Trying to Be a Good Citizen!

Sometimes all you can do is lead 'em to water. The rest is up to them.

Case in point: Last week I received a regular updates from the City of Sioux Falls, which included information about today's municipal elections. Since the community occasionally flirts with the idea of "super precincts" and otherwise is given to play around with polling locations, I thought it best to follow a provided link to make sure we're still in the same place.

We are, but I noted that the address of the neighborhood school was wrong. The list of polling places said it's on South Fourth Street, but in this town there ain't no such animal. Streets run east-west; avenues run north-south, so you'll never find an address on South Forth Street. The proper venue is South Fourth Avenue. Not an issue for us veterans, but newcomers might be confused.¹

So I, civic-minded as always, quickly dashed off e-mail to the entities indicated at the bottom of the list, viz., the County Auditor and the City Clerk.

In reasonably short order I received replies from each of them, thanking me for bringing the error to their attention.

And today comes another update from the city, with the link to the list of precinct polling locations...and the still-wrong street for Longfellow School.

Well, to be fair, both the County Auditor and the City Clerk merely thanked me for my efforts on behalf of clarity and accuracy; neither of them said anything about correcting the error.

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¹Indeed, anyone attempting to find number 1116, east or west, on Fourth Street in Sioux Falls will quickly find himself on the wrong side(s) of town entirely. In other places I've lived--specifically, Omaha--numbered streets and avenues conveniently run parallel, meaning you'd never be more than a block off if, say, someone told you Fourth Street instead of Fourth Avenue. Not so here. Another oddity of Sioux Falls' street numbering system is that the center of town is said to be the intersection of Phillips Avenue and Ninth Street, the location of City Hall. All well and good, but it confuses the heck out of people who are used to cities where, say, 1116 South Fourth Avenue would be found near the corner of Eleventh Street and Fourth Avenue--when in Sioux Falls it's on Fourth Avenue between Nineteenth and Twentieth streets. You gotta have your wits about you if you're going to drive in this burg.

Something New Under the Sun!

Here at last is something that's never happened in my experience. Let me know if it's befallen you.

I am, as is my custom, wading through my various e-mail accounts, when a message from my wife pops up in my Yahoo account. I click on it, of course, and the message displayed is an ad from HP Home & Home Office Store. I assume that I clicked on the wrong line in the message queue, but note that there is no "previous" link even though my wife's note, being the most recent, was at the top of the list. Back to the message queue, where I observe that the HP message is actually three messages down the list from my wife's, making it pretty unlikely that I clicked on the wrong line. Try, try again...and here's the HP message again!

Weird, yes?

Back to messages, where I click on the HP message, and am rewarded with the latest Nikonians Newsletters, a message that appears four places down the list from the HP message.

So I close the tab in which I had Yahoo Mail running, create a new tab, re-enter Yahoo Mail...and presto! everything is working again.

Just when a guy thought he had seen it all...

Surveying the Surveys

Occasionally I enjoy taking online surveys. I don't consider them terribly significant--by their very nature, they are not scientific, although I'm not sure that's all that important when it comes to product or lifestyle questions--but some of them can be interesting enough, and most of them feature some kind of point-earning scheme or enter you into a drawing that you'll never win, which makes it fun. Sort of. Beats playing solitaire, mostly.

But having written more than a few surveys in my time, I'm often amazed at the poor writing, illogical questions, and just plain sloppiness that often makes it through to the respondent. I can only conclude that the proofreading department at some of these research companies has been downsized out of existence. And that they don't have a handful of volunteers take the survey before they unleash it on the public.

I've written of this before (Survey says huhn??,), when a survey dated 10/8/08 asked me if I felt "the new president's administration is doing enough to fight unemployment?" Note that 10/8/10 was nearly a full month before the 2008 election (11/4/08) and more than three months before the inauguration. There was no "new president" in October 2008!

I pointed that out to Harris Interactive, and never received a reply.

Which is why I won't bother to share these survey oddities with the various companies that perpetrated them. But I will share them with you!

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This snippet is from a longish "lifestyle" survey that I took a few weeks back:

The problem is one of consistency. The only "abstinence" answer option given is "I do not smoke," but three of the five products it asks about are "smokeless" products. Since the question is about "tobacco products" and not smoking, a more properly worded option would have been "I do not use tobacco products."

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This snippet is from a customer-satisfaction survey following my recent stay at a Day's Inn:

The problem here is dumbness. Sorry, but I have grown weary of supposedly professionally produced publications, signs, and, yes, surveys whose creators can't be bothered to educate themselves about the difference between it's (a contraction, usually for it is and occasionally for it has) and its (a possessive pronoun indicating belonging, as in Every dog must have its day). I used to be more patient about such things, but this is so widespread, and so wrong, and so easy to figure out, that I can no longer do but immediately relegate the perpetrator of such dumbness to the Chowderhead file and move on.

