Marcus' World

My Bubbly Atheist

Growing up, I was a good Christian boy.  Before I was even 10 years old, I would only listen to Christian radio and watch religious television; and the Bible was my main reading matter. My grandma was very religious and this seemed to work for her. Whenever I spent the night at her house, I'd always read the 23rd and 91st Psalms aloud while sitting on her knee.

Around the age of 10, I started planning out sermons I would deliver when I became a minister someday.  (If only there had been blogs back then--I could have crafted some very interesting posts!)

At the age of 11, I took a more stern approach and figured out who at school needed "saving" from the fiery flames of Hell.  One person on the docket was a fellow sixth grader with the seemingly  Hell-proof name of Faith. Even back then I wasn't much of an activist; I pondered talking to Faith about my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and how He should come into her heart, but never really did it.

By the time high school rolled around, I was a stalwart in the church youth group (a group known as "The Filling Station"--complete with a logo of a gas pump--because Jesus had the power to fill your formerly empty life up). I edited the youth group's newsletter. I went to Bible camps most summers, and was on the "Bible Bowl" trivia team (think Jeopardy, but with all questions coming from the Bible). I went to every single youth group meeting during my senior year in high school, and was rewarded with a trip to Niagara Falls. (Driving to church on the day of the trip, I went so fast that I got a speeding ticket.)

My early years at Northwestern were filled to the brim with Campus Crusade for Christ meetings, and twice-Sunday trips to the First Presbyterian Church of Evanston.  Eventually, though--as often happens in college--I had a crisis of faith. Sometime in the summer between freshman and sophomore year, I decided that the evangelical Christian notion that everyone must worship the same God or be damned to perdition made no sense at all. During sophomore  year I  half-heartedly attended various religious functions, and eventually stopped going altogether.

Almost 2 years after this break in faith, I met Helen.  Several things stood out about her--she was smart, she was sweet, she was sharp, she was attractive, she was funny.  Another thing that commanded attention: her proud declaration that she was an atheist, and not just a mushy agnostic who wanted to have it both ways.  Helen only believes in what she can see with her own eyes, and doesn't think that you have to be religious to care about making the world a better place.

For years after meeting Helen--for years after marrying her--I didn't know how to acknowledge her atheism to my family.   Obviously it didn't bother me that much, but I had years of  Filling  Station-inspired conditioning to contend with.  For all I know, nobody in my family would have cared. But because of our religious heritage, however attenuated it might be today, I never wanted to bring the topic up.

This morning I peeked at Helen's Facebook profile, and noted that she now lists her religious views as, "Bubbly atheist."  I thought this was awesome.

Helen is my bubbly atheist, and I love her.

Clinton Should Keep Running if She Wants To

The last few weeks have shown Hillary Clinton at her worst: peddling sham gas tax relief and beating the drums of war against Iran. A month or so ago I was wondering if perhaps I'd misjudged her.  Today I'm very happy to support Barack Obama.

That said, why should she bow out now?  Although the chattering class has declared her candidacy over, it's not.

Next week she's likely to prevail in West Virginia (a state with similar demographics to Pennsylvania, where she did very well).  Success is also waiting in Kentucky; if she's able to get the votes in Michigan and Florida counted (whatever you might think of that maneuver), Clinton is right back in the race.

This interminable campaign has had many inflection points when either Clinton or Obama were supposedly finished.  But it's not over yet.   

At the Movies: Tout est pardonne (All is Forgiven)

Today Helen and I ventured into San Francisco to watch Tout est pardonne (All is Forgiven), which is  enjoying its West Coast premiere as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival. 

Aside from watching a powerful film, an ancillary benefit of the day was the opportunuty to explore the Pacific Heights neighborhood of SF.  Since we're in Berkeley most of the time, we're only slowly getting a handle on the quilt pieces that comprise the City by the Bay.  Someday we'll have it all figured out, even if takes a while.

In the meantime I can offer this brief report on All is Forgiven: It's about a heroin addict named Victor, who becomes awful to his wife Annette once he the throes of his addiction.  Eventually Annette cuts off contact between Victor and their young daughter Pamela, a terrible fate that estranges Victor from his daughter for 11 years.  Eventually father and daughter reunite during her teenage years.  They form a deep connection, because--in the long run--all is forgiven.

Rest assured that I'm not giving away too much. This is definitely a film to watch, both for its visual acuity and a sense of compassion that never lapses into maudlin posturing.

