Mark Byron

Earthen Vessels

I had had been getting some Google hits for my old Midland pastor, Tim Ortiz, which was odd. What was odder was the reason why; he's up on rape ("third-degree criminal sexual conduct") charges.

That's a jaw-dropper.

We left Father's Heart about three years ago when Tim's preaching became (IMHO) a bit too perfectionistic in striving to follow God's will 100.000000000% of the time. I wondered whether I was too lax in my faith or he was over-the-top in his, but when both Eileen and I have a worry-streak that gets us depressed when we get perfectionistic, we needed to leave before we went crazy.

Was Tim dealing with his internal shortcomings by getting perfectionistic in his teaching?

Prayers for him, his family, and the church are an order. A pastor in prison on those charges is going to have a bulls-eye on his back, so even if he did what he is alledged to have done, he still needs prayers for survival in the prison system.

...We're Just Negotiating the Price

I was thumbing through CNN's website while proctoring an exam and saw the Reators^© running an ad: "Tell Congress: Extent the Homebuyer Tax Credit Now."

OK. $8000 tax credit, of which about half will go into the Realtor^©'s pocket, given a 5%-or-so commission. You would normally thing that the real estate folks would be fans of limited government, but like most folks trolling K Street, the punchline of the old joke "We know what you are... we're just negotiating the price" seems fitting; that's why hearing that Steve Largent is now on the wireless-lobby dime is disturbing.

Your tax dollars at work. Yes, tell Congress to get that McMansion-Monger^© a $5000 commission at your expense NOW.

Watch Out for the Double Dip

We had some surprising GDP numbers come in; we had 3.5% growth in the third quarter. The BBC home page had a Cash-for-Clunkers car as its poster boy.

The White House will be happy with this news, but they shouldn't get too thrilled. We dug about a 3% GDP deficit in the last year, so a 0.9% increase (the economy only went up 0.9%, but that's a 3.5%/year rate) only climbs about a third of the way up out of that hole.

A lot of that increase was from extra economic activity due to housing and car incentives; one interesting analysisthat Drudge pointed to noted that Uncle Sam paid about $24,000 per new car sale that wouldn't have happened otherwise. According to that Edmunds study, about three-quarters of the CfC customers would have bought a new car this year anyway.

The fourth quarter will still havethe new-home sale tax rebate that expires at the end of next month but car sales are now on their own. That might make for an iffy 4Q and a potentially rocky 1Q 2010, especially if a contractionary health care bill squares the legislative circle and gets to Obama's desk.

I know that this reminds me of what Laura Ingram called the But-Monkeys; it's good news, but.... She didn't like it when Democrats played the game to minimize Bush successes, and it isn't quite fare to Obama when applied from his right. It is good news.

However, if some rather statist policies come out of Congress, we could easily see a double-dip recession, as businesses who are keeping their powder dry put the powder on the shelf indefinitely while the new mandates mess with businesses and the economy. Right now, Democratic leaders seem to be reaching for their aspirin bottles in increasing regularity as getting a health care bill through seems just out of reach; if it stays that way, the recovery might continue strongly.

[Update 2:55PM- Here's a But-Monkey right out Central Casting that I found blog-Googling for "double dip"-his headline, "Third Quarter GDP Rises to 3.5%… But…"]

Chain Gang

Our sermon this morning was in Acts 26, where Paul is witnessing to two local governors, Festus and King Agrippa; let's pick up the action in verse 28-

²⁸Then Agrippa said to Paul, "Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?"

²⁹Paul replied, "Short time or long—I pray God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains."

He was in Festus' court, but in that context is was where a ruler meets his subjects. That being said, I have an image of Paul in a modern-day court, in a orange prison jumpsuit, handcuffs and ankle-cuffs; not exactly a great example to look up to for the outsider.

However, what Paul had was the Gospel and a knowledge of Jesus that these folks didn't have. That is worth copying even if the big-house couture wasn't.

A lot of folks in the Peanut Gallery are scared to be evangelizing in part because we feel like poor examples. "Why would they want to be like [insert shortcomings, e.g.- a overweight, geeky introvert who can't keep his emotions in check]?" you hear your inner demon whisper. 

