Last week, I was chatting with the phlebotomist while I was donating blood. In the course of the conversation, he told me, “You know, one of the first thing we teach new people around here is that if you make a mistake, don’t say “Oops!” or “Uh oh!”

I haven’t posted about a book in quite some time. A couple of reasons: I haven’t been reading much lately, and I haven’t read anything that really captured my attention. I’m glad to say that The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber has broken that stretch. This book passed several of my criteria for a good thriller:

• Characters were well fleshed out
• Only a couple of times did I read something and think “Ah, this will be important later”. Given the complexity of the plot, that’s pretty good.
• I also didn’t guess much of the conclusion–just a couple of pretty obvious points. I was looking forward to seeing how the various plots and characters would come together
• Finally, most of the plot lines came together very well. The only part that I thought was handled poorly was the part of the brother Paul–though he was an interesting character nonetheless.
All in all, a very enjoyable read.

As I’ve mentioned before, Fred Clark’s ongoing page-by-page commentary of the horrendously bad first Left Behind novel is always an interesting read. In this week’s commentary, I found an interesting conversation in the comments. I think it’s easiest just to quote the relevant comments.
First, Reverend Ref responds to a line from the novel:

Everything he had tried had failed. … Rayford had never felt more powerless and desperate.
And this is also something that is theologically wrong. We don’t convert people, that is God’s job (or the Holy Spirit if you want to get technical). I tell my parishioners all the time, “All we can do is invite people; conversion is God’s department.” This fundagelical push to constantly figure out how many people you’ve saved is, for lack of a better term, whacked. It’s nothing more than spiritual bullying. Our job as Christians is to proclaim the kingdom of God. We proclaim. We invite. We welcome. We talk. God converts. If the other person rejects that, it’s not our problem. But that DOES NOT mean we revel in their (anticipated?) destruction.
Love God. Love your neighbor. Remember you aren’t the boss.

Bugmaster resplies:

Well, what about people like myself, who don’t believe that there is any “boss” at all ? You have shown us the way to salvation, and we rejected it as a fantasy. Now (assuming you’re right), we will burn in Hell for all eternity / will be stuck in Limbo forever / will be separate from God for all time / won’t get our 72 virgins / etc. Wouldn’t you want to push your point… and push and push and push… until the atheists do convert ? It’s for their own good, and you love them, right ?
Ok, this is different from typical evangelicals, who only care about themselves (“I’ve converted 10 people last week ! Woo !”), but still, I’m sure there are some people out there who think that way. Three of them were in my math class…

And here’s Reverend Ref’s reply:

If you don’t believe that there is any “boss” at all, and if you reject it as fantasy, that’s your call (that whole free will thing). Am I disappointed? Sure, for a variety of reasons. However, I will not push and push and push… until the atheists do convert. It may be for your own good, as you say, but so was syrup of ipecac (or so my grandmother told me). I would much rather invite you into a discussion about God and invite you to church, be turned down, and then talk about about the Mariners or Seahawks or the weather and have you remain on speaking terms with me (maybe even be considered a friend), than to push and push and push and piss you off.
At least with Option #1 there’s a chance you might change your mind. That’s how I operate during my bar visits. There’s a whole hospitality thing going on there. Not to mention the fact that I do not believe God put me on a quota system.

And Bugmaster again:

Well, if more people thought like you, we’d have less wars (and less theocratic maniacs in charge), so your stance is quite admirable. Still, it sounds like you’d rather acquire a friend in this life, than rescue the same person’s soul from an eternity of torment in the next life. Some people (i.e., zealously religious people) could interpret this as a selfish attitude.

Reverend Ref:

Um … not quite. I’d rather remain on speaking terms with you. Whether you are or are not my friend, I really couldn’t care less. However, I believe that conversion happens through conversation, which has the potential to open one up to the working of the Holy Spirit. If I push and push and push, as you said earlier, and do nothing but piss you off about me in particular and Christianity in general, then I have helped to shut the door. And that, in my book, is sinful behavior.
I don’t know where a conversation will lead, but I do know that not being willing to converse, or sit down at table or any other words/actions that shuts people down will lead nowhere. Witness my own Anglican Communion and the various behaviors there about not wanting to converse with or commune with the “wrong” people. At least if we keep talking, the potential for conversion remains.

And finally, Bugmaster:

Well, your position does make sense. I don’t know much about the Anglican Communion, but some Protestant varieties here in America also have such an isolationist approach. Pretty sad.