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And finally this, from the same customer-satisfaction survey:

As you see, I did not complete this portion correctly. I foolishly assumed that since I indicated that I had paid my tab with American dollars it was unnecessary to indicate also that I did not pay it with Canadian dollars! What was I thinking?

Seriously, does it make any sense at all for me to have to tell them that my room cost me $90.00 US and $0.00 Canadian? Which, after all, turned out to be the "correct" way to complete that section. Is there any instance in which my stay would have cost me, say, $45.00 American and $46.33 Canadian? Had I completed the section in such a fashion, would anybody on the other end even have noticed?

Given the survey crafters' issues with its and it's, I would assume not.

Good advice in putting together instruments such as surveys (indeed, good advice for any piece of instructional writing): Give it to someone else, someone out of the loop but whose opinion (and, more important, intelligence) you value. If they turn up puzzled, go back to the drawing board. Repeat as necessary.

Two Oddities

A couple of strange things in my electronic world...not unsettling, not even annoying, just strange:

First: A couple of weeks ago ShareThis made an update to its nifty service. Since I use ShareThis as my primary sharing mechanism (to Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and Diigo primarily, and often as a quick way to e-mail links to my far-flung correspondents as well), I was excited at the prospect of the update. Which, for the most part was worthwhile. Early on I had an issue with Twitter: Basically, nothing would happen. But if I chose "More Sharing Services" from the menu, I could share to Twitter in a sideways fashion. I reported it to the Proper Authorities, and was told that a bug fix in the next day or so should address the problem, which it did. Great.

But ever since then, something peculiar happens if I share something to Facebook and am not logged in to Facebook: My browser window rolls up to about two inches in height, and won't "unroll" back to full size until I either log in or cancel. After which a simple click on the green button (Mac OS X) and I'm back to normal. Well, my browser window is, at least. If I'm logged into Facebook already and share something via ShareThis, the collapsing window doesn't occur. Weird, no? Hasn't seemed worth reporting to ShareThis, but I am curious if others have encountered anything like this. I'm using Firefox 3.6.2.

Second: I noticed toward the end of last week that I wasn't getting e-mail from The Washington Post--not my daily news update, not my Opinions e-mail, no breaking news, nothing. Went to my account and everything there is as it should be. I even clicked the "update" button, just for kicks. But nothing. (No, it's not suddenly routing to my spam folder. Why do people always ask that? Am I the only one who checks the contents of his spam folder before hitting the "empty" button?) When I'll get around to it I'll swap a different e-mail address for the one they've been sending stuff to for all these years and see if that breaks the logjam. Strange, though, when something that's always worked suddenly...doesn't.

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A Lot of Candles

Today is the 103rd birthday of my grandfather Paul Bryan Reynolds, who died in 1987. I'm not sure why the date sticks with me--I would, for instance, have to look up the birthdates of my other grandparents--but it does, to the point that I realized signing a bunch of car-purchase papers three years ago that it was the old boy's 100th birthday. The memory is an odd thing.

Here's a couple of photos. The first, undated, is my grandfather as a young man. Looks like it might have been a work-related photo.

And here's one that I imagine was taken perhaps 25 years later, including, from left, Grandma Reynolds, Mom, Great-Grandma Reynolds, Grandpa, yours truly, and Dad. My guess is that it was taken in 1957.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go round up 103 birthday candles. And a lighter. One of those long-handled jobs, I think.

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"Did You Know?"

A friend e-mailed me the link to this video; the person who originally sent it (it was one of those fwd: fwd: fwd messages displaying about two dozen previous recipients' addresses) made this comment: "Sony Corporation played this video at their executive conference this year.. Caution: It may leave you a little breathless ----."

I don't know about "breathless," but it is very interesting and extremely well done.

"Somebody's Not Paying Attention" - UPDATED

In re the previous post: 

MoveOn.org seems to have given up on Stephanie; she is not included in their latest list of undecideds at http://bit.ly/9Nizyv.

Somebody's Not Paying Attention

Amazingly, MoveOn.org keeps sending me e-mail about my state's sole delegate to the House of Representatives, like this one this morning:

Dear MoveOn member,

The big House vote on health care reform is scheduled for Sunday, and Rep. Herseth Sandlin is one of the key votes needed to pass the bill.

But she still hasn't publicly said how she'll vote.1 And it might come down to a single vote.

Rep. Herseth Sandlin's office is getting bombarded by calls from both sides, so a quick visit to her office is the best way to break through the noise and remind her what's at stake on Sunday.

Rep. Herseth Sandlin has an office right near you in Sioux Falls. Can you print out a flier showing the tremendous impact that reform will have for residents of South Dakota, and drop it off before the end of the day TODAY to ask her to vote yes on reform?