We all know people who never fully pull themselves together, and we all have traits that seem intractable no matter how much they can hurt those we love.  Few things are truly intractable, but change is hard.  So large measures of compassion are needed, for ourselves and for each other. 

All is Forgiven makes this case gracefully.  Afterwards, screenwriter and director Mia Hansen-Love answered audience questions. At one point she mentioned her initial impression of the "luminousness" and "darkness" within the presence of the actor who plays Victor (Paul Blain). We all have both impulses, and we all have the power to make sure that luminousness prevails in the end.

They Don't Write 'Em Like That Anymore

Today the library demoed a federated search product--a tool that searches many databases simultaneously, rather than requiring that researchers search each database individually. 

If I were a better librarian I would have diligently noted the strengths and weaknesses of the interface and pondered how to improve upon the product.  Instead, with a few errant keystrokes  I found myself reading an article about dental caries published in Scientific Monthly in 1931.

The thunderous opening sentence of this article reads thusly: "Dental caries is without doubt one of the very ancient diseases to which mankind has fallen heir."

My goodness gracious.  They don't write 'em like that any more!

Bloggers vs. Journalists (Sigh)

A few weeks ago the New Yorker published a probing article by Eric Alterman about the fate of American newspapers. These days I can't seem to read three straight paragraphs in the New Yorker, due to juggling multiple books and various other periodicals in my absurdly ambitious collection of reading materials.  So I was rather too proud of myself for reading Alterman's entire piece.

The sentence that sticks with me is: "But Huffington (as in Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post) fails to address the parasitical relationship that virtually all Internet news sites and blog commentators enjoy with newspapers." Alterman argues that--for all the talk of "citizen media" and "grass-roots journalism" at HuffPost and elsewhere--bloggers would be nowhere without easy access to the reports that traditional journalists post online.

Alterman makes a strong point. Score one for the mainstream media.

And so things  stood, to my mind at least, until I read Ezra Klein's blog post today.  Klein points out that being a full-time writer is a privileged position, and that traditional journalists who criticize political bloggers never acknowledge that most bloggers have day jobs (and thus are not able to do original reporting.)

The sentence that strikes me is: "If you've got the gig (as a full time writer), then pat yourself on the back, shut up, outcompete your competition, and be generous to those who steal time out of their workday in order to carve out a small space in the national conversation." (Emphasis mine).

Klein is a bit punchy here, but the point holds: Blogging can never replace full-time journalism (whatever some blog proponents might proclaim), but it does open space for more voices to be heard. Sure--many blogs are uninteresting or absurd; and many good blogs aren't updated often enough to be worthwhile.  But there is cream in this crop, just like in anything else.

So score one for the bloggers.  Fortunately this isn't a zero sum game.

Good Causes, Quick Rewards, Partial Solutions

Yesterday was World Malaria Day, and sadly I didn't realize this until today. So now it appears too late to play the "Deliver the Net" game, an interactive online game in which your success results in the delivery of free bednets to fight malaria in places where it is endemic.

One game that's always available is Free Rice, a vocabulary quiz in which each successful result yields 20 grains of rice for the UN World Food Program.  That's especially important right now, when the prices of many staples like rice are shooting up.

Let's not forget the Hunger Site, where one simple click yields 1.1 cups of food a day.

These are all quick and easy ways to make a difference. It's easy to forget that this is only part of the solution, though; tackling the systemic reasons for world hunger is  much harder and can quickly seem daunting.  But as we all play Free Rice, let's keep in mind the larger issues at stake.

The Campaign Rolls On

Hillary Clinton trounced Barack Obama in Pennsylvania today. She won by 10 percentage points, and raised $1 million online in the two hours immediately after declaring victory.  My inaccurate guess beforehand was that Clinton would win by 5 points--enough to keep going for a while, but not enough to stop the Obama juggernaut. 

It's anyone's ballgame, once again. Obama's bid to shift the focus to John McCain tonight will fail, because the Democratic campaign is far from over.

As the campaign rolls on, McCain will be the prime beneficiary of the foul mood. The 6 week  long Pennsylvania slog brought out the nastiness in both Clinton and Obama--especially Clinton, who peddled images of Osama bin Laden right before the Pennsylvania primary to show that she would be tougher on national security than Obama. 

