July 9, 2008
The NFL confronts the Mismatch Problem
The pathological way in which National Football League teams annually evaluate college football players has been a common topic on this blog. So, I thoroughly enjoyed this New Yorker video (H/T Guy Kawasaki) of a recent talk by Clear Thinkers favorite Malcolm Gladwell in which he uses the NFL's new-player evaluation process as an example of a hiring practice that is undermined by the "mismatch problem" -- that is, the tendency of an employer to cling to outmoded employee evaluation variables despite the fast-changing nature of the employer's jobs.
Gladwell's point is that the nature and demands of jobs in American society are becoming increasingly complex. That complexity, in turn, drives employers to desire more certainty in making the right employment decision. However, in striving for that certainty, many employers continue to measure the wrong variables in evaluating prospects and finalizing their employment decisions. Gladwell is currently studying the mismatch problem and has some initial observations on how employers can minimize its effects. Check out his talk.
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July 1, 2008
Tyson who?
I swear, you can't make this stuff up.
The American Family Association apparently has a policy over at its new outlet, OneNewsNow, never to use the word "gay" in an article. Instead, the AFA always replaces "gay" with the supposedly more proper "homosexual."
Unfortunately for the AFA, someone forgot to check the automated changing of the word "gay" to "homosexual" when the subject of the article was Tyson Gay, who on Sunday nearly set a world record in the 100 meter sprint.
Ed Brayton has the hilarious story, and here is the Google Cache of the article before the AFA caught their blunder and changed it.
Update: By midday today, even the mainstream media was all over the gaffe.
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June 9, 2008
Aging well
Steve Winwood sounded good back in the 1960's and 70's during his days with the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic. I'll be darned if he doesn't sound even better now.
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June 4, 2008
Slugging Metro?
I'd bet that a program such as this (H/T Craig Newmark) would rival (if not exceed) the ridership on Houston Metro's light rail line.
Slugging is a term used to describe a unique form of commuting found in the Washington, DC area sometimes referred to as "Instant Carpooling" or "Casual Carpooling". It's unique because people commuting into the city stop to pickup other passengers even though they are total strangers! However, slugging is a very organized system with its own set of rules, proper etiquette, and specific pickup and drop-off locations. It has thousands of vehicles at its disposal, moves thousands of commuters daily, and the best part, it’s FREE! Not only is it free, but it gets people to and from work faster than the typical bus, metro, or train. I think you'll find that it is the most efficient, cost-effective form of commuting in the nation.
Here is the etiquette and rules of the process. Being a "slug" doesn't sound all that bad! ;^)
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May 31, 2008
I would have never guessed
That, according to this handy database, this person would have given the most commencement speeches during this current season of university graduation ceremonies.
Similarly, I would not have guessed the city in the world that is home to the most billionaires.
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May 25, 2008
Flying high
Check out what Michel Fournier is doing for fun today.
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May 23, 2008
Reflecting on the raid
The Third Court of Appeals' decision yesterday ruling that the State of Texas had illegally seized over 450 children from their homes at a polygamist West Texas ranch threw a large monkey wrench into the largest custody case in (at least) recent American history (the court's decision is here). However, the decision is almost certainly the correct one. As Scott Henson has diligently reported over the past two months, the state's case for taking such pervasive action was shaky, at best, and has clearly deprived many parents and children of their due process rights.
The appellate court concluded the state had offered no evidence that all of the children were in danger other than an investigator's vague opinion that the church's "belief system" encouraged teenage pregnancies. State investigators have identified 20 females at the ranch who had become pregnant before age 18, but most of them are now adults. "Even if one views the FLDS belief system as creating a danger of sexual abuse, there is no evidence that this danger is 'immediate' or 'urgent' . . . with respect to every child in the community, " the court observed.
As Henson has noted, Texas authorities' handling of the case has been dubious from the get-go. The state raided the compound last month after a sobbing woman called a family-violence hotline and identified herself as a 16-year-old girl who had been forced into marriage at the compound. Authorities never found the girl and now believe the call may have been a hoax. Then, at a mass custody hearing in mid-April that can only be described as a gross miscarriage of justice, one of the state's chief witnesses testified that he did not really know whether the young girls and boys removed from the ranch truly had been in danger. Given that context, the appellate court's decision is not surprising.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, it is difficult not to feel a profound sense of sadness over the many women and children who are subjected to a stifling existence at the Eldorado compound by a relatively small number of sexual tyrants who hold sway over them. Anthropologist Lionel Tiger addressed the genesis of the cruelty recently in this Wall $treet Journal op-ed:
The fact is that, despite all the blather about faith and freedom of religion, the men operating the various compounds in question are behaving in virtually the same manner as countless dominant males in countless primate troops observed over the years.