Yes, I'll stop by Rep. Herseth Sandlin's office today

No, I can't make it

The office is located at:

326 East 8th Street
Suite 108
Sioux Falls, SD 57103

Passing health care reform would be historic. It would lower costs, expand coverage to 32 million Americans, end insurance company discrimination for pre-existing conditions,2 and be the biggest deficit reduction measure in 25 years.3

The flier shows, in detail, what health care reform would mean for families, young adults, small-business owners, and hospitals in your area. It will remind Rep. Herseth Sandlin that reform is not just an abstract concept or a political battle—it would have a profound impact on real  people in her district. She needs to see this handout before she makes up her mind.

Please make time today to visit Rep. Herseth Sandlin's office. You can download the flier and get all the information you'll need here:

http://pol.moveon.org/finaldropby/?office_id=14&id=19455-6895690-R4nuDkx&t=3

Thanks for all you do.
–Kat, Joan, Daniel, Michael, and the rest of the team

Sources:

1. "Hoyer Likes CBO Numbers, Sees Health Vote on Sunday," NPR, March 18, 2010

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=87083&id=19455-6895690-R4nuDkx&t=4

2. "CBO: Health-care reform bill cuts deficit by $1.3 trillion over 20 years, covers 95%,"
The Washington Post, March 18, 2010

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=86994&id=19455-6895690-R4nuDkx&t=5

3. "CBO: Health bill would cut $138 billion from deficit in 10 years," The Washington Post,
March 18, 2010

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=87002&id=19455-6895690-R4nuDkx&t=6

After a message from MoveOn.org a week or two ago, warning me that Herseth Sandlin was being "targeted" by the GOP in her re-election bid, I sent them e-mail in which I basically said, "So what?" It's my opinion that Herseth Sandlin, whom I previously supported with enthusiasm, has proven to be a DINO who votes the wrong way on every important piece of legislation (credit-card reform? Vote to protect the big banks. Health-care reform? Vote to protect the big insurance companies), fails to support the president, and behaves in every respect like a Republican. My take: I'd rather have a genuine Republican in that seat than a name-only Democrat.

Obviously ignoring my wisdom, MoveOn.org now sends me today's message. Which is bizarre on a couple of levels.

For one thing, la Stephanie has made it very plain on more than one occasion that she intends to vote against health-care reform. Again. I heard it from her own lips the other day on South Dakota Public Broadcasting Radio (used to just be South Dakota Public Radio, but for some reason now it's always rendered "SDPB Radio"); it's been repeated in the local rag here and here, the latter in fact being an AP report. Which I presume the folks at MoveOn.org would have access to.

So what makes them think that she "still hasn't publicly said how she'll vote?" It's bizarre.

Bizarre too is the footnote MoveOn.org supplies after their assertion, number 1 above, which links to an item on NPR's website that doesn't mention Herseth Sandlin at all. It's as if someone felt there needed to be a citation there and just threw in a quasi-related article. Maybe they don't think anyone ever reads the footnotes. (Note ye well, Jim Wunsch, that I listened to you 30+ years ago when you railed at the class for ignoring the footnotes! I still believe, as I told you at the time, that if stuff's really important it should be in the body of the text and not the bottom of the page, but I took your rant to heart and have kept it there ever since.)

Anyhow, I don't know where MoveOn.org is coming from -- the Land of Wishful Thinking, I suspect -- but I do know that unless my Congresswoman has some sort of road-to-Damascus experience in the next few hours and winds up voting on the right side of history, I shall have cast my last vote for her. I believe I have provided her more than enough rope; it remains only to be seen what she intends to do with it.

Opportunity Lost?

We received this e-mail today from the financial aid office at our daughter's college, Augustana College:

ATTN: Parents of Augustana students who receive the South Dakota Opportunity Scholarship:

2010 South Dakota Legislative News:

As you may have read or heard, funding for the South Dakota Opportunity Scholarship is on a list of proposed cuts being strongly considered.

Under the proposal, $2 million of the scholarship funding would be replaced by funds from private donors. Legislators have been advised by the Board of Regents that the possibility of donor support for this state-funded program is minimal. If the $2 million is cut, the scholarship program is in jeopardy. It is anticipated that awards to students will be cut in half or perhaps eliminated.

We want students and parents to know that this change is under consideration. If you feel strongly about this issue, we urge you to contact your local legislators regarding this issue immediately. The Legislature is expected to act on the final appropriations bill tomorrow (Friday, March 12).

Please paste this link into your browser to gain access to email contacts: http://legis.state.sd.us/who/index.aspx

Well, naturally, that's upsetting on a couple of levels. First, of course, our daughter obviously is a recipient of the Opportunity Scholarship, and its loss certainly would be felt.

But second, we spend a lot of time in this state worrying about our talented young people scampering off to find opportunities elsewhere. I'm pretty sure that's why they call it the opportunity scholarship.

