Mark Byron

Still Here

I haven't been up to blogging for the last few days. I'll explain why in the near future once I figure out how to explain it in such a way that present and future employers will be comfortable with. It's not bad or illegal, but somewhat touchy.

Bear with me as I figure out how to share with my good on-line friends and keep up my near WYSIWYG persona.

Edifier du Jour-Deuteronomy 6:4-9(NIV)

⁴ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. ⁵ Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Are you all-in for God?

If your channel surfing has paused on one of those ubiquitous TV poker games, you might be familiar with the concept of all-in, where the player bets all he has on his current hand. If he wins, he doubles his money (plus whatever what was in the pot prior to that final bet), but he goes belly-up if he loses.

There's plenty of all-in folks in the Bible. Peter leaving his nets behind, the parable of the pearl of great price where the discoverer hocks everything to buy the field it's in, Abraham willing to sacrifice Isaac.

We're called here and elsewhere to be all-in for God. However, many of us still want to keep some chips in our hands, fearful of losing. Often, those are emotional chips rather than financial ones, where we are looking to hedge our bets and not get too excited about God, or not to have too much invested emotional when things turn sour.

One of the things that struck me about my life is how little I do talk about God in a casual manner. I'm probably not alone in talking more about spring training or March Madness rather than God, even in a week where we just got done with Easter. We can start putting some more chips in the pot by moving some of our conversations away from trivialities and towards God.

We might not get fully all-in in our daily walk, for that would look like a monk, but we can get far closer than we are at present.

GDH-Gross Domestic Happiness

Bhutan isn't a country I recall blogging on before, but they had their first elections as a constitutional monarchy. It's enough of a democracy where the king's brother-in-law was allowed to get thumped in the polls.

However, it wasn't the nascent democracy that pulled my chatty ring when I read this piece earlier today, but this paragraph on the ruling philosophy of the country-

The monarchy remains popular in Bhutan partly because of its focus on promoting what it calls "gross national happiness" - based on the idea that economic growth should be balanced by respect for traditions and the environment.

I've discussed my ideal macroeconomic policy as seeking to maximize the commonweal, looking for a peak on a modified Laffer curve that maximizes the collective well-being of the country rather than tax revenue.

Since commonweal is a very highbrow term, might the Bhutanese concept of Gross Domestic Happiness be a better phrase? Since we tend to use Gross Domestic Product these days rather than Gross National Product in macroeconomics (GDP looks at where something's produced rather than GNP, where it measures which country owns the company producing it; the Toyota plant in Georgetown counts on US GDP but Japanese GNP), I'd rather go with GDH rather than GNH for our mythical measure of commonweal.

There are a number of things that are good for GDP but aren't good for the country; we all can rattle off a number of vices that we'd be better off without. There are also some things that are bad for GDP but are good for the country; stay-at-home moms are a great example.

• They aren't earning an income, reducing GDP.
• They do more cooking from scratch, reducing the grocery bill, reducing GDP; the value added from their labor doesn't count towards GDP.
• They don't use as much daycare services, reducing GDP; the care they give their own kids at home isn't sold, so it doesn't count as GDP.
• They don't use as much gas or buy as much business attire, reducing GDP
• Their families tend to eat in more, further reducing GDP
• If they're home-schooling, there will be less need for teachers, reducing GDP.

In addition, we can look at the ideas of tradition and the environment as the piece does. Economic development can have a lot of negative externalities that may reduce GDH while increasing GDP.

For instance, one discussion here in Lexington revolves around building a big hotel-condo-retail space skyscraper downtown. The development would take out some nightclubs and do a number on the skyline, but it sure would add to the tax base, and many mayors and city councils start to drool when they see the extra property tax dollars from such a project.

As a suburban newcomer (I have a Lexington address, but live well away from downtown) who has no attachment to the existing skyline and who goes downtown only when I have to, I don't have a dog in the aesthetic fight. However, there are lots of folks who would have their quality of life impacted by having their bohemian part of downtown torn down to put up a hotel for the big-shots who come to town for the Keeneland meets, UK games and major events at the Kentucky Horse Park like the world equestrian championships slated for 2010.

Would the hotel increase Gross Civic Product? Yes. Will it increase Gross Civic Happiness? Good question; the powers that be say yes, but a lot of activists say no.

Gross Domestic Happiness. You can't quantify it, but it's something we need to focus on.

What sayeth the Peanut Gallery?

Monday Musings

Calm before the storm; I just got done with the first class of Spring term and I'm in an easy spot, where the classes for the rest of the week are already prepped and the first batches of homework to grade are a week away.

_________

Since spring break coincided with the start of March Madness, I was basketballed out by Sunday and ticked off when I didn't get to see either Michigan State game. At least they won both games and get to play Memphis in the "Sweet 16."

What's odd is when you start getting sons of former stars making names for themselves, like Dell 2.0 Stephen Curry, who took Davidson on his back into the third round. Or seeing Tony Bennett leave his heart in Pullman, going from leading Wisconsin-Green Bay into the second round as a player in 1994 to getting Washington State into the third round this year as a coach. It doesn't seem like that was 14 years ago already.

_________

It's a good time to be an ex-Michigander; Kwame Kilpatrick may have killed off the rest of his career along with Patrick by lying about an affair under oath; at least that's what he's been indicted for in state court. We'll find out later if it was a righteous bust, but it's at least a Worthy one; the county prosecutor is Kym Worthy.

We all know the saw about being able to indict a ham sandwich, but there seems to be quite a bit of meat to this charge.

If South Park does this as a episode seed, is it mayor Kwame Kilkenny that will get caught with his pants down, both figuratively and literally?

__________

The story's about a week old, but there was a bit of dark humor in the NYC crane tragedy; the massive crane took out, among other things, a bar named Fubar.

“Our bar is done,” [Fubar owner John PlaGreco] said. “The crane crashed the whole building. If I wasn’t watching a Yankees game, I would’ve come to work early and gotten killed.”

Four people did get killed in other nearby properties, but Fubar did get fubared, an old army acronym for "fouled up beyond all recognition." Well, they used a different F-word, but... let's keep it chipmunk-friendly here.

Edifier du Jour-Deuteronomy 5:12-15(NIV)

¹² "Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. ¹³ Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹⁴ but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor the alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do. ¹⁵ Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.

That's one of the Ten Commandments we don't do a great job of; it's one of the few that you can violate with a clear conscience in most evangelical quarters. The first, about loving God whole-heartedly, probably gets nuked even worse, but that's a matter of the heart rather than a matter of hitting Olive Garden after church.