The essence of the case is that the men who control the politics of the group (as well as the hapless women and children who live there) have used junk theology about heaven, hell, paradise and salvation to maintain their unquestioned access to all females of reproductive age (or younger).
That's the reproductive fantasy of any adult male primate.
In this blow to simple decency, the Texas polygamists are not pathfinders. Multiple wives are of course permitted in the Islamic religion, and co-wives are a feature of dozens of human groups in which powerful men control sufficient resources to be able to support more than one woman.
This is usually because the societies in which they live are sharply unequal. Sex and offspring flow to those with resources.
One of the triumphs of Western arrangements is the institution of monogamy, which has in principle made it possible for each male and female to enjoy a plausible shot at the reproductive outcome which all the apparatus of nature demands. Even Karl Marx did not fully appreciate the immense radicalism of this form of equity.
The Texans' faith-flaunting is morally disgraceful and crudely cynical. It also raises bewildering questions about human gullibility on one hand and the efficacy of the Big Lie on the other.
Can anyone really believe that the notorious communal bed to which senior men command 16-year-old girls is part of some holy temple apparatus? Apparently some people do, and the few escapees from the fetid zoo have testified to the power the ridiculous theory wields.
The victims are not only young women but young men too. They are reproductively and productively disenfranchised, and are in effect forced to leave the communities to become hopeless, ill-schooled misfits in the towns of normal life. No dignified lives as celibate monks with colorful costumes for them.
Again, the issue is cross-cultural. Osama bin Laden has at least five wives, which means that four young men of his tribe have no date on Saturday night and forever. They may become willing jihadists, or desperate suicides eager to soothe their god by killing infidels and Americans.
Elsewhere, preference for sons has meant a sharp shortage of women in China. It is known that raiding parties from there cross into bordering countries with more regular sex ratios to steal women.
The deranged cults have been operating in plain sight for years in Texan communities whose police forces have been earnestly writing parking tickets while ignoring what is obvious major criminality. Some 400 young children have been drastically separated from their mothers – who among other derogations of civil life are allegedly part of longstanding welfare fraud engineered by their sexual tyrants.
And now what? It will be intensely depressing but probably useful to acknowledge this is at bottom a natural matter, a product of our inner behavioral nature. Understanding the shadowy sources of this nightmare may help our community cope with its victims.
John Calvin would say that the Eldorado compound is a reflection of the depravity of man. A nation of laws that protect the individual from the overwhelming power of the state may prove inadequate to deter the men who perpetrate such cruelty. But a special place in hell awaits them.
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May 11, 2008
Nixonland
George Will gives Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland (Scribner 2008), a history lesson.
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April 15, 2008
An eternal optimist
Don't tell Ray Kurzweil that we ought to be all gloomy about the prospects for mankind. This WaPo op-ed reflects that he is downright bullish:
MIT was so advanced in 1965 (the year I entered as a freshman) that it actually had a computer. Housed in its own building, it cost $11 million (in today's dollars) and was shared by all students and faculty. Four decades later, the computer in your cellphone is a million times smaller, a million times less expensive and a thousand times more powerful. That's a billion-fold increase in the amount of computation you can buy per dollar.
Yet as powerful as information technology is today, we will make another billion-fold increase in capability (for the same cost) over the next 25 years. That's because information technology builds on itself -- we are continually using the latest tools to create the next so they grow in capability at an exponential rate. This doesn't just mean snazzier cellphones. It means that change will rock every aspect of our world. The exponential growth in computing speed will unlock a solution to global warming, unmask the secret to longer life and solve myriad other worldly conundrums. [. . .]
Take energy. Today, 70 percent of it comes from fossil fuels, a 19th-century technology. But if we could capture just one ten-thousandth of the sunlight that falls on Earth, we could meet 100 percent of the world's energy needs using this renewable and environmentally friendly source. We can't do that now because solar panels rely on old technology, making them expensive, inefficient, heavy and hard to install. But a new generation of panels based on nanotechnology (which manipulates matter at the level of molecules) is starting to overcome these obstacles. The tipping point at which energy from solar panels will actually be less expensive than fossil fuels is only a few years away. The power we are generating from solar is doubling every two years; at that rate, it will be able to meet all our energy needs within 20 years.
I just thought I'd toss in that third paragraph for those in the oil and gas industry that believe that a period like the mid-to-late 1980's can't happen again. Meanwhile, light, sweet crude oil futures for May delivery settled yesterday at $111.76, a new record, on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
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April 7, 2008
Acupuncture or fake acupuncture?
This Respectful Insolence blog post reports on yet another in an increasingly long line of medical studies that demonstrate that acupuncture is nothing more than an elaborate and fancy placebo. In this particular study involving patients in "true" acupuncture and "fake" acupuncture protocols, patients in the sham acupuncture group improved more than patients in the "true" acupuncture group.
