While y’all wait for me to complete a new post on evanescent’s carrot & stick article, here’s a link to whet your appetite. (HT: Gene Cook, TNM #864)

Without belaboring my obvious recent absence from the blogosphere, I’ll just provide a number of links that you might find interesting:

RiffTrax: Don’t you miss MST3K? Years ago, Forester had the idea to make his own MST3K-type spoofs, but the original MST3K guys ended up beating him to the punch. Now, for only $5.98, I’ll be able to watch the Star Wars Episode I and II DVDs that came packaged with Revenge of the Sith!

MythTV: One reason I’ve never plumped for a TiVo or other type of DVR is that I would rather buy a device, than buy a device AND pay a subscription fee. Turns out you can take any old Intel box, add a special card for converting cable signals into digital video, install Linux, and (voila!) MythTV turns your computer into an open-source DVR. Program information is free over the web (for instance, from zap2it), and the bigger the hard-drive, the more it can store (about 1 GB/hour of non-HD television).

Finale Notepad: As a musician, I’ve occasionally had the need to jot something simple down. For instance, when I got married, one of the hymns that I wanted as part of the service was not in the hymnal of the church we were using. I managed to enter and print the hymn as a leaflet inserted in the bulletin, using a 30-day evaluation copy of some software or other, but I wish there had been (or I had known about?) Finale’s Notepad back then! As the name implies, Notepad is a lightweight, free music composition software. I say lightweight because it is a limited version of Finale’s full software, but the limitations are surprisingly unrestrictive. You can have up to 8 staves, you can enter lyrics, you can have all manner of special notations (tuplets, slurs and ties, fermatas, repeats,…), you can perform transposition, there is MIDI playback, you can save and print — I really think Finale has gone overboard in their free offering, such that I might never have a need to pay for anything better!

On a more serious (and less geeky) note,

The PCA: Following the OPC (my church’s previous denomination), my denomination has produced a report about Frank Valenti. The PCA report is smaller than the OPC’s report, probably because it narrowed its focus on standards rather than scripture. The report has not yet been adopted by GA, but it concludes quite clearly that all of the following hallmarks of FV are contrary to the Westminster Standards: monocovenantalism, temporary “covenantal” election, denial of ICAO, denial of merit, imputation subsumed in union, baptismal regeneration, saving graces without perseverance, and final justification partly based on works.

Good Grief: My sister recently wrote a very personal, very touching post about our sister that we both lost. If you have ever lost anyone, I think her post will be edifying for you.

(If you haven’t read it yet, back up and read the previous post)

The second phase of the biblical relationship between Word and Image is Incarnation. Ellul states that “there is no true theophany.” Instances like these [Gen 18:1-16, Gen 32:22-32, Judges 13, Daniel 3:24-25] are all difficult to discern in terms of whether the apparent theophany is God himself, an angel, or pre-incarnate Christ. In any case, Ellul also asserts that the only possible Image of God is man — because this is the only vessel in which God himself placed his own image:

Gen 1:26-27 –

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

What is “our image”? The mystery of the trinity is entwined here, with Son, Father, Spirit mirrored by man’s body, soul, and spirit. I’m not sure how “male and female” relates to God’s image — since my God is all man, I think this last poetic line is affirming more that woman bears God’s image as much as man, rather than that God is androgynous.

Heb 1:3 — So when God decided to represent himself visibly on earth, it was necessary that he come as a man. Jesus is described in this verse by various translations as “the express image of his [God's] person” (KJV), “the exact representation of his being” (NIV), “the very image of his substance” (ASV), “the exact representation of his nature” (NASB, ESV). Note that the very same verse also reminds us that the Son “upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

John 1:1-14 — This most profound of passages beautifully expresses how the incarnation unites Word and Image.

v1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

v9: The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

v14: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

What a mindblowing concept: Word become flesh; the immaterial clothed with material; God as man.

All four gospels testify that Jesus’ ministry was kicked off with a double sign of image (dove) and word (“This is my son, in whom I am well pleased”).

John 14:7-9 — Jesus in many instances like this (especially in the book of John) identifies himself with the Father, even visually: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”

John 12:44-50 — Jesus transitions here seamlessly from talking about Image (sight/light) to Word (hear, word, speak, commandment).