Without getting into the question of exactly who was sleeping at which switches, causing the state to be thrown into a vast pit of red ink, and understanding that hard choices must be made, blah blah blah, one does have to question the long-term wisdom of encouraging young people to seek opportunity somewhere else. Actually, one doesn't have to question the wisdom, for it is patently unwise. Whittling away at one of the
mechanisms designed to encourage the upcoming generation to stay, work, and contribute here will have the effect of causing them to seek opportunities elsewhere.

I've already contacted my legislators to encourage them to do what they can to preserve the South Dakota Opportunity Scholarship. If you live near my ZIP Code, I encourage you to do likewise.

Alright, Already!

Some people need to decaffeinate.

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Said, and Done

This is a long screed, even by my standards. Some background must be painted first:



For the past eight and a half years I have been Communications Director for the South Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), an organization that uses the word "synod" in the sense of a diocese or district office. It's been a good gig and I've mostly enjoyed it, especially in the past couple of years as I've been able to expand more into digital communications efforts as opposed to Yet Another Newsletter.



That all came to a screeching halt a little more than a month ago, however, when my position was eliminated because of significant budgetary shortfalls. (And not just me: Since my departure, one of my former co-workers is also now everyone's former co-worker; and another has been cut to one-quarter time. Nor are they out of the woods yet.)



Why the budget crunch? In the main, is has to do with a vote taken at the ELCA's national gathering--Churchwide Assembly, in their parlance--last August. First they dopted a Social Statement, "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust"; then, as if that wasn't bad enough, the voting members adopted a set of Ministry Policies Resolutions that, among other things, committed the ELCA to finding a way for people in "publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders of this church."



Meaning: If an ELCA congregation wishes to call a pastor who is a "practicing" homosexual, it's okay with the home office. Previously, gay or lesbian pastors were expected to be celibate, same as unmarried heterosexual pastors. (You can read the summary on their website.)



At that point, something that may be accurately described as all hell breaking loose occurred. A small but astoundingly noisy contingent decried the action as a repudiation of Holy Writ and began a concerted effort to rouse the rabble and move away from the heresy enacted by their church's governing body forthwith. The biggest noisemaker in this scenario was and is an outfit that calls itself Lutheran CORE (COalition for REnewal). They've done an excellent job of keeping pots stirred, fires stoked, and emotions at fever-pitch.



It's no stretch to say that my final six months (as it turned out) with the synod largely were devoted to helping my boss, the local Lutheran bishop, calm people down. Our message was unwavering: There's a lot of ground to be covered before anyone really knows how everything will sort out, and it's easier to burn down the building in the heat of passion than to build it back up again. Plus, no matter what policies and procedures are ultimately worked out, no congregation will be forced to call a pastor they don't want.



And usually our efforts--pastoral letters, video messages, resource materials posted to the website--would indeed have the effect of getting people to calm down and take a couple of deep breaths.



Which Lutheran CORE couldn't have, of course. Calm, reason, thoughtfulness--these are not the sorts of things you can launch a revolution from! The CORE organizers have been very good at keeping the coals raked up.



One of their tactics has been to convince individuals and congregations that they should withhold their giving to ELCA, since ELCA is the bad guy who's wrecking "their" church. Unfortunately for me, the traditional path of money to the ELCA is collection plate -> synod -> ELCA, so withholding contributions to the national organization meant withholding contributions to the local office. Thus the budget shortfall.



It's been nice working with you. Here's your water wings.



Now, at this point, I no longer have a dog in the fight. I care about the fate of my friends back at the office, but I no longer have a professional stake in the organization's future. Shoot, I'm not even Lutheran! However, I did dedicate nearly a decade of my life to the enterprise, and I am the sort of person who takes pride in his work. So to see it all crumbling down because of self-righteous, self-centered bigots is pretty galling.



So too is the fact that the people behind Lutheran CORE have displayed complete indifference for the pain and suffering that they are causing throughout their church. (And beyond: Sooner or later budget shortfalls will inevitably affect the work that the ELCA does around the world.) It's completely understandable, of course: They're having loads of fun strutting around, holding secret meetings, organizing task forces, and, generally, biting the hand that feeds them. (At the time of my leaving the synod's employ, the number of local pastors who had resigned from the ELCA roster because of their much-vocalized disgust at its heresy was exactly zero. That's the same number of them who had removed themselves from the ELCA health plan in protest. And as for the number of them who had disassociated themselves from the nasty ELCA's pension plan? You got it: Zilch. Can you spell "hypocrisy?")