My conclusion? On one hand, if you stick pins in people who are complaining about something, then some of them will eventually quit complaining. On the other hand, if you take pins out of some people who were previously complaining, then some of them will also stop complaining.
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April 4, 2008
The NY Times discovers that Houston
is a pretty darn diverse place.
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February 29, 2008
Indexed
Jessica Hagy has had a smart blog for awhile. Now, she has a smart book. Barry Ritholtz provides a taste of her work. She is a very insightful lady. Enjoy
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February 28, 2008
I'm shocked, shocked! There is academic cheating in big-time college football!
The entertaining hypocrisy of big-time college athletics continues at Florida State University. (H/T Jay Christensen). Just like Rick's Cafe, everybody knows what's going on, too.
So, what level of embarrassment in regard to "academic integrity" is it going to take to prompt university presidents to reorganize big-time college football into the professional minor league business that is its true nature?
This imbroglio reminds me of an insight into academia that my late mentor, Ross Lence, passed along to me years ago. As regular readers of this blog know, A Man for All Seasons -- the story of Sir Thomas More's conflict with King Henry VIII -- is one of my favorite movies and it was one of Ross' favorites, too. Ross particularly enjoyed the scene early in the movie when Sir Thomas attempts unsuccessfully to persuade his student, Richard Rich, to eschew a political appointment for a teaching career. After rejecting Sir Thomas' advice, Rich takes a political appointment from Henry's henchman, Thomas Cromwell, in return for agreeing to betray Sir Thomas.
"Sir Thomas knew that Rich had a corrupt heart and would never be able to resist the corrupt temptations of politics," Ross observed to me once with a chuckle. "So he recommended that Rich become a teacher." Then, with a twinkle in his eye, Ross posited the question for discussion:
"But was Sir Thomas suggesting that a corrupt heart is not a problem for an academic?"
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February 27, 2008
Dick Armey on immigration
I must admit, I never thought that former House Majority Leader Dick Armey would sound like a statesman to me. I was wrong. Watch the video to find out why.
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The diversity of Texas
Yes, Texas is a diverse place. It's a part of its charm. But following on this post from yesterday, that diversity does not make it an easy place to get one's arms around.
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February 22, 2008
Compensation through resort privileges
Check out the renovated digs for the University of Texas baseball team at UFCU Disch-Falk Field in Austin.
Even the most defensible big-time intercollegiate sport is now funneling compensation to its players through "resort privileges." The renovated locker room at Disch-Falk looks better than most university faculty lounges that I've seen.
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February 20, 2008
Born Standing Up
Don't miss this Smithsonian.com excerpt from comedian Steve Martin's new autobiographical book, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life (Scribner 2007). Take, for example, Martin's hilarious description of the implementation of his novel theory of comedy in one of his initial shows:
A skillful comedian could coax a laugh with tiny indicators such as a vocal tic (Bob Hope's "But I wanna tell ya") or even a slight body shift. Jack E. Leonard used to punctuate jokes by slapping his stomach with his hand. One night, watching him on "The Tonight Show," I noticed that several of his punch lines had been unintelligible, and the audience had actually laughed at nothing but the cue of his hand slap.These notions stayed with me until they formed an idea that revolutionized my comic direction: What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out sometime. But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation. This type of laugh seemed stronger to me, as they would be laughing at something they chose, rather than being told exactly when to laugh.
To test my idea, I went onstage and began: "I'd like to open up with sort of a 'funny comedy bit.' This has really been a big one for me...it's the one that put me where I am today. I'm sure most of you will recognize the title when I mention it; it's the "Nose on Microphone" routine [pause for imagined applause]. And it's always funny, no matter how many times you see it."I leaned in and placed my nose on the mike for a few long seconds. Then I stopped and took several bows, saying, "Thank you very much." "That's it?" they thought. Yes, that was it. The laugh came not then, but only after they realized I had already moved on to the next bit.
Now that I had assigned myself to an act without jokes, I gave myself a rule. Never let them know I was bombing: this is funny, you just haven't gotten it yet. If I wasn't offering punch lines, I'd never be standing there with egg on my face. It was essential that I never show doubt about what I was doing. I would move through my act without pausing for the laugh, as though everything were an aside. Eventually, I thought, the laughs would be playing catch-up to what I was doing. Everything would be either delivered in passing, or the opposite, an elaborate presentation that climaxed in pointlessness. Another rule was to make the audience believe that I thought I was fantastic, that my confidence could not be shattered. They had to believe that I didn't care if they laughed at all and that this act was going on with or without them.
I was having trouble ending my show. I thought, "Why not make a virtue of it?" I started closing with extended bowing, as though I heard heavy applause. I kept insisting that I needed to "beg off." No, nothing, not even this ovation I am imagining, can make me stay. My goal was to make the audience laugh but leave them unable to describe what it was that had made them laugh. In other words, like the helpless state of giddiness experienced by close friends tuned in to each other's sense of humor, you had to be there.