I'm not talking of the Jewish minutia of what constitutes work, to the extent that they have their elevators go from floor to floor automatically since pushing a button is considered work. Nor do I want to get on a Saturday-versus-Sunday sabbath theological food fight. What I'm looking at is giving everyone we're associated with a work-free day, including ourselves.

In the old days, it was easier to keep these, since very few stores were open. If you were oot-and-aboot after church yesterday, you got a bit of a flashback to the blue-law era, where a lot of places were closed on Easter; restaurant A was closed, causing us to go to restaurant B.

We don't have a problem with dining out on Sunday and have little qualms about swinging through the grocery store after church as well. However, that's putting somebody to work. Even if they aren't interested in keeping Sunday pristine, the wording points to giving everyone the day off, even the "aliens" in the land.

Why do we take this commandment lightly and major on the others? One possibility is that Jesus did. However, the "work" He was doing was healing and He was (and is) God. We don't want God to take the day off.

Legalism isn't good, but hedonistic expediency isn't good, either; we seem to have leaned a bit too much towards the latter in regards to this commandment.

Edifier du Jour-Deuteronomy 4:5-8(NIV)

⁵ See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the LORD my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. ⁶ Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people." ⁷ What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him? ⁸ And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?

When we name our kids after our advertising capital rather than past saints, I'm not sure we're "a wise and understanding people." So much for making the US Israel 2.0.

Yes, but it is 2.0, and like any X.0, it has it share of bugs; once would think that 200+ years of beta testing would have worked out the bugs. However, the code was written by man, and is often impervious to correction.

End of curmudgeon rant. On to the real Edifier.

One thing to remember as we come up upon Easter tomorrow is that we do serve a living God, not some dead idol that passes for a deity. Not only that, but we have a God that not only listens, but experienced human life first-hand, so he knows what we're feeling.

No, Jesus didn't go exactly through everything we go through today; He never let His cell phone go uncharged or forgot to use all of His flexible medical spending dollars or got cut off by jerks in traffic. However, He did go through the first-century equivalents thereof. It wasn't for nothing that He got the nickname Emmanuel, God With Us.

That's one of the key points that Moses makes here, we have a God who is with us, not sitting off at a distance taking it all in passively. Sometimes, we'd like Him to be more active, but He's still in charge and in da house.

Name that Name

I'm in the middle of proctering an exam and stumbled into a MSNBC piece on baby names. My immediate family seems to fit nicely in the top names for their era.

My parents names both made the 1940 list, Judith came in at #4 for that era, as Judy Garland probably helped put it on radar, while Thomas was the #8 guy.

The  1960 list saw Mark at #6. My sister Kathy was out of both the 1960 and 1970 top ten; as a 1965 baby, I'm not sure where to put her.

However, she was with the trend when she named her kids; Jessica is #8 on the 2000 list while Ty-guy Tyler scrapes in at #10.

What I find interesting is some of the modern girl names; Madison has become a staple, and I don't recall that as a girl name before Splash, and that was only because the mermaid saw a Madison Avenue sign in Manhattan and clamed it as her own.

Madison Avenue... advertising HQ... the #3 female name. How fitting for modern America.

[Update 12:45PM-It turns out Freakonomics also posited that Madison hypothesis, which we can test with the Social Security system's database. Splash came out in 1984 and Madison didn't crack the top 1000 in girl names until 1985.

Year of birth	Rank
2006	3
2005	3
2004	3
2003	3
2002	2
2001	2
2000	3
1999	7
1998	9
1997	10
1996	15
1995	29
1994	52
1993	78
1992	107
1991	128
1990	203
1989	222
1988	300
1987	325
1986	366
1985	625

You can't quite prove the connection, but Madison wasn't on radar pre-Splash. It's unlikely everyone started to have a love of James Madison or Dolly Madison during that era.]

Edifier du Jour-Deuteronomy 3:18-20(NIV)

¹⁸ I commanded you at that time: "The LORD your God has given you this land to take possession of it. But all your able-bodied men, armed for battle, must cross over ahead of your brother Israelites. ¹⁹ However, your wives, your children and your livestock (I know you have much livestock) may stay in the towns I have given you, ²⁰ until the LORD gives rest to your brothers as he has to you, and they too have taken over the land that the LORD your God is giving them, across the Jordan. After that, each of you may go back to the possession I have given you."

This story of taking over the Jordan valley isn't new to me, especially that of the folks who had territory on the east bank of the Jordan being mandated to help their West Bank kin with their battles before enjoying their share of the Promised Land.

However, I was taken aback a bit with the parenthetical in verse 19- "I know you have much livestock." It's not that God (or Moses) doesn't know how much cattle folks have, but that he opts to make note of that fact.

One take-away point is that in warfare, whether it be spiritual or otherwise, being able to travel light is important. Cattle may rhyme with battle, but the two don't mix; the enemy could use those possessions to slow them down or be the target of a counter-attack or as sabotage-bait.

Unless you're a farmer (and I can't think of any farming members of the Peanut Gallery off-hand), you don't have any livestock save a few dogs or cats. However, we have a lot of other "livestock" that can get in the way of serving God; jobs, possessions, relationships, that can keep us from focusing on expanding the kingdom of God.

God didn't tell the east-bankers to forget about their cattle, just to leave it behind while they did battle. We need to do likewise with out own third-millennia possessions.

The Wright Stuff

I talked about it in passing yesterday, but I need to get my $0.02 in on the Obama speech.

It's by and large a good speech, where he essentially casts pastor Wright as the Ghost of Civil Rights Past, the guy who is still fighting the battles of the 60s a half-century later, whereas Obama casts himself as the Ghost of Civil Rights Future, where hope is focused on lifting up the downtrodden of all races in a non-zero-sum game.

What is the underlying issue for swing voters will be whether they will be comfortable with a guy in the White House who has a firebrand Afrocentric, Liberation Theology pastor as his spiritual mentor. That runs counter to the Obama that was being marketed to us for the last four years.

When Obama was presented to the nation four years ago as the 2004 Democratic convention keynote speaker, he was the Great Black Hope, the very articulate black guy who could break the stereotypes of a black politician and speak to the non-African-descended part of the population.

Part of that ability was that he wasn't raised in the black community, that his Kenyan dad was out of the picture quickly and was raised by his Euro-American mom or grandma. In Babylon 5, the Minbari prophet Valen was said to be "a Minbari not of Minbar;" in fact, he was a human genetically modified into a Minbari. In a similar way (but without any genmods), Obama is a black guy who isn't of the black community... at least not as a kid.