And so it is that I was rather peeved when a blog post on the Lutheran CORE website popped up in my Google Alerts (which I set up to keep tabs on news about or affecting my erstwhile employer and have not yet canceled) a couple of weeks ago. The post, "ELCA taking hard line against those who dissent from actions on sexuality or redirect benevolence giving" is a long one, which you can read here.
The part of it that ticked me off is this offhanded bit:

Many ELCA congregations have chosen to redirect their benevolence giving away from the ELCA churchwide organization because they believe the actions of the assembly violate the clear teaching of the Bible and the ELCA Constitution which states that the Bible is “the inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm of (the church’s) proclamation, faith, and life.” The changes in benevolence giving have resulted in some cuts in churchwide and synodical budgets. (Emphasis mine.)

Some cuts. See, that's all it is for them, for they have nothing on the line. They take no risk, they suffer no consequences. Some cuts. Like, we'll cancel the daily deliveries of fresh tropical fruit and designer water. Oh, and we can all share just one limo to and from the office, can't we? After all, "some cuts" must be made, yes?



Expletive!



So I jotted a comment to the blog post, which was written by an acquaintance of mine. I predicted at the time that the comment would not be approved for posting to the blog, a prediction that to date has been accurate. I also opined that there was a 50-50 chance that I would receive some kind of acknowledgement or reply outside of the blog, which has not happened either. But that's okay. I have a blog too, after all.



Here's the comment I sent:

Let's call things as they are, David, for once. "The changes in benevolence giving have resulted in some cuts in churchwide and synodical budgets"--what we mean by "some cuts" is that real people are being really hurt by the callous indifference of those who love their church so much they can't wait to rip it to shreds. Self-aggrandizing and self-serving pastors who exhort their congregations to withhold funds from the ELCA and the synod have the direct effect of putting people out of work.



I am one of them. And neither the first nor the last.


This bizarre obsession with what other people hundreds or even thousands of miles away may or may not be doing with their body parts has had a very real and very painful effect on me and my family. But it seems that all of these "concerned" pastors are far too busy unzipping to see who has the biggest theology to care about who gets hurt by their posturing and posing.



Is that your idea of "church?" Is that your idea of "Christianity?" If so, you are welcome to them both.

It really is quite astounding to me how eager these people are to destroy that which they keep referring to as "their" church. Of course, they see it as saving, not destroying, but that's because they have let their collective Messiah Complex get out of hand. Only they see what's going on; only they can lead the charge to save "their" church. Anyone who disagrees is as best deluded, at worst evil. For only they know, absolutely and without doubt, what God wants. Only they can properly interpret the various obscure Bible verses that may or may not apply, therefore any other interpretation must perforce be wrong. See above in re deluded or evil.



In this funhouse-mirror view of things, they are not hate-filled, stone-hearted bigots. God is! And as good God-fearing Christians, they must of course carry out his narrow-minded, prejudicial agenda, yes? So don't blame them--they're only doing what God wants!



Such tiny, narrow boxes "believers" insist on cramming their God into, no? In that regard they are in fact no different from the ancient pagans, who attributed to their gods the full range of human shortcomings and foibles. Human beings are prone to anger, suspicion, anxiety, pettiness...stands to reason their Creator must be too!



It is more than a little telling that, in the course of their incessant talk about the desires and intentions of the Creator (which are stunningly in sync with their own desires and intentions), one small possibility never seems to occur to them:



Maybe they're wrong.



A great many of these folks insist long and loud that God "never changes," that the Bible is his immutable word and that it too is immutable and not subject to interpretation except by themselves to their own ends. To the latter: Nonsense. The Bible is and always has been wide open to interpretation. The idea that its contents--whatever importance one chooses to give them--are invariably crystal-clear, straightforward, and self-explanatory is sheer silliness. Were it true, there would be no need for the mountains of books about the Bible; no need to annotated editions of the book. There would be no point in Bible study, if the Bible is as clear-cut as some insist, for there would be nothing to discuss; one might just as well hold discussion groups on the owner's manual for a toaster. There certainly would be no reason for homilies and sermons, were the Bible verses on which they are founded so transparent that anyone could read and understand them as easily as the instructions of a tube of toothpaste.



To the former: It has always seemed to me that God is all about change. Golly, doesn't the Bible make that clear? He seems to be all about throwing out the old and ushering in the new. Did not he send his son to establish a new covenant? Or was it merely to review the terms of the old one? From the first line of Genesis, it's all about upsetting the apple cart, shaking up the status quo, changing things! Strange, then, that religion puts such a high premium on tradition, on precedence, on fossilization. It seems to me another example of human beings creating God in their own image, of building a nice, safe, matchbox-sized container for him, cramming him in here, and insisting it can be no other way. For to contemplate any other way is scary.