At least that was the theory. And for the next eight years, I rolled it up a hill like Sisyphus.
My first reviews came in. One said, "This so-called 'comedian' should be told that jokes are supposed to have punch lines." Another said I represented "the most serious booking error in the history of Los Angeles music."
"Wait," I thought, "let me explain my theory!"
Martin also passes along an interesting observation about longtime Tonight Show host, Johnny Carson. It took some time for Martin to earn Carson's professional respect:
I was able to maintain a personal relationship with Johnny over the next 30 years, at least as personal as he or I could make it, and I was flattered that he came to respect my comedy. . . Johnny once joked in his monologue: "I announced that I was going to write my autobiography, and 19 publishers went out and copyrighted the title Cold and Aloof." This was the common perception of him. But Johnny was not aloof; he was polite. He did not presume intimate relationships where there were none; he took time, and with time grew trust. He preserved his dignity by maintaining the personality that was appropriate for him.
The excerpt also includes Martin's chance encounter with Elvis. Classic.
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February 19, 2008
Importantitis
Theater critic Terry Teachout made an interesting point the other day in this W$J op-ed about one of the hazards of great achievement relatively early in one's career:
Leonard Bernstein set Broadway on fire in 1957 with "West Side Story," a jazzed-up version of "Romeo and Juliet" in which the Capulets and Montagues were turned into Puerto Rican Sharks and American Jets. It was the most significant musical of the postwar era -- and the last successful work that Bernstein wrote for the stage. His next show, 1976's "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," closed after seven performances. For the rest of his life he floundered, unable to compose anything worth hearing.What happened? Stephen Sondheim, Bernstein's collaborator on "West Side Story," told Meryle Secrest, who wrote biographies of both men, that he developed "a bad case of importantitis." That sums up Bernstein's later years with devastating finality. Time and again he dove head first into grandiose-sounding projects, then emerged from the depths clutching such pretentious pieces of musical costume jewelry as the "Kaddish" Symphony and "A Quiet Place." In the end he dried up almost completely, longing to make Great Big Musical Statements -- he actually wanted to write a Holocaust opera -- but incapable of producing so much as a single memorable song.
Teachout goes on to discuss the career of Orson Welles, another performer who peaked early with "Citizen Kane" and then spent the remainder of his career attempting to scale that peak again. Teachout compares Welles and novelist Ralph Ellison to choreographer, George Balanchine:
Contrast Ellison's creative paralysis with the lifelong fecundity of the great choreographer George Balanchine, who went about his business efficiently and unpretentiously, turning out a ballet or two every season. Most were brilliant, a few were duds, but no matter what the one he'd just finished was like, and no matter what the critics thought of it, he moved on to the next one with the utmost dispatch, never looking back. "In making ballets, you cannot sit and wait for the Muse," he said. "Union time hardly allows it, anyhow. You must be able to be inventive at any time." That was the way Balanchine saw himself: as an artistic craftsman whose job was to make ballets. Yet the 20th century never saw a more important artist, or one less prone to importantitis.
I've admired the trait that Teachout notes in Balachine in Texas novelist, Larry McMurtry, who churned out interesting novels and short stories for 25 years or so until he reached the pinnacle of his profession at the age of 50 with his 1985 Pulitizer Prize-winning novel, Lonesome Dove. Even after hitting a grand slam with Lonesome Dove, McMurtry didn't rest on his laurels; he went back to work producing a novel every several years or so. Although many of those novels and other works (the screenplay to Brokeback Mountain, for example) have been highly entertaining, he has not been able to produce a work on the level of Lonesome Dove. The odds are that McMurtry won't (he is 72 now), but my sense is that he is much more likely to do so pursuing his craft the way in which he is doing it rather than sitting around contemplating what the next great American novel should be.
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February 17, 2008
Letterman on body painting
David Letterman discusses body painting with Sports Illustrated cover girl Marisa Miller, who is a good sport about it all.
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February 8, 2008
The Dear Abby of business
Lucy Kellaway, Financial Times columnist and associate editor, pens an entertaining blog called Dear Lucy in which she solicits letters from businesspeople about various business problems. Sometimes she comments on them, but all the time she opens them up to reader comments, which range between the insightful, hilarious and bizarre. The following is last week's letter:
I recently submitted an expense report following a routine trip to Frankfurt. Instead of attaching the total bill, I mistakenly attached a fully itemised printout. Unfortunately, this was returned to me, copied to my boss, with one item – “Private Room Entertainment: Adults Only Movie” – highlighted as an illegitimate business expense. I ordered the film more out of curiosity than habit and am usually meticulous over my expenses. I work in the finance department and am a loyal and trusted employee. The form was seen by my secretary, though, and I am anxious that it may become a topic of conversation with her lunchtime colleagues. How do I salvage the situation?Manager, Male, 43
The following was one reader's advice:
"Go to work tomorrow dressed as a lady. It's sure to deflect from any comments made."
