Board Games and the Values They Teach Children

Steven Johnson argues that modern video games are far superior for teaching children than classic board games, such as Candyland, Battleship, or Sorry:

What’s irritating about the games is that they are exercises in sheer randomness. It’s not that they fail to sharpen any useful skills; it’s that they make it literally impossible for a player to acquire any skills at all.

[snip]

I hadn’t thought about this until I actually played the game again last week, but there is absolutely nothing about the initial exploratory sequence of Battleship that requires anything resembling a genuine decision. It is a roulette wheel. A random number generator could easily stay competitive for the first half. But even when some red pegs appear on the board, the decision tree is still a joke: “Now select a co-ordinate that’s next to the red peg.” That’s pretty much it. Yes, at the very end, you might adjust your picks based on your knowledge of which ships you’ve sunk. But for the most part, it’s about as mentally challenging as playing Bingo.

For older children, Johnson's logic certainly rings true. But for young children, say five of six years old, these games teach how to follow a step-by-step procedure, even if there is no strategic decision involved in it: flick the spinner, count the steps, move the piece, and follow the resulting instructions. That may be automatic for adults, but can be a serious mental exercise for young children.

At any rate, these games based upon random chance teach children that their lives will be dominated by forces utterly beyond their control. I can't think of a more useful concept to learn early on in life.



HT: Neatorama

City Dreams

A new Pew poll notes that a majority of Americans would rather live someplace else than where they are now. In particular, people who live in cities would prefer to be out of cities:

“City residents disproportionately are more likely than people living in other types of communities to say they would prefer to live in a place other than a city,” Morin says. “Fewer than half of all city residents say there is no better place to live than in a city.”

A smaller proportion of women express the desire to live in the nation’s largest cities. “Women are less drawn to big cities,” says Robert Lang, co-director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. “It could be safety.”

I used to have romantic notions of small town life. I've lived in two small towns, one of 20,000 and one of 2,000. The latter, Lake Butler, Florida, permanently cured me of this Mayberry-ish view of life in rural America.

This is the impression that I've gathered: small towns are more political than major cities. If 1 out of 100,000 people in a major city is an elected official, then 1 out of 100 is an elected official in a small town. And all of these officials, in small or big communities, have roughly the same destructive power.

Allow me to put this gently: politicians are scum. I have limited experience, but what I do have indicates that there is a certain personality -- a devious and manipulative one -- that goes into politics, from President to down to City Commissioner. This personality, if given a choice between being a small fish in a big pond and a big fish in a small pond, chooses the latter. Prestige is very important, if not critical, to this type's happiness.

And the smaller the town, the more likely you are to have contact with such people. Like the rabbi's prayer for the Tsar in Fiddler on the Roof, I say "May God bless and keep the Tsar -- far away from us." In a big city, this distance is a far greater than in a small town, where you are stumbling over politicians in the produce aisle of the supermarket -- all of whom know you by name.

I would much rather lead a quiet, anonymous life, choosing who I wish to associate with, rather than being forced into political relationships for which I have neither the time nor the inclination.

It is often easier to have privacy in the midst of a crowd of strangers than in a small group, which is why I prefer city life.

All of which is not to say that there are not good people in small towns, or that it is impossible to be happy in one. But there are real dangers to small towns, and in them, participation in informal, social politics is more mandatory than it is in a big city.

I am content where I am, but there is a city that I have thought of for a while as being ideal. I've never been there, but I am attracted to it from what I have read: Las Vegas.

It is a relatively young and fast-growing city. And Reason magazine recently declared Las Vegas to be the free-est city in America. It has an attitude that is both libertarian and libertine. As much as I have no desire for the libertine pleasures of Las Vegas, I am attracted to the middle finger that Las Vegas extends to the rest of the world. I want to live in a city that will give me a job and leave me the hell alone. From what I have read, Las Vegas sounds a lot like it.

Back when I was doing the Methodist Blogger Profile series, I used to ask the question that I will now pose to you, my readers.

Where would you most like to live -- other than where you do now?

HT: Instapundit

Updike ignorance being remedied

I have a confession: I have never read anything that John Updike (March 18, 1932 - January 27, 2009) has ever written. That is, until now. With the news of his death, I decided that I should at least read a couple of his novels and see for myself what I think. Today at the library, I picked out two novels from the collection (set aside in special display in his honor), and plan on reading them next week while I am on vacation.

I don't know if anyone thinks he deserves consideration for the greatest English fiction of the last century, but I anticipate that I will enjoy the two I selected (The Witches of Eastwick and In the Beauty of the Lilies) as a nice diversion from the kinds of things I might normally read. I expect Pulitzer winning authors to at least write in a style that I will find engaging . . .

I am intrigued by this quote I read in the NY Times obituary linked above:

“My subject is the American Protestant small-town middle class,” Mr. Updike told Jane Howard in a 1966 interview for Life magazine. “I like middles,” he continued. “It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.”

What motifs should I be looking for as I read Mr. Updike for the first time?

My New E-mail Address

I have a new e-mail address for blogging purposes. It is zeraygazette at yahoo dot com.

