCain once referred to Falwell as “an agent of intolerance” but they've patched things up.
My new favorite Chicago Cub is Angel Pagan. In addition to having a cool name (actually pronounced pay-GON) Angel hit a three-run homer yesterday and is probably going to make the team as a fifth outfielder with the announced retirement of Marquis Grissom.
Tom Delay (R-TX) had to surrender his concealed weapon permit when he was indicted on campaign finance charges in October but he now wants it back. I thought that having a CHL was pretty much like carrying a driver’s license in Texas.
The three-year warranty on my HP laptop has expired. Everything I do from now on is at my own risk. I’m backing things up more frequently and making sure there is always a power supply nearby.
When I link to a story in the Washington Post (above, #5) they link back to my blog. I hope it helps their circulation.

Campephilus principalis

2006-03-28T07:00:00.000-06:00

One of the highlights of my brief career as a member of the 4-H Club in my hometown was winning a county medal in Ornithology. Bird watching is not as big a category in 4-H as animal husbandry or turnip farming but I was willing to try anything that would not actually involve visiting a farm.

So I was really excited when I found out that Professor David Luneau was coming to speak at Harding this week at the invitation of our biology department. You’ve may not have heard of Luneau but I’m sure you know that because of him, Arkansas is now home to the first Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis or just IBWO) sighting in the United States since 1944. Luneau led the search team that filmed an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in the Cache and White River National Wildlife Refuge in April 2004. Since then, there have been at least 18 other sightings in the same general area.

Until then, it was widely-assumed that the IBWO was extinct due to the destruction of its habitat. Unfortunately, the deforestation of the old-growth forests of the Mississippi Delta and across the South in late nineteenth century have destroyed much the IBWO’s feeding and roosting areas. IBWOs are more peculiar than other woodpeckers are about what they eat -- they prefer long-horned beetle larvae (grubs) that are found in the rotting timber of dead trees.

I wasn’t aware until I heard Luneau’s presentation yesterday that his filming of the IBWO was quite accidental – Luneau and his brother-in-law were checking automated cameras in the Cache River NWR when a camera on their boat caught the flash of white and black bird flying away from them. Subsequent analysis of the film by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology showed that the bird was an Ivory-billed Woodpecker.

You can see the video here – it’s not that spectacular but it sure convinced me.

Luneau and his fellow researchers from the Big Woods Conservation Fellowship are continuing the search in a effort find roosting areas and more evidence of the IBWO in the area in which the bird was sighted. They are also working hard to with several conservation groups to get more land that used to be part of the Delta’s old-growth forests persevered so that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker can hopefully make a come-back.

It’s a beautiful bird -- I’m even thinking about getting one of those license plates.

Activist Afghan Judge Frees Rahman

2006-03-27T08:30:00.000-06:00

First the good news: The prayers that have been lifted up on behalf of Abdul Rahman have been answered. Reports from Afghanistan and the Western media indicate that the former Muslim who converted to Christianity sixteen years ago will be released “on a technicality”. Under the 2004 Afghani constitution, Rahman faced the death penalty for apostasy. One report said that the judge thought that there was a lack of evidence in the case.

I think I heard a sermon like this once: “If you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” But what was unusual about this case was that Rahman admitted that he was a Christian which in turn may have caused Afghan prosecutors to question his sanity. I was reminded over the weekend that the apostle Paul had a similar experience in Acts 26:24 when the Roman governor of Judea questioned his sanity at one of his trials. Like Paul, Rahman has denied that he has any mental problems. But his judge has ordered the equivalent of a competency hearing for him anyway, just to make sure.

Now the bad news: Afghanistan still has a constitution that makes it possible for a citizen to be sentenced to death for converting to anything. In this case, the apparent irony is that the only thing that saved Rahman was a judge who interpreted the constitution against the will of the Afghan people. Demonstrations denouncing the decision and the undue influence of the United States on the case took place throughout Afghanistan over the weekend. Moreover, the judge apparently let himself get pushed around by President Hamid Karzi who in turn got pushed around by the United States.

Good thing for Rahman that he got one of those liberal Afghan judges. A strict constructionist would have had his head on a stake by now.

This Week's Sign of the Impending Apocalypse (#21)

2006-03-25T09:00:00.000-06:00

There is an Elrod Elementary School in Kalispell, Montana.

Students from Elrod Elementary eventually get to attend Flathead High School in Kalispell.

That figures.

Really Old Glory

2006-03-24T07:00:00.000-06:00

I received my copy of the Harding Class Schedule for the fall semester in my mailbox yesterday. It's always reassuring to see the schedule for the first time -- it's one indication that I'll still have a job this August. It’s almost as good as getting my contract in the mail.

The first two things I do when I get my schedule is make sure that my name has been spelled correctly and that none of my classes are scheduled for the third floor of the Benson Auditorium. You might think I’m making this up, but I was actually scheduled to teach a class in the über-balcony my first semester here in 1987. At first, I thought it might be some kind of loyalty test but then I realized that they were serious about me climbing Mt. Just-as-Iam every morning at 8:00 to teach international relations. So I groused about it a little and managed to get it changed to a smelly classroom next door to the weight room in the gym. I haven’t had to do anything like that in a long time but I’ve been paranoid about it ever since.

The next thing I do is make sure that they are still putting the American flag on the back of the schedule. They’ve been doing this for as long as I have been getting schedules and for as long as I can remember it has always had 48 stars on it.

This would be the same flag that was flying over the campus when the first president of Harding (J.N. Armstrong, 1924-34) was in charge and it is the same flag that was in use when I was born in 1957.

In other words, while other parts of the Harding Schedule of Classes have been changed significantly, the university has never taken the time to update the flag on the official class schedule. This means that as far as the official class schedule goes, Harding has never officially recognized the admission of Alaska and Hawaii into the union.

How do we explain this? Since I am too lazy to actually call the registrar’s office and ask them, I would rather speculate about it. I've decided to go with the “tradition” explanation: if forty-eight stars were good enough for J.N. Armstrong, then they should be good enough for me.

Or maybe I’m just the only one around here who notices goofy things like this.

UPDATE: Big hat-tip to sharp-eyed reader Jacob Edwards; the flag that is used on the Harding Schedule of Classes actually has only 45 stars. This flag has not been used since 1908.

The People v. Abdul Rahman

2006-03-23T07:15:00.000-06:00

I like to think that when the Bush administration touts the success of US efforts to expand democracy and liberty in the Middle East that they are serious about it. But what kind of democracy has a constitution that empowers the state to execute somebody because of their religious faith?

I ask this question because of the case of one Abdul Rahman, an Afghan convert to Christianity who faces possible execution for being an apostate Muslim, the maximum penalty under the 2004 Afghan constitution. That same constitution calls for religious freedom as well as the respect for the rights of all people. But much of it is based on Sharia or Islamic law making the Afghan constitution at odds with itself as well as international human rights norms.

According to the Bush administration, this is the same constitution that has allegedly made Afghanistan a model for Iraq. According to Think Progress, the president was advised in 2003 by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom that the proposed constitution did not go far enough in protecting religious freedoms in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Rahman, 41, was arrested last week following a custody dispute with estranged family members over his two children. He has testified that he converted to Christianity about 16 years ago while working with an NGO in Pakistan. Prosecutors have questioned whether or not Mr. Rahman is mentally fit to stand trial.

My understanding of why the United States went to war with the Taliban has always been clearer than why the Bush administration launched a poorly-planned and implemented invasion of Iraq three years ago. The war in Afghanistan was supposed to be about holding the Taliban government accountable for giving aid and comfort to the Al Qaeda organization responsible for 9/11 and about making sure that Afghanistan would never again be used as a base for terrorists. The establishment of a functioning democracy was to be one of the means of achieving this end.

The Bush administration has correctly protested the harsh treatment of Mr. Rahman for his religious beliefs but at the same stated that it does not want to interfere with the judicial process. But what the White House should really be doing is asking how it can call a nation with a provision in its constitution authorizing the death penalty for apostasy a "model" for anything in the first place.

Denying what most of us would consider basic, essential liberties to one individual is a travesty. But the denial of those rights to an entire nation, while at the same time calling it a democracy, is a hallucination.

The Imperfect Crime

2006-03-21T09:00:00.000-06:00

I’m gradually working my way back into teaching mode after Spring Break so I’ve decided to use today’s post to confess to my first crime. I had confessed to this crime earlier at Pax Fellowship, but I need to do it here as well. I'm going to think of it as Spring Cleaning.

My short-lived crime spree began when I was six years-old right after I discovered that my initials (ME) were also a personal pronoun (me). I thought this was pretty cool.