When we heard Obama speak, he wasn't speaking in the cadence and style of the black church, since he was raised both white and largely secular. While that empathic, emotional black-pulpit style is rather effective in reaching for the heart of the listener, it is a style that is foreign to the typical swing voter. In addition, that black-pulpit style speaker has typically brought with it a focus on the problems of black Americans, problems that may not be shared by swing voters.

Were he speaking in the Wright style instead of his well-crafted mainstream prose, he not only wouldn't have been keynoting the 2004 convention, he likely also would still be an obscure state senator from Illinois.  It was the combination of the black (yes, only half-African, but we tend to round to the most discriminated race in a hybrid) politician that spoke passionately but in a mainstream style that attracted Democratic leaders and later the party as a whole.

Here's where Geraldine Ferraro was correct. Were he Padraig O'Bama, son of an Irish immigrant college student and a nominally Protestant American mom, he most likely wouldn't have gotten a speaking gig at that convention as a state senator from Chicago running for US senate. The half-black, immigrant story was part of the package, giving people a black politician they can be comfortable with.

However, the pitch wasn't to black voters, it was to white voters; Obama was Sidney Poitier in Guess Who's Coming to the White House, the pitch-perfect black guy who even Archie Bunker could like. In the early going, Obama was doing poorly with blacks, being seen to be not black enough; he was biologically black but not culturally black. It was only when the Clintons started to awkwardly play various race cards, like trying to write off a South Carolina win as like Jesse Jackson's win there in the 80s, that blacks started to rally around him; when the Man started dissing him, Obama became one of them.

Politicians gravitate towards big churches where they can network, and Obama found Wright's big Chicago Trinity United Church of Christ; at least that's the conventional wisdom that a lot of pundits have exposited. It may have also been a young seeker looking for a church home; out in the Chicago suburbs, people who aren't on the make find their way to Willow Creek and Bill Hybels. People tend to go to big churches before trying the smaller ones, and Trinity was the biggest black church in town.

Obama got a passionate dose of liberal Christianity spiked with the black liberation theology that came of age in the 70s. Like the evangelical Methodism that Dubya found in his 20s, the Trinity exposure seems to have rounded out Obama's persona.

From what I have seen of Obama, that Christian faith, albeit a liberal one which has erred on the side of permissiveness a bit too much, is a real part of his life. I'm not planing to cross the aisle and vote for him, but it is an attractive part of him, one we rarely see in liberal politicians.

There are churches that can be firebrand on some issues and loving and graceful in the bigger picture; it's the hot-button politically-charged issues that make the news, while the ministries of care and discipleship that go on unnoticed by the "drive-by media." Yes, that means that Pastor "USA of KKK A" could well be a good and caring pastor delivering a winsome message when he's not on his high horse; I've seen pastors give the more morally corrupt parts of society both barrels at 11:45AM and pray tenderly for a sick child at 12:05PM.

Ironically, the guy who comes to the fore as an un-black black guy now is in trouble for having a white-establishment-bashing pastor. The connections and authentic-but-liberal Christianity that Trinity provided may have helped him get in position to be a presidential candidate, but the establishment-bashing may help him lose a few swing votes.

I can see that Obama's not in a position to push Wright "under the bus;" Wright's too much of a net plus to his life to do that, and it would make him look reactive and weak if he did. However, we'll be getting a steady diet of those Wright clips on radio and on You Tube for the month to come; it's not something that the Clinton or McCain camp will do directly, but those clips will be used.

This will likely help Clinton with blue-collar white voters in PA and elsewhere and will help McCain in the general election. If it proves to help McCain a lot, Obama might wind up getting the one pushed under the bus by the super-delegates. There would be a civil war within the Democratic party if they did, especially if Clinton doesn't close the gap in the remaining primaries, but if polls start showing Clinton to be more electable than Obama...they could opt to pay the price in a hard-left and black revolt and go with Clinton if they would pick up more swing voters in the center than they lose on the left.

OK. On to the next issue of the week as we wait for PA to vote.

Edifier du Jour-Deuteronomy 2:24-25(NIV)

²⁴ "Set out now and cross the Arnon Gorge. See, I have given into your hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his country. Begin to take possession of it and engage him in battle. ²⁵ This very day I will begin to put the terror and fear of you on all the nations under heaven. They will hear reports of you and will tremble and be in anguish because of you."

Was is Machiavelli who said it is better to be feared than to be loved? Yep, but he did add that it is better to be both feared and loved, but "the two rarely come together."

It's hard to take the ethnic cleansing parts of the OT and apply them today, since we don't have God's orders to parking lot our modern day foes. When we start acting like OT Israel on the battlefield, we're asking for trouble.

The dilemma American Christians have is that we want to be loved by the rest of the world as we look to witness to them, whereas the American geopolitical machine has us feared by the rest of the world. Sometimes that fear can manifest itself into a healthy respect for the American system, it's economic, political and military clout that can be brought to bear on the side of the angels, but that fear more often manifests itself in a disdain for the hegemon, to "bless and keep the Czar.... far away from us."

That may be why foreign evangelists, like Nigerians and Koreans, seem to be delivering a bigger bang for the buck than Americans; they have less baggage to deal with.

 

Edifier du Jour:Deuteronomy 2:1-6(NIV)

¹ Then we turned back and set out toward the desert along the route to the Red Sea, as the LORD had directed me. For a long time we made our way around the hill country of Seir.

² Then the LORD said to me, ³ "You have made your way around this hill country long enough; now turn north. ⁴ Give the people these orders: 'You are about to pass through the territory of your brothers the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. They will be afraid of you, but be very careful. ⁵ Do not provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land, not even enough to put your foot on. I have given Esau the hill country of Seir as his own. ⁶ You are to pay them in silver for the food you eat and the water you drink.' "

That's another passage that I don't recall reading over the years; we know in 20/20 hindsight that they wandered 40 years, but I don't recall them being warned off attacking Esau's territory.

Does that have an application to today? The one that comes to mind is some of the theological and ideological food fights that go on in the Blogosphere, where no minds are changed and a lot of feelings are hurt. Partisans on one side of the food fight might go "yeah, way to tell off those heretics" to their champion, while the fanboys on the other side will pay their champion on the back in the comment section and trash the other side in the foes' comment sections.

Does such behavior win converts to your side? Not usually, especially when it's done with an unloving vitriol that looks far from Christ-like; "speak the truth in love" isn't often in the vocabulary. The person on the other side of the debate is likely to merely declare you anathema and the person who doesn't have a dog in the fight heads for the hills at warp speed.