Madam, If I Were Your Husband, I Would Drink It

Daniel Freedman writes about Prince Harry off-color joking with a fellow soldier and writes that when political leaders act offensively, they need to be more witty about it:

The real shame about the inappropriate utterances coming from royals and politicians these days is how boring they are. It used to be the case that if you were going to offend, you’d do it with a touch of class. Churchill, as with most things in British politics, led the way. The day before he delivered his famous Iron Curtain address at Fulton, a ceremony was held dedicating a bust of him. When a buxom Southern lady told him, “Mr. Churchill, I traveled over a hundred miles for the unveiling of your bust,” Churchill gallantly responded: “Madam, I assure you, I would gladly return the favor.”

Many more amusing historical anecdotes follow.

The Decline of the Miss America Pageant

Laura Vanderkam writes about the declining interest in and ratings of the annual Miss America pageant:

But the biggest challenge, by far, has been the public’s declining interest. In the late 1960s, Miss America was one of the top-rated broadcasts each year. In 1996, NBC dropped it because of low ratings. ABC picked it up, then declined to renew its contract in 2004, effectively kicking Miss America off network TV.

There are many theories about the pageant’s decline and, in 2002, I offered my own in a USA Today column: “Once, the competition at least had pure Sports Illustrated-swimsuit-issue appeal,” I wrote. “Now, it’s a search for a girl who’s pretty but not overwhelmingly pretty; talented, but only in a parlor-after-dinner way (usually she sings or plays the piano); intelligent, but not dangerously so; and who will feign interest in the most politically correct cause imaginable.” As I said then, “the pageant has become a search for the nation’s most inoffensive woman.” There are a lot of bad TV shows out there these days, but even so, I doubt that concept would make it off the napkin and into production minus an 88-year history.

My wife would, with all justification, not approve of me watching a show that constituted leering at women. But with even that consideration aside, I've always found the Miss America and Universe pageants incredibly boring.

All the women look exactly alike: the same dress, swimsuit, hairdo, and vacuous smile. They're so similar to each other that they're not attractive.

Beauty is found in individuality, not uniformity.

A Ray Charles surprise

For Christmas, my brother gave me a boxed set of Ray Charles tunes, and I have been slowly soaking them up. Much to my delight, I heard the RC version of You Are My Sunshine, a song that I sing in its traditional form to my daughter as a lullaby. It has become an instant favorite of mine! The video here is a nice tribute to Charles set to his version.




What is your favorite Ray Charles song? Or what is your favorite rendition of a song in a style different from its original genre?

If Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Was an Italian Opera

...it would be even cooler. And I've never said that about an opera.

Question of the Day

Should marijuana be legalized?

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice Restored to Its Original Text

Way back in library school, I once read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to impress a girl. It worked, and I got two dates out of it. But the book was an awful tedium, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone...until now.

Editor Seth Grahame-Smith as published Jane Austen's masterpiece as it was presented in the original manuscripts:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen’s classic novel to new legions of fans.

HT: Neatorama

Maybe I Should Get an iPhone

I barely use my own cell phone. Really, I only keep it on me for emergency purposes. But this Saturday Night Live commercial makes a good case for having and advanced, multi-function device like the iPhone.

[Video Link]

Question of the Day

Do you think that anthropogenic global warming is real?

Weekend Music: Code Monkey by Jonathan Coulton

[Video Link]

Hello, Florida Conference Cyberstalker!

Good morning, 65.32.43.217! How is Lakeland, Florida, headquarters of the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church?

Here is a picture of the building from which you are reading my blog ever 2-3 hours for the past few weeks.

I've been there. It's a pretty building. It must be nice to work in it.

How am I doing? Thank you for asking! That is so nice. Well, I had a chocolate-covered donut this morning. It was yummy. It was just the right start to the day.

So anyway, I am aware that I am being watched closely by Bishop Whitaker and his henchmen. Perhaps filing that complaint against him upset him.

Be aware that I am also watching you.

Getting Older

Jockeystreet on fatherhood:

I sold my gear.

My 1974 Kramer fretless bass. My amp head. My processor and pedals. My funky Ovation bass. I've offered out my remaining bass speaker cabinet, am just waiting to hear back.

Thousands of dollars of equipment. Thousands of hours of playing, recording, playing the part of the up and coming rock star.

For the last couple of years, most of that stuff has just been sitting in the back of a big closet.

I finally let it go. I needed that storage space in order to get things out of the living room.

So that I could make room for toys. Specifically, for a very small table with very small chairs (decorated with monkeys and elephants), a toy kitchen, and a pile of cardboard blocks.

Life is just awfully damn weird.

Question of the Day

In a movie about your life, who would play the lead role?

Great Art, Simpsons Style

Munch's The Scream and other classics at The Aviary. HT: Neatorama

Question of the Day

How would you construct the perfect sandwich?

The Modern Academy

In the latest issue of City Journal, classics professor Victor Davis Hanson writes about the erosion of the study of the humanities and traditional university education in American campuses:

Over the last four decades, various philosophical and ideological strands united to contribute to the decline of classical education. A creeping vocationalism, for one, displaced much of the liberal arts curriculum in the crowded credit-hours of indebted students. Forfeiting classical learning in order to teach undergraduates a narrow skill (what the Greeks called a technê) was predicated on the shaky notion that undergraduate instruction in business or law would produce superior CEOs or lawyers—and would more successfully inculcate the arts of logic, reasoning, fact-based knowledge, and communication so necessary for professional success.