About that same time, I discovered a can of red spray-paint somewhere in our basement and it was at that time that the six year-old mind of Mark Elrod concocted what I thought would be the perfect crime: I could spray-paint my initials anywhere and nobody would know who it was because “ME” could be anybody on our street.

I imagined everyone in Wilmington Manor Gardens scratching their heads and asking “Who is this mysterious person who only spray-paints the personal pronoun ‘me’ on buildings?”

The surface I chose for my first act of vandalism was our next-door neighbor’s white stucco wall that faced the street we lived on. After completing my art work, I went off to play with my friends, keeping my secret to myself. I remember thinking that I had pulled off the perfect crime.

About four hours later, I walked into our house whistling a happy tune. The next thing I knew, I was being lifted off the floor by my shirt collar by my father's right hand while his left hand was wailing away on my backside with his leather US Postal Service belt. Dad is a natural lefty but over the years, he's learned to be ambidextrous. Begin able to swing from both sides of the plate gave him a distinct advantage when administering corporal punishment to me and my brothers.

Somewhere between the ninth and tenth wack on my butt, I realized that my dad was a whole lot smarter than I had given him credit for. I marveled at how anybody could have made the connection between me and “ME” so quickly.

I then had to make the long walk to our neighbor’s house to apologize. To my surprise, he thought it was pretty funny. He painted over my initials, but for many years you could still see my work of art on his wall if you knew where to look.

The confession booth is open.

Get Back to Work

2006-03-20T09:00:00.000-06:00

I’ve found that one of the frustrating things about middle-age is that I can still do a lot of things I used to do when I was 21 (like push wheelbarrows up mountains of garbage and lift refrigerators over my head) but it now takes me three times as long to recover from them. That’s one way of saying that I could use another Spring Break to recover from the Spring Break I just finished.

The work that I was involved in near Mandeville, Louisiana last week was one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I feel selfish when I say that because I know that the work was for the benefit of the people who live there whose lives were turned upside down by Katrina. I told my co-workers on Friday night that another one of the unfortunate results of middle-age is the feeling that nothing you’ve done so far in life has really changed anything for the better. As the poet and philosopher Bruce Springsteen once suggested, life is a steady, uphill battle against cynicism.

This is the same feeling I had when I got back from Bay St. Louis, Mississippi last year. I know in the big picture, our work didn’t amount to much but I’m certain that even if our team didn’t change Louisiana very much, we changed the lives of the people whose homes we worked on and we changed ourselves a little. When we finished demucking and gutting Sonny and Thelma’s house in Chalmette, I stepped back and looked down Decomine St. and saw ten blocks of houses that seemed to be in even worse shape than the one you just spent three days working on. In that context, it’s easy to see your labors as just another bucket of water over Niagara Falls.

I got an e-mail from Thelma last night thanking us again for the work we did on her home in Chalmette. She wrote,

I miss you all and I hope you arrived home safely. Thank you for your final farewell to me and Mr. Sonny. I stopped by the house Thursday evening after work and as I turned the corner I saw the American flag proudly flying on top of the debris. All I could hear as I was crying was 17 voices saying, "Remember Ms. Thelma, In God We Trust.” You will never know how much you restored my faith in God and finally brought peace of mind to me and Mr. Sonny. Thank you for everything you did for us but most of all for giving your faith and love of God to us.
Nobody knows when the Gulf will recover from Katrina, if ever. But I like to think that we helped at least four families start the process of returning to a normal life. You never know what people are looking for but I hope we helped a few people find it.

I thank the Lord that I had the time and resources to make this trip. I thank Him that I had co-workers that never complained about the work we had to do and who embraced the families we worked for despite the fact that they were strangers to us. And I thank Him that I work in a place that is full of people who search every day for people to give that cup of water to. They inspire me and lift me up more than I deserve at times.

Take that, cynicism.

Before I forget to say it, I love my Mandeville co-workers. I'll just go ahead and say that I think they are AWESOME: Kris Davidson, Lisa Dunyon, Jacob Edwards, Jonathan Edwards, Jonathan Edwards (yeah, there were two of ‘em), Sara Foster, Myriah Gilbert, J.J. Hendrix, Kristin Kellett, Scott Taylor, Nakeia Monte, Jennifer O’Neil, Karen O’Neil, Jenny Sego, Chris Simpson, and Jaren Stempfer.

This Week's Sign of the Impending Apocalypse (#20)

2006-03-18T06:00:00.000-06:00

A six-year old student's discovery of six bags of marijuana in her coat pocket at school has resulted in the arrest of her mother on drug charges.

According to police in Hartford, Connecticut, the daughter of Lisa Phillips found the cannabis in her jacket pocket and reported it to the staff at the Noah Webster Elementary School. Ms. Phillips was subsequently busted after police found more marijuana in her home.

Phillips was charged with possession and held on a $10,000 bond on marijuana-dealing charges. Her daughter is in the care of a relative.

This is probably why Tommy Chong never let his kids do "Show and Tell" at school.

Mandeville, Louisiana (Friday Night)

2006-03-17T23:59:00.000-06:00

It struck me again today how the story of every Katrina survivor is worth listening to.

Jacob and I finished at Sonny and Thelma’s house today. We sprayed the wood on the inside of the house with bleach to kill the mold that seems to have taken up residence just about everywhere around here. Neither of us had ever done this before, so we offered Thelma no guarantees. But at least the house smelled better because Jacob had the foresight to purchase “Mountain Fresh” Clorox. You don’t get that scent in Louisiana very often. Maybe people use enough of it, the mold will get confused mold and it will leave the state forever.

We also spoke to Bob, one of Sonny and Thelma’s neighbor’s and he complimented our work on their house. That was good to hear, especially from someone who had seen what their house looked like before we started working on it. It turned out that Bob had earlier asked someone in our group for information about how he could get some help with his place and he had given him one of Tammany Oaks’ business cards. Before we left, a group from the Southwest Church of Christ in Jonesboro arrived to start the work. I didn't envy them -- I would have hated to be thrown into that big of a mess on our first day.

The last big job we were assigned was to finish a house that another crew started last week but couldn’t finish. The owner and his wife have been living there for 42 years and evacuated to Cordova, Tennessee with their son (Greg) and his wife and their grandson, Scott on the morning of the storm. Greg works at one of the local casinos and stopped by on the way home to his FEMA trailer (he called it a “metal box”) to catch some sleep before his next shift at 2:00 am. Scott stayed and helped us most of the day. He’s a freshman at the local community college.

Greg said that when they brought his dad home to see his house after the storm, he was too upset to even get out of the car to look inside. It was probably just as bad as Sonny and Thelma’s house looked at first. The neighborhood we were in today was on the west side of Chalmette and didn’t get as much water and was not inundated with the oil as the east side of the city so there is a better chance that they will be able to rebuild. Scott made it a point to thank every member of our group with the words “God bless you” before he left in the afternoon.

After work, we were invited to the home of Todd and Candace Voigt. Todd is the pulpit minister here at Tammany Oaks. We used the opportunity to have our last devo together and share our impressions of the work we had accomplished. Todd’s commented that when each of us feels the compassion we feel when we see the hurt in people’s lives, we connect with the life and ministry of Christ.

There is still a lot of work to do here and there are still thousands of lives to heal and reach out to. The workers and the church members here need your continued thoughts and prayers in their labors.

Mandeville, Louisiana (Thursday Night)

2006-03-16T23:59:00.001-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, a student at Harding (let’s call him “Earle”) remarked to me that “the people of New Orleans got what they deserved.” Earle has visited New Orleans in the past and is convinced that it is the most debauched place on earth. This thought is certainly not original with Earle but I think it is wide-spread but always verbalized.

I argued with Earle a little when he made the comment but since I generally try to avoid arguments with people who are crazier than an outhouse rat (no offense, Earle) I let most of his statement stand. I just asked him a few questions to clarify his view of God’s justice. Not too surprisingly his conclusion was that we really don’t understand things like this even though he had earlier stated that he had it all figured out: evil-doers get hurricanes and the rest of us get sunshine and gumdrops.

Earle’s comments probably reflect the sentiments of many people who can’t accept the idea that bad people often go unpunished in this world. Most of us non-evil-doers think that bad things should happen to bad people and visa-versa.

But after visiting two hurricane-devastated regions in the last year, I have come to the conclusion that even if Earle is right, a hurricane in a very arbitrary method of striking down the evil-doers living amongst us non-evil doers. You might remember from your Greek mythology that Zeus used lightning bolts to get his point across when he was not a happy diety. Maybe he was on to something: big bolts of lightning are much more much more effective than hurricanes, particularly if the evil-doers are mixed in with the general Zeus-fearing population. I’m pretty sure than Zeus was only interested in hitting barbarians (non-Greeks) with lightning bolts. This means that Greeks had to avoid standing too close to a pagan at the moment when Zeus decided that it was time for his comeuppance.