Here we have Bugmaster, a self-professed aethist, who has been reading and participating in the comments of a blog by a liberal evangelical for months or longer, and yet, after all this exposure to Fred Clark and many of his commenters, Bugmaster still thinks that their (and my) brand of Christianity is the exception, not the norm. That’s a sad statement on American Christian culture.

I keep my resume on my personal web site all the time as part of my online profile, even when I’m not looking for a job. As a result, I get quite a few calls from recruiters. Over the years, I’ve discovered that most of them follow a funny pattern:

My cell phone rings. I see that it’s a number I don’t recognize, often from a different area code. The beginning of the call almost invariably goes like this:
Me (using my sonorous, who-the-hell-is-calling voice): ‘Stan Taylor’
Caller: Hi, Stan Taylor? How are you today?
Me (suspicious): Fine, thank you.
Caller: Is this a good time to talk?
Me: I don’t know. What do you want to talk about?
Caller (sounding surprised by my answer): My name is Joe Blow, and I found your resume… I have a position that I think you’re qualified for…

I’m not sure why they always ask how I’m doing before they say anything else. I guess it must be that ‘make a personal connection’ thing. Likewise, I don’t understand why they ask me if it’s a good time to talk before they introduce themselves. I guess if they introduced themselves first and then asked, it would be easier for me just to hang up.

According to Reuters,

Iraq has emerged as the world’s second most unstable country, behind Sudan, more than four years afterPresident George W. Bush ordered the U.S. invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, according to a survey released on Monday.
The 2007 Failed States Index, produced by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace, said Iraq suffered a third straight year of deterioration in 2006 with diminished results across a range of social, economic, political and military indicators. Iraq ranked fourth last year.

I’m a little late on posting this, but security expert Bruce Schneier tells it like it is:

Terrorism is a real threat, and one that needs to be addressed by appropriate means. But allowing ourselves to be terrorized by wannabe terrorists and unrealistic plots — and worse, allowing our essential freedoms to be lost by using them as an excuse — is wrong.

Remember, folks, terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. Don’t be scared of something that, statistically speiaking, barely even makes the list of things likely to hurt or kill you.

“Let Are Kids Walk!”
From the accompanying article:

FORT WORTH — Students who had been planning to walk across the stage at graduation ceremonies this weekend were instead walking a picket line Thursday morning.
The Trimble Tech High School seniors marched in front of Fort Worth Independent School District headquarters to protest Wednesday’s decision by trustees to bar students who failed the TAKS test from commencement exercises.

This is an AP story, but if it’s not a hoax, I’m not going to sleep well: 11-year-old boy kills a 1050-pound wild hog with a pistol.
UPDATE: Looks like I can sleep well after all. StinkyJournalism analyzes the photos and concludes that the pig wasn’t really as large as claimed. Quelle surprise!

Today, Fred Clark blogs about a growing movement in the Southern Baptist Convention to urge parents to pull their children out of public schools. One of the motivations for this movement is to remove children from the “‘metastasizing spiritual, moral and intellectual pathologies of the government school system.'”
As usual, Fred does a very good job of covering the political, cultural and religious aspects of the issue. But his post reminded me of something from my own past. I grew up in the Texas Hill Country just north of San Antonio. We lived just beyond the fringes of suburban San Antonio at the time; you could live more or less in the country and still commute into San Antonio, though it was a long commute.
I can think of quite a few families who moved out of San Antonio to remove their kids from the perceived negative influences of the city’s schools. But by and large, these families continued to deal with the same types of problems with their kids even in the idyllic Hill Country. In my opinion, those families chose to blame the city for their kids’ problems, when in fact the problems lay with the kids and families themselves; moving to the country didn’t change things. Sounds to me like some Southern Baptists might be suffering the same delusion.

This comment on MetaFilter sums up my feelings about many of my grad school professors quite well:

Respect for academic achievements is slowly eroding into extinction. Good riddance, I say. I have been working several years at a university known as one of the top in the country for its particular field, and here’s what I found out: it’s meaningless. It is an institutionalized popularity and writing contest. It’s as if these folks who probably suffered from social ineptitude at some point in their lives (or continue to suffer from it) are using their intelligence as a substitution for charisma and basic, decent human behavior. Which is fine for them inside their own circles I suppose. However, I personally have little respect for titles, authority, position and supposed academic credibility. The result of your work may be astounding and important, but that doesn’t make you a good person or a decent human being, and it damn well doesn’t mean that I have to show you any respect until you earn it. If I don’t understand how great your work is, then you get to earn your respect from me by being a good person on a general level.