Even though there was plenty of Image to verify Jesus divinity, it was never meant to be the primary or sole source of evidence. Jesus expressed dissatisfaction with those (like the Pharisees, or doubting Thomas) who demanded evidence in the form of Image. He knew (and warned his disciples) that the phase of Incarnation, in which Word and Image were unified, was only temporary; his current and future disciples would need to learn to get by without Image: “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Next phases: New Covenant and Consummation.

Still not really back yet, but I thought maybe it could be more interesting to pose this question to Forester here, inviting others to discuss as well, rather than just sending him an email. T got me the DVD of Raising Arizona for my birthday, and we re-watched it for the first time in many years. Since I know Forester is also a Coen Bros. fan, and likes Raising Arizona specifically (although probably not as much as Barton Fink), I wanted to hear his (or your) take on the following question that T & I couldn’t come to a satisfactory answer on. What is the ‘lone biker of the apocalypse‘? With the same road-runner tattoo (although over his heart, not on his arm), the bronzed baby shoes, the “Mama didn’t love me” tattoo, is he (in some secular sense) H.I.’s original sin, his carnal nature? Or does Smalls represent righteous justice and unavoidable consequences? And what is the message of the movie, in terms of the fact that H.I. was able to destroy whatever is represented by Leonard Smalls?

We went to a great talk tonight; our church sponsored a lecture and Q&A about The DaVinci Code, by Mark Strauss (professor of New Testament at Bethel Seminary, and author of Truth & Error in The Da Vinci Code)

Now I have to say I haven't read the book (and I'm sure I never will), and I haven't seen the movie (I might on DVD), but the talk was peppered with direct quotes from the book. The basic format was to present a quote from the book, and then demonstrate how it is an obvious historical fallacy.

Even without having read the book, the lecture was a great learning experience in terms of early church history. For instance, how accurately do you believe we know the original text of the Iliad? There exist about 500 ancient manuscripts, the earliest of which is a copy from 1000 years after Homer. Compare that to 5000 ancient biblical texts, the earliest of which are copies dating to about 10 years within decades [RR: fixed misquote of the speaker] from the originals! (Not to mention the fact that large parts of the bible (in particular almost all of the New Testament) can be reconstructed from quotations from ancient commentaries, i.e. Augustine and the like).

I hope that the PowerPoint and .mp3 will be made available online; if so, you know I will link to it for you (in the meantime, there is a fairly concise website in support of Strauss' book here). The lecture was about an hour, one could probably read through the PPT in 15 minutes. In the meantime, I say go ahead and read the book or watch the movie, and enjoy, but don't get your panties in a bunch thinking it's some amazing expose of the seamy underbelly of Christianity (despite the "novel's" claim on page 1, under the heading "FACT": "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate")

In closing, I think it's interesting to note how the Christian response to Da Vinci has been radically different from the Last Temptation debacle (claim to fame: my dad and aunt went to school with screenwriter Paul Schrader). I have heard of no protests, no picketing; from the Christian community, I observe an outpouring of measured, reasoned, dismissive bemusement. Let's hear it for Mark Strauss' closing admonition not to forget how I Tim 3:15 flows into the next verse:

but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

T here. This is my first attempt at a blog entry. After some slight urging from RubeRad to write on the blog, I felt compelled to write about a book that I recently read titled Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman. Read this book to find out if our world has turned out like Orwell’s predictions in 1984, or is it a Brave New World like Huxley posits? Amusing Ourselves is rich and thought-provoking. The book contains a lot more than what I will write about and is truly worthwhile for anyone, whether they are TV watchers or not. In his book, Postman breaks up America into two ages: the Age of Exposition and the Age of Show Business.

The Age of Exposition was the period of time in America starting in the early 1600s when the printed word was the main avenue for information (theology, philosophy, news, politics, opinions) and interaction (letters, debates, and expositional speaking). During the Age of Exposition nearly everyone read (see chapters 3 & 4 of Postman’s book for his evidence supporting this statement). At your local (County/State) fair, it wasn’t unusual for regular people to attend (and comprehend!) 7 hour long debates!

The Age of Show Business began in the mid 1800s with the advent of the telegraph and photography. The telegraph allowed information to be sent at rapid speeds to far away places. “News of the Day” stories became popular because of the telegraph. Next came radio and the telephone. Television followed, combining visuals with language broadcast over the air waves arriving instantaneously and rockin’ our world. The printing press was to the Age of Exposition as the TV is to the Age of Show Business. TV has its offshoots in new technology with computers, the internet, video games, and now video cell phones.