“Sorry, Xenostanes, but I can’t shake your hand right now because I think you are about to become the next target of the 20,000-volt, non-arbitrary justice of Zeus… I’m just going to stand here on this rubber mat while he turns you into souvlaki. Nice knowin' ya...”

But let’s assume for a minute that Earle is right about the wrath of God being manifested in a hurricane. In the case of Katrina, this would mean that the Creator of the universe has a really bad aim. Most of New Orleans’ visitors and residents will tell you that Bourbon Street and the rest of the French Quarter are ground-zero for debauchery. But Katrina hit the working-class neighborhoods in the New Orleans area like Chalmette and the Ninth Ward very hard and spared the French Quarter. I was in the French Quarter tonight for a café latté and a couple of beignets at Café du Monde and I have to report that there is very little indication that they are suffering any effects from one of the worst natural disasters in US history.

Meanwhile, Sonny and Thelma’s house as well as the homes of a lot of other nice people in Chalmette are a wreck. I could understand if they were all members of Al-Qaeda or something like that, but they're not.

I’m telling you, the lightning bolts are the way to go – they are far less arbitrary and we all know that electricity never fails to get the attention of evil-doers. When I was six, I stuck my mom’s nail file in an electrical outlet and it put me on the straight-and-narrow for at least a week or two.

Okay… I got that off my chest. Thank you.

We had another great day today. We’re just about finished at Sonny and Thelma’s house now and we’re going to finish up a project that was started by another crew in the Chalmette area tomorrow.

Nate Copeland, the Director of Harding Spring Break Campaigns is spending the night with us in Mandeville and is going to work with us tomorrow. Our intention is to get a full week’s worth of work out of him in one day.

Mandeville, Louisiana (Wednesday Night)

2006-03-15T21:30:00.000-06:00

We had a great day in Chalmette. We’re almost finished demucking and gutting Sonny and Thelma’s house. We have now created a debris pile that you could probably see from Outer Space.

When we got to Thelma’s house this morning, she met us at our vans and said that she needed to talk to all of us. She told us that she been has struggling for some time in believing in a good God. She said, "I've seen too much of the wrath of God and and not enough of His love."

But she said that watching us work on her home this week had caused her to re-think many of her feelings about God. Thelma said that she wondered why a group of people who didn’t know her would want to come to her home to try to make her feel better. Then she gave all of us a hug and we got to work. Thelma worked with us today, sweeping the mud out of what used to be her kitchen and garage. At one point she told me, “Honestly, most of the time my house doesn’t look this bad.”

At the end of the day, we said a prayer with Thelma for her and Sonny as they try to get through this ordeal. More than likely, they are going to have to sell their home for whatever they can get for it and start their life over again in another town. From the looks of Chalmette and their neighborhood, it’s going to be a long time before anyone is able to live there again any time soon.

We’re going to finish her house tomorrow and then take half a day off.

Thanks for your kind thoughts and prayers this week for me and our group. Good things are happening here.

The photo above was taken by Nakeia Monte; L-R, Karen O'Neil, Thelma, Chris Simpson, and Jenny Sego.

Mandeville, Louisiana (Tuesday Night)

2006-03-14T22:00:00.000-06:00

Today, we started our biggest project of the week and one that will probably consume most of our remaining time here in Louisiana. The house we are working on is located in the town of in Chalmette, St. Bernard Parish -- the location of the 1812 Battle of New Orleans.

The devastation in Chalmette is far greater than anything we've seen in Mandeville or Slidell. Most of the town was flooded when the levees on the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet were breeched by Katrina's storm surge. Only about 10 percent of the businesses in Chalmette (pop. 32,000) are in operation and many parts of the town are now considered uninhabitable. The neighborhood we are working in was completely covered with water and the only people living there now are living in RVs.

Sonny and Thelma are the owners of the house we are working on they’ve lived there for about thirty-five years. They lost just about everything in the storm and they almost lost Sonny too. Thelma told us that Sonny was the only person on their street to stay behind (“Because he’s a stubborn old Italian”) and ended up having to be rescued from the roof by two volunteers in a rowboat after seven hours. Sonny then spent five weeks in various aid stations and medical centers recovering from his injuries. All that time, Thelma had no idea whether or not he had survived the hurricane.

Today was the first day that anybody had done any work on their home. Thelma told me that a co-worker saw her crying at work and suggested that she call Tammany Oaks for help in clearing their house back in January. From the looks of their street, only about 1 in 10 homes have been gutted and prepared for renovation. The curbs are piled high with debris, none of the homes have electricity or gas, and there are abandoned vehicles everywhere.

The house itself was covered with a four-inch layer of black mud and water that had filled the house to the attic. All of the drywall, furniture, and appliances were destroyed.

We finished about 30% of the work today and may be able to finish the job by tomorrow evening or Friday at the latest. I think the students in our group were challenged when the director of the relief effort here said that would be the last house we’ll get to work on before we leave on Saturday. If we can get in another two days like the day we had today, we can get it done.

Before she left today, Thelma told us that she has been feeling pretty bad lately but having us there today had lifted her spirits. She said that listening to the students laughing and cutting up while they were working reminded her that the Lord said that “Laughter is the best medicine.”

I don’t think the Lord ever actually said that, but I wasn’t about to correct someone who was having the first good day she had seen in awhile.

Mandeville, Louisiana (Monday Night)

2006-03-13T22:30:00.000-06:00

I'm working in Mandeville, Louisiana this week with a group of sixteen Harding students who are part of the university's Spring Break campaign program. I wasn't sure what the computer situation was going to be like here but it’s worked out better than I expected. So I’m going to abandon my original plan to have Alan update my blog this week and try to do a few short posts about the work we are doing here instead.

We’re staying at the Tammany Oaks Church of Christ building in Mandeville, sleeping on air mattresses and sleeping bags in the area of the building normally used for worship services. Tammany Oaks finished this facility about two months before Katrina hit last August and since then, the building has served as a staging area for relief supplies and workers who have come to the area. Tonight, there will be about 250 volunteers from all parts of the country staying here. There are temporary showers and a laundry in the back of the building and the members of the church have been providing meals and organizing work projects. There is still a lot of work to be done here in the St. Tammany Parish area and on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain. Most of the damage in this area has been caused by wind damage and flooding from the storm surge from the lake.

The students I'm working with have been a fun group to be with. I only knew a few of them before we left Searcy, but we are all getting to know each other really fast. So far, the energy level and commitment to the work have been as high as could be expected. It was hard to keep up with them today and Sunday. There aren’t too many days when I wish I was 21 again, but today was one of them.

After worship service at Tammany Oaks on Sunday, we worked on a house in the Covington area whose roof had been severely damaged by a fallen tree and needed to be stripped of its drywall and insulation. Most of the work had already been done, but there were still two rooms in the back of the house that needed to be stripped. We finished about half of that project on Sunday and the rest this morning before going to a second job in Slidell. At that house, we cleared a flooded garage of everything that had been in it when the storm hit and also gutted a bathroom of its drywall.

I think the best illustration of how long it is taking for relief groups and volunteers to get to this kind of work is the fact that both of the work requests we completed today were made with the Tammany Oaks church in December. It is hoped that with the record number of volunteers here this week for Spring Break, some of that backlog of jobs can be eliminated.

Most of the damage I’ve seen so far is not nearly as bad as what I saw when I was in Mississippi back in December but I know that I haven’t seen the worst of it. We may get a look of some of that damage tomorrow -- our project tomorrow is in the Chalmette area, just east of New Orleans. We'll be gutting a four-bedroom, two-bath house with a garage that has not been touched since the storm. It looks like that job might take a couple of days to finish.

The people at the Tammany Oaks church have been great. If my home is every destroyed by a natural disaster, I hope there is a group of people like the Christians here to get things organized and to lift up Christ to the community.

This Week's Sign of the Impending Apocalypse (#19)

2006-03-11T07:30:00.000-06:00

There is a street named "Psycho Path" in Traverse City, Michigan.

A recent online poll conducted by Mitsubishi Motors determined that this is the most unusual street name in America.

The complete list of wacky street names as reported by the survey:

Psycho Path in Traverse City, Michigan
Divorce Court in Heather Highlands, Pennsylvania
Farfrompoopen Road in ~~Tennessee~~ Story, Arkansas (the only road up to Constipation Ridge)
The intersection of Lonesome and Hardup in Albany, Georgia
The intersection of Clinton and Fidelity in Houston, Texas
Bucket of Blood Street in Holbrook, Arizona
Unexpected Road in Buena Vista, New Jersey
Shades of Death Road in Warren County, New Jersey
The intersection of Count and Basie in Richmond, Virginia
Tater Peeler Road in Lebanon, Texas

It has been strongly advised that if you find yourself in Traverse City, to not stay at the Bates Hotel on Psycho Path and do not take a shower.