A current application that I see is the trashing of Jeremiah Wright, B.O.'s pastor. Wright and some of the other black liberationists mirror Esau quite a bit. They feel they had their birthright stolen from them by the white man (true back in the day; not so true now) and sold their blessing to the Democrats for a big bowl of progressive stew that really doesn't do much for the long term. They have a long standing distrust of Jacob's tribe that they'll pass down from generation to generation, long after the guy who cheated them has passed the scene.

Not that Wright's teachings don't deserve to be trashed, but audio loops of chickens-come-home-to-roost /god d**m-America / US of KKK A aren't going to convince anybody that his theology is flawed. It will merely cause a certain breed of conservative have a cocky wiggle in their seat as they listen to Rush or Hannity play such tracks.

Nor does cherry-picking incendiary quotes from Wright's influences in the heresy-hunter style do the job; find the most heretical quote from an influence and throw it at the target. All it might do is give a swing voter who's wandered into Joe's site cause to vote for McCain in a McCain/Obama fight or cause to vote for Hillary in a Hillary/B.O. fight, at least until they see the next piece of McCain dirty laundry (Hagee's Catholic-bashing, maybe) or a Hillary hamper denizen (e.g., Ferarro's faux pas on Obama's black advantage).

Some ideological fights don't have a lot of benefits and are best left alone.

 

Dr. Hu's on First

Here's a write-up of a piece I heard on NPR about stem-cell research in China, spearheaded by a Dr. Hu at a Baker Clinic. The Dr. Hu was enough of a chuckle, bringing up memories of some rather cheesy sci-fi. What was even weirder was that the most noted of the actors who played Doctor Who was Tom Baker; he was the Doctor when the show had a following at CMU in my undergrad days courtesy of the PBS station playing it weeknights. It was starting to sound like the piece was a week too early for April Fool's Day.

Well, when I got to the actual piece, the work was being done at Beike Biotechnology. Well, it could well be pronounced "Bay-kah" and sound like a dough-cooker while making my way back down Man O' War after dropping off Eileen at work.

Liquidity Traps and Snares

2.25%. That's the new Fed Funds rate, dropped by 0.75% today. That wasn't even the big news of the week to date, which was the Fed-shepherded takeover of investment bank Bear Stearns by JP Morgan.

The low Fed Funds rate (that's the rate banks lend Fed deposits to each other at) brings to mind the monetary theory concept of a liquidity trap, where the Fed or other central banks drops rates down to near-zero, but the economy doesn't budge. Once you've got the Fed Funds rate down to near zero (we're not there yet, but we only have two more of these 75-basis-point jobs before a third would take us to zero), Bernanke and friends have shot their wad on interest rates.

Liquidity has different meanings in economics and finance. In monetary policy econ, it's having the right amount of money in the system; a tight monetary policy would have not enough liquidity in the system, while a loose policy would have too much liquidity. You want things lubricated, but not so much so that you get a truckload of inflation.

What the Bear Stearns case was about was a different type of liquidity issue, one of being able to sell an asset at fair price quickly. For instance, your house is less liquid than a share of Microsoft stock; you can call your broker and get the MS stock off your hands at the market price in a matter of minutes, but it may take weeks or months to get a fair offer for your house. If you're willing to take a 20-30% hit, you might be able to sell your house today, thus a house isn't overly liquid an investment.

We'll talk about liquidity risk in an investment, but normally, it's in the form of an obscure investment, like a very small stock or an small-town municipal bond that will be hard to find a buyer for on short notice when compared to a bigger known issuer. However, what we're seeing in a lot of the mortgage-based securities that Bear Stearns was issuing are investors not quite sure how to value the underlying investment and staying away from them in droves.

We're used to seeing markets work in most every case; sometimes, the price will drop like a stone, but eventually, buyers will be found at the right price. However, there's enough uncertainty with some of the Bear mortgage offerings (you really can't initial Bear Stearns without making a nasty statement) that the investment community wasn't touching Bear's offering with a ten-foot Hungarian. Even the more mundane dealings of Bear were endangered when people weren't quite sure what Bear's balance sheet was worth.

Thus, the lack of liquidity in the mortgage market caused the Fed to step in, guarantee part of Bear's portfolio and arrange a shotgun marriage with JP Morgan. The Bear got snared in this new liquidity trap.

We might need some sort of sub-prime Fannie Mae, doing for that sector of the mortgage market what Fannie does for the conventional mortgages, bundling them, insuring them and packaging them to mutual funds and institutional investors. The markets didn't trust Bear Stearns to do the job.

Is this a valid "bailout" for the Fed? Yes, if you think through what would have happened if Bear were left to stew in its own natural juices. A Bear bankruptcy would be exceedingly messy, as assets and liabilities of Bear's on other firm's balance sheets get frozen, a cascade effect might bring down a number of other firms as well.

The scenario that comes to mind in comparison is Chrysler. A Chapter 11 Chrysler in the early 80s would have very ugly for Michigan and the US economy. A Chapter 11 Bear Stearns today would be almost as bad, even worse when you consider what the trail of repurchase agreements might take out. The US government made money off of the Chrysler deal in 1979 and the Fed might make money off of the Bear Stearns deal, so it might not even cost us a dime in the long term.

Is the Fed rewarding risky behavior, the "moral hazard" that has been bandied about in the financial news this week? Buying out a firm that was trading for over $100 a share not that long ago for $2 isn't much of a reward.

The question that comes through my mind as a finance professor is whether Wall Street got a bit too far ahead of itself. Creative finance is often, if not usually, a good thing. However, creativity occasionally shanks one into the trees, and the SEC, the Fed and other regulatory authorities might want to think through whether there might have been some backstops that could be used to stop future debacles.

On the other hand, what the Fed just did might be just enough of a backstop. "Let 'em play" and occasionally step in to clean up a mess in as market-friendly a way as possible could be a valid reply.

Lots to think about there for the finance prof this week.

Murphy's March Madness Laws

I'm getting some blogging in after a lot of napping during my first day of spring break. I still have my Smarthinking shift to manage, so I'm getting some blogging in between explaining NPV and Betas to the unwashed masses of cyberspace.

Grades for my EMBA classes got posted yesterday afternoon and now I can relax a bit outside of getting a couple of on-line classes ready for next term. My three conventional classes are ones I've taught before, so I only need to tweak presentations rather than create them from scratch.