Now let me admit that I am a fan of TV (especially for watching movies) and have logged many hours in front of the boob tube (although not nearly so much since I’ve had kids). I am not going to say that TV is evil and should never be watched again by your children or you. Also, not all printed matter is lofty, edifying and worthy of our time (junk mail, romance novels, magazines). There is much print out there that is strictly for amusement, but I see many more people plopping down on the couch after a hard day and flipping through the channels until a show that looks good is found. It’s hard to find that kind of mindless veggin’ with print, unless you subscribe to a lot of picture-laden magazines. Postman’s book brought up some very interesting ideas about how to think about the medium of TV and how this piece of technology has changed our culture in some very surprising ways. I’ll start with the more obvious ways (the first two aren’t in Postman’s book) and then talk about the sneaky, subtle one.

TV negatively affects the pocket book! When #1 began watching TV, he would despise the ads and say “Can you fast forward over this?” After explaining the difference between TV and videos, I told him that he’d just have to wait a few minutes until the show came back on again. Now, he has the ads’ sequence figured out and he enjoys watching them — after all, the ads are nearly the entire purpose of TV and why it’s free — supposedly, somehow, cable has us paying for network TV; if we just used the antenna, we would get reception for CBS, PBS, and some Spanish network. Anyway, ads are there to get you to buy stuff. #1 used to say to me, “Hey mommy, we need to buy that <insert name of cool, flashing, spinning, lit-up toy here>!!” and I would reply “Do you really need it or is it just something that you want that looks really cool to play with?” #1 is pretty honest, so he would admit it was not a need but a want. After that, I would periodically pop into the TV room and say “Do you know what TV is for? To amuse you and to get you to buy things.” Now he repeats that when asked. Even still, when we are in a store with toys, he’ll invariably say, “Hey, I saw this toy on TV, can we buy it?” To which I always reply, “Did you bring any money? No? We aren’t buying it.” So, I guess TV has failed to affect our family’s pocket book in any significant way.

Telly negatively affects the belly (and the mind)! I read a statistic in Self Magazine:

Spending more than two hours a day in front of the small screen can help increase your risk for obesity by 23 percent, a study from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston indicates.

I didn’t really need Harvard to tell me that. Generally, I know that it’s pretty easy to wait for those commercial interuptions and go get <insert your special favorite treat here–ours is ice cream>. TV makes you passive in both body and mind. How easy is it to jump into an episode of Friends or Seinfeld or even my fave, The Simpsons when you’ve missed the first 10 or 15 minutes? Did you ever just give up on watching Friends because you missed an episode or two? No, of course not. Joey is always a dumb lothario, Phoebe is always just a little bit too out there, Ross is always a dinosaur geek, Chandler always has the snarky quip and self-deprecating comment, Rachel is all about the hair (shallow), and Monica is always a control freak and neatnik. These characters never break their mold or grow or change. Similarly, Bart Simpson is still in the 4th grade and Lisa — genius or not — is still the saddest kid in grade number 2 (after 11 years!). Contrarily, in the past few years there has been an increase in serial TV shows that actually require you to remember what happens from episode to episode (Lost or 24), albeit starting the show with a “Previously on…”. But really, as much as you might “think” during a TV show, your life is mostly entertained rather than edified or enriched.

TV trivializes information! Did you ever notice how news never spends more than about 2 minutes on the stories? Earthquake in Mexico, 500 dead <show rubble and carefully framed anonymous bodies> Famine in Ethiopia <show distended-bellied kids with flies in their eyes> Bombing in the UK <show wreckage of double-decker buses> The opposite of this is the 24 hour news channels that spend about 20 hours asking “Do we have any more information on <bombing, kidnapping, natural disaster>? No, let’s go to Dan in the Chicago office….” In watching news, most of it does not affect you or your loved ones and you don’t usually change your life in any significant way after watching the news. Showing something as tragic as a starving village and a split second later an ad for a magic beer fridge really trivializes those starving in a far away country. You can relax and enjoy those silly frat boys bowing to their “god”, the beer fridge and not give another thought to the suffering previously portrayed. Information can be separated from its context so that it becomes meaningless. This trivialization didn’t begin with TV, but prior with the telegraph. To be fair, print did it first with penny newspapers which came out in the 1830s, just slightly before the telegraph, but it was telegraph’s speed that beat out the penny paper stories’ road to irrelevance. Later, penny newspapers reported news bits delivered by telegraph. Trivial information: Did you know that the first crossword puzzle was published in 1913? It is the ultimate print game of trivializing information. Oh, how I love them. How many of you would rather watch Jeopardy?