Why, indeed? Well, despite the shortcomings, we know a God who can help with those shortcomings and who sent part of Himself to die for our sins. Even Paul had his unspecified "thorn in the flesh" that he dealt with, and he was arguable the greatest evangelist of all time. Most of his epistles were written in prison 

So, we can witness despite our flaws; just tell people to ignore the mess and show them a God that helps you be less of a mess than you were without Him. With Him, I've become less geeky, less introverted and better able to handle my emotions; the overweight part is a work-in-progress, but three out of four ain't bad. Most of you can report similar success stories, even if they aren't the 100% healed type of story.

Random Stock of the Day-PLCE

I haven't heard of the Children's Place clothing stores until it showed up in the Stochastic Wok just now. Talk about hiding in plain site; they have stores both at the Fayette Mall here in Lexington and in the Hamburg shopping district on the east side of town. I guess being childless has me not noticing them like my inner child will notice things like Toys R Us.

They've been growing steadily, even managing to turn a profit in a tough 2008. However, the market seems to be a bit sour on it, as it has a Rodney Dangerfield no-respect PE of 15.

The financials look solid, with a bit too much inventory being  the one point that sticks out; they have an inventory turnover of 4 compared with 5.1 for the apparel store industry, which means that average item is sitting around for three months. Kids stuff might be a little more timeless than adult clothing and thus staying around a bit longer, but that's not an encouraging sign.

They have lower debt and higher returns than their peers and their low P/E and Price-to-book mark them as a possible value stock.

Has any of the Peanut Gallery shopped there? If they actually do a good job of providing good clothes at fair prices, this stock looks like it should do well.

The Ghost is Toast

One of my favorite web sites is Get Religion, where a recurrent theme in their critique of journalism is writers missing a clear religious angle to a story; in GRese, such a spiritual elephant in the living room is a "ghost."

I thought I saw a ghost in this Herald Leader story on Morehead State football coach Matt Ballard, who will be coaching barefoot this afternoon.

Ballard, 51, is going without shoes during his team's meeting with Marist so that underprivileged children around the world will no longer have to go barefoot every day.

His shoeless game is being done for Samaritan's Feet, the Charlotte, N.C.-based charity that seeks to provide footwear to children around the globe who have never had a pair of shoes.

During Saturday's MSU football game, fans will be asked to text the word "shoes" to 85944. When they do so, a $5 charge will be applied to their next phone bill that will go toward providing shoes for children without them in South Africa.

Samaritan's Feet. Franklin Graham's poverty-fighting ministry is Samaritan's Purse and Charlotte is where the Billy Graham organization has its HQ. Dollars to donuts that's a Christian outfit, but nary a mention of a spiritual angle is to be found in Mark Story's story. Is there a ghost to bust here?

Well, yes and no. SF is a Christian organization (no connection to the Purse), but they seem to do a lot of efforts that work on getting shoes on kids' feet without a lot of evangelism. For instance, IUPUI's basketball coach did a similar Shoeless Joe shtick as a SF fund-raiser (at least he was inside; it's in the 50s and rainy today) and the whole Detroit Piston team worked at a SF event; Ben Gordon and Will Bynum were washing kids' feet and Rip Hamilton "was the self-appointed shoe tester."

That lets them get access to places like Morehead State. Morehead is in eastern Kentucky where people might be a but more churchy than most, but it's still Morehead State; the ACLU and other critters of the secular left would be on things like white on rice if the football coach were doing something evangelistic with the school's blessing.

SF might either be below their radar or be so non-evangelistic like Habitat for Humanity that they become an honorary Bright and get help across the board without worrying about the Christian roots of the organization.

No ghost here. The spook is SF's downplaying the gospel to get secular help, so Story didn't miss the story.

Worldwide Wes 2.0

I thought keeping "Worldwide Wes" away from Lexington would help. Now, another basketball operator is getting UK in trouble, a guy named Brian Clifton. He was star recruit John Wall's AAU coach and was registered as an agent with FIBA, the international basketball organizing body.

Clifton has an attitude, as he seems to have some bad blood with UNC's Roy Williams; why a Charlotte-based AAU couch would look to pick a fight with a major coach in his backyard is a good question. Word on the basketball street is that he's a manipulative critter.

The FIBA tie makes Clifton toxic to the NCAA; Wall may have to sit out three games and pay back the cost of a trip to Lexington since it would be down as taking money from an agent.

That shouldn't be a big deal, since UK has a easy early-season schedule with Morehead State, Miami U and Sam Houston State as the games he's likely miss. It isn't until game 6, where they play either Stanford or Virginia, that UK would have to sweat the details. Yes, I remember Gardner Webb, but I don't see that type of brain-burp happening this year.