Bonds v. Norris

2006-03-10T17:00:00.000-06:00

Chuck Norris is 66 today. If you woke up this morning, it was only because Chuck Norris let you live.

Barry Bonds is #3 in career home runs. A new book alleges that he has used more steroids than a small cattle ranch.

Who would you be more frightened to meet in a dark alley -- Chuck or Barry?

Spring Break Campaign to Mandeville, Louisiana

2006-03-10T07:30:00.000-06:00

I’m going to be in Mandeville, Louisiana next week with a group of students from Harding working on hurricane clean-up. This is one of Harding’s Spring Break campaigns sponsored by the College Church of Christ. Jacob Edwards is the group leader and there are seventeen students in the group.

We’ll be working with the Tammany Oaks Church of Christ in Mandeville, one of the congregations in the New Orleans area. Mandeville is on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain, west of Slidell.

After I went to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi with the West Side youth group in December, I decided that I needed to spend my Spring Break doing something like this. There are several other Harding groups going to Louisiana and Mississippi next week but I wanted to go with Jacob because I like working with him and I appreciate the fact that he is both a leader and has the heart of a servant. I’m sure that all of the groups working around the country next week would appreciate your thoughts and prayers.

The Tammany Oaks church has been doing great things in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina including the distribution of $4-5 million of supplies to the community and helping with the clean-up of 250 homes. The church also seems to have things organized to the extent that we will just be directed to a project once we get there. We’re still in the dark about what we’ll be doing once we get there – it could be anything from de-mucking houses to hanging drywall.

I don't know if I’ll be able to make blog posts next week, so I am going to leave the responsibility for keeping you entertained to my son, Alan. He'll be sharing some of my favorite Australian postcards with you next week. Don't ask me why; I guess I was looking for a theme.

I’ll post photos and stories about the work in Mandeville when I get back to Searcy.

Jacob Edwards: If you're reading this, I got my tetanus shot yesterday. So you can stop bugging me about it.

Dude, Where's My Bird?

2006-03-09T07:30:00.000-06:00

On February 17, when somebody began vandalizing billboards announcing the start of a new baseball season for the St. Louis Cardinals, Redbird fans immediately suspected that it was the work of Cubs fans.

Naturally, neither the Cardinals franchise nor their fans took the theft lightly. But as this photograph illustrates, these billboards and the Cardinals on them were huge (8’ tall) and certainly not the kind of thing that your average vandal, even a Chicago fan under the influence of a six-pack of Old Styles, would be able to remove without the aid of a large crane.

But the rumors persisted that no less force than Cubbiedom could have pulled off such a evil desecration in the heart of Cardinal Nation.

It was a nice complement while it lasted, but it turns out that the alleged vandalism was all part of a public relations campaign put together by the Cardinals' new flagship radio station (KTRS) and even the franchise was in the dark about it.

Now that Chicago fans have been cleared in the Midwest's crime of the century, KTRS plans to auction-off the detached birds, with all proceeds going to Cardinals Care, the official community foundation of the St. Louis Cardinals.

That's commendable, but I think the Cards owe it to the Cubs to make a contribution to one of the many Cubs' post-game support groups.

A Litmus Test for Democrats

2006-03-08T08:30:00.000-06:00

I found another test to give my students. Well, a few of them…

George Will and others have recently taken former Senator and Vice-presidential candidate John Edwards (D-NC) to task for not knowing who James Q. Wilson was. If you are a political scientist, you have at least heard of him… he’s big. As a professional politician, Edwards should have at least heard of him at some point in his life – George W. Bush awarded Wilson a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003.

But failing to recognize the name of one of the best-known political scientists in America won’t work against Edwards. Being smart used to be an asset in politics; now it seems to be a liability.

One of Edwards’ detractors has developed a measurement of LQ (liberal quotient) at the American Prospect. He says that any Democratic candidate for president should be able to answer at least fifteen out of twenty-five. But it’s a tough test, even if your heart’s is on the left.

I say if you get fifteen right, don't run for president... If you're that smart, we have a place for you on the Harding Academic Team.

I only got nine out of twenty-five but I’ll use the excuse that when I looked at the answers I thought… “I used to know that.” And I lost a couple of them in the sun.

And I re-read Will's column about Edwards this morning and I don't think that he is actually suggesting that Edwards has never heard of Wilson but that he is unfamiliar with his theories.

I'll Take the Physical Challenge

2006-03-07T09:00:00.000-06:00

Midterm grades were posted yesterday but a few of us are still giving midterm exams. My international relations classes won a reprieve so they'll get to take their exams after Spring Break but my comparative politics class gets the biggest break -- we're actually ahead of schedule in that class so we're going to sample one of the local Mexican restaurants as a global literacy project on Friday. I expect to have perfect attendance.

Midterms can be a stressful time for students. Personally, I think the real stress comes after my freshmen finish working on Spring Sing and start coming back to class.

Several years ago, a friend of mine gave me a copy of this exam (.pdf file) that he used when he taught at the Air Force Academy. I think he gave it to his senior cadets as a joke at the end of the year to loosen things up before they took their real final exam.

A couple of years ago, I gave it to one of my freshmen classes as an example of what they might expect to see on the first exam. None of them thought it was funny.

Kirby Puckett (1961-2006)

2006-03-06T19:18:00.000-06:00

MSNBC just reported that Kirby Puckett, 44, former outfielder for the Minnesota Twins has died after suffering a stroke yesterday.

I'm not a Twins fan, but there isn't a baseball fan in the country would not recognize Kirby Puckett as one best players of his generation. He seemed to always be having a good time when I watched him play.

Puckett won two World Series with the Twins, was a six-time Gold Glove winner, was named to 10 consecutive All-Star teams from 1986 to 1995, and retired with the second-highest batting average for a right-handed batter (.318) since Joe DiMaggio. He led the Twins to World Series victories in 1987 and 1991.

Puckett's career ended prematurely after the 1995 season due to irreversible retina damage in his right eye.

Spring 2006 L.C. Sears Collegiate Seminar Series

2006-03-06T08:45:00.000-06:00

On Thursday night, the Harding Honors College held the second event in the L.C. Sears Collegiate Seminar Series. Last semester, the Honor College hosted a session on the AIDS epidemic in Africa and the topic this year was “Peace in Palestine: The Arab-Israeli Conflict and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

The invited panelists were Rabbi Elliot Gertel of Congregation Rodfei Zedek in Chicago and Dr. Nabil Bayakly, Adjunct Professor for Islamic Studies at Memphis Theological Seminary. The seminar was moderated by Dr. Evertt Huffard, Dean of Harding University's Graduate School of Religion in Memphis.

I thought it was a great program, if only because it is unusual for us to sponsor events of this kind that are “balanced.” Several students commented to me afterwards that the Honors Symposium series is what American Studies ought to be: balanced, provocative, and educational. The L.C. Sears Seminar is completely student-led and organized so it reflects what our students want in terms of speakers and events.

On Thursday night, both speakers presented their views on the hurdles that must be overcome to achieve peace in Palestine. Predictably, each felt that the other side needs to do more to make peace a reality.

Rabbi’s Gertel’s argument was that there needs to be more unilateral action on the part of the Palestinians and especially Hamas. He suggested that the election of Hamas to lead the Palestinian government will make this process more difficult and that the Palestinians will have to recognize the borders of Israel and renounce the use of terror before peace talks can resume. During his presentation, Dr. Bayakly suggested that it is the intent of Israel to isolate the Palestinian population in the West Bank by means of a security fence. Bayakly also questioned the sincerity of the Israeli government in any settlement that would not recognize the rights of Palestinians within the occupied territories or the state of Israel.

Some of my students who attended the seminar told me that they were surprised to learn that there are two sides to the conflict between Jews and Palestinians. One student, who told me that he used to be a committed Zionist, said that he wanted to apologize to Dr. Bayakly. When I asked why, he said “Because I used to think that this was a simple issue that could be resolved by just giving the Jews all of the land that the Lord had promised them in the Old Testament.” When I asked him what caused him to change his mind he said, “I changed my mind when I realized that I was wrong.”

There were a lot of students lined up to meet Dr. Bayakly after the seminar. I don’t think this was because Rabbi Gertel’s was any less interesting or persuasive but rather because it was the first time that many of them have had an opportunity to interact with a Muslim or to hear the Palestinian side of the conflict in a balanced discussion.

More than anything, the impression was left that dialogue is important and that dialogue can't take place in an atmosphere that emphasizes what has happened in the past.