And good riddance to it.

If I were eighteen again and graduating from high school, I would not have majored in history in college. In fact, I would not have even acquired a 4-year degree at all.

Instead, I would have gone to a community college and acquired an associate's degree in computer technology in a track that would qualify me a network administrator upon graduation. It would not only have saved me tens of thousands of dollars, but earned me more money than my frivolous explorations of medieval Europe, the Latin language, and Biblical studies ever did or could.

Studying the liberal arts expanded my mind and made me ask important questions. And when you get to be an old man of thirty-three years like me and reflect upon one's choices, transcendent truths shine consistently through the dark years.

When I look at all that I have seen and experienced, I think that only one grand thing really matters in life: money.

I've long been drawn to causes, professions, and issues that make the world a better place; that contribute to a greater humanity. But this has all been foolishness and a waste of my youth and opportunities. These were all delusions that led me astray. All that matters is the security of me and mine, and that comes from money, and the power and freedom it purchases.

It's like John Lennon sang "Money is all you need." Or something like that.

One Sentence Stories

Here's a great blog composed entirely of reader-submitted stories that are only one sentence long. A few of my favorites:

I didn't recognize the voice or the number, but the message said, "I just thought you might like to know I'm pregnant."

Thank you, guard rail.

Our first kiss tasted of Lucky Charms.

Here's one of my own:

My lawyer was having a hard time convincing the jury that the man in the Chuck E. Cheese outfit really did appear to be drawing a gun out of his vest.

Add your own in the comments. Unlike One Sentence, I won't claim your stories as my intellectual property.

HT: Neatorama

UPDATE: As I read through the addictive archives, I've found this online anthology to be remarkably similar to Post Secret -- another blog that you should be reading weekly, if you aren't already.

Question of the Day

If you could recommend one book for President Obama to read, which would it be, and why?

Caption Contest

Previous contest winner


Via I Has A Hot Dog

WINNER: Rocks Alive: ...and yet his vlogs still make more sense than anything on YouTube.

On the Abnormality of the Church

When my church was hijacked by Karen Sutherland and her clique, I did not immediately wake up to the disaster that was Christianity. It took me many months to process all that had happened to me, and I am still doing so. I did not wake up one morning and realize my grand error. It was a gradual process to "grow wiser", as the Hayek quote in my header advises.

As the cult-like environment of the Church around me receded, I began to see more clearly. I began to realize how abnormal the Church was. That, at least, is the term that my wife and I began to use to describe our experiences in the Church.

This is still a bit hazy, so I have organized this post as a list of thoughts rather than a clearly-composed essay, but here goes:

1. The Church does not sanctify people; it profanes them.
That sentence was hard to write as I struggled to find an antonym for "sanctification", but that is what I saw in the Church.

There's probably some variation, but in the United Methodist Church, in general, there is no sanctification of members. On the contrary: Church is an accountability-free zone for members.

I saw members engage in the most outrageous behavior that would have, had they engaged in it at work, gotten them immediately fired: wild temper tantrums, overt lying, malicious gossip, and flagrant politicking.

But Church is a job that you can't get fired from. Most United Methodist congregations are so desperate for members that they will tolerate any behavior other than serious crimes at Church. Practically speaking, there's no way to be thrown out of Church -- and pastors know that they need every warm body in a pew or on a committee that they can get. A member has to really, really screw up before a pastor decides that it's not worth having him around, and become overtly dangerous before a pastor decides to get rid of him.

And so members often adjust their behavior to fit this environment. If they behaved so destructively at work, they would get fired. If they did so at home, they could lose their families. But at Church, they can relax all of their behavioral inhibitions. They can do as they please because they know that there will be no consequences. In this manner, Church is like a brothel; it is a place where you can do just about anything, so as long as you're willing to pay for it.

[No offense is intended to any prostitutes who may read this blog and be offended by that statement.]

To a much lesser extent, this was my experience with some clergy as well. At the DCOM meeting, members directly refused my attempts at reconciliation and reason. They explicitly denied that they had any obligation to act with justice. A couple even started yelling at me.

Now they would never dream of treating their parishioners this way. After all - those parishioners might leave, and then who would replace them on committee assignments, or worse, the collection plate?

But with a mere candidate -- a person lower than shit on the bottom of a rock -- and behind closed doors, they could do as they wish. They could take out their frustrations with the world on a candidate. After all, what can a candidate do but sit and take the abuse in silence? The conference room thus became an accountability-free zone.

But as I said, I did not see such rampant clergy misbehavior as I did among laity.

In the social environment of the Church, I saw people enabled to sin, rather than encouraged to sanctify. I even began to suspect that some people were attracted to Church membership only because it was a place to be unaccounatble, or a place to gain power over other people.

The Church is supposed to make people better. Instead, I saw it make people worse.

And that's seriously fucked-up.

2. The expectations placed upon candidates are beyond absurd.
So after Karen Sutherland hijacked my church, I faced the DCOM. Upon the advice (read: pressure) of the District Superintendent, they delayed my candidacy a year and instructed me to get counseling. The counselor -- one approved of by the committee -- would write a letter to the DCOM reporting on how well I did in counseling.