However, the shady nature of Clifton brings the ethics of Calipari into question; how many other corners has he cut with this recruiting class?

Strap-Sniffers

Tell me what is wrong with the following passage-

Bengals receiver Chad Ochocinco was fined $10,000 by the NFL on Friday for a uniform violation. The colorful Cincinnati wideout was fined for wearing the wrong colored chin strap (black) during the Bengals' loss to Houston last Sunday.

Also fined $10,000 was Tennessee Titans safety Chris Hope for roughing-the-passer against New England in a 59-0 loss during which Tom Brady threw for six touchdowns.

San Diego rookie linebacker Larry English was fined $7,500 for a horse collar tackle in the Chargers' loss to Denver on Monday night.

Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma received a $10,000 fine for his helmet-to-helmet hit on Giants quarterback Eli Manning.

Not that 10K will make much of a dent in Ochenta y Cinco's (if we're going Espanol, let's be authentic) wallet, but victimless crimes should get lesser fines that cheap shots.

My suggestion to Ochenta y Cinco... wear the right color strap this week, but instead of a chin strap, make it a jock strap around the chin. You said you were going to do the Ricky Bobby Fire Dance; the ESPN morning guys said that they'd pay the fine if you did that one, so they might cover this one.

Elmo's a Girl!

Here's an interesting piece on the young lady, Jessica Miller, who plays Elmo in the touring Sesame Street Live, which is hitting Rupp Arena this weekend. She doesn't get to talk, since they use pre-recorded voices they lip-synch to on stage and are supposed to be mute when they're off-stage but in costume-

But even in personal meet-and-greets, the kids don't seem to mind an uncharacteristically silent Elmo. Miller said they never seemed to question when they are told that Elmo is resting his voice in preparation for the big show.

However, her cheerleading background might come in handy, as Elmo loves to bounce, as anyone who has dealt with a Tickle Me Elmo knows.

She might need to be careful about not going to the bathroom while in character. One of my female church friends from Akron used to do Barney for kid's parties. When she went into the woman's room in costume, a crushed young boy exclaimed "Barney's a GIRL!"

Promoting Promotion

Here is an idea that will never happen, but it would be interesting if it did.

In European sports, the bottom teams in the major league of soccer or basketball will get "relegated" to the second-division (the top minor league) while the top teams in the second division will get promoted to the first division. That way, teams at the bottom of the league don't mail in the last third of the season, coast their way to a high draft pick, and trade off their free agents for prospects and draft picks; they fight and claw to stay in the bigs.

My brainstorm would apply that to college football. Let's say we paired the 1A conferences thusly, with a big conference paired with a mid-major; since there are only five-mid majors, I split Conference USA in 2.

Pac 10-WAC

Big 12-Mountain West

Big 10-MAC

ACC- Sun Belt

SEC- Conference USA West

Big East-Conference USA East.

That would see Boise State swap with Washington State and we would see how the Smurf Turfers fare with the big boys for the whole season; probably well enough to keep out of the basemant and let another WACCY team up the next year.

Central Michigan and Illinois would swap and give the Chips a shot at OSU and Penn State. Would CMU be able to hang with Minnesota, Indiana and Northwestern well enough to avoid the cellar and a return trip to the MAC? It would be a very fair fight. Illinois would have to the the favorite for the MAC title the next year, but would have a good Western Michgan club to get past in the MAC West and a solid champ in the East to contend with to win the MAC in 2010.

SMU would, in an awkward fit, join the SEC East and Vandy would get a shot at CUSA. Other than the longer-than-normal road trips, that might actually be a fair trade. SMU, Kentucky and Mississippi State would be in an interesting fight to avoid the cellar in year two. Vandy would be no lock to get right back up.

Baylor heads to the Mountain West and a fairly good program (TCU, BYU or Utah) gets to go head to the mountains. Iowa State might join them the next year as the newcomer might hang with the tough Big 12 south enough to stay around.

The Sun Belt might be road kill in this format, for none of their schools are quite ready for prime time. We'll see the creme of the conference, LA-Monroe in Lexington tomorrow night; they are one of three teams undefeated in conference play, although LA-Lafayette is probably the better bet to win the conference; they managed to beat Kansas State when they paid a call to the bayou earlier this year. I don't see the Sun Belt champ being able to hang with the ACC well, but I could see Duke stay in the Sun  for a while.