_________

The locals can breathe a sigh of relief. Despite losing to eventual conference champ Georgia, Kentucky managed to bag a 11 seed in the Big Dance, getting Marquette on Thursday afternoon. For the first time I can remember, spring break corresponds to the first week of March Madness, so I don't have to work around work to watch stuff; neat, no?

That Georgia run will be talked about for a while, going from the bottom of the SEC east and winning three games in 27 hours to barge into the NCAA as a 17-16 14 seed.

__________

Two of my alma maters are dancing; a somewhat underperforming Michigan State team is in as a 5 seed, drawing Temple on Thursday afternoon and a overperforming Kent State is a nine seed, getting UNLV. Of course, Kent is on at the same time as UK on Thursday.

There are two Murphy's Law of tournament coverage

(1) If there are multiple teams you are interested in, two of them will play at the same time (2) If there is a team you are interested in, local TV will cover something else.

Rule one applies with Kent and UK going at the same time.

Rule two applies here in Lexington, since it's likely that we'll get focused on the Xavier-Georgia game in the early Thursday slot for two reasons; Xavier's from nearby Cincinnati just to the north of us, and UGA beat the Cats and is the conference champ of "our" conference. The MSU-Temple game will get relegated to "look-ins" unless it's close.

Time to check out that March Madness on Demand computer feed of the broadcasts. MSU-Temple and Kent-UNLV will get that treatment.

Edifier du Jour-Deuteronomy 1:9-18(NIV)

⁹ At that time I said to you, "You are too heavy a burden for me to carry alone. ¹⁰ The LORD your God has increased your numbers so that today you are as many as the stars in the sky. ¹¹ May the LORD, the God of your fathers, increase you a thousand times and bless you as he has promised! ¹² But how can I bear your problems and your burdens and your disputes all by myself? ¹³ Choose some wise, understanding and respected men from each of your tribes, and I will set them over you."

¹⁴ You answered me, "What you propose to do is good."

¹⁵ So I took the leading men of your tribes, wise and respected men, and appointed them to have authority over you—as commanders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens and as tribal officials. ¹⁶ And I charged your judges at that time: Hear the disputes between your brothers and judge fairly, whether the case is between brother Israelites or between one of them and an alien. ¹⁷ Do not show partiality in judging; hear both small and great alike. Do not be afraid of any man, for judgment belongs to God. Bring me any case too hard for you, and I will hear it. ¹⁸ And at that time I told you everything you were to do.

Here's an interesting passage that I don't recall from previous readings of the Bible; I recall seeing where Moses delegated authority in Exodus after micromanagement of a whole nation became too much for him. However, we have both the beginnings of a representative democracy and of a judicial system complete with a something of an appellate process.

Not a pure democracy, mind you, but a representative one, where the wisest of the tribes were brought forward and named rulers over the parts of Israel. How exactly the process of getting those leaders isn't seen, but it looks quite a bit like a democracy; not a whole lot of checks and balances other than God overseeing the whole thing, but a democracy nonetheless.

It also may have been a bounded democracy, not unlike Iran, where the big mullahs can veto folks who are outside the pale; Moses got to approve of whoever was brought forward.

 

Mad March

I was planning on staying up a bit late to watch the Georgia-Kentucky game after getting back from my Friday night EMBA class; I get home to see the early game between Mississippi State and Alabama go to overtime, so Eileen and I start talking for a while back in the bedroom.

By the time I come up for air, there's footage of stairwells turning into waterfalls; a tornado ripped through downtown Atlanta, doing major damage near the stadium and minor damage to the Georgia Dome; they finished up the MSU-Tide game after an hour delay and postponed the Georgia-Kentucky Game.

CNN had this in their back yard; their building was damaged. I watched a bit of CNN's coverage of the damage; their reporter stated that he was used to trooping off to Kansas or Mississippi to cover the aftermath of a tornado, but that it was surreal covering it in his own back yard.

The Omni hotel downtown was damaged, leaving UK fans in the debris-strewn streets waiting to get back into their rooms; making the NCAA "big dance" bubble is a rather low priority item at this point, even for basketball-crazy Big Blue fans. So far, no deaths have been reported.

The SEC folks will have some logistical nightmares in the next few hours; Kentucky might wind up channeling Ernie Banks and play two tomorrow, or play none at all. If the Georgia Dome is OK enough to play and the damage around the area is cleaned up enough, they could have the UGA-UK game in the early afternoon, then have the winner play later in a semifinal game.

It could also be possible that they may have to scrap the rest of the tourney altogether, or try to hold it at an alternative site on close notice; that would  make the NCAA folks jobs difficult, who normally plan to have the NCAA field ready 6PM on Sunday. The bracketologists may have to push things back until the SEC is done, especially if Georgia (who won't make the field save an automatic bid a conference champ) makes a run and takes a spot away from an at-large team.

Eliot Mess

Well, I have to at least get my $0.02 in on Eliot Spitzer's quick demise as NY governor; he's resigned as of Monday. The other news of the day was that the "Kristen" in the indictment has been outed, and has a blog; go to Drudge if you want a link.

If you generate goodwill, your foes will cut you some slack; if you don't, friends are hard to come by when things are tough. At least his wife is sticking by him for now.

Edwin Edward's "dead girl or live boy" line came to mind, but he didn't have to pay for his ladies (that we know of), nor did he run on a corruption-fighting platform. The first name of Eliot easily brought up Elliot Ness of The Untouchables fame as a comparison; now, he's very touchable.

He had a tendency to be ruthless; very early in this blog's history, he showed up on radar for harassing crisis-pregnancy centers along with Wall Street sharpies. His bust of after-hours mutual-fund trading got this closing comment-"it is a righteous bust, even if it makes a guy who seems the classic case of an AG on the make for something bigger look good."

More than once with Spitzer, I wound up invoking the story of my liberal friend Dave's dislike of the invasion of Grenada; it was the right thing to do, but it made Reagan look good. There was a bit too much grandstanding, a bit too much of a grooming for the next level for my comfort.

State AGs have a tendency to use their position to make various righteous busts of corrupt practices that give them good PR for a run for US Senate or Governor. Jennifer Granholm, Charlie Crist, Bill Clinton and John Ashcroft are additional examples of state AG-turned-governors, while others like John Cornyn and John Danforth did AG-Senate moves.

The modern prototype of a crusading AG just went down in flames after making it to the governor's chair. What that portends for the future remains to be seen, but it might make us a little bit more skeptical about the next Mr. Clean.

Constistantly and Correctly.....

Fresh off the I Can Has Cheezburger site comes this nice counterpoint to this AP piece on teen STDs in the Herald Leader. The basic lead is that a quarter of all teenage girls have one, and the reporter trots out a lot of anti-abstinence-only doctors and officials.