So let's sum up: my candidacy would be delayed for a year. During that year, I would be unemployed. Also, the Church told me to get counseling. Which I would have to pay for myself.

Does anyone else see the problem here?

I went through two counselors, the latter of which was fantastic. And both were absolutely shocked when I told them this. They were astonished that I was not only out of a job courtesy of the Church, but that I was expected to pay money for the counseling that they told me to get. And be active in ministry during this time of financial insolvency.

When I saw the shocked expressions of both counselors, I began to realize how absurd was the burden that the Church had placed upon me.

I found work -- eventually. What was so shocking about it was that I was not abused, manipulated, or slandered at the workplace. I was treated with respect and human decency -- in a completely secular workplace with co-workers who had no faith among them beyond a nominal Christianity.

I kept on waiting for the abuse to happen. It never has. Which is not to say that secular workplaces cannot be abusive and destructive -- far from it. But the Church had led me to expect work to be abusive and full of lies and manipulation. I had come to expect such things as normal.

But they were not.

I have learned that I don't have to be abused to have a job, and I sure as hell do not have to be abused by fellow Christians in order to fulfill some mission from God. That was a false idea -- a burden -- that they put upon me. Scriptural passages about persecution by the World on Christians were misinterpreted to excuse the inexcusable behavior of Christian leaders as somehow acceptable, if not praiseworthy, because the Bible spoke of it happening.

And I've shrugged that burden off my shoulders for good.

But back around to the main point of this section: the way that the (United Methodist) Church treats candidates.

For my current job, I was flown out for the interview -- at the expense of the firm -- and interviewed for half a day. They paid for it, and they treated me cordially. It was a challenging interview, but there were no mindgames, as one oft encounters in candidacy interviews.

Two weeks later, I was offered a job. And for a salary that would have probably taken me 20 years as an ordained elder to acquire.

By contrast, the Church: go to seminary for a 96-hour master's degree, write hundreds of pages of candidacy paperwork, go to interviews with committees and power brokers for -- at a bare, theoretical minimum -- 7 years, all of whom will amuse themselves with mind-fucking you.

All at your own expense.

At the end of this process, provided that you do everything right and make no foes whatsoever, you will get a high-stress, high-abuse job that pays $40K a year, and does very little to make the world a better place.

No, thanks.

I know -- it's supposed to be a holy calling. But that was certainly not how my DCOM viewed it. These and my deeply corrupt District Superintendent and blatantly dishonest Bishop were the "holy men" who were supposed to be my leaders.

If there was some sort of holy calling in all of this, I don't see it.

And eventually, I woke up from the delusion that it was.

Shoot, let's say that my DS hadn't been a crook, or the Bishop and DCOM weren't willing to sacrifice me to cover for his screw-ups. The UMC candidacy process still would be a seriously fucked-up institution.

(Yes, I say 'fuck' now when appropriate. If it's a sin, it's an utterly insignificant sin in comparison to what which I have been a victim of.)

Here's what they don't tell you in seminary: there's a reason why the UMC makes the ordination process so arduous -- reams of forms to fill out and essays to write, candidate files "accidentally" lost en route to the Conference, faulty instructions "unintentionally" given to candidates -- for years and years on end.

Here's the reason: the UMC wants candidates to drop out of the system. I mean, with fewer and fewer churches to assign pastors to, the UMC has far more candidates than they have churches. So it creates a system that will induce so much irritation, annoyance, and frustration so that many candidates will drop out and the system won't have to deal with them. The rest will be ordained.

And that, ladies and gents, is abnormal. Deeply and profoundly abnormal. This is a very, very bad way to hire personnel at any company. But this is the way of the (United Methodist) Church.

The only thing more abnormal than the candidacy process is the fools who are willing to go through it. And it is only now, months later, that I have begun to realize how foolish I was to sign up.

3. The Church, if it can, will suck the life out of you.
I've written about this before. But it's been even more my mind this weekend.

I've had a three-day weekend because today is a holiday. And it occurred to me that I couldn't remember the last time that I had a three-day weekend. And barely a regular weekend.

That's because, as a Christian, my spare time was always devoured by the Church. Even long before seminary, my evenings and weekends had some sort of Church activity involved. I never stopped working.

Sometimes it was working for God, like visiting a parishioner in jail. But most of time, it was working for the Church. It was just some tedious task that kept up the institution of the Church for its own sake.

This morning, when many Christians would be in church, I sat in my pajamas with my dog in my lap and watched episodes of The Venture Brothers. I wasn't rushing around a church building doing some task. I wasn't reading some vitally important seminary assigned reading on Orthodox trinitarianism.

I wasn't busy. I had my life back again.

Sure, the Church talks about "Sabbath", but doesn't really mean it. I remember getting brochures in the mail from the Conference advertising "retreats" at various camping facilities. But these were really seminars on spiritual topics lasting all fucking day. If I'm going to retreat or have a sabbath, I want a cabin in the woods with a door mat that says "Go Away" in bold letters. Or I want a quite house and a DVD of Hogan's Heroes.

I sure as hell don't want work disguised as play.