The CUSA East isn't anything to write home about this year, but Southern Miss has had some out-conference success, beating Virginia and hanging within a touchdown of Kansas and Louisville. None of the other leading clubs have a big-conference scalp to claim this year. USM could easily hang with the second tier of the Big East, while the celler dweller in the Big East might not escape CUSA quickly.

Thus, other than the Sun Belt, the tops of the mid-majors are good enough to hang with the BCS conferences. We could easily see some movement, as some of the weaker big-conference programs float to mid-major levels for the long haul.

That's an interesting thought experiment that might argue for some modifications to our bowl format.

Is Racism Conservative? Not in England

There was a bit of a buzz this week when British National Party leader Nick Griffin was the featured guest on the BBC show Question Time. That's going to fly doubly over most American's heads, as they've heard of neither the BNP or QT.

I hadn't heard of QT either, but it is a weekly BBC staple that seems to be a cross of a Sunday morning political show and a town-hall meeting; a panel of news makers field questions from a studio audience on Thursday evening at 8:30 and the session is shown live-to-tape as is (with the occasional bleepable or decorum breech edited out) at 10:35. Griffin was a guest on this week's edition, which had a bit-too-lively debate between he and his many critics.

Why the hoopla? Well, to put it kindly, the BNP folks make Tom Tancredo look like a member of La Raza. They are racists in that they want to end immigration and encourage non-ethnic-Brits to leave. They had a whites-only membership policy until recently; why a non-white would want to join is another matter.

However, calling them critters of the right would be a mischaracterization. Lest we forget, real fascists are leftists, and the BNP economic policy is of the left. They turn up their nose at both free-market-free-trade liberalism and socialism, wanting the economy to serve the state and to move away from big corporations and towards small mom-and-pop businesses. 

Yes, that does sound a bit like Pat Buchanan's dream world, but both share a localist tendency to like the small and distrust the big. The problem with that romantic notion is that a lot of our modern technology is made possible by large corporations that have the scale to do things that can't be done easily in a storefront shop on a six-figure budget. I'd likely not be blogging on the Web were localist economics the rule of the day. Localism has crunchycon, paleocon, and leftist versions, and the BNP vision is that of the left.

The BNP got 6% in the last EU elections in that other UK (I can tell I've been in Lexington too long when UK has me thinking John Wall before I think of John Bull) and that gives them some credence; a proportional representation system lets minor parties like the BNP and the anti-EU UK Independence Party more votes than they get in standard first-past-the-post races. If the Constitution Party (not to equate the two, but that's our closest analog, albeit much less virulently ethnocentric) got 6%, they'd be in the mix of public affairs shows, too. They got that vote largely in Labour-leaning districts, so their vote is of blue-collars with red necks behind them.

That makes the Labour folks nervous. The anti-fascist protesters are right to rail on their racism, but the BNP isn't of the right. Militant racism and ethnocentrism is a blue-collar art-form by and large; the better off tend to be more cosmopolitan than Joe Shoprat, so you see blue-collar skinheads in German and the BNP taking votes from Labour in Europe.

When Labour needs all the help it can get in not getting slaughtered in next spring's election (the five year mark of the last election is May 5th, 2010, so by custom, they'll have to go to the polls by then), the threat of losing Archie Bunker types to the BNP is rather real; let's not forget Archie's prototype was Alf Garnett from the British show Til Death Us Do Part. The analogy might not hold perfectly, since Alf was a reluctant Tory, since Labour "pretend to represent the working classes, whilst all they would do when in power is feather their own nests."

Who such disgruntled (if they were ever gruntled in the first place) folks vote for next spring will be a good question, and the BNP rednecks might sadly get a few of those votes.

Random Stock of the Day-DRAM

I decided to move a dormant feature of an old subblog over here and look at a randomly chosen stock each day. Today's quick stir-fry in Dr. B's stochastic wok is Dataram, a small memory-chip maker that has seen better days, even as it has been a leader in memory R&D going back to the 1960s.

Their revenues have fallen each of the last four years, although their first quarter of FY 2010 ended in July showed a strong up-tick in revenue, even as the red ink continued.

Dataram's revenue have been falling steadily over the years, but the stock market still sees it work more alive than dead with a price-to-book of 1.44. It's heyday as a stock seems to be during the dot-com boom, as its price went well up, but it has been in steady decline since then.

Computer memory has become a commodity and I'm not sure if there is enough of an upside to keep Dataram going and get them back to profitbability as a free-standing entity.