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February 6, 2008
Waxing philosophic on bad announcing
My standards for announcers of football games are not high, but it seemed to me that the Fox Sports announcing team of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman in last weekend's Super Bowl LXII game were unusually bad. For example, neither of them made much of Coach Belichick's dubious decision of going for it on 4th and 13 on the Giants 32 yard line rather trying a long field goal (49 yards) that is made easier by the pristine conditions in which the game was played. In particular, Aikman -- who has that annoying ability to say absolutely nothing of substance while reciting overlapping clichés -- could not bring himself to stop rhapsodizing about Tom Brady's "coolness under fire" despite the fact that Brady was missing badly on relatively easy passes while looking antsy in the pocket over the brutal pounding that he was enduring from the Giants' front seven.
Noting the same mediocrity in announcing quality, Michael Bérubé takes up another key call in the game and provides this imaginary dialogue between Buck and Aikman.
We can only dream. ;^)
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January 28, 2008
The bus to Houston
Check out this interesting story of how a young woman's bus ride to Houston in the 1960's led to a better life. A redeeming quality of Houston is that it attracts folks who are looking to improve their lot in life. I hope that quality never changes.
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January 21, 2008
The Civil War in Four Minutes
And to The Ashokan Farewell, no less!
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January 12, 2008
Conquering stress in the skies
It seems as if everyone who has been traveling recently has a horror story to relate about an abysmal experience with an airline. Heck, air travel has become so distasteful that I don't even think about flying anymore if I'm traveling within the Houston-Dallas-Austin/SanAntonio triangle here in Texas. I have an excellent chauffeur (i.e., my wife) who handles the driving while I work. It's far more pleasant than dealing with the non-stop hassles of air travel.
But if you simply must endure air travel these days, take a moment to read this Peter Greenberg article that provides about a half-dozen tips for minimizing stress during air travel, such as:
Avoid "direct" flights. The only good flight is a nonstop flight. Labeling a flight "direct" is an airline euphemism that means you'll stop at least once, exponentially increasing your chances of being delayed.
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January 8, 2008
YouTube for eggheads?
This looks as if it has great potential. The NY Times has the background story on the project.
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January 5, 2008
The Great Debaters
My younger daughter, my wife and I took in Denzel Washington's new film the other night, The Great Debaters. Although the story was somewhat formulaic and the movie certainly not perfect, we found the movie to be hugely entertaining. The acting is superb, particularly the reliable Mr. Washington and newcomer Denzel Whitaker, a delightful young actor who literally steals the show as the youngest of the college debaters. Mr. Washington, who also directed, wisely decided to tell the story through Mr. Whitaker's character (James Farmer, Jr.), and Mr. Whitaker is more than up to the task. What a talent!
Interestingly, the always-excellent Forest Whitaker plays James Farmer, Sr., the father of the young Mr. Whitaker's character in the movie. However, despite their common last name, the two are not related.
At any rate, in discussing the movie on the way home afterward, my daughter observed that it sure is a good thing that the horrific racism depicted in the movie is not condoned in American society anymore. My reply was that brutal discrimination of blacks is still not as uncommon as we like to think. Scott Henson and Radley Balko comment on the unacceptable revelations of, at minimum, prosecutorial negligence in Dallas. Where is the outrage?
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December 25, 2007
Happy Holidays!
Happy Holidays to all Clear Thinkers from my lovely wife Susan and me. We appreciate you checking on our small slice of the blogosphere from time to time.
In my Hayes Carll post from a few weeks ago, I noted the grand tradition of Texas songwriters, one of whom is Robert Earl Keen. A number of years ago, Keen wrote and recorded one of the funniest Texas-oriented Christmas songs that I have ever heard, and now he has the video below to go along with it. For a slice of quintessential Texas culture, don't miss it:
Finally, each Christmas season since 1949, the Wall Street Journal has published the late Vermont Royster's classic op-ed In Hoc Anno Domini, which is passed along in its entirety after the break below. Regardless of one's religious persuasion or whether one has a religion at all, Royster's short essay is a wonderful reminder of the extraordinary impact that an unlikely Jewish man of 2000 years ago had on the course of the human condition:
When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.
But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression -- for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?
There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?
Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.
And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.
So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe salvation lay with the leaders.
But it came to pass for a while in divers places that the truth did set man free, although the men of darkness were offended and they tried to put out the light. The voice said, Haste ye. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you, for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.
Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.
Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter's star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness.
And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren, the Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in each of the years of his Lord:
Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
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December 7, 2007
The world according to Americans
This map would be funnier if it wasn't so darn accurate.