In that context, then--God as the elemental agent of change--it seems not impossible that the Creator is doing what he does best, viz., stirring things up. I have more than once had the thought that it may be that the Creator has decided that Creation is at the right point to deal with a new idea, that it's okay for people to be different. Perhaps God has decided that humanity has reached a point in its development where it can and should and must begin to accept the fact that sexual orientation is just one tiny little part of the whole being, and in turn accept the fact that homosexual individuals are, well, acceptable. This would indicate that God has a higher opinion of humanity than I do, but that would come as no surprise.



Why would God think that this is the time, given the hatred, suspicion, and downright inhumanity that humanity displays? Beats me. If he does so think, presumably he has his reasons.



And if he does so think, then all of those "Christians" working so hard to "save" their church are in fact positioning themselves as speed bumps in God's plan. If God wants change, as I believe is possible and even likely, then what does that make those who are standing in the way of change?



Which would fit into my opinion that these people who are so determined to make sure that the other is kept out, that only like-thinking, right-minded, "pure" people are admitted, have been so deluded and turned inside out by Old Scratch that they honestly think they're gloriously marching to God's drumbeat when in fact they are pitching for the other team. The idea that God wants bigotry, hatred, and exclusion as the foundation of anything done in his name is ludicrous. Old Hob, on the other hand, would find such building materials right up his alley.



And that's why I believe that ultimately any new church body created by Lutheran CORE is doomed to fail. Well, one of the reasons:



First, whatever they may develop would be an institution founded on negativity, an institution founded to be opposed to something--in this case an acceptance of people who sexual orientation is different than what we like, which makes it different from what God likes, which makes it wrong--rather than to put forward any nurturing, meaningful, or enlightening ideal.It would be an undertaking founded on the notion "We are right and everything going on around us is scary and wrong." It would not be the first such undertaking, and it's unlikely to be the last. But even to a cynic such as yours truly, it's hard to imagine that there is that large a pool of frightened, hate-filled people to sustain the enterprise, much less that the pool will continue to grow. It seems that the best and most successful human endeavors are established on principles of advancement, improvement, forward-thinking--not retrenching, insulation, parochialism.



Second, and perhaps most important (given my cynicism), is the apparent nature of those leading the charge to their shimmering new future: They strike me as angry, frightened, smug, self-aggrandizing malcontents. Such personalities, in the long run, make poor leaders, for sooner or later, and probably sooner, they will be disappointed. It is inevitable, for being disappointed in other people is a cornerstone of their existence. They are in a constant state of anticipation of the next slight, the next brush-off, the great disappointment. So all will be skittles and beer at the outset, for they will be free of the heretical oppression of the ELCA, happily swimming with others who think and believe and look like them, everybody in lock step doing the Right Things and thinking the Right Thoughts, and it will be good.



But these are human beings we're talking about here, folks, and eventually one of them will have a Different Thought! And then it will be beer and skittles no more. It will in fact be Great Disappointment. And again it will be Sturm und Drang all over again, and distrust and suspicion and accusations and ill-will and on and on. For that is the nature of such people. They have already demonstrated that they cannot and will not accept different ideas. They have already demonstrated that they cannot and will not accept the doctrines of live and let live or to each his own or agree to disagree. Why would we expect them to suddenly change their stripes once they've succeeded in tearing apart their old church in the pipe dream of building their new, shiny, better one? There is no reason to think that the first instance of disagreement or discord will not cause the entire endeavor to re-fracture and the cycle to repeat itself ad nauseam.



But knowing that their efforts are doomed to collapse on them gives me no pleasure, for the ultimate failure will occur only after thousands of people, maybe more, have been hurt.



And as is always the case, it will be all the wrong people. It already has been.

Another Handful of Quotations

A few that have been gathering digital dust for a few months. Many if not most come from the wonderful newsletter A Word a Day.

Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc., and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons. -Douglas Adams, writer, dramatist, and musician (1952-2001)



Silence is the severest criticism. -Charles Buxton, brewer, philanthropist, writer and politician (1823-1871)



I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us. -Konrad Lorenz, ethologist, Nobel laureate (1903-1989)



The best armor is to keep out of gunshot. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)
 

The doubts of an honest man contain more moral truth than the profession of faith of people under a worldly yoke. -Ximenes Doudan, journalist (1800-1872)



We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)


God is usually on the side of the big squadrons against the small. -Comte Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, writer (1618-1693)



No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. -Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)


Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt. -Clarence Darrow, lawyer and author (1857-1938)



Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. -Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian (1892-1971)


A good leader can't get too far ahead of his followers. -Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945)



Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits. -Dan Barker, former preacher, musician (b. 1949)


Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth. -Fyodor Dostoevsky, novelist (1821-1881)



Who breaks the thread, the one who pulls, the one who holds on? -James Richardson, poet, professor (b. 1950)


We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old -- reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism is negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)



I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes. -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)


There will be no Homeland Security until we realize that the entire planet is our homeland. Every sentient being in the world must feel secure. -John Perkins, economist and author (b.1945)



Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right. -Martin Luther King, Jr.