However, I don't see anything in the basic news of the study in question to state that increased STD is caused by lack of "comprehensive" safe-sex-style sex ed. Our LOLcat friend here might agree.

The issue in the picture regards unwanted pregnancy rather than STDs, but a trashed Trojan could be a Trojan horse for either. The assumption in the comprehensive-sex-ed crowd in the article is that more teaching of safe sex means less unprotected sex.

The counter-argument for that is a judgment-free presentation of sex will lead to more sex; if the increase in sex is greater than the increase in use of effective "protection", then the comprehensive program will be short-sighted.

It doesn't take a feline Luddite to screw things up; many protection devices have a non-trivial failure rate, and any protection device has a very high failure rate if they're not used during the heat of the moment. Teens aren't known for their sophisticated level of judgment about their safety, especially when you the hormones are going full tilt.

On the other hand, if a abstinence-only program decreases the amount of sex, it may prove effective if it also decreases the amount of unprotected sex as well. Modern kids get most of the "protection" message through the culture and may learn more bad habits (or have them reinforced) than good ones from a comprehensive program.

I haven't seen the correlation between types of sex-ed and STDs as of yet, but the AP piece seems to take that as conventional wisdom.

"...and we've run out of natural gas"

Sorry, Peanut Gallery, but I've had such a backlog of grading that I've not had much intellectual energy left to blog this last week. We'll get some methane flowing and get things cooking in the very near future.

I'm about halfway through my FIN510 midterm grading and might actually break radio silence tomorrow; it's finals week and I the grading needs to get done. At least that saves me from any tasteless commentary on the soon-to-be-former governor of the Empire State or commenting on Ferarro's discovery of a faux pas being an accidental telling of the truth.

Still on the Planet

I haven't quite dropped off the planet. I was out of town most of the weekend seeing one of Eileen's seminary buddies get installed as pastor in a church in Missouri. The new reverend is still unpacking into her new house and doesn't have her Internet up, so I bummed just enough church bandwidth to keep tabs on my on-line classes.

It's also finals week and I have a backlog of grading to get done. I'll be up for air later in the week.

The Power of the Not Yet: Part I- For Whom Tolle Tolls

I haven't seen a whole lot of press on this, nor a lot of coverage in the Blogosphere, but B.O.'s buddy Oprah was seriously touting a rather New-Agey book, Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth, not just as her book-of-the-month, but with a 10-part weekly webinar; part one on Monday night had 500,000 people trying to get in, frying Oprah's servers. A New Server or Two might be an order.

I'm not sure how much this 10-week study will impact things, but this might be one of those Next Big Spiritual Things that we might want to keep on radar. If Oprah's devoting a big chunk of her personal creditability on it, there will likely be some water-cooler talk on the book, given that four million copies of the critter have been sold.

Tolle's shtick can be summed up by a previous book of his, The Power of Now (here's an interview on the book), where he focuses on getting past our past and living in the present, the Now. However, he does so from a Buddhist-flavored standpoint, borrowing from Christian literature just enough to appeal to the American listener. While there is a germ of truth that we could use to leave a lot of the baggage of our past behind, the Gospel is more that Carpe Momento.

I'm not sure who first coined the phrase (a Google last night didn't come up with a good answer), but "the now and the not yet" is often used in reference to Kingdom of God in orthodox Christian circles.  Real spiritual power and authority goes beyond Tolle's Now and into something timeless.

In that context, Romans 8(NIV) was one verse that came to mind.

      

²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

If we are focused on the moment, there isn't much room for hope, for hope is not something that seems to be in Tollian paradigm. There is a future that we need to be focused on as well as a present.

More on this later; I have a faculty meeting to attend to now.

Edifier du Jour:Romans 3:21-26(NIV)

²¹But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. ²²This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, ²³for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. ²⁵God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— ²⁶he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

We don't have to wonder if we're good enough to be saved; we aren't good enough. Yet we are  able to be saved, since it's God doing the saving, and it's open to all who believe, regardless of how many skeletons you have in the closet.

End of the Line

He kept going almost as long as Rasputin after he should have been dead, but the Huckabee campaign finally packed it in after McCain swept today's primaries. Texas went for McCain 52-36, with McCain winning by larger margins in less conservative states.

The other semifinal is still alive and kicking. Texas seems to have gone to Clinton in a squeaker, 50-48 with 53% in; that's close enough that we may have to wait until morning for a clear winner. Clinton won Ohio 56-42 and Rhode Island 58-40, while the home of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream and Howard Dean's Scream went for Obama 60-38.

The Ohio result is enough to keep Clinton going. The Conventional Wisdom was that Hillary needed to win big in both Ohio and Texas to warrant continuing. However, a big win in Ohio, more than the double-digit CW, a modest win in Texas and some Obama stumbling over NAFTA may make a continuation of the race plausible.

Now, McCain has the nomination, having gone over the top in delegates after tonight. He'll meet with Dubya tomorrow to get an official presidential endorsement.

Meanwhile, the beat goes on on the Democratic side.

Edifier du Jour:Romans 2:1-4(NIV)

¹You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. ²Now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. ³So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment? ⁴Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?

Randy McRoberts is an interesting orthodox free thinker; that verges on an oxymoron, but he seems to take the best from the emergent critique of the garden-variety evangelical church without throwing out the orthodox baby with the tepid suburban-conditioned bathwater.

A favorable quote from Brian McLaren, a rather heterodox emergent guy, sets my heresy-hunter antennae off; however, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Here's Randy's post of this afternoon-

I have learned two things from Brian McLaren that I hope I never forget:

• Only God can determine who is in and who is out, not me and not you
• My theology might be wrong

That first bullet point fits in nicely with my reading in Romans here. It's God that has custody of the Lamb's Book of Life, not us.

Two recent departures from the mortal coil come to mind; William F. Buckley and Dungeons and Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax, who died earlier today. Who's more likely to have made the final pass-fail grade, the faithful Catholic Buckley or the role-playing maestro Gygax?

The gut response (no Catholic-bashing allowed) would be Buckley, but I don't know a thing about Gygax's faith. Yes, D&D is routinely bashed by conservative churchmen for it's universe that includes magic and summonable demons, but the guy whose creations line the Monster Manual, JRR Tolkien, was a rather devout Catholic himself, instrumental in bringing the 20th century's greatest apologist, C.S. Lewis, to a saving faith.