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November 24, 2007
Hayes Carll's show in The Woodlands
One of the highlights of the Kirkendall family's Thanksgiving holiday was a family outing one evening that my older son Andy and his friend Jon Charbonnet arranged to enjoy a show by Hayes Carll, the emerging Texas singer-songwriter who grew up in The Woodlands.
The location of the show was Dosey Doe's, a delightful coffeehouse/restaurant/bar that has become the go-to club venue over the past year in The Woodlands and Houston's north side for performing artists. The show we attended was recorded as a segment in KVST-FM 99.7's series, "Real Life, Real Music," which airs from 6:00-7:00 p.m. on Sunday evening.
When Carll burst on the national scene with his 2002 album Flowers and Liquor, some critics assumed that it was just a matter of time until he became another local Texas singer who made "good" in the mainstream Nashville country music scene. But Carll followed up his first album with the 2005 Little Rock, which cemented his reputation for remaining steadfast to his Texas-rooted songwriting in the same vein as such legends as Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Steve Earle, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Robert Earl Keen and Lyle Lovett.
Carll put on a wonderful show for my family and the other local folks, intermingling his soulful and heartfelt music with humorous and self-effacing memories of growing up in The Woodands, his college days in Conway, Arkansas, and "competing" for preeminence in the distinctive club scene of Crystal Beach, Texas during the early days of his performing career. At one point in the show, Carll admitted that he was struggling with naming his third album (scheduled for release in April, 2008), but that his mother -- who attended the show and still resides in The Woodlands with Hayes' father -- suggested the title "He's a Very Good Boy."
Check out Carll's touring schedule. If you enjoy Texas country/folk/rock music, then you will not be disappointed if you take in one of his shows (he is playing the Mucky Duck in Houston on December 1st). In the meantime, enjoy the video below of Carll singing "It's a Shame," which is on Flowers and Liquor. There is a reason that some are calling Hayes Carll the new "Bob Dylan of Texas."
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November 22, 2007
A butcher's turkey carving instructions
I've been carving the family's Thanksgiving turkey for the past 25 years, so I speak with a bit of expertise in saying that this NY Times article and accompanying video provides the best turkey-carving instructions and tips that I've come across in quite awhile.
Have a restful and joyous Thanksgiving, and thanks for reading Clear Thinkers.
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November 3, 2007
Texas Haute Country
The New York Times discovers what we in Texas already know -- the Texas Hill Country is wonderful!
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October 25, 2007
Goin' Tex-Mex
This NY Times article does a nice job of explaining the special place of Tex-Mex food within Texan culture. But I have one question. How does one write an article about Tex-Mex in Houston and not mention Ninfa's on Navigation? Alison Cook comments along the same lines.
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October 22, 2007
Now even deer hunting regulations are running amok
As deer hunting season approaches, check out what regulations you have to follow simply to bag a deer in Texas these days:
When state game wardens hit the woods and fields in the wake of Texas' Nov. 3 opening of the general deer season, those 500 or so officers can pretty much predict the violations they're most likely to encounter."Tagging is the No. 1 (deer hunting-related) violation we see," said Maj. David Sinclair of TPWD's law enforcement division. [. . .]
In most cases, a hunter taking a deer in Texas must, immediately upon taking possession of the animal, attach to it the appropriate tag from the hunter's license. [. . .]
Deciding which tag to use isn't all that daunting. Five detachable tags valid for tagging whitetails are attached to the perimeter of a Texas hunting license. . . . Three of those whitetail tags are valid for tagging a buck or an antlerless deer, and two are valid only for tagging an antlerless deer.
It's a simple thing to detach the correct tag — a buck tag for a buck whitetail and antlerless tag for a doe.
But then some people drop the ball.
To legally tag a deer, the hunter must fill out, in ink, the requested information on the back of the tag — the name of the ranch or lease on which the deer was taken and the county in which that hunting area is located.
Also, the month and date the deer was taken has to be cut out of the tag. Cut out. Not marked with a pen. Cut out. [. . .]
But the most common deer-related violation was failure to complete the white-tailed deer log on the back of the hunting license.
The deer log was created this decade when the state seemed to be moving away from requiring tags be attached to deer. The log, printed on the back of the license, was seen as a way to keep track of how many deer, buck and doe, a hunter had taken, where they were taken and when.
The move to do away with deer tags has lost momentum. But the deer log remains. And it's surprising how many deer hunters don't know about the log requirement, forget to complete it or ignore it.
This past year, TPWD game wardens issued more than 500 citations for failing to complete the deer log.
As with the other tagging-related violations, hunters charged with not completing the deer log face a Class C misdemeanor. Conviction brings a fine of as much as $500.
Sheesh! Let's hope the regulators don't start piling on similar rules for hunting these.
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October 15, 2007
What is Joel Osteen's message?