Thanks again to Brett Keller and Toni Griffin for getting this event organized. If you were one of the faculty or students who were fortunate enough to attend the Seminar, I'd like to hear your comments. (Brett lurks and posts occasionally and I'm sure he'd appreciate you comments too.)

This Week's Sign of the Impending Apocalypse (#18)

2006-03-04T09:00:00.000-06:00

Ben Cooper, the mayor/town manager/police chief of Appalachia, Virginia (pop. 2,000) was indicted by a grand jury on Thursday on charges of election fraud that includes alleged offers of cigarettes, alcohol, and pork rinds for votes.

Prosecutors have charged Mayor Cooper and 13 others with 269 counts of voter fraud and corruption dating back to Appalachia’s May 2004 election. It is charged that Cooper and others altered and fabricated ballots before and on Election Day. Other indicted city officials include a city councilman, two police officers, and a mail carrier.

According to the Roanoke Times, the 300-page indictment declares that one of the goals in electing Cooper and his two running mates to town council was “the control of the town of Appalachia by one person, Ben Ellis Cooper.” The indictment also lists approximately two crimes for single vote cast in 2004.

Last year, investigators noticed an unusually number of absentee votes in the election (108) and are now comparing handwriting samples and even DNA to determine if the ballots and envelopes that contained them were cast in an appropriate manner. It is suspected that as many as 60 of those ballots were cast illegally.

One of the primary catalysts for the investigation of corruption in the small southwestern Virginia coal mining town was the revelation by Appalachia resident Christina McKinney that a campaigner had offered her a pack of cigarettes and a bag of chicharrones (fried pork skins) for her vote.

Ironically, when Ms. McKinney was asked by a reporter in last month if she had voted for the candidate, McKinney said, “I don’t think so.”

Ms. McKinney now knows what every citizen of a free society knows – there’s nothing like the feeling you get when you beat a politician out of a free bag of pork rinds.

Ms. Rankin Goes to Washington

2006-03-03T07:30:00.000-06:00

There’s been a nice discussion at Greg Kendall-Ball’s blog the last couple days about the relative merits of pacifism. I don't mean to draw anyone away from his blog but whenever conversations like this come up, I am reminded that American history doesn’t celebrate its peacemakers as much as it should.

You read in history books about great military leaders and the contribution of men who gave their the last full measure of devotion in wars but you very seldom hear about Americans who worked to prevent wars in the first place. I think those people are pretty important too.

The American that I think gets overlooked the most is the first woman elected to Congress, Jeanette Rankin of Montana and it just happens that tomorrow is the 89th anniversary of Rankin taking her seat in the US House of Representatives in 1917. Four days later, Rankin and the other members of the House and Senate were asked to vote on Woodrow Wilson’s declaration of war against Germany.

Rankin had campaigned as a suffragist and on an anti-war platform but was discouraged from voting against the war by many women’s groups who felt that a "no" vote would have an adverse effect on the campaign to secure the right to vote for women. Rankin eventually became one of only 49 members of Congress to vote against the declaration and was immediately vilified in the press and lost the support of the core of the women's movement. Before her vote, Rankin said, “I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war. I vote no.” As a result, she was gerrymandered out of her district before the 1918 election and ended up running in an unsuccessful campaign for the US Senate.

Rankin spent much of her term in Congress working on women’s issues but also worked to sell Liberty Bonds, voted in favor of America’s first military draft, and opened debate on the amendment that would give women the right to vote. After the war, she worked as a lobbyist in Washington on women’s heath issues, child labor laws, and for the peace lobby.

In 1940, Rankin ran for Congress again as an anti-war candidate and was re-elected. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Rankin again refused to vote for the American war declaration, becoming the only American to vote against two wars. At the time of that vote, she said “As a woman, I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.” By one account, after voting against the declaration, Rankin barely escaped an angry mob by taking refuge in a phone booth. Needless to say, she did not run for re-election in 1942.

Rankin spent the rest of her life working for various peace movements. At age 87, Rankin became a bit of a anti-war celebrity to a new generation of war protesters in the "Jeanette Rankin Brigade" when she participated in a 5,000-woman march in Washington to protest the Vietnam War. Today, her name is shared by the Jeanette Rankin Peace Center and the Jeanette Rankin Foundation and she is one of two Montanans who are honored in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol Building. She died in California in 1973.

It could be argued that Rankin was not the world’s most consistent pacifist and that she had the luxury of wealth and education to fall back on after she left Congress. And while Rankin’s pacifism was more humanist than religious, her public opposition to three of America’s most important wars is noteworthy and should be more than just a historical footnote.

After voting against the 1941 war declaration, Rankin later explained that she didn’t believe that any country should go to war unanimously. Rankin should be remembered for being another American who practiced the principle that dissent is the foundation of every good democracy, even if it only amounts to one vote against a popular war.

Il Batmobile

2006-03-02T07:00:00.000-06:00

The Winter Olympics got me thinking about the only Italian car I’ve ever owned – a FIAT 1200, proudly made in Torino (Turin), Italy. Actually, I owned exactly 50% of it and it really wasn’t that much of a car. I can’t believe I actually still have a picture of it.

Just before the Navy sent me to NAF Signonella, Sicily with my patrol squadron (VP-16) in April 1980 for my last deployment, my friend Steve suggested that we buy a “turnover car” when we got to Italy. Turnover cars were basically cheap cars that were passed down from one squadron to another after their five-month deployment. Having a car at Signonella was a big deal at the time – the barracks we lived in was located at the NATO base about five miles from the main Navy facility that included things like the commissary, the hospital, and the movie theater. There was bus service between the two bases, but nobody liked riding the bus.

We purchased a 1961 FIAT from one of the departing sailors in VP-24 for $300, which seemed about right for a 19-year old car. It was dirty, ran bad, and smelled like the inside of an ashtray. But it started most of the time and didn’t use much gas. It wasn’t a great car, but it was in our price range and we weren’t looking to take it home with us anyway. Some of the car's other unusual features were a big rusted hole in the floor board (so you could look at the road passing under the car) and an electrical system that made the headlights flicker when the radio was on.

We quickly discovered that the FIAT needed some work on the suspension. The good news was that the guy in VP-24 that we bought the car from recommended an Italian mechanic who would fix just about anything for a bottle of Chianti. The bad news was that we learned from the mechanic that we had purchased the Batmobile.

All Navy air squadrons have a mascot – we were the Eagles, VP-49 was the Woodpeckers, and VP-24 was the Batmen. It turned out that one of the things that some of the Batmen liked to do when they weren’t flying was to drink a lot and actually play Batman in their cars. The mechanic told us that before we owned it, our FIAT had black cardboard bat-fins taped to the hood and tailfins most of the time and that the owners spent a lot of time plowing up the local pastures chasing the Riddler. That explained why the Batmobile needed a lot of suspension work.

The good news was that we had one of the few turnover cars with real personality. Sometimes, when we parked it at the commissary, people would ask “Isn’t that the Batmobile?”

Despite the breakdowns and frequent trips to the mechanic to restock his wine cellar, the Batmobile got us through our deployment without stranding us somewhere we didn’t belong. We made a couple of long trips to Catania and few other places but most of the time we stayed as close to the air base as possible, just in case.

My last ride in the Batmobile was when Steve drove me to the airport to catch my flight back to the US to be discharged. A few months later, Steve sent me my half of the money for the car along with a $100 profit we earned when he sold the car to an officer in VP-56.

I felt guilty about that until I found out that Steve threw in a utility belt and a bat-a-rang.

Why We Fight

2006-03-01T08:15:00.000-06:00

Polling can be dangerous at times, but nothing is more dangerous than trying to conduct an opinion poll in a war zone. A recently-conducted Zogby poll of US troops in Iraq may be one of the first that has tried to gauge the opinion of soldiers at the front about sensitive political questions.

I have to tip my hat to American military leaders for allowing US troops to be surveyed in Iraq -- not many governments would have the guts to do something like this in peacetime let alone in the middle of a war.

Nobody ever asked me for my opinion when I was in the Navy. I think the policy back then was that if the Defense Department wanted you to have an opinion, they would have issued you one in boot camp. It was generally understood that if half the enlisted men in our squadron weren't complaining about something on any given day there was a problem.

The Zogby poll that was released on Tuesday contains several interesting insights into “why we fight” in Iraq. The survey was conducted among 944 troops between January 18 and February 14.

72% of the US troops surveyed believe that the US should withdraw from Iraq with a year and 23% said that that US forces should remain in Iraq “as long as they are needed.”
The percentage of troops favoring withdraw within a year was higher among National Guardsmen (82%) and reservists (82%).
29% said that US troops should leave immediately.
42% of those surveyed said that they were “unsure of their mission in Iraq.”
85% believe that a major reason they were sent into war was “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the September 11 attacks.”
93% said that “finding and destroying weapons of mass destruction” is not a reason for the ongoing military action.
24% said that “establishing a democracy that can be a model for the Arab World" was the main or a major reason for the war.
37% said that Americans who oppose the war are unpatriotic.