In tonight's concession speech, Obama hopefully spoke about moving beyond the "silliness and the tit-for-tat that consumes our politics."  But he never should have gone to this level in the first place, and I don't see a way out of the muck now. I don't mean to be harsh; the turn of events only goes to show that interminable campaigns wear away at anyone's sense of civility.

On a practical level, therefore, Democrats have every reason to be concerned about how things are shaping up in what should be a landslide Democratic year. But there is nothing intrinsically wrong with an epic campaign like this one.  Both Clinton and Obama are brilliant; both care about everyday Americans; and both would be good Presidents.  If our politics were less shallow, their jousting would be invigorating and informative. As it is, though, their skirmishes are only helping to ensure four more years of a Republican White House.

Stricter Comments Are Back

Sadly, my experiment in loosening up comment authentication has failed. The last two comments have been spam, and surely more of that is coming. So I've re-activated tougher comment measures.

I always love getting emails about my posts, or comments within Facebook (all blog posts show up as Facebook notes). So there are options!

Thanks for reading.

Of Stale Debates and Strange Memories

I'll fall in line with the complaints of Obama supporters that last night's ABC debate focused on shallow issues and was much tougher on Obama than Clinton.  But Clinton also had a point in her criticism that earlier NBC debates were biased against her.

Perhaps we are witnessing a titanic TV network split in preference between the two Democrats.  We all know that Fox supports McCain, and CBS News seems fairly marginal these days.

I don't really care, to be honest. This thing is taking way too long.

My favorite part of the debate was the question from a woman in Latrobe, PA about why Obama doesn't regularly wear a flag pin on his lapel.  Sure, it's a loaded question--but I thought she was sincere.

All Pennsylvania towns that begin with "L" are the same to me, it seems--her Latrobe location reminded me of Ligonier.  Way back in 1995 (deep in the pre-blog era) Bill and I dined in Ligonier one evening, as part of his visit to Carnegie Mellon.  Dinner was served right on the town square, and during the course of the meal we learned that our waitress liked pornography (or, at least, she didn't look away upon discovering certain videos that her son left in the VCR.)

What a thing to reveal to your guests during dinner!

In light of this confession--and from my gilded perch here in the elite Bay Area--I would like to amend Senator Obama's recent remarks on small town America.  Small towners don't  always bitterly cling to guns and religion. Sometimes they cling to skin.

Food and Fuel (or, Everything is Complex)

Over the last few days the question of whether government subsidies for ethanol are raising food prices--thereby causing poor people around the globe to starve--has arisen frequently.  First I heard discussion of this on the radio this weekend. Now the Times has published a good overview of the issues. 

Recently this was much less of a visible issue. Michael Pollan spoke about the ethical conundrums of ethanol when Helen and I heard him speak a few months ago. I had no idea what he was talking about at the time, but his argument that SUV drivers keep food from poor people by using corn-based gasoline stuck with me.  Not because I agreed with Pollan--to the contrary, his formulation struck me as trite and judgmental.

In essence, Pollan proclaimed the liberal orthodoxy on this issue. Allow me to paraphrase and read between the lines: those gas-guzzling SUV owners are so callous that they're willing to kill poor babies to enjoy more off-road thrills. 

As he spoke, I thought of an SUV owner at Helen's business school who is among the most socially conscientious members of the class. Her Facebook profile is ablaze with causes to support, and she participated in a socially conscious case competition earlier this year.  Given this counterexample I concluded that Pollan prefers the shortcuts of political activism: boiling complex interconnections down to ire-producing nuggets devoid of any context or substance. 

The Times story validates my viewpoint, if I do say so myself.  Yes, ethanol subsidies are a partial culprit for rising global food prices (and yes, SUVs are bad for the environment.) But so is a much higher global demand for meat (a sign of rapid incomes gains in some developing countries), as well as various droughts. Furthermore, wheat and rice prices--neither of which can be used as gasoline--have also risen rapidly. 

So it's not just corn snatched from the mouths of babes.

All this said, the rapid rise in food prices around the world is very worrisome. Thankfully the US just authorized $200 million in additional food aid--a pittance compared to the costs of the Iraq war, but $200 million more than used to be available. 

Of course this is a band-aid; more sophisticated adjustments to global food dynamics are necessary. Don't ask me what those adjustments should be.  All I know is that ethanol isn't the only culprit, and that SUV owners are too easy a punching bag.