I work a 40 hour/week job, have a baby to take care of, work out everyday and still have a bit of seminary, and I still have more time on my hands than I know what to do with. That excess time is what the Church took from me.

The Church will tell, directly or implicitly, to members that they must work a full-time job, take care of their families, do daily devotions, engage in a Bible study, worship every week, and engage in some significant work (not "ministry", but work) at the Church, and give 10% of their income to the Church, or they're not being faithful to God.

I vividly remember one Church member who often skipped Sunday morning services to go visit a friend who was in prison, Sunday being the only non-family visitation day at the prison. For this, she was deemed an uncommitted Christian.

That's fucked up. That's abnormal.

And that is the Church.

Now I've been beating up on the Church a lot lately, and I wish to express that not everyone in Christendom is evil incarnate. Far from it. Many Christian bloggers in particular have been supportive and kind. Many of them have stridently acted as Jesus Christ would.

I even have friends in the Florida Conference who would have stood up for me, but I kept them away so that they would not suffer retaliation for being a friend of mine.

But that doesn't redeem the Church. And it doesn't make the world of the Church less abnormal, less freakish, and less reasonable than it has been.

The Church is too isolated by its internal logic, too unaccountable for its unreasonableness.

The only thing that I can suggest is to get up and leave. That's what I did.

A couple of months ago, I mentioned that I was developing a set of personal laws. One of them, inspired by some profound statement uttered by my father years ago, is this:

You're always a slave to someone -- but try to have as few masters as possible.

I used to have three masters: my employer, the UMC hierarchy, and the seminary. They were my masters because they had the power to financially destroy me at will.

Now the UMC cannot control me. Seminary is almost over, and even if they found some reason to pick a fight with me (say, at the behest of the Bishop), I doubt that they would want to tangle with me having seen the havoc I have unleashed in the Florida Conference.

Soon, I'll be down to one master. One that demands only my work, not my soul, and pays me well for it.

And that, unlike the Church, is normal.

UPDATE: John Meunier writes about this post:

Every DCOM and candidate for ministry should read it. It should be talked about by men and women in positions of authority.

Thank you, John. I'm flattered. John continues:

John’s description of his experience may be one-sided; it is certainly not charitable to those who he feels have wronged him. His report may even be wrong. But tell me you have not heard candidates and young clergy who say things that hint of some of the things he is raging about here.

And if there are problems in the ordination and clergy accountability systems, can there be any doubt that we have deep problems throughout the church?

Can we ask hard and truthful questions about our own polity? Do we?

Is true discernment going on? Is true accountability in place? Do we speak the truth? Is the structure serving the mission of the church?

Do we talk about these questions enough?

Evil Plan Generator

This could save me quite a bit of time on a daily basis. It's a automatic idea creator for evil overlords.

It's so simple! I've just now freed up a half hour of time every evening. I wonder what I should do with it now.

HT: Neatorama

Another Jockeystreet Classic

Wordsmith Jockeystreet has crafted another masterpiece. I'll still ruminating over it, and so have no comment. But go and read.

Question of the Day

When I started shaving at the age of 14, I used disposable two-bladed Gillettes, just like my father did. I usually wore some form of razor burn until about five years ago when a friend gave me a Gillette Mach 3. I've used it ever since. The three blades get everything in one or two strokes, it's easily washed out, and the flexible blades and hinged head make it a very accurate razor.

I also have a Schick Quattro, but I find that the closed back to the Schick prevents me from effectively cleaning the blades between strokes, and the excess width makes it less maneuverable in tight corners.

So I still use the Mach 3 as my razor of choice.

What do you shave with?

Poofread You're Writings

I know that at some point, about a year ago, I linked to slam poet Taylor Mali's excellent beating of post-modernist epistemology.

Here's another short performance by Mali on the subject of proofreading written materials.

[Video Link] HT: Grow A Brain

The Inevitability of Facebook

Over in Slate, Farhad Manjoo writes about that strange group of misanthropes that slithers amongst us: people who refuse to join Facebook.

I am among these, the 21st Century’s unwashed.

Manjoo interviewed several people who refuse to join Facebook and asked them why. Among them was one person who gave the same reason that I do:

Finally, I heard what must be the most universal concern about Facebook—I don't want people knowing my business! Kate Koppelman is a 23-year-old New Yorker who works in the fashion industry. She was on Facebook all through college, and she concedes that the site has many benefits. And yet, the whole thing creeped her out: "I had friends from back home knowing what was going on with my friends from college—people they had never met—which was weird," she told me. "I found friends knowing things about what was on my 'wall' before I'd had a chance to see it—which was also weird." Koppelman quit Facebook last year. She still uses it by proxy—her roommates look people up for her when she's curious about them—but she says she'll never sign up again.

I want to control the people who enter into my life: who and what they know about me. I don’t want my ex-girlfriend from college finding me. I don’t want that cretin of a roommate who said that he would be so much more successful than me – and turned out to be completely correct – to find his suspicions true. And I certainly don’t want the woman who hijacked my church or the Florida Conference public relations people (I can check IP addresses, folks), knowing what I’m up to now. Cracked magazine joked a few months ago that most of the people on Facebook from your past are just trying to show you up or play head games. And this strikes me as quite plausible. I don’t want to be stuck in high school, college, or even just a few months ago. I want to live today.