The Chronicle's Tara Dooley is breathless in this Sunday Chronicle article on the ever-expanding financial empire of Joel Osteen, pastor of Houston megachurch, Lakewood Church (previous posts here):
Osteen and Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, will release the pastor's second book, Become a Better You on Monday. It debuts with at least 2.5 million copies, the largest first run in Free Press's more than 60-year history.With an initial printing of 136,000, Osteen's first book, Your Best Life Now, attracted an audience just waking up to Osteen and his growing Houston church. The book, which came out in 2004, eventually sold about 5 million copies in the United States and was translated into 25 languages.
Become a Better You meets a public that has grown accustomed to Osteen's face. Taking his place with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as one of the 10 Most Fascinating People of 2006 — according to Barbara Walters — Osteen's national profile has made him an A-list Christian celebrity.
"I'm starting to realize it," Osteen said in an interview. "It wasn't until about a year or so ago that I thought, 'This is something unusual and God has given us a lot of favor.' Sometimes you think it's just people flattering you, but I think it's starting to hit home."
But on Sunday night's segment of 60 Minutes, Michael S. Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, raised substantial questions regarding the theological substance -- or lack thereof -- of Osteen's basic message:
In the Wal-Mart era of religion and spirituality, every particular creed and any denominational distinctives get watered down. We don’t hear (at least explicitly) about our being “little gods,” “part and parcel of God,” or the blood of Christ as a talisman for healing and prosperity. The strange teachings of his father’s generation, still regularly heard on TBN, are not explored in any depth. In fact, nothing is explored in any depth. Osteen still uses the telltale lingo of the health-and-wealth evangelists: “Declare it,” “speak it,” “claim it,” and so forth, but there are no dramatic, made-for-TV healing lines. The pastor of Lakewood Church . . . does not come across as a flashy evangelist with jets and yachts, but as a charming next-door-neighbor who always has something nice to say.Although remarkably gifted at the social psychology of television, Joel Osteen is hardly unique. In fact, his explicit drumbeat of prosperity (word-faith) teaching is communicated in the terms and the ambiance that might be difficult to distinguish from most megachurches. Joel Osteen is the next generation of the health-and-wealth gospel. This time, it’s mainstream. [. . .]
This is what we might call the false gospel of “God-Loves-You-Anyway.” . . . God is our buddy. He just wants us to be happy, and the Bible gives us the roadmap.
I have no reason to doubt the sincere motivation to reach non-Christians with a relevant message. My concern, however, is that the way this message comes out actually trivializes the faith at its best and contradicts it at its worst. In a way, it sounds like atheism: Imagine there is no heaven above us or hell below us, no necessary expectation that Christ “will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead” and establish perfect peace in the world. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find anything in this message that would be offensive to a Unitarian, Buddhist, or cultural Christians who are used to a diet of gospel-as-American-Dream. Disney’s Jiminy Cricket expresses this sentiment: “If you wish upon a star, all your dreams will come true.”
To be clear, I’m not saying that it is atheism, but that it sounds oddly like it in this sense: that it is so bound to a this-worldly focus that we really do not hear anything about God himself—his character and works in creation, redemption, or the resurrection of the body and the age to come. . . . Despite the cut-aways of an enthralled audience with Bibles opened, I have yet to hear a single biblical passage actually preached. Is it possible to have evangelism without the evangel? Christian outreach without a Christian message? [. . .]
. . . “How can I be right with God?” is no longer a question when my happiness rather than God’s holiness is the main issue. My concern is that Joel Osteen is simply the latest in a long line of self-help evangelists who appeal to the native American obsession with pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Salvation is not a matter of divine rescue from the judgment that is coming on the world, but a matter of self-improvement in order to have your best life now.
Horton's collection of essays on Joel Osteen's ministry is here and Tim Challies provides this critical review of Osteen's new book.
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October 11, 2007
Texas' inexhaustible supply of hog
Anyone who has spent any time in rural Texas understands the havoc that the burgeoning feral hog population (previous posts here) has caused in almost every area of Texas. Chronicle outdoors columnist Shannon Tompkins has been studying the problem for quite some time and, in this article from this past weekend, he puts the hog problem in perspective:
Texas is awash in a rising tide of feral hogs. And Texans appear as impotent as King Canute in stopping that tide from climbing up the beach. [. . .]Texas has about half as many feral hogs as it does white-tailed deer — perhaps 2 million hogs and about 4 million deer. [But] almost all the growth in the hog population has occurred over the past 20 years. Once limited to a few thousand pigs in small pockets of East and South Texas, feral hogs infest all but a half-dozen or so of Texas' 254 counties.
This is an incredible rate of expansion. And with it has come millions of dollars of damage to agriculture, land, water and native wildlife.
What's behind the expansion?
We Texans did this to ourselves. People hauled live-trapped feral hogs all over the state and released them, thinking they would create good hunting opportunities.