TV turns politics into a selling game! Politics used to be rational, requiring logical suppositions to support your belief in a topic. People would attend debates and decide which candidates to support and vote for based on their platform, beliefs and ideas. Now, politics is all about the TV ad, how emotionally charged it is and how many positive sound bites they can get replayed on the news. These emotional political ads began in the early nineteen hundreds but really changed America during the 1960 Presidential election contest between Nixon and Kennedy. On TV, Kennedy was suave and picture perfect. Nixon looked paunchy and sweaty. Of course, there was a little more to it (the Vietnam War), but this started the era of the plastic politician.

A plastic politician is image with very little substance, and could tour the country as a plastic doll with a push button on the back with the right sound bites and pauses for audience clapping like “No new taxes”, “America needs leadership”, “New jobs for America”, and “God bless America and our troops”. With image being so important in today’s politics, how would presidents like Abraham Lincoln or W. Howard Taft (who weighed around 300 pounds) get elected? Both were brilliant, driven men, but not lookers. Nowadays, the image of a politician is mostly what people think of when thinking about politics, all substance no depth. Smear campaigns are rampant; they try to sell a viewer on the opposition by pointing out a campaigner’s negative qualities, often without mentioning any logical reasons to vote for the opposition.

TV turns teaching into an amusing activity! This is the sneaky, subtle effect of watching TV and the one that surprised me the most. Its affects are definitely my mom’s big complaint about teaching; she has taught a variety of ages from middle school to college aged students. Students expect to be entertained while they are taught. Who’s the culprit? Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer, and any TV show or video that claims to be educational. It might teach your kids some facts, but it also teaches them that in order to be taught, it must be entertaining! If it doesn’t jump around and sing and dance, then it’s really not worth your attention. Students learn to ignore what does not amuse them. Maybe because I’m a first generation TV watcher (I grew up watching TV and my parents didn’t), I can still concentrate, take notes, and retain the information from a teaching session (although my limit is a 3 hour stretch) and not expect to be entertained and amused through the class. Why is teaching as entertainment bad? It’s all about the grades and how cool your teacher was, not how about how much you learned and how much you can apply that knowledge to your career or life. Postman’s book talks of a professor who is a favorite among his students because of his entertaining classes. He has a few standard gags that he says “get them everytime” like when he gets to the edge of the chalkboard, he keeps writing onto the wall, or when talking about molecules, he goes bouncing off one wall all the way to the other wall and bounces off again. Wow, who wouldn’t like that teacher? Would his students remember what he taught or just the gags? There is a difference between engaging and entertaining your students. Either that or all teachers should get a vaudeville certificate along with their teaching certificate.

TV and print have both brought us amusement; what can we do about all of this?

• Read to your kids, let them see you read too, and limit the amount of TV that they can watch and that you watch. Read the Bible. Have family Bible studies and talk about God’s word with your kids. People of the Word need to show that the Word is important. Read all kinds of books to your kids — just prescreen them and see what is right for your family and particular kids. If you need some extra help with this, Honey for a Child’s Heart by Gladys Hunt and Honey for a Teen’s Heart by Gladys Hunt and Barbara Hampton are excellent resources.
• Talk to your kids about the books they read. Relate their lessons and stories to other books and your daily life.
• Have a family bookclub. Use your boys’ natural competitiveness to see who can read — and report on — the most books in the summer.
• See what summer reading programs there are at your local library — one year, before #1 could even read (I read to him), we got a free In-n-Out burger for reading something like 10 books. Teach them how to find books in the library and later how to research topics that interest them, so they will be ready to do research on their own projects and interests.
• Talk to your kids about how to learn in school and how to study. One term in high school, we had an entire elective class on how to study at my prep school. It was a little redundant to me, but there are always tips that you never thought about. Admit to them that not all topics that they are required to learn are fun or entertaining, but they may still need to know the skills or foundational knowledge taught; if nothing else, pay attention and do well enough to get a better than average grade because grades are important too.
• Talk to them about what TV is and what kind of role you think it should play in your family’s life. At times when they can’t watch TV, if they say they are bored and can’t find anything to do, have a list of chores ready; they’ll magically find other things to do like play with some toy they got for their birthday 2 years ago and haven’t touched for a year and a half — and they will enjoy it!