And, for that matter, I don’t have much today that I really feel like sharing with the entire world (my exit from ministry and organized Christianity being a notable exception). I started a MySpace page a year and a half ago (under my first name, but quite deliberately, not my last name) when I became a pastor and published it in the church bulletin, but I found that there was nothing I really felt like sharing. I wanted my private business to remain private. This is essentially the same approach that I take with this blog. I rarely write about myself, and usually only in character.

My wife was once compelled to create a Facebook page for a former employer in order to join the workplace Facebook group – and was shocked to see her fellow employees sharing intensely intimate information about their lives on their pages. But Katherine prefers to keep her private life private, and so had little to write about. My MySpace page was rarely updated on the exact same grounds.

I have no interest in being famous (although infamous might be interesting), and so have for several years consciously tried to keep myself invisible on the Internet. A Google search for my name reveals virtually nothing, and whatever information appears must be carefully sorted from that of my more famous Google twin. I prefer it this way. I want to, as much as possible, control who is in my life.

But as Manjoo notes, it is increasingly unavoidable to have your private life public. So I’m going to join Facebook. I’ll use the controls that will restrict access to my page, as Manjoo suggests, but these are really inadequate for the degree of Internet invisibility that I desire.

Under a pseudonym, starting in 1998, I began friendships with great people through Watership Down role-playing groups. This experience, as well as my blogging persona known as “John the Methodist” or “Rabbit John” was a fun way to mediate Internet social networking interactions with the rest of the world, but it has reached the limits of its effectiveness.

Internet social networking is no longer just a fun, optional, and pseudonymous way to connect with people. It’s becoming increasingly mandatory for living in the 21st Century developed world. And with its rise, privacy shall go into decline, for good or ill.

Khaaaannnnn!

Ricardo Montalban, dead at the age of 88.

Committee Facilitation Throughout History

[Video Link] Human advancement through the ages would have been faster if it had not been for committees and strategic planning sessions.

True Love Aims for the Head

Awwww! What a sweet Valentine's Day gift!

HT: DoublePlusUnDead

Art Blogging: Updating Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) was a Dutch Baroque painter famous for his scenes of bourgeois domestic tranquility from the Netherlands' golden age of wealth and empire. I've never been a fond for the Dutch Masters, as they always seemed a bit too dull. This is his painting Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid. It, like the rest of Vermeer's corpus, never really grabbed me.











Modern artist Jonathan Janson, however, has updated Vermeer by showing modern scenes in style of Vermeer. This is girl writing with a bic.














young man and computer.



You can view Janson's collection here.

HT: Neatorama

Books to Read to My Baby Girl

Just because babies have a very limited grasp of language doesn't mean that reading to them is a waste of time. I've decided to use some of my free time with the baby reading educational books to her:

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli







The Art of War by Sun-Tzu







How to Build a Robot Army by Daniel H. Wilson







How to Rule the World: A Handbook for the Aspiring Dictator by Andre de Guillaume






I Love You, Little One by Nancy Tafuri





Any suggestions to add to the list?

Caption Contest

Previous contest winner

WINNER: John Meunier: Remember, black goes on the left ear. Red goes on the right.

Question of the Day

What is your favorite alcoholic beverage from Star Trek?
	Romulan Ale
	Saurian Brandy
	Michelob
	Aldeberan Whiskey
	Bloodwine
	Kanar
	Samarian Sunset
	Chateau Picard
pollcode.com free polls

One of My Quirks

I refuse to shop at businesses that misuse the apostrophe in their primary signage.

Picture via Apostrophe Abuse, a blog dedicated to combating this widespread grammatical perversion.

Art Blogging: Brutalism

Brutalism was an architectural movement that was popular in the 1950s through the 1970s. The movement was initiated by French architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, known more popularly as Le Corbusier. The Brutalist approach was marked by an unashamed display of building functions and construction using poured concrete in a way that did not disguise the rough materials with which buildings are made. Brutalism completely rejected the classical norms of beautification and decoration for hard angles, rough surfaces, and exposed plumbing and machinery. I like Brutalism for its geometric flow and confrontational style.

My first conscious encounter with Brutalism was the Bigelow-Rice Building on the campus of my undergraduate school, Ohio Wesleyan University. It has a blunt character in its blocky slabs of poured and raked concrete.

This building is a Christian Science Church in Washington, D.C. Very pretty, in my opinion. The owners, however, disagree and want to tear it down to build a new building. However, historic preservationists want to force the Christian Scientists to keep their old building, leading to a lengthy legal battle.
Brutalism was particularly popular for institutional buildings, such as schools, libraries, government facilities, and churches. This is one of the many Brutalist libraries across the U.S. -- the Orlando Public Library. Its blunt styling makes me think of street gangs of librarians daring any passerby to start a fight.

The Cast of SpongeBob SquarePants ReDubs Classic Movies

You can hear the voices of Spongebob, Sandy, Patrick, and Squidward in Casablanca, The Godfather, and one movie that I can't identify.

[Video Link] Hat tip to Need Coffee via Neatorama

UPDATE: Video link fixed.