If the price-to-book falls under one, it might be time for one of their major customers like Dell or Intel to do some verticle integration and buy Dataram; that might allow for some economies of size and eliminination of seperate sales and front-office departments to make a Dataram subsidary of a bigger computer company profitable.

Until then, things look shaky enough to be on the outside looking in based on a half-hour once-over.

The RIte Stuff

The religion news of the week has the Roman Catholic Church essentially setting up an Anglican Rite wing of the church; they're open to receiving Anglican looking to cross the Tiber as fellow Catholics and open to whole Anglican churches and dioceses to come over, accepting the ordination of Anglican priests, even if they're married. Here's one of many Get Religion posts on the topic.

If I remember the shortcomings of non-Catholic churches as viewed by Catholics, the two shortcomings are lack of apostolic succession and the lack of fellowship with Rome; I may be off in my terminology a bit. The Anglicans and the Orthodox both have apostolic succession, where they can trace the ordination of their priests back to pre-schism Catholic ties.

To top it off, the Anglican-Catholic split brought about by Henry VIII was more political than theological; other than not looking to Rome for leadership, high church Anglicans kept most Catholic theology, often thinking of themselves as Anglo-Catholics. So, if you just opt to bow the knee to Rome, there isn't much to stop a Anglican-Catholic merger other than five centuries of bad blood, blood that can be buried by the blood of Jesus.

Of course, not every Anglican would be interested in crossing the Tiber. Low church conservatives would have a more evangelical theology and might not be comfortable under Rome's tutelage. Liberal Anglicans won't be the least bit interested, especially when they'd be hanging out with conservatives in the new Anglican Rite. High Church conservatives from the global South don't have liberal bosses screwing up their theology and praxis, so they would have little reason to cross.

The one possible batch of takers are conservatives in liberal terrain who want to get out from under left-listing Anglican/Episcopal leadership. In the US, many conservative Eposcipal churches have already boogied, but Anglican conservatives in Canada and England might be a market for such a push.

Don't hold your breath for a Baptist Rite or a Cambellite Rite Catholic, however.

Those Who Can't Teach, Research Teaching

It's a good thing my blood pressure was low when I went to the doctor yesterday, for this article started to raise it. I'm not a Tea Partier, but this is Exhibit A in why the Department of Education could be best made to disappear; here's some planned statements from department boss Arne Duncan-

"Schools of education have been renowned for being cash cows for universities," Duncan will say, according to his released remarks. "The large enrollment in education schools and their relatively low overhead have made them profit centers."

Duncan will say that universities divert the profits from education schools to other departments while doing little to invest in educational research and clinical training.

Most teacher colleges are in second-tier colleges that focus on teaching students rather than on research. It is true that you don't need a lot of extra equipment to teach education classes, but the same holds true for business and social science classes; when I was teaching at Warner U, their adult-ed business programs were major cash cows, supporting their traditional bible-college day students.

If we follow Duncan's logic, he wants college education to be more expensive. If the school of education has to plow any "profits" back into research, that will mean that tuition across the board will need to be raised or unprofitable departments cut in order to make room for the new education research.

OK, everyone at Central State U pays extra tuition and the Physics and Anatomy programs get downsized to pay for more education research. Remember to thank Arne for the increase in your student loan.

Duncan has been surrounded by researchers for years, both as Chicago school superintendent and now as Ed Secretary; his cohort is going to be research buffs who got to school district HQ or Washington primarily as education research experts rather than day-to-day teachers. That crowd will be biased towards more research, since that's the air they breathe.

Mundane Interests

I was reading an ESPN piece where Steve Largent was commenting on former Seahawk teammate Jim Zorn's travails as Redskins' head coach; the news of the week was that meddling owner Dan Snyder stripped him of offensive play-calling duties.

However, it wasn't the NFL minutia that pulled my chatty-ring; it was this line that describes what the former congressman from Oklahoma is doing these days- "Largent is currently president and CEO for CTIA, a wireless communications lobbying group."

Largent took a stab at running for governor in 2002 and lost, so he decided to go back to Washington where he can use his connections (and fame as a Hall-of-Fame wide receiver) to nudge legislation in the way his paymasters would like. That's a bit disappointing to me, since we have far too many smart people trying to nudge legislation their way.

However, as Willie Sutton use to say about why he robbed banks, Washington is where the money is. 

Frankfort, too.