Of these findings, the most disturbing one is the widely-held belief among US troops that the US presence in Iraq has something to do with 9/11. This is considerably higher than what most Americans now believe about the 9/11-Saddam connection – a recent CBS News poll puts the number of Americans who believe that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11 at about 57%. That’s still pretty high considering the fact that the bipartisan 9/11 Commission determined in 2004 that there was no Al-Qaeda-Saddam connection.

It’s not good when the troops are more confused about what they are fighting for than the general public.

On the other hand, nobody really likes to be deployed. If somebody had surveyed me when I was in Keflavik, Iceland with the Navy in 1977 and asked “How soon should US forces be withdrawn from Iceland” I would have said “immediately.”

Fat Tuesday

2006-02-28T09:00:00.000-06:00

This is the day on which good Catholics are supposed to prepare for Lent by getting all of the fat out of the house and eat a lot of pancakes. I’m not even a bad Catholic, but I’m going to join in the tradition and get the fat out of my blogging house today. So here's some fat to chew on...

The USS Iraqwar is still taking on water and listing to port. The crew is abandoning ship faster than they can get the lifeboats in the water; the latest deserters include George Will, William F. Buckley, and now one of the fathers of neo-conservativism, Francis Fukuyama. At the very least, these three deserve the same treatment from the right that Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) received when he turned against the war back in November. At the time, one conservative columnist called Murtha and those who agreed with him "gutless traitors."
The “voice of reason” holding Iraq back from a civil war seems to be the “radical cleric” Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite religious leader and commander of an estimated 10,000-man militia in the slums of Baghdad. This is not the man that the Bush administration wants playing peacemaker. Right now, Sadr’s stock is higher than that of many of the leaders within the new Iraqi government itself.
The Bush administration seems to have found a way out of the Dubai Ports World mess: a temporary suspension of the deal by DPW and forty-five day review by Congress. Some members are now expressing concern over a report by the US Coast Guard that voiced some concern about security when the deal was first proposed.
Somehow, the committee of experts commissioned by the Baseball Hall of Fame to name twelve new members to the Hall from the Negro Leagues managed to snub one of the greatest spokespersons and living legends of baseball, Buck O’Neil. O’Neil, 94, played with Jackie Robinson when he was with the Kansas City Monarchs, won two batting titles and broke a color barrier himself in 1962 with the Chicago Cubs when he became the first black coach in the majors. Shame on them for snubbing Buck.
President Logan went completely Nixon last night on “24” when he asked his Chief of Staff to get on his knees and pray with him during a crisis. I know it was supposed to be a serious moment in the show but I just about fell out of my chair laughing. I think the producers were trying to recreate the scene in the 1995 Oliver Stone film Nixon when Anthony Hopkins (Nixon) asks Paul Sorvino (Henry Kissinger) to pray with him in the White House on the eve of his resignation. The real Henry Kissinger has claimed that this never happened.
The International House of Pancakes is offering a free short stack today in honor of Shrove Tuesday. But you have to get there before 2:00 pm.

Close, But No Brass Ring

2006-02-27T09:30:00.000-06:00

The Harding Academic Quiz Team had a good weekend at the Regional College Bowl tournament at the University of Houston, but not as good as the weekend we had last year. The team went 10-2, with the two losses coming in the playoffs against the eventual tournament champion, Baylor. Baylor finished second to Harding last year so it seemed natural that we go 1-2 with them this year. They went 7-0 in their division and we went 7-0 in ours.

Our matches went like this (modified round-robin):

Houston Downtown (W, 200-160)
Tarrant-Northwest (W, 275-105)
Texas State (W, 285-25)
Houston (W, 230-165)
Hendrix (W, 335-115)
Tarrant-Northeast (W, 355-60)
LSU (W, 275-205)

Playoffs (double-elimination):

Baylor (L, 190-330)
Houston Downtown (W, 340-30)
Rice (W, 350-100)
Baylor (L, 245-285)

The final match against Baylor came down to the last question and Jason Loy (captain) was the fourth-highest scorer in the tournament. There is an outside (1 in 15) chance that the team will get an “at large” bid to the national tournament. The complete results of the tournament are here.

Meanwhile, we’ll start preparing for the NAQT national tournament at the University of Maryland in April.

I hope it’s obvious how much I enjoy working with the team and co-coach, Mike James. If you are going to be riding in a van for 8 hours, it’s always helps to be with entertaining people. I am really proud of this team. It was also a pleasure to get to know some of the players from the other schools from Arkansas at the tournament: Hendrix and the UA Fayetteville. Kudos to the University of Houston and College Bowl, Inc. for running a good tournament.

And thanks to Tom Rufer of the University of Arkansas for the photo of the team.

BTW: Houston, your interstate highway system stinks. It would say that it reminded me of a habitrail but a habitrail has better signs.

This Week's Sign of the Impending Apocalypse (#17)

2006-02-25T07:00:00.000-06:00

A 41-year old mother has saved the lives of her two children by wrestling a 700-pound polar bear.

Lydia Angyiou, who lives in Inujivik (pop. 300) on the shore of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec, was watching her two sons play street hockey when they were approached by the bear. She immediately told her sons to run and positioned herself between them and the polar bear and began kicking and punching it.

At one point, the bear was able to knock her down but Ms. Angyiou kept kicking and fighting. Another resident of the village eventually arrived with a rifle and shot the bear to death. Remarkably, she suffered only a few scratches and a black eye.

Somewhere in northern Quebec, there are two kids who never talk back to their mom and always eat their vegetables.

I've Seen It All Now

2006-02-24T13:45:00.000-06:00

The Whataburger in Timpson, Texas has free WiFi.

My first blog entry from a fast-food place.

On the down side, I think the ice in my drink has bacteria in it.

Defending College Bowl Champions

2006-02-24T07:00:00.000-06:00

That has an odd ring to it, but the Harding Academic Quiz Team will be defending its 2005 Regional Championship this weekend at the University of Houston. This is the first time in the history of Harding College Bowl that we have a championship to defend.

The team won the Region 12 (Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas) Championship at Texas A&M last year and earned a trip to the National Tournament in Seattle. We didn't do as well in Seattle as we would have liked, but getting there was an accomplishment for the team.

Some of you have asked me the difference between NAQT and College Bowl. It is primarily in the questions -- NAQT questions tend to “pyramid” and award players who can identify the answer with only a small amount of information. NAQT questions also tend to be “brainier” and there are more questions from the areas of math and science than pop culture and sports. These are examples NAQT toss-up and bonus questions.

College Bowl questions are shorter and sometimes have twists at the end of the question that can misdirect a player. There are more questions in College Bowl about things like the Simpsons and Kidz Bop and fewer about famous Albanians or polyhedrons. These are examples of College Bowl toss-up and bonus questions.

In both cases, the matches are timed and only one player gets to answer toss-ups. The entire team can work together on the bonuses.

This year’s College Bowl team consists of Jason Loy (Captain), David Ashley, Jason Ballenger, Andrew Ferren, and Jordan Nester.

Meanwhile, Back in Iraq...

2006-02-23T10:30:00.000-06:00

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the view that the news we get from Iraq is mostly depressing and that the media doesn’t report all of the good things that happen there every day such as the reports of all the US troops who were not attacked by IEDs or Iraqis who say that they do not support the insurgency.

But I don't blame this on the American media having any particular axe to grind against the administration or the war. After all, most of those imbedded reporters sure looked like they were having a good time when they were rolling into Iraq with US forces in March 2003. I think the television media that more and more Americans have come to depend on for information tends to be sensationalist first and foremost. When things get incinerated, you can count on someone from FoxNews, CNN, and the others being there to report it.

Knowing that many media outlets like to blow things out of proportion and spin the significance of events in Iraq to suit their interests, I'm going to let Bill O'Reilly back me up on this one. Bill says that the US should exit Iraq "as fast as humanly possible" because the country is full of crazies (he means Iraq, not the United States). When Bill starts making sense to me, I know that it's time for reflection.

Bill and I both know that nothing makes a person go crazy more quickly than having their religious sites destroyed by someone who is playing for the other team.

The destruction of the golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra on Wednesday has put Iraq (again) on the verge of civil war. The shrine contains the tombs of Ali al-Hadi and his son Hasan al-Askari, the 10th and 11th imams of Shiite Islam who died in the 9th century and it is one of the four main Shiite pilgrimage sites in Iraq. It has been suggested that the shrine is to Shiites as St. Peters is to Catholics.