A Modified Pledge of Allegiance

Here's the current version:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands: one nation under God, indivisible, With liberty and justice for all."

And here's what Tom Bell (h/t) proposes as an alternative:

I pledge allegiance to the laws of the United States of America, on condition that it respect my rights, natural, constitutional, and statuory, with liberty and justice for all.

I like that. Loyalty to a state -- any state -- should be conditional on the moral worthiness of that state. In fact, we could take Bell's pledge a step further and make this public vow:

I pledge allegiance to the laws of the United States of America, on condition that it respect my rights, natural, constitutional, and statutory, as well as the rights of other people, with liberty and justice for all.

After all, a state that doesn't respect the rights of others is unlikely to respect yours, regardless of whatever loyalty oaths you make. And pledging allegiance to a set of laws, rather than a flag, is a more concrete assertion.

Questions of the Day

Are modern-day African Americans owed slavery reparations by modern-day European Americans or the United States government?


If yes, how should these reparations be paid?

I Used to Make this Mistake Until I Bought a Copy of Emily Post

Question of the Day

Do you think that sexual orientation is innate or chosen?

In Half-Hearted Praise of Lexx

I mentioned that I can sing the song Vaiyo A-O, which Theresa Coleman properly recognized as the theme song to the 1997-2001 Canadian science fiction TV show Lexx. Theresa wrote:

I really liked Lexx -- until they went weird with that last season. Like they weren't weird B4.

Lexx was, indeed, very, very weird. Singing brains, love-crazed robot heads, and apocalyptic musicals were only a few of everyday issues in Lexx. The show was wildly original and defied all norms of science fiction.

Its greatest flaw was that the writers did no substantial world-building before launching the show. Consequently, the Lexx universe was a hodge-podge of different ideas and gimmicks tossed in whenever it was time to write a new episode. This led the writers to completely re-invent the show in the third season, and again the fourth, which retroactively attempted to provide some internal consistency.

Nonetheless, the show was occasionally capable of putting out quality stories that made full use of its creators' zany approach to science fiction.

Here is my favorite episode, "Lafftrak", which is a satire of 20th Century television:


[Video Link] Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

I remain baffled as to why my wife refused to place "Xev" on our short list of baby names.

UPDATE: Bad video links fixed.

My Favorite Episode of The Outer Limits

The original series of The Outer Limits was something of a lame monster-of-the-week show. Rather unimpressive. The modern series in the 90s, however, was a majestic depiction of great science fiction stories. My favorite episode is "The Human Operators", written by Harlan Ellison. It is a tale of the indomitable human will rising up against oppression. Here's the first part.

Be forewarned: there's a nude scene. It's tasteful and romantic, like the one in the director's cut of Earnest Goes to Camp. But I thought that readers might like to know ahead of time.


[Video Link] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]

E-Mail Forwards

I'll level with you: one of the best things of not being a pastor anymore is not getting barraged with insipid and conspiracy-theory touting e-mail forwards every day -- and then getting asked to validate the honey-drenched sentiment and/or crackpot rumor therein.

Here's a satirical take on the phenomenon: a news faux program composed entirely of e-mail forwards.

[Video Link] HT: Urlesque. Related post here.

A Zeray Gazette Comedy Classic

Tired today. Go here. Now that Shane Raynor is blogging again, it's all the more appropriate.

Typo In Proposition 8 Defines Marriage As Between 'One Man And One Wolfman'

SACRAMENTO, CA—Activists on both sides of the gay marriage debate were shocked this November, when a typographical error in California's Proposition 8 changed the state constitution to restrict marriage to a union between "one man and one wolfman," instantly nullifying every marriage except those comprised of an adult male and his lycanthrope partner. "The people of California made their voices heard today, and reaffirmed our age-old belief that the only union sanctioned in God's eyes is the union between a man and another man possessed by an ungodly lupine curse," state Sen. Tim McClintock said at a hastily organized rally celebrating passage of the new law.

Read the whole article here, especially for the punchline.

Plagiarism and the Internet

Recently, the great humor blogger IowaHawk had a post plagiarized by a newspaper columnist. The Munchkin Wrangler (h/t) recently suffered the same fate thanks to a club newsletter. He asks:

Ugh. Is the new rule that “everything found on the Internet is automatically public domain”?

No, I don't think that the Internet has encouraged plagiarism, so much as it has exposed the pervasiveness of plagiarism. Internet search tools have made it much, much easier to catch a plagiarist, and I suspect that a lot of less web-savvy people have yet to catch onto this.

Lullabies

Sometimes I sing to my baby girl to get her to calm down when she's crying. But I've found that I have a limited repertoire of songs that I know completely by heart. I'm really not a musical person. So I just sing what I know all the way through, which is Edelweiss, La Marseillaise, Skullcrusher Mountain, and Vaiyo A-O. Of course, I'm working on learning something more appropriate for a baby. Certainly not "Rock-a-Bye Baby", which has really creepy lyrics.

What lullabies do you/did you like to sing to your babies, if any?

Caption Contest

Previous contest winner

Picture via Rofl Razzi

WINNER: John Wilks: From now on I see a red hat, I kill the old woman wearin' it. So run you cur. And tell the other curs the law is coming. You tell 'em I'm coming! And Hell's coming with me you hear! Hell's coming with me!