We have some nasty Kentucky state politics going over gambling; the Democrats want to let the racetracks here in the state have casinos, which brings some Republican-leading horsemen over to the Democratic side of the fence. Gov. Beshear ran on a pledge to put a casino measure on the ballot, but instead has tried and failed to get a bill out of the legislature; he got it past the House earlier this year, but a Republican-majority Senate has blocked the measure.

Now the Republicans are talking about putting it on the ballot. Democrats are becrying it as a stall tactic, as such a vote would happen next November and would bring extra voters out for an off-year election that would more likely be anti-casino conservatives.

Both parties are in interesting boxes. The Democrats have increasing horse-racing money coming in from apolitical folks who want the extra money in a declining industry. That will make it harder for Republicans to get elected as long as casinos are a live issue in the legislature; the anti-casino folks are either theocons who are pro-GOP already or goo-goos on the religious left who might contribute to an anti-casino referrendum campaign but not switch sides of the aisle on this issue.

By taking the topic off the table until Nov 2010, it takes the pro-casino money away from Democrats and into the pro-casino referrendum campaign. That's why Democrats might want the issue to hang around the legislative agenda and get extra horsey money.

The Terrorist Next Door

I'm out of commission with a virus; it isn't H1N1 (thank you, Lord) but I was ordered home to bed today and tomorrow. As I write, a nice Muslim Indonesian guy is subbing in my ECON 510 class tonight; Muhammad is our main Econ prof, so the class will be in good hands (possibly better hands since he's ABD in Econ from the University of Kentucky and knows more economics than I).

I've run into plenty of Muslim academics over the years as fellow grad students at Kent State and teaching at Sullivan U, where we have about a 8% or so Islamic population in our MBA program; it's rare to have a Muslim-free MBA class.

That brings a lot of diversity; with our MBA program about 25% foreign, roughly equally Asian, African and Arab, it makes for interesting conversations in class. When we talked about discrimination in my MGT 499 classes, I had some real life confirmation of Flying While Muslim from a US-born Iraqi-American.

So, this story about a junior-high math teacher getting busted for allegedly plotting bad things to non-Muslim Americans rings home. The purported terrorist wannabe, Tarek Mehanna, is stated to be "a sweet guy and loved by his students."

You were expecting Achmed the Not-Yet-Dead Terrorist? You can be very devout in one's faith and be sweet and lovable. On the Christian side of the aisle, most devout folks are very nice; it's the occasional jerk that thinks standing on the quad in front of the college library and calling everyone damnable sinners on the highway to Hell to be a effective witness that gives the brand a bad name.

On the Muslim side of the aisle, the devout ones I've seen have been very gentle; it's the less devout ones that tend to be problematic. However, there are schools of Islamic thought that want to take jihad into their own hands and have a lot of Koranic rhetoric to back it up. It often can be those thoughtful, otherwise gentle folks that want to follow God so seriously, that they can turn to violence, especially if you get a twisted heurmanutic that praises martyrdom and violence against the infidel, even if the infidel is just a batch of ordinary people in an office building or mall.

I don't know Mr. Mehanna, but I've met quite a few intelligent good-citizen nice Muslims over my years. Could one of them have gone over the edge to become a terrorist? Possibly, but I'm not in the mood to strip-search my Muslim students or give my collegue Muhammad a wide bearth just because he's a practicing Muslim who can laugh when I joke about our box lunches after our in-service meeting included a kosher and halal pickle.

Purell Paranoia

Here's an interesting poll from the Great White North-33% of our northern neighbors won't shake hands due to fear of H1N1. I'm sure that you'd get a similar result if you polled Americans.

I remember having a bit of a cough last week, probably just allergies during a colder-than-normal October for Lexington. The student sitting next to my workstation in the classroom (we have a computer and projector at our disposal in each room) was packing Purell and made sure to re-wash his hands after I used some paper on his desk as a prop in my lecture.

Another casualty, at least at the Lexington Clinic branch we went to for Eileen's sinus infection last week, is waiting-room magazines; they've taken them out in order to stop spreading germs via the magazines and have posted notice for patients to BYORM in the future. Thankfully, I brought the local fish wrap newspaper with me.

It doesn't seem to be just Lexington where this is happening. I Googled for "waiting rooms magazines H1N1" and got this CBC piece noting that the same thing is happening in Manitoba and that the Canadian analog to the CDC recommended such a move back in August.