The D&D folks (TSR was the parent company) weren't Biblically illiterate; I recall that a chart of expected hauls from various Wild West robbery targets in Boot Hill was titled The Wages of Sin.

Did Gygax make it through the Pearly Gates? Given gamer cultures and multiple marriages, I'd put money against it, but I don't know enough to be sure. Both Paul and Randy remind us that making hard-and-fast judgment on that is improper.

Folks in the Peanut Gallery probably know the rest of the phrase Boot Hill played off of, "the wages of sin is death" but we need to remember the rest of Romans 6:23, "but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Who He gives that gift to is His call, not ours.

There may be people walking more closely than others, but anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved, even if it's on their deathbed. Thus, we can't categorically punch a sinner's ticket to Hell on our own.

The Political Playground

One of the interesting blowups of the past week involved John McCain having to dress down a talk show host named Bill Cunningham for a common right-wing trick of referring to the junior senator from Illinois by his full birth certificate name, Barack Hussein Obama.

It's not the first time that politicians have made hay of someone's given name. Tom Harkin loved to refer to "George Herbert Walker Bush" in his less-than-stellar 1988 presidential run, making Bush out to be the patrician with blue-blood parents that give out multiple middle names. Bush pere proceeded to turn the tables rather than the other cheek; when running against Pete DuPont in the primaries, he made sure to refer to him by his given name Pierre, making him sound more aristocratic that Mr. Kennebunkport Compound.

What the sayin' Hussein shtick does is bring Obama's Muslim lineage to bear without openly saying so. The person who's been following Obama knows that his dad, while of Muslim stock, was agnostic to atheist and that he was out of his life in a hurry, and that Obama is a reasonably-devout-but-liberal Christian. However, the person who hasn't been following the race may think that more of that middle name, either out of a fear of Muslims or a fear of foreigners in general.

Thus, the folks like Cunningham who are sayin' Hussein are essentially taunting Obama like bullies on a playground. They can't make fun of his race or they'll be out of a job in a heartbeat, but they can make fun of his middle name. Those were the kind of people in middle school that I was happy to finish a fight with if they went from name calling to real violence; as the biggest guy in my class, I didn't start fights often, but I would sure finish them.

That experience has left me with a soft spot for the minority who's picked on. It leaves me with a sore spot for the would-be bullies of the political playground, who take pride in picking on others as an anti-PC backlash. Andy Jackson's got that in his craw as well-

The contrast between the original approach and intellectual sanity of William Buckley’s conservatism highlighted in his death, and the modern big-mouth, self-proclaimed conservatives - they are better identified as entertainment conservatives - like Bill Cunningham, Laura Ingram, Rush Limbaugh, Lars Larson and others has simply pushed me over the edge in recent weeks. I cannot stomach any longer the majority of the present-day Republican conservatives, in general, they are shallow, lack principled intellectual clarity, and mature character.

I can't vouch for Larson at all and I have limited history with Ingram, but Limbaugh has that intellectual bully part down along with the aforementioned Cunningham. Limbaugh's like Rick Mahorn, who would elbow you into the third row and give a big manure-eating, Chessy-Cat grin as the whistle blew; "Who, me?". In part, they view the political opposition as the enemy, and have a ends-justifies-the-means motif that makes belittling them fair game. That's not a Christian attitude.

I'm not sure if I'm quite with this assessment of Jackson

As of today, I am changing my political identity from conservative Republican to a conservative Independent. I am encouraged by John McCain’s professionalism so far in this race, and I will be voting for him. It is time to throw not only Bill Cunningham under the bus, but the whole lot.

I'm still a registered Republican here in Kentucky and fit the policy profile of a modern conservative more often than not, but it's cretins like Cunningham that want to have you back away from the breed. I'm not so interested in throwing him under the bus as throwing his attitude off the bus.

I'm reminded of the old Pat Buchanan joke. "There's no room for bigots and anti-Semites in our campaign; we filled those positions months ago." Swap out anti-Semite for Muslim-baiter (Jew-bashing is more a game of the left these days) and you something that comes within hailing distance of quite a few talking heads of the right.

I'm not sure what that makes me. A moderate-in-tone, graceful conservative? A pro-life moderate? Someone who's independent from the GOP core and the conservative core but often supportive of both?

Cyber-Koinonia

First, some props back to Richard Hall and Matt Brown. Let's start with Richard's sixth blogaversary post last last month; I've been too tied up with my anxiety issues and teaching to comment properly.

There have been lots of other friends along the way of course, and I’ve been irritating many of them since ‘the early days’: Mark Byron, Randy McRoberts, Bene Diction and Craig Schwarze are the ones that leap to mind. It’s an odd thing, but three of those four are folk I’ve had (and have!) significant disagreements with and yet I don’t remember any of our exchanges getting beyond the ‘robust-but-friendly’. Either my memory is faulty, or they’re all soft! Most of Christian blogdom is rather further to the right than I am, both politically and theologically, and one of the joys of blogging for me has been the conversations that have been possible across these divides.

That list of four reminds me of another feature of blogging that I’ve particularly enjoyed. Look closely, and you’ll see that it’s a little list that spans the world. Two from the US, a Canadian and an Aussie. Through their blogs, they’ve given a little window into their lives: joy, sorrow, pain, hope and the rest. And because of that sharing, I’ve been able to see their countries through their experiences. Not just theoretical issues, but real people whose opinions and beliefs have been shaped by their circumstances. I’m certain that they’ve led me (and others) to a deeper understanding of their cultures. Conversation can do that when it’s allowed to happen, and I’m grateful for it.

Richard and Bene are a few notches to my left theologically and a bit less so to my left politically, yet those two are two of my better friends in the Blogosphere. They may overmajor in grace and under-emphasize righteousness at times, but that grace has been abundantly applied when I've been down in these last six years. When you're struggling, you need compassion more than conservative orthodoxy from your friends; both would be nice, but you don't get too many warm fuzzies out of a Solo Scriptura discussion.

Meanwhile, to Matt Brownnoser's paean to this site, partly in praise of this Cedarville piece-

I'm surprised that Mark Byron isn't a bigger light in the blogosphere. I don't know what his traffic numbers are, but I'm sure that whatever they are, they're not high enough. He's been in the blogging game for several years, and his posts are thoughtful and well-written. I especially enjoy his Edifier du Jour series. If you're not a regular reader of his blog, you really need to become one. (And, Mark, I'm not saying all this just because you've been a faithful reader of mine since nearly my beginning. Truly, I'm not...)

Well, everyone deserves a fanboy or two just to give your ego a boost now and then.