You’ve heard “I’ll believe it when I see it,” but in Charlotte’s Web (1952) by E.B. White, Charlotte says (of her spun messages to save Wilbur) “People believe almost anything they see in print.” What do you think? Forgive my verbosity, but after all, this blog is titled Blogorrhea.

Inspired by my baby sis…

1) Minesweeper for speed. Hours can evaporate in a blur. You haven't really played minesweeper until you have beat either 5/30/100 seconds in Beginner/Intermediate/Expert. But when you get into the zone of right-drag-left-clicking efficiently, it's like dancing with logic!

2) Ice Cream. If I had to choose between a lifetime with only ice cream vs. a lifetime with all other kinds of desserts except ice cream, it would be no contest. I can do without cakes, pies, cookies, donuts, brownies (except in ice cream), chocolate (except in ice cream), … you get the point. I sometimes wonder if I tried to survive on only ice cream whether I would die of malnutrition before I got tired of it. In a pinch, chocolate milk (guzzled at the rate of about 32 oz / 32 seconds) is a decent substitute.

3) Lounging on the couch with T, watching Movies(/TV) that are innovative, not formulaic. For instance, Intacto, Bubba Ho-Tep, Twelve Monkeys, Pulp Fiction, any movie by David Mamet, the Coen brothers, M. Night Shyamalan, or Charlie Kaufman, Spaced, The Simpsons, Scrubs, Freaks & Geeks, My So-Called Life, The Office (The Office), My Name is Earl, Lost, etc. (I could keep going, but I don't want to get carried away here). Also lately (should probably be higher) discussing theology and interesting books with T (books on classical education, culture&religion, postmodernism, etc.)

4) My own software. Ditto to dad's sentiments in his own #4:

I knew after writing my first program in 1982 that seeing your own software run and be useful is strangely satisfying. Still is – but all the more so when the useful software is for your own personal benefit.

BTW, my first program (in BASIC) was also pretty close to 1982. Lately, I've been getting much enjoyment out of Perl and C++ STL. Watch Blogorrhea for an upcoming post "Code is Poetry"

5) Things kids say, that show there's something going on upstairs. Like the other day when #1 asked whether the name "Obi Wan Kenobi" was Spanish because the a in "Wan" matched what we explained to him about the simpler treatment of vowels in Spanish (as opposed to in English, where it would probably rhyme with [bcdfjlmprtvy]an, as opposed to the two other sounds a can make by itself, not to mention dipthongs). I told him there were actually many languages that use the same single sound for a as Spanish (I was thinking of German). His response, "OK, then I guess it's Latin." And back on the bike to continue around the block. Kudos to home-school-marm T, who is the only possible way this 5 1/2 year old could possibly know anything about Latin and its relationship to Spanish.

I don't know if the "organizers" of today's "Day Without an Immigrant" activities knowingly borrowed their title from the movie "A Day Without a Mexican" (see also the short film by the same director, especially the user comment at IMDB), but it appears that they do share the same self-defeating premise.

A while back, when T & I watched the movie, I was hoping for a thoughtful examination of what would happen if our crutch of cheap, illegal labor was kicked out from under us. Instead, the movie depicted the disappearance of all SoCal residents with Mexican blood, descending into pointless hysteria in reaction to a phantom bloc of bigots that hates Mexicans, legal or il-. (The movie centers around the only Mexican left, a woman whom the media turns into a freak show, and who is distraught because her continued existence is a denial of her Mexican-ness. <SPOILER?> Turns out she was adopted, but when she opens herself to her true Mexican-ness, she too vanishes. It was so touching, I almost cried, but then I realized it would be wasteful in light of our perpetual water shortage.)

Today's events display the same schizophrenia, with immigrants both legal and illegal encouraged to stay home from work/school (or not, depending on which activists you listen to), but definitely not to buy anything. So even if there is an economic impact from today (first thing this morning, I already heard an "organizer" lowering expectations in an NPR interview by saying "even if there's no economic impact, the point is we've made ourselves heard…") what am I supposed to say? "Well, immigrants, y'all got a point thar, I retract my earlier position that we should revoke green cards and recent citizenships and kick furr'ners out the country"? There is nobody, even in the furthest, xenophobic, Pat Buchanan Right, that is against Legal Immigration. Today's protests and boycotts are opposing a threadbare strawman with barely a body, not to mention a brain.