Thankfully, the United States had nothing to do with the attack, although the president of Iran has blamed the bombing on the US and Israel. I'm not sure that piece of lunacy is going to get much traction in Iraq though. The Shiites have blamed the Sunni insurgency for the attack and this has put Iraq on the verge of collapse and a civil war. US troops may be caught in the middle and may have to end up chosing sides.

The before and after pictures of the shrine are incredible. I'm trying to imagine the anger I would be feeling right now if something I loved and venerated had been nearly destroyed this way. Sunni and Shiite leaders are calling for calm but local militias and other groups have already started extracting revenge on Sunni mosques and neighborhoods.

Bill O’Reilly is now one of the growing number of Americans who thinks that its time for the US to get out. He used to think that people who felt that way were nitwits and comparable to Nazi sympathizers.

He doesn't owe me an apology and I'm a big enough man not to ask for one.

Port Authority

2006-02-22T12:01:00.000-06:00

I've been reading a lot of College Bowl questions to the Quiz Team lately preping for our tournament this weekend in Houston. I wrote this one last night:

Q. What do the following people all have in common? Mark Elrod (D), Bill Frist (R-TN), Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Charles Pataki (R-NY), Susan Collins (R-ME), Bill Bennett (R), and Pete King (R-NY).

A. They think that turning over shipping operations in six of America’s most important ports to a United Arab Emirates-owned company seems a little strange.

GOP leaders are breaking ranks with President Bush on whether or not to allow the transfer (sale) of port operations at several U.S seaports to a UAE-owned company, Dubai Ports World from the current operator, London-based P&O . Yesterday, the president defended the deal and threatened to veto any legislation that attempts to stop it. The ports in question are New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

Others, including the Dubai-based news network Aljazeera, have argued that the public backlash is largely emotional and not logical – security at the ports will remain in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security and nothing is compromised by shifting control of port operations from a London-based company and one that is owned by an Arab government.

But the UAE is no ordinary Arab government. Apart from being one of the least likely states in the Middle East to join the ranks of democratic nations...

The UAE is one of three countries in the world to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
The UAE has been a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran, North Korea and Lybia.
According to the FBI, money was transferred to the 9/11 hijackers through the UAE banking system.
After 9/11, the Treasury Department reported that the UAE was not cooperating in efforts to track down Osama Bin Laden’s bank accounts.

Most congressional opponents of the deal want it put on hold until it can be studied further. I’m not sure how things like this sneak up on lawmakers, but there even seems to some confusion within the administration today about the sale. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said that he first heard about the deal over the weekend.

If it is such a good deal, what would be wrong with waiting a few weeks and giving Congress a chance to examine it in more detail? Since 9/11, I’ve heard from any number of terrorism experts that our port security is in need of improvement and this event might present us with the opportunity to give it another look.

UPDATE: The White House has now reported that the president himself was unaware of the sale of port operations to Dubai Ports World until recently.

Housekeeping

2006-02-21T11:00:00.000-06:00

I guess you noticed that I changed the template yesterday. I like this one a lot better; things show up more clearly and I think it's easier to read.

It was a little like painting the living room but with fewer drop cloths.

Nails Hate Hammers

2006-02-21T10:45:00.000-06:00

Several months ago, I almost wrote a blog about a student at UMass Dartmouth who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security officers after he requested a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book via inter-library loan. At the time, the story both outraged and intrigued me. Why would anybody be interested in investigating a college student that had requested a book that doesn’t seem to be all that subversive in a post-Cold War world and is readily available in most bookstores and libraries?

I’m glad I didn’t write about it because as it turned out, the student made the whole thing up and his professors bought it. The post-9/11 world has evidently given some of us a new way of saying “the dog ate my homework.”

But the fact that the story had legs is because so many of us believe that there actually are over-zealous government officials who will go to great lengths to investigate disloyalty. Investigating someone for requesting an overrated book written by a long-dead communist seemed to be stepping over the line.

There are litanies of stories that confirm the lengths that some individuals will go to protect us from ourselves. Last week, two security officers at a Montgomery County Maryland Public Library confronted a patron who was viewing material on a computer that they considered to be pornography. The fact that the two security guards where wearing hats that identified them as “Homeland Security” gave this story national attention. Library officials determined that the patron’s activities were legal and the two guards have been temporarily suspended from duties.

There is still the argument that only the guilty would worry about the government monitoring their activities. I’m not sure I can explain why it bothers me, but it does. I really don’t have anything to hide; I just don’t like being monitored.

I know that my brushes with the law pale in comparison to those of real criminals but last winter, I got to spend a few unhappy minutes with a police office in New Castle, Delaware after he pulled me over to ask me why I was taking pictures of my high school. Our discussion went something like this:

Officer Krupke: Sir, may I see your driver’s license?
ME: (I already had it out of my wallet and gave it to him)
Officer Krupke: Sir, do you mind me asking you why you were taking pictures of that high school?
ME: Because I went to high school there and I don’t have any pictures of it.
Officer Krupke: When did you go to high school there?
ME: I graduated in 1976.
Officer Krupke: Where do you live now?
ME: Arkansas.
Officer Krupke: Why are you here now?
ME: I’m visiting my mother and father. They live in that house over there. (You could almost see it from where we were).
Officer Krupke: Do you understand why I would be suspicious about your behavior?
ME: No. Would you mind just running my license? I’m a good citizen and I just want to get on with my life. (At that point, I started getting a little nervous because I couldn’t remember if I had paid that parking ticket I got in Rehoboth Beach in 1975.)
Officer Krupke: That high school is the biggest one in the state.
ME: Yes, I was aware of that.
Officer Krupke: This seems to be bothering you.
ME: It is. Would you mind running my license?

At that point, Officer Kurpke's backup arrived and they had a nice chat and I guess they decided that I was no threat to the republic. Before I left, I shook his hand (reluctantly) and told him that there were no hard feelings. But I don’t think that I was belligerent with Officer Krupke and I do realize that he was just doing his job. Even at the time, I thought that because I was only answering his questions and not engaging him in snappy banter about my life in Arkansas it bothered him. But there’s something about being treated like a suspect when you know you aren’t one that really annoys me.

I extend that same concern to my African-American students who have been pulled over in white neighborhoods for DWB (driving while black) and to the two Sikh truck drivers who where pulled over here in White County two years ago and their truck searched by the local sheriff because they “looked suspicious.” I have been told by several people that the local sheriff looks suspicious but I’m pretty sure that he has never been subjected to same level of disrespect as the two Sikh truck drivers were.

Mark Twain once reflected “that to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” That’s why we need to be careful about how many hammers we pass out and who we give them to.

Presidents' Washington's Day

2006-02-20T08:00:00.000-06:00

Since 1971, the United States has used the third Monday in February to honor the birth of our first president, George Washington. Washington's birthday (February 22) was recognized as a holiday while he was still alive and it was declared a federal holiday in 1885.

But if you believe the legends, Americans started celebrating Washington's birthday before he was actually born.

Ironically, recognizing the third Monday in February as Washington's birthday ensures that we never actually celebrate it on February 22. The earliest in the month it can possibly be recognized is on the 21st.

Most calendar makers designate today as "Presidents' Day" but the intention of the "Uniform Holiday Bill" was to save money by having all levels of government celebrate Washington's birthday (as well as Columbus Day, Veterans Day and Memorial Day) on the same day. The popular conception of the holiday is that it is now used to commemorate all American presidents.

Celebrating Presidents’ Day as a single ordinary holiday has undoubtedly saved the federal as well as state and local governments millions of dollars over the years. The downside is that it has associated George Washington with the likes of Rutherford B. Hayes and Warren G. Harding.

There was nothing ordinary about George Washington – few men or women live up to their legend the way he has, even after you strip away the mythologies. More counties and cities in America are named in honor of Washington than any other American president. His image watches over us in our classrooms and looks up at us from our currency. George Washington is an icon that transcends race, age, gender and nationality.

None of the qualities that we normally think of as making Washington a great man came naturally to him. Washington had a bad temper and had to work to keep it under control. He was interested in making money but he was charitable. He was a self-made aristocrat who was considered by many in his own day as the great plebeian. Washington went to church but never officially belonged to one. Like many colonial planters, he owned slaves but referred to slavery as "a massive American anomaly."

Most of us have a tendency to focus more on the character flaws of our political leaders than on contributions they make to good governance. But in the case of Washington’s legacy, even his flaws have become virtues. Washington was accused by many of his contemporaries as being too austere, but his serious demeanor served him well as he presided over the Constitutional Convention. Both historians and Washington's own contemporaries have have questioned Washington’s military skills but his appreciation for the importance of keeping the Continental Army intact was one of the most important factors in winning the American Revolution. And despite his disdain for politics, Washington is often underrated as a politician. As president, his success in keeping the national government solvent as it took shape under the new constitution was an amazing accomplishment.