I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust, which accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed and unintimidated inquiry. -Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961)



A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born. -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., poet, novelist, essayist, and physician (1809-1894)


In other countries poverty is a misfortune -- with us it is a crime. -Edward Bulwer-Lytton, writer (1803-1873)



What you cannot enforce, do not command. -Sophocles, dramatist (495?-406 BCE)



Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)


Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? -Douglas Adams, writer, dramatist, and musician (1952-2001)

Some People Can't Be Helped

I have written previously about my often vain attempts to help people who erroneously send e-mail to me. For every person who graciously responds and offers appreciation for having been informed they have the wrong address for whoever they're attempting to contact (sometimes another William Reynolds; sometimes, oddly, not), another half dozen or so do not. And, worse, they continue to send me e-mail that is clearly intended for someone else. (See here for the sad tale of my trying to let a Mary Ann Reynolds's friends know they didn't have her proper address.)

Today's adventure stands as another shining example of some people's boundless stupidity, and how even the most well-meaning of nice guys (me, for instance) can't rescue them.

I happened to be online this morning when e-mail popped into my Yahoo account from someone named Sandi with the subject line "Training Certificates - 1-21-10." Something made me think it wasn't spam, so I opened it. Obviously it was intended for some other William Reynolds (not, alas, a unique name) who had attended a seminar with the enticing name "Basic Math for Water Operators" last month in Illinois. Being, as previously mentioned, a well-meaning nice guy, I immediately dashed off a note to Sandi to inform her that she had the wrong Reynolds.

No reply, but I wasn't surprised. As I mentioned above, that sort of thing happens constantly.

But a fellow wishes that people would at least pay attention. For a little while ago here comes e-mail from Sandi with the subject line "Sales Receipt from Illinois Section." And, sure enough, attached is a PDF receipt for the other Reynolds's seminar fee.

Too bad the invoice didn't include Mr. Reynolds's e-mail address; I might have still been nice guy enough to e-mail him that I've tried to help him out but have met resistance.

But there was no such address, and I have once again reached the end of my nice-guyness. I tried, my conscience is clear, and if people are too busy sending e-mail to incorrect addresses to check their own e-mail alerting them to their mistake, well, what can I do?

This is what that guy means when he says you can't fix stupid.

On the plus side, I have instructions for printing out a certificate to show I successfully completed  Basic Math for Water Operators, which should look cool on the old résumé.

Guess I'll Find Something Else to Do Tomorrow

I hate it when you can't golf just because

A. It's South Dakota B. It's February C. There's like two feet of snow on the ground D. It's raining and turning over to snow and ice overnight

Also, when did the TV weatherpersons decide to start using "overnight" as a noun rather than an adjective, as in "rain turning to snow during the overnight." During the overnight what? If the idea is to save effort (avoiding the drudgery of having to say "the overnight hours," for instance), the why not simply say "rain turning to snow overnight"...thus saving three whole syllables!

Anyhow, golf seems to be a bust. Curling, anyone?

Ode to a Coffee Maker

My coffee pot, it seems, is shot.
It once worked fine; it now does not.
I shouldn't complain -- I've used it a lot.
It was pretty good, now it's not so hot.
And I know what comes next: I've got
to start the search for a replacement pot.

Two Years On. Or So.

Here's a great old photo I came upon this past week whilst cleaning out an old desk at my folks' house. It is your humble correspondent and his dad, taken, I would judge, in the spring of 1957. (Clues: I was born in December 1956, I am obviously not very old in the photo, I am not particularly bundled up but Dad is wearing a long-sleeved shirt so I suspect a warm spring day and not a hot summer day.)

I love those old scallop-edged snapshots; I wonder why they did away with them. For that matter, I wonder why the scallops existed in the first place--purely decorative, or was there some other purpose?

According to the Minnehaha County Coroner, my dad died two years ago today, January 31. But it has always been a date pulled from the air. I found my dad in his bed on February 1, 2008, when he failed to turn up for our weekly luncheon. He lived alone, so who is to say whether he died before or after midnight? 

(Had the bureaucratic coin-toss landed on the other side, we would not have had to refund his February Social Security payment. Thanks a bunch, county!)

When my mom died, we knew with certainty the date, for my parents, as was their custom, had been up till the wee hours of February 7, 2003, going to bed well after midnight. No question marks there at all.

But with dad...well, there's always just that little bit of mystery. Is today the anniversary? Or tomorrow?

To be safe, I shall drink a toast to him this evening and again tomorrow.

Department of Unhelpful Advice

Here's the fine print on a recent piece of e-mail from MyPoints (which I like pretty well, except when they do things like send me a link to a survey, which, when I follow it, then informs me that I have already taken the survey. Which would be a pretty neat trick since it arrive in my mailbox literally minute before):

In other words, Mac user, don't be a Mac user. If you want to do business with us, you should switch to an inferior operating system that you probably don't care much for (seeing how you're a Mac user and all), because that's way easier for us than to have to program our stuff to be cross-platform.