Closer to home, we have Owensboro hospitals doing the same thing as well as Lafayette, IN.

So much for Byron's Law of Waiting Rooms; the quality of reading material is inversely proportional to the length of wait. If they have great magazines, you'll get called in halfway into the first article, but if the best bet is a three-year-old Reader's Digest, you need to get out your overnight gear.

Bitter Harvest

Here's an interesting Dan Edelin post on Halloween and the "Harvest Parties" that a lot of churches will throw.

If I might turn his table into text form, both have fun times, candy and other treats and neither have tainted candy to speak of. Not that tainted candy is an urban legend, but it approaches it; you're in more danger from drivers going to and from church than you are from a twisted neighbor putting meth or a razor blade into a Butterfinger.

Both have harvest imagery and other images; Halloween will have some scary images that the church may lack, but if "the church sponsors an evangelistic 'Hell House,' then all bets are off." Local megachurch Porter Memorial Baptist is doing a "Judgement House" this year, which is just south of our big mall quadrant and just north of the new Brandon Crossing center in the growing nether region between Lexington and Nicholasville; other churches looking to scare the snot out of and the bejeebers into kids are likely a short drive away from you.

Neither has a serious demonic intent; very few Wiccans will be traipsing around in black hats and brooms and few pint-sized demons are actually possessed.

So, why bother with the faux-ween? It would seem easier to ignore the holiday or use it as a ministry tool, or maybe do some sort of All Saint's Eve vigil. However, the latter might sound a bit too Catholic for the good Baptists and Indie-Christians in town to swallow.

Ode to a Smurf

The first BCS rankings came out today, and Boise State is in 4th at present. Florida and Georgia are 1-2 with both humans and computers, but the computers have Iowa and Cincinnati in third and fourth, while the humans have Texas and USC in those slots. Everybody has Boise in 5th but that puts them in 4th.

Computers have no memory and no thought to reputation, so human fave USC gets only an 11th in the computer ranking. Arizona and Wisconsin are computer darlings, getting a tie for 14th with the computer and no-shows with the pollsters.

I'm hoping for Texas to lose at least once in the Big 12 to give Boise a shot at the title. The computers will like Boise's win over Oregon, and if the Ducks win the Pac 10, that will make the Smurf Tufters case easier if the pollsters are faced with a 1-2 Florida Alabama match-up come December.

When Michigan and OSU came in 2-1 into their final game match, the pollsters moved Florida into #2 to avoid having a BCS tital game rematch. Would they do likewise this year? We shall see.

Hogs and Sweathogs

I was thumbing through the news and saw that a third person had died as a result of an extended stay in a dry sauna-like sweathouse in Sedona, AZ. The third victim had "multiple organ failure." It seems like there was one organ that seems to have surely failed in all this, and it was the brain of the organizer.

Eileen and I visited Sedona a few years ago when we were visiting her sister's clan in metro Phoenix over Thanksgiving, spending Black Friday morning touring north of town. The red rocks in the area are pretty, but the town was downright spooky with its New Ageyness. We didn't stay long, for there was an oppresive spirit to the town.

People are often looking for the mystical and supernatural without having a personal God tied to it. When you try that on your own, you get some very bad juju, like Mr. Legion in Mark 5; we were studying that our home group just now. I don't know that the guy here was messing with the supernatural, but the supernatural was sure messin' with him. 

After we saw the first recorded case of sooo-eee-cide, doing a number on the Gerasenes Futures Exchange's December pork belly contract (at least the folks who were short could really claim a act of God), Jesus instructed the former demoniac to "Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you."

Well, the Peanut Gallery is family, so I ned to be talking about Him more than I have.

The Liberal Art of Bumper Stickers

We were out TV-shopping today, bagging a 22" digital TV; it's odd to be lugging a TV in one hand and four two-liters of pop in the other and have the TV be lighter.

However, it was a car in front of me as we were heading to HH Gregg that got me thinking. It had about ten bumper stickers on the back, one supporting a funky music store downtown, a couple promoting bicycling, a couple promoting native American stuff, one proclaiming "I'm already against the next war" and one on the bottom right which just said "Liberal"; gosh, I think I figured that out already.

I'm not sure if there is any scientific way to quantify this, but it seems like a liberal activist's car is more likely to be stickered-up than a conservative or libertarian one. It may be that there are a wider array of causes that get a liberal juiced than conservative do. Or, since I'm living in a college town, I see more folks on the port side of the aisle.