Washington is seldom thought of as a politician -- more often than not, we describe him as a statesman because he recognized his own importance in history and yet refused to make a personal exploitation of the the power that that America laid at his feet in 1789. The story goes that just before Napoleon Bonaparte died he lamented that his subjects always wanted him to be “another Washington” meaning that people usually want leaders and not dictators. Even Napoleon understood that Washington was a hard act to follow.

Perhaps the thing that we should appreciate the most about our first president is that he had the strength of character to reject the temptation to be a despot when he had the opportunity. In doing so, Washington helped to establish America as a free society and not an empire.

He deserves his own day. Forget about those other guys.

This Week's Sign of the Impending Apocalypse (#16)

2006-02-18T08:00:00.000-06:00

A 12-year-old Tampa Bay, Florida girl's science fair project has determined that the ice in that soft drink that you ordered in a fast food restaurant last week probably had more bacteria in it than the water in the restaurant's toilet.

Benito Middle School student Jasmine Roberts won an $800 prize for her study that examined the amount of bacteria in ice served at fast food restaurants and with the water from their toilets. She found that seventy percent of the time, the ice had more bacteria than the toilet water.

My 17-year-old son has been ordering his drinks "with no ice" in restaurants for as long as I can remember and I always thought it was quirky. But if he knew about this and didn’t tell me, he’s in big trouble.

Trust Me, I'm a Doctor

2006-02-17T09:30:00.000-06:00

In the 18.5 years that I have been teaching at Harding, I have missed exactly one class day for being sick. I had to take that one sick day last year after I got extremely ill after moderating the HUD Cup quiz bowl tournament in chapel. I’m still not sure if it was something I ate or I just didn’t like the questions I was asking.

Up to that point, I had considered myself the Cal Ripken of teaching political science and I have been trying to working to rebuild my "consecutive days in the starting line-up" every since. I was almost sick enough to dismiss class on Monday, but I thought, "What would the Iron Horse do?" So I soldiered on. I did ask my students at the beginning of class on Monday that if I passed out during the lecture and curled up into a fetal position to at least walk around me quietly as they left the classroom.

I usually have to be in a position like that to drag myself to an actual doctor for advice. My experience with doctors when I actually have made an appointment is that I go home with two things: 1) The diagnosis "You seem to have ‘what’s going around’" this time of year and 2) a bill for the visit that is smaller than my insurance deductible.

So I have tendency to diagnose myself when I'm sick this time of year or ask my students with the same symptoms (assuming they also have "what’s going around") and then self-medicate.

If you have what I had earlier this week (fever, aches, and a dry couth) I suggest the following. Any one of these or a combination of all five got me through "what’s going around" in about 48 hours:

NyQuil
Sudafed
Ibuprofin
Two gallons of orange juice
Weezer (Green Album)

The last one may be a fluke. I just member that a couple of the songs helped relax me after I drank the NyQuil.

(NOTE: Dr. Elrod actually holds a PhD in political science and is not a medical professional. Therefore none of his medical advice should be taken seriously. If you are seriously ill, you shouldn't be looking for advice at a blog anyway.)

The World's Smallest Political Quiz

2006-02-16T09:00:00.000-06:00

Early in each semester, I walk my two sections of PolS 202 International Relations through the “World’s Smallest Political Quiz”. Maybe you've seen it before or actually taken the quiz -- as the name implies, it is one of the quickest political surveys available on the internet.

But just because it’s quick doesn’t mean it’s accurate -- the WSPQ is an interesting exercise but it is flawed in a number of ways. I use it because it's fun and quick and it gives me an opportunity to talk briefly about polling bias. And my students usually enjoy talking about some of the issues on the WSPQ in an open forum.

I like this quiz too, but it takes more time than I have in one class period. I encourage my students to take it as well and then make comparisons with the WSPQ.

The WSPQ makes five statements on “personal issues” and five on “economic issues” that the respondent is asked to select “agree,” “disagree” or “maybe.” In class, I usually allow my students talk about each issue for about five minutes and then take a vote. In cases where there is no clear consensus, the class will vote “maybe”.

I have found that the single-greatest weakness of the WSPQ is that some of the statements are vague. For example, the statement “Repeal laws prohibiting adult possession and use of drugs” does not specify what specific controlled substances should be legalized or if they should be regulated in the same way as alcohol and tobacco. It cases like these, I usually try to explain what I think the statement means and then allow the discussion to proceed. In the case of the drug issue, I assume that it means that all drugs that are currently illegal would be made legal but regulated.

The same problem occurs with the WSPQ’s statements about media censorship and the draft. In several cases, a range of several possible responses would be preferable to a choice of “yes-no-maybe.” A more sophisticated survey would also collect socio-economic and regional data and it would control the number of respondents.

At least one analysis of the WSPQ argues that the quiz is flawed because it is associated with a libertarian website. The fact that the single-largest group (35%) identified by the quiz is “libertarian” and libertarians represent nowhere near that proportion of the electorate may support this claim.

Even with those problems, it is an easy survey to do in one class period and I was surprised at the results this semester. Normally, my students (as a group) end up in the “right-conservative” category on the WSPQ. This year, one section scored in the “centrist” category and the other scored in the “statist-big government” category. I think that may have been the first time that has happened in the ten years or so that I’ve been doing the quiz in class. This may have been the result of several of my more persuasive and vocal students taking those positions early in the discussion and then bringing other students along with them.

If you know of any other surveys that you feel are more accurate, I'd like to hear about them. Of course, as a class exercise, it has to be something that I can do in fifty minutes and that’s why I'm inclined to use the WSPQ in the first place.

Forget Something?

2006-02-15T13:00:00.000-06:00

Despite feeling extremely ill with flu-like symptoms over the past several days, I somehow managed to remember to get my Valentine to Tish yesterday. It was waiting for her on her desk when she got to the office on Tuesday morning. When I got to the office, there was a card and a balloon waiting more me. Then I treated her to dinner with José María Aznar.

But just in case you forgot to get a card for your special lady, here's a *Post-Valentine's Day Valentine for you to use. Good luck!

*The management of Mark Elrod's Lame-o Weblog takes no responsibility for flying objects that may hit you upside the head after this card is removed from its envelope.

José María Aznar

2006-02-15T08:15:00.000-06:00

Last night, as promised, I managed to weasel my way back to an ASI dinner and spend a couple of hours listening to the former leader of Spain, José María Aznar.

I'm going to be inviting students in my classes to make comments on this post. I know that several of them went to the speaker last night and I’d like to know what they thought about it.

Aznar spoke for about an hour on the topic “Terrorism and Democracy” and outlined some of the things he did as the leader of Spain to combat terrorism in his country. Naturally, he was very supportive of the Bush administration, the invasion of Iraq, and the global war on terrorism.

I thought that Aznar's comments took an markedly neo-liberal view of the world. He decried Islam's resistance to "modernity and Westernization" and promoted the need for greater global political and economic cooperation. Anzar stated that he believes that ideas are important and that the spread of democracy will eventually bring an end to the political instability that creates terrorists. In his short presentation after the ASI dinner, Aznar said that "politics without values is just power."

But remains committed to using military force to intervene in places like Iraq because they are potential breeding grounds for terrorists. Most of the things he advocated for dealing with terrorism were associated with “showing resolve” and “remaining strong.”

I thought that the most interesting comments Anzar made dealt with the future of the NATO alliance. In discussing NATO reform, Aznar said that he is working on a plan that would call for the expansion of the alliance to include Australia, Japan, Ukraine, and Israel. Assuming that the alliance remains a mutual defense treaty, this would mean that the US would be obliged to defend Israel every time they are attack by a terrorist group. I wish that someone would have asked him about that in the 45-minute Q&A. I think what he was proposing goes way beyond "reform" of NATO.

These were the questions that were asked by the audience:

Do you think Iran will get the bomb and what should the West do about it?
What would it take to convince the people of Spain to join in an alliance with the United States?
It what way does civilian control of the military play a role in war on terrorism?
What were some of things you did as leader of Spain to reduce the deficit and bring down inflation?
What should the US and the Western European powers do to deal with Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales?
Given that terrorism is a method of fighting, how is it possible to wage war against it?

Bad Will Hunting

2006-02-14T08:46:00.000-06:00

This weekend, Dick Cheney shot a 78 year old man in the face with a shot-gun while hunting in Texas. The victim is recovering in a Corpus Christi hospital.

This makes Cheney the first sitting vice-president to shoot a man since Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804.

Jon Stewart has the details here.