Question of the Day

What novel has had the most impact on your life?

The 100 Greatest English-Language Novels of the 20th Century

In 2000, a board of authors and literary critics created a list for Random House of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th Century. This is that list. I've bolded the works that I've read.

1. (1922) Ulysses James Joyce
2. (1925) The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. (1916) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
4. (1955) Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
5. (1932) Brave New World Aldous Huxley
6. (1929) The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
7. (1961) Catch-22 Joseph Heller
8. (1940) Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler
9. (1913) Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence
10. (1939) The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
11. (1947) Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry
12. (1903) The Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler
13. (1949) Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
14. (1934) I, Claudius Robert Graves
15. (1927) To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf
16. (1925) An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser
17. (1940) The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
18. (1969) Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut
19. (1952) Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
20. (1940) Native Son Richard Wright
21. (1959) Henderson the Rain King Saul Bellow
22. (1934) Appointment in Samarra John O'Hara
23. (1938) U.S.A. (trilogy) John Dos Passos
24. (1919) Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson
25. (1924) A Passage to India E. M. Forster
26. (1902) The Wings of the Dove Henry James
27. (1903) The Ambassadors Henry James
28. (1934) Tender Is the Night F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. (1935) Studs Lonigan (trilogy) James T. Farrell
30. (1915) The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford
31. (1945) Animal Farm George Orwell
32. (1904) The Golden Bowl Henry James
33. (1900) Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser
34. (1934) A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh
35. (1930) As I Lay Dying William Faulkner
36. (1946) All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren
37. (1927) The Bridge of San Luis Rey Thornton Wilder
38. (1910) Howards End E. M. Forster
39. (1953) Go Tell It on the Mountain James Baldwin
40. (1948) The Heart of the Matter Graham Greene
41. (1954) Lord of the Flies William Golding
42. (1970) Deliverance James Dickey
43. (1951-1975) A Dance to the Music of Time (series) Anthony Powell
44. (1928) Point Counter Point Aldous Huxley
45. (1926) The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
46. (1907) The Secret Agent Joseph Conrad
47. (1904) Nostromo Joseph Conrad
48. (1915) The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence
49. (1920) Women in Love D. H. Lawrence
50. (1934) Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller
51. (1948) The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer
52. (1969) Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth
53. (1962) Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov
54. (1932) Light in August William Faulkner
55. (1957) On the Road Jack Kerouac
56. (1930) The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett
57. (1924-1928) Parade's End Ford Madox Ford
58. (1920) The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton
59. (1911) Zuleika Dobson Max Beerbohm
60. (1961) The Moviegoer Walker Percy
61. (1927) Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather
62. (1951) From Here to Eternity James Jones
63. (1957) The Wapshot Chronicle John Cheever
64. (1951) The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger
65. (1962) A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
66. (1915) Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham
67. (1902) Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
68. (1920) Main Street Sinclair Lewis
69. (1905) The House of Mirth Edith Wharton
70. (1957-1960) The Alexandria Quartet Lawrence Durrell
71. (1929) A High Wind in Jamaica Richard Hughes
72. (1961) A House for Mr Biswas V. S. Naipaul
73. (1939) The Day of the Locust Nathanael West
74. (1929) A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway
75. (1938) Scoop Evelyn Waugh
76. (1962) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark
77. (1939) Finnegans Wake James Joyce
78. (1901) Kim Rudyard Kipling
79. (1908) A Room with a View E. M. Forster
80. (1945) Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
81. (1953) The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow
82. (1971) Angle of Repose Wallace Stegner
83. (1979) A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul
84. (1938) The Death of the Heart Elizabeth Bowen
85. (1900) Lord Jim Joseph Conrad
86. (1975) Ragtime E. L. Doctorow
87. (1908) The Old Wives' Tale Arnold Bennett
88. (1903) The Call of the Wild Jack London
89. (1945) Loving Henry Green
90. (1980) Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie
91. (1932) Tobacco Road Erskine Caldwell
92. (1983) Ironweed William Kennedy
93. (1965) The Magus John Fowles
94. (1966) Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys
95. (1954) Under the Net Iris Murdoch
96. (1979) Sophie's Choice William Styron
97. (1949) The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles
98. (1934) The Postman Always Rings Twice James M. Cain
99. (1955) The Ginger Man J. P. Donleavy
100. (1918) The Magnificent Ambersons Booth Tarkington

Notes
Lolita -- Nabokov did not so much write words as he sculpted them. The opening lines to this novel are the best that I've read anywhere.

Nineteen Eighty-Four -- Along with Animal Farm, where would our political discourse be without Orwell's vision of statism at its worst. His dire visions for the future are a rhetorical firewall that help to normalize the notion that government is a predatory menace.

To the Lighthouse -- I read it in AP English. Or rather, I read the Cliffs' Notes for them, due to the work's sheer incomprehensibility. Wolf makes James Joyce seem straight-forward in comparison.

Lord of the Flies -- Golding reminds us that we would become monstrous without social constraints and legal consequences.

What books here have you read?


What book wasn't on this list, but should have, in your opinion?

As I Always Suspected

Via Neatorama