Thanks, MyPoints, but no thanks. After 25 years on the Macintosh, it's far more likely that I will drop you than the Mac.

Indeed, one of the little silver linings in my having been recently downsized out of my job of the past nine years (first hired, first fired, I guess) is that I no longer have to work in Windows on a daily basis. It's been a constant nuisance to have to dive through various hoops to accomplish that which could be done on a Mac in a fraction of the time. (How often did I bring things home to do on the Mac in an hour rather than spend an afternoon trying to accomplish the same things in Windows?)

On the subject of MyPoints: The gist of the service is that they send you e-mail; usually you get a few points, which you collect and spend on stuff later on, for clicking the link to the sponsor's website and reading their material, taking their survey, whatever. You get additional points for following up on their offer or completing the survey or what have you. (You also can log into MyPoints and shop their vendors via their website, amassing points in that fashion, too.) The system works well, and some of the offers have been useful. But it seems to me lately that a greater-than-usual number of offers don't include the points-for-reading feature. If you buy you get points, but you get no points for merely following up on the offer. A sign of tough economic times?

And despite the disclaimer reproduced above, I have almost never had any trouble with MyPoints from my Mac platform. Once in awhile a survey sponsor will insist that I have to access their site using Internet Exploder on a Windows POS computer. Not so; I have the option of clicking the close button, and I avail myself of it.

That, I think, produces the "best results."

I Know Several People Who Could Stand to Read This

C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity (1952):

Finally, though I have had to speak at some length about sex, I want to make it as clear as I possibly can that the centre of Christian morality is not here. If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronising and spoiling sport, and back-biting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither.

A good many people of my acquaintance seem to think that sex is indeed the center of Christian morality, as well as everything else, and I hold them directly responsible for the abrupt elimination of my position with the local Lutheran synod.

Nor has it escaped my attention that most of these people--most, though not all, pastor--decry "society's" overemphasis on sexuality and yet themselves seem incapable of talking about anything else. Merely an observation.

Playing God?

Here's a fun story from the Telegraph:

Russia plans to stop asteroid crashing to Earth

Russia wants to send a spacecraft to knock the large Apophis asteroid off a possible collision course with Earth.

The ambitious plan envisages the co-operation of Nasa, the European and Chinese space agencies to pull off a mission with echoes of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Anatoly Perminov, the head of Russia's space agency, said it would assess the difficulties of knocking the asteroid Apophis out of harm's way.

The 885-foot-wide asteroid was first discovered in 2004. Astronomers estimated the chances of it smashing into Earth in its first flyby in 2029 were as high as 1-in-37, but have since lowered their estimate.

The rest of it is here.

Now, setting aside for the moment the fact that I already saw this movie, I am left with the same question I have whenever I read about this sort of thing, viz., do we know for a fact that it would be a good idea to stop an 885-foot-wide asteroid from crashing into the Earth?

Sure, it sounds like the sort of thing we should take on. But here's the thing: My chums on the right-wingnut fringe of society keep insisting that stuff like stem-cell research, cloning, genetics research, unplugging a dead person's respirator, etc., etc., is wrong because it's "playing God." And they always say that as if it's a bad thing, playing God, although, I dunno, I can certainly think of worse examples to imitate.

But let's go along with the idea that "playing God" is a bad thing. And let's skip over my usual question, namely, "Don't we 'play God' much if not most of the time?"...like, say, every evening when I take my cholesterol medication without the slightest thought given to whether God wants my HDL to go down and my LDL to go up, or whatever's supposed to be happening. We'll leave all that for another day.

But back to the asteroid Apophis: How do we know that God hasn't sent it hurtling toward Mother Earth because that's how he plans to end the world? To my knowledge, most religions preach some kind of end-of-days scenario, however vague or specific they prefer to make it. Maybe Apophis is it!

Maybe this is supposed to happen!

And maybe our attempt to prevent it from happening is, well, "playing God." Which, we previously agreed, is a bad thing.

At this point you might say, "Well, you know, if God wants this to happen then it will happen. Nothing we can do to thwart God, after all."

To which I say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, there, buckaroo! How come you're not so sanguine about, say, genetics research? Or cloning? I mean, if God doesn't want us monkeying around with those things, either, then can we not safely assume that all the effort will simply come to naught and we have nothing to worry about?"

One might--might!--almost form the opinion that it's only "playing God" if it's something of which we disapprove. Otherwise it is both hunky and dory.

So, first thing we need to do is get Bruce Willis. He knows how to handle asteroids.

2009: Looking Back

A short video I made via Animoto.com. Happy New Year!