What Have You Done for US Lately?

Not that President Obama is Jesus, but one of His sayings fits him-a prophet is without honor in his home town... or home country. Here's Nick Kristof, a thinking liberal (yes, they do exist) who will say nice things about evangelical efforts oversees and be critical of The One where warranted.

Well, not quite, but he's being critical of the Nobel committee-

So what do you think of President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize? I’m nonplussed — I admire his efforts toward Middle East peace, but the prize still seems very premature. What has he done?

Even the most famous denizen of the Saginaw Valley took time away from bashing AIG to critique Obama from the left; "Congratulations President Obama on the Nobel Peace Prize -- Now Please Earn it!" Of course, what MM wants to see and what I would like to see are two different things (did you just equate Washington, Castro and Ortega? ... yes, you did), but at least he knows that this was given on potential rather than actual deeds.

Even SNL gave him both barrels last week on not doing much to date. NPR's Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me satired the Norwegians today by accepting their Emmy for the TV show they will do in the future. However, I guess actually doing something other than making good speeches will do for a Nobel.

This isn't the first time that good intentions won a Nobel. Algore won it two years ago and others who talked a good game but failed to deliver the goods, like Oscar Arias and the anti-landmine movement, have gotten the award. The committee seems to veer between people who have actually made life better around the world, like microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus in 2005 or Doctors Without Borders in 1999 or even Jimmy Carter in 2002 (yes, I hear the right wing of the Peanut Gallery wince, but he has done quite a bit of good in many countries over the years even as he's an occasional pain-in-the-butt domestically) to believing-the-right (or should that be left)-thing picks like Obama and Gore.

The Nobel committee is essentially praising Obama for not being Dubya. That's a fairly low bar.

Let's hope Obama earns it, but not at the expense of him being a yes-man for the European elites.

Under Pressure

I had to chuckle on my way back from running errands when an NPR broadcast talked about "mounting pressure" coming from gay activists to get President Obama to move on their issues; he'll be speaking to the Human Rights Campaign this evening. That's an interesting choice of words; any mounting pressure will happen after the meeting.

Speaking of mounting pressure, Barney Frank lived up to his name, questioning the effectiviness of the big march/rally planned for Sunday.

Frank said in an interview with The Associated Press that he considers such demonstrations to be "an emotional release" that does little to pressure Congress.

"The only thing they're going to be putting pressure on is the grass," the Massachusetts Democrat said Friday.

That ranks up with Coleman Young's "he hasn't run anything but his mouth" takedown of Jesse Jackson for a modern political one-liner. Well, Palin's convention line about mayors being community organizers with actually responsibility is good, but it takes a bit more time to set up.

Three or Four Degrees of Seperation

Two odd little stories from today. One was from lunch; the waitress was the granddaughter of my 7th grade geography teacher... in Midland. We're in Lexington, KY, a good 500 miles away, but the young lady is going to UK after growing up in Lansing.

Another interesting story was Eileen asking me to look into a horse that a friend's family owns; this being horsey country, it's not that odd to be a person or two removed from the racing industry. The horse in question was a filly named Dr. Zic who was supposed to be running at Keeneland (Lexington's race track) during their fall meet.

I find that she's riding in the 8th race on the 14th, ridden by a C H Borel.... is that the Calvin Borel of Triple Crown fame? It seems so, since H is his middle initial and it's unlikely that two CH Borels are floating around horse racing.

One step away from my old Geography teacher (who passed on in the 90s as it turns out) and four steps away from Bo-Rail. Interesting

I Can't Drive 0.26- Baseball Remix

This piece on Miguel Cabrera getting dressed down by Tiger GM Dave Dombrowski reminded me of this 2003 post on former Bear QB Jim McMahon blowing a 0.26 DUI.

That blood test reminded me of Dick the Bruiser, who'd do a low-rent Weird Al thing on one of the Detroit rock stations (WRIF, if memory serves) back in the early 80s. One of his send-ups was a redo of I Can't Drive 55 as I Can't Drive Point-Two-Five.

Off by one-hundredth, but give me some poetic license.

Well, Carbrera blew a 0.26 after the police arrived after a scuffle with his wife. He managed to get home, but went 0 for the weekend as the Tigers lost the AL Central.

Something's wrong, but at least Dombrowski is referring this to the Tigers' EAP program; that can be helpful in helping deal with problems that Cabrera might be "self-medicating."