I'm still wondering how Matt calls himself a Democrat when he seems to be with the Republicans on the issues more often than not. However, I was once a registered Democrat myself, even a delegate to county and district conventions. Not everyone's comfortable with the GOP. More on that part later.

A Wii Bit of a Logistical Problem

I was impressed with the Wii gaming system that my niece and nephew got for Christmas and went looking for one this weekend after Wiis showed up in a Circuit City flier in the Sunday newspaper. In CC's case, they had 33 units per store that get allocated first thing Sunday morning; the store opens at 10, but vouchers are handed out to the first 33 people in line as of 9AM. People then can come back when the store opens and use their voucher until noon.

Best Buy works much the same way, as I understand; you line up when the units go on sale, usually Sunday morning. Sundays are often when store sales periods starts, often meshing with when their fliers go out in the Sunday paper.

There's a problem with that distribution system; it tends to exclude folks who spend Sunday mornings at church. When we have a 9AM first service and a 10:30 Sunday school class, it's impossible for us to work in that setting without blowing off church, and if a gaming system is more important than church, you're priorities are a bit warped.

If you're in a multi-service church without Sunday School classes, you might be able to pull that off, snagging the machine at 10, then hustle over for your 10:30 or 11AM service. It;s even easier for the members of churches with Saturday evening services, leaving Sunday morning free.

The funny thing is, stores may well be doing that on purpose. Who's more likely to be an obsessive gamer, church goers who refuse to play hooky or the rest of the population? Probably the latter. Who's going to be more likely to buy more games for their new system once they purchase them? Probably the latter.

There seems to be a shortage of Wiis, of much longer standing that you usually see in a hot tech item; after a year or so, you'd think that Nintendo would have cranked up production. However, there is no shortage of accessories and games, which the stores will want to maximize sales of. If given the choice between selling to a casual fan who will buy a few games and a rabid fan who'll buy lots of games, your profit-maximizing point will be to find a way to get it in the rabid fan's hands.

Christian gamers can get to Midnight Madness things that launch a lot of new techie stuff, but Sunday morning releases are one way to screen them out, at least with the casual ones who aren't going to screw up their Sunday morning to get one.

¿Sabe "Saber Rattling?"

In a page out of the Israeli playbook, the Columbians killed FARC's "foreign minister," Raul Reyes, in an outpost just inside the Ecuadorian border. Of course, Ecuador didn't appreciate the presence of foreign troops on its soil even if it was just a mile over the border.

The death of Reyes will hurt Farc diplomatically as he was the head of the International Front, the part of the guerrilla movement dedicated to developing foreign contacts and links with like-minded organisations.

During the failed peace process with former president Andres Pastrana which ran from 1998-2002, Reyes headed Farc's negotiating team, based in Los Pozos, a dusty hamlet in the 42,000 sq km safe haven that the government granted to the guerrillas as the venue for talks.

In case you think FARC is Drudge on acid, they're a leftist Columbian rebel group that has effective control of a lot of southern Columbia. Their drug of choice is cocaine and they make a lot of it; using the sales to finance their movement.

The current Columbia president is a pro-US conservative, Alvaro Uribe, who lost his dad to FARC years ago. He got elected and reelected on a tough anti-FARC line.

Columbia is bordered by a couple of hard-left governments in Ecuador and Venezuela, both of who have friendly relations with FARC. Venezuelan strong-man Hugo Chavez has been friendly with FARC, playing a south-of-the-border Jesse Jackson in arranging releases of some FARC captives. Meanwhile, the Ecuadorians kicked out the Columbian ambassador over the border incursion and Chavez is publicly calling for his troops to beef up his border with Columbia.

Would Chavez be dumb enough to pick a fight with Columbia and the US over FARC? He's been struggling in public opinion at home and might want to do some saber rattling with the Yanquis. In answer to the title question, yes he does know saber-rattling all too well.

However, Chavez has to be careful. If he gives FARC outposts inside Columbia any material support or resists any efforts from Columbia to clean up the Venezuelan side of the border, we could have a US-Venezuelan shooting war, which may well disrupt the flow of oil from Venezuela. $4/gallon gas might be feasible if that goes down.

World War I got started over the assassination of the Austrian heir apparent. Could the FARC War start over the assassination of the FARC foreign minister? Stranger things have happened. Pray that it doesn't go that route.

 

Edifier du Jour-Romans 1:11-15(NIV)

¹¹I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong— ¹²that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith. ¹³I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.

¹⁴I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. ¹⁵That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.

I've read through Romans umpteen times over the years, for it's one of those books that "serious" Bible students flock to; for instance, one common evangelistic shtick is the Romans' Road of verses from Romans.

However, this passage hit me in a way it hasn't before, especially verse 12. Mr. Charismatic Paul is equating encouragement in the faith as a spiritual gift. Eileen had that yesterday morning in spades.

I was so anxious/nervous/depressed that I feared going to church Sunday morning. My thought patter was that my shattered nerves were a lousy witness and/or that somebody's likely "just have faith" platitude in Sunday School would have me thinking about pinning them to the floor like the intruding stoner I tackled two weeks ago (that helped trigger this bout of anxiety). I felt more than a bit like an edgy David Banner this morning looking to avoid a Hulk-out; you wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

Instead, Eileen took the time to reassure me that my faith was still solid and that neither was I turning my back on God nor was He turning His back on me because of my emotional problems. We took a hike through a nature preserve south of town in lieu of church, taking time to cry through some of my frustrations and hurts; communing with God through nature on Sunday morning is for Assisis;-).

That's not an blanket excuse for skipping church; you aren't going to get spiritual encouragement from close fellowship with an 8-iron. However, an encouraging talk with my wife on a warm early March morning (we were in the 60s today by afternoon) was more empowering than whatever Pastor David was cooking up; no offense, Pastor.

That's not to say that I might not have benefited from the sermon or that someone from our Sunday School class Life Group couldn't have had a kind word that would have made a difference. Today, I needed that encouragement, and if Eileen is anything, she's an encourager.

I seem to have licked the anxiety that has crippled me for the last two weeks; we'll see how that lasts, but a double-dose of encouragement and a bit of a hike seemed to do the trick today. That is a spiritual gift, even if it doesn't come in a showy word-of-faith package.

I try to give that type of encouragement to my students, especially the ones who struggle with the math in finance and Managerial Econ; I've talked more than one out of dropping the class over the years when it gets rough quickly and they feel out of their league. I don't know if they have a slot for encouragement on the student evaluations they did last week, but the one God has on His does, and that's who I need to focus on first and foremost.