Those infections spread.
Also, changing land-use practices — everything from what grows on land, who owns it, average size of tracts, who has access to that land and what they do there — gave feral hogs the conditions they needed to become established and thrive.
Will feral hogs become more populous in Texas than whitetails?
Could happen. Texas' deer population is stable, and deer live on just about every acre that can support them; the herd isn't going to grow.
But the feral hog population continues mushrooming as the animals pioneer into new corners and herds expand to fill the newly infested habitat.
Feral hogs can outcompete and outreproduce deer.
Hogs are omnivores. Deer are browsers. Deer depend on a small suite of plants for food. Hogs can live on almost anything, and in places that will not support deer.
A doe deer doesn't breed until she's a year old, then produces one fawn most years and twins in really good years. On average, half those fawns survive to their first birthday.
A sow feral hog can breed for the first time when she's 8 months old or so, and throw litters of four to eight piglets twice a year, and almost all survive.
Do the math.
It appears impossible to eradicate feral hogs once they have become established at the level we have them in Texas.
Yes, extreme methods — intense trapping, aerial gunning — can clear an area of feral hogs. But it's expensive, time-consuming and only a temporary solution. If intense control is not maintained — constant trapping, brutally efficient gunning over a large area — new hogs migrate to fill the vacuum.
Look; Texas has the most liberal hog-killing regulations in the nation. Feral hogs can be killed by any method other than poisoning. They can be shot from the air or ground. They can be trapped. They can be run down by packs of hounds. Day and night. No limits.
No one has a dependable estimate of how many feral hogs are killed in Texas each year. But it has to be in the neighborhood of a quarter-million or more. Heck, the state's two commercial processing plants that butcher feral hogs for the retail market are annually handling an estimated 100,000 wild swine. Maybe twice that many are taken by recreational hunters and trappers.
Still, the pig population climbs.
Feral hogs are the four-legged equivalent of fire ants, tallow trees, salt cedar, water hyacinth and all the other non-native, invasive species that are damaging Texas' biota. Their only positive qualities are that they provide hunting opportunity, and they are great on the table.
I kill feral hogs whenever I can, even though I understand that assassinating one every now and again from a deer stand or even trapping a dozen or two a year from the deer lease has the same impact as trying to dip out the ocean using a coffee cup.
It's not particularly satisfying work. But I like to think the deer and the quail, squirrel and turkey and every other native creature in the woods appreciates the effort.
Feral hogs have even been seen roaming in parts of Houston's Memorial Park near Buffalo Bayou. And markets are developing for feral hog meat. But the population continues to grow steadily. Any ideas?
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October 7, 2007
A good Sunday story
One of my many beautiful and talented nieces passes along this delightful story carrying on my family's legacy in medicine. Enjoy.
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October 4, 2007
The genesis of bad regulations
I'm not an advocate of using cell phones indiscrimately while driving. In fact, I try to avoid it as much as possible. But every few months or so, some media outlet passes along another superficial story (see also here) on the latest study or tragic story that supposedly suggests that use of cell phones while driving leads to accidents and, thus, should be outlawed.
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September 21, 2007
Coopertown?
Dr. Kenneth Cooper of Dallas may have oversold the benefits of aerobic exercise, but will the same be true for his new real estate venture?:
Dr. Cooper is developing a $2 billion residential wellness community here called Cooper Life at Craig Ranch that is going up on the first 51 of an eventual 151 acres on the Texas plains, north of Dallas.Taking the concept of spa real estate into the medical realm, Dr. Cooper’s community promises home buyers a life that sounds equal parts Norman Rockwell and Olympic village: a small town where doctors will make house calls and where every resident has a bevy of experts close at hand for keeping in tiptop shape.
It appears to be the first of its kind. . . .
Included in the monthly residential fee ($1,041 for an individual to $2,181 for a family of six) will be an annual physical and a six-month follow-up, which Dr. Cooper calls key to his utopian vision of a place where everyone can live in peak health. The fee also includes home doctor visits, a fitness center membership, concierge services and exterior home maintenance, lectures and social activities.
While a diverse mix of ages and fitness levels are welcome, Dr. Cooper admits that many prospective residents may well be baby boomers with cushy bank accounts. “They’ve got the money,” Dr. Cooper said, “now they want to live long enough to enjoy it.”
I get exhausted just thinking about the thought of living there. ;^)
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September 19, 2007
A dose of Americana
Will Veber over at Road Tips reports on his trip (with pictures) to one of the last bastions of pure Americana -- the Iowa State Fair.
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September 16, 2007
Gambon on acting
Sir Michael Gambon is one of the finest character actors of our day. In the brief video below (h/t to my son, Cody), he brilliantly explains his theory on acting. Enjoy.
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September 13, 2007
How to buy your next new car
Inasmuch as I have four college age children, I hav