I wish somebody would produce an honest remake, "Day Without an Illegal Mexican". I wish today could have been a well-organized, fully-supported "Day Without an Illegal Immigrant". As a matter of fact, let's stretch it from a day to a week or a month, even a year! I welcome a little well-deserved economic consequence. In the spirit of prevailing relativism, the preponderance of lawbreakers is held up as a reason not to enforce the law. Well, millions of Americans (including myself) speed on the freeway on a regular basis. But by signing on the dotted line of the drivers license application, we all officially recognize that we are subject to penalties if we're caught. And if there were a massive crackdown on speeding, well guess what, I'd take my lumps, pay my fine(s), and conform my behavior to the law. If there are myriad businesses/industries who would be devastated by removal of their illegal labor, well, that's what they get for profiting from illegal labor! (Wasn't the abolition of slavery devastating to the cotton industry?)

Call me naive, but I would like the opportunity to pay fair-market price for a basket of strawberries harvested by workers getting paid a wage an American would be willing to work for, rather than a price subsidized by the exploitation of cheap, illegal labor (and while I'm being naive, I wish the U.S. would stand up for freedom and human rights, and issue a boycott against China).

Anyways, let's hear it for the true legacy of Day Without an Immigrant: Day Without Traffic Congestion.

A while back, I gave an elder at my church a copy of Doing Our Own Thing. Yesterday (probably in retaliation, and certainly an escalation!), he gave me a copy of Jacques Ellul's The Humiliation of the Word, which he termed "a long, hard read", and knowing a little about the reading proclivities of that assessor, I'm probably in trouble.

The book is apparently about how our society has reached a dangerous imbalance between image and word, such that we have even come to have a contempt for the word.

So far, I have only read the back cover, the preface, and three pages, and I have already had my mind blown by two new concepts:

God chose language as the means of communication with man, not image, which is why idolatry is a sin.

Is there such a great difference between trying to represent God with an image, vs. trying to represent him with language? I guess since the language of the bible which represents God is God's language, that makes it ok. And we are to continue in that example.

Reality is visual; Truth is verbal

This statement startled me at first (since it appears to be a postmodern / deconstructionist divorcing of reality from truth), but I'm starting to warm to it, as the expression of two sides of a same coin — or maybe two parts of the same elephant. This makes me think of the difficulty of teaching a math student how to prove. Novices all make the common mistake of thinking they can show that something is true by example. I.e.

The sum of even numbers is even

We look at 2+2=4, we look at 2+4=6, we look at 1234+5678= xxx2, etc., and we think we have it figured out. That's reality. We have seen it, we have seen it enough that we believe it. But that is not proof; we have not nailed it down completely as truth. Not until we verbalize as

By defintion, an even integer is twice some other integer, so

even + even = 2n+2m = 2(n+m) = even

do we have a proof, a handle on the infinite truth behind the finite number of realities that shaped our understanding.

That's all I got for now, but I'm looking forward to a long, hard read.

This morning on NPR there was a short feature on a Korean immigrant describing why her marriage is more affectionate than is common among other traditional or immigrant Koreans.

The story can be read and/or heard here, although it is disappointing to note that the high point of the story (for me anyways), is omitted from the written version.  The web text says

As a child, she had seen very little affection or tenderness in her home.  Lee decided she wanted her marriage to be different from what was customary in Korea.

But in the audio version, we learn that Mrs. Lee was inspired to have a different marriage by the example of American missionaries (?Bob and Arva?) Pinkston.

I always say that I perceive NPR to be less biased than CBS, but I wonder if here is some liberal bias showing through NPR’s usually polished veneer of objectivity.  Could the writer of the web-summary of the audio interview not wrap their minds around the concept that Christianity (which everybody knows is completely misogynistic) defines marriage as mutual sacrifice and self-deprecation?  Could they only hear the story in terms they could understand — in terms of a woman fighting the good feminist fight against an oppressive, subjective patriarchal tradition?

So anyways, listen to the audio if you have the bandwidth.  Ideology aside, the written summary isn’t as sweet and personal as hearing the story in her own words.