I’ve been tagged by Scott Spiegelberg to do the following:
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Making up the Mind by Chris Frith

Group D: 8,950 women without breast cancer, and with negative mammography.

Group C is the 9.6 percent false positive: P(X|~A).

So the screening gives a positive result in 950 women who don’t have cancer and only 100 women who do have cancer.

I actually haven’t even read this book — Greta read it. It looks like a neat one though. I’m going to break rule number five, though. If you read this post, consider yourself tagged.

Here.

I scored 25 out of 34. If you know your fonts (which I don’t), it’s not that difficult. Usually two of the answer choices can be eliminated right away (hint: It’s not Comic Sans).

I like PZ Myers, and I enjoy reading his blog Pharyngula. I think the whole Expelled fiasco was hilarious, and, like Jake Young, I think PZ is basically right to object to Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney’s characterization of the episode as a win for the creationists.

But this is just stupid. Only a tiny portion of religious folk actually believe anything resembling it, so why alienate them with crap like this?

Evolutionists argue all the time that creationists don’t understand the science. When evolutionists do the same thing, shouldn’t creationists rightly get upset about it?

Of course, PZ can put whatever he wants on his blog, but I don’t think posting cartoons like this is going to do anything for the cause of science — or atheism, for that matter.

Wow. I’ve kept this blog up for four years now. Who’d a thunk it?

It’s been quite a stretch, and some would say the peak years of this blog are behind it. I certainly don’t get the kind of traffic I got a couple years back, but of course, I’m a little sidetracked these days, what with CogDaily and now ResearchBlogging.org.

All this has gotten me thinking. Am I really blogging any less than I did four years ago? This stacked line graph gives you a pretty good idea of my productivity over the past four years:

As you can see, things haven’t actually changed that much. Other than my warm-up year in 2005, year to year, I’m good for right around 500 posts. It’s just that now those posts happen to be distributed over three different blogs.

What will the future hold? For now, I’d say Word Munger will probably continue at about its current rate of roughly 100 posts per year. I’ll probably ramp up the blogging here during the summer vacation season, with ups and downs as I get more or less busy in the other parts of my writing life.

I’d venture a guess that Word Munger is probably in the top 1 percent of blogs in terms of longevity and number of posts. Higher if you count the number of posts written in complete sentences (excepting this one, of course).

But maybe next year I’ll look back at this post and wonder what the hell I was thinking.

For the record, here are links to past Blogiversary posts (there wasn’t one last year):

2005
2006

With all the trouble public figures have gotten into lately getting caught with escort services, it’s occurred to me that someone with the right qualifications has a unique opportunity to make a lot of money.

All the navel-gazing about why anyone would pay up to $7000 for a service that typically maxes out at around $500 has pointed to one thing: Rich and powerful people need companionship and privacy, something that’s not typically offered by your run-of-the-mill $500 prostitute. Since politicians and other public figures may be starting to realize that paying for sex isn’t a very good career move, they’ve got a lot of extra spending money lying around, and they still need companionship.

That’s where my business idea comes in. What’s needed is some way to match up affluent people with overeducated, underemployed people with a lot of time on their hands. After all, a rich person isn’t going to spend quality time with just anyone. But fortunately, the internet has a solution:

Bloggers.

That’s right, bloggers are the perfect people to fulfill every desire of rich and powerful people, with the exception of one relatively cheap, commodity service. And since that one missing service could also destroy these folks’ careers, it’s the one service they’re probably most willing to do without.

The business would work like this: There’s a central clearinghouse that would allow rich people to hire bloggers by the hour to be their platonic friends. Since most bloggers have at least one liberal arts degree, they can chat about any subject the rich and powerful would like to discuss. Since they’re already being handsomely paid for their services, they wouldn’t ever be in the awkward position of asking their patrons for favors. The rich and famous person need never feel guilty about not calling if, say, their rent-a-friend’s dog died. Money erases all embarrassing social gaffes. It’s a no-commitment platonic relationship!

I envision the service priced in tiers, something like this:

The Divine Proportion
$6,500/hour
All bloggers in this group have at least one Ph.D. from an Ivy-League university. Their Technorati rankings are above 1,000, and they have at least two completed manuscripts that are making the rounds with agents. They have Wikipedia pages that they didn’t create themselves. All have been trained to mix the perfect Martini, and for an extra $500, they promise not to talk about themselves or their blogs.

The Salon
$5,500/hour
All bloggers in this group have a Ph.D. from a top-tier state school or an M.A. from an Ivy. Their Technorati rankings are above 5,000, and they’re well over 50,000 words into their first novel. They have made fewer than five edits on their personal Wikipedia pages. They don’t usually get embarrassingly drunk in public. An extra $500 will ensure they don’t talk about themselves, but there’s no guarantee about their blogs.

The Saloon
$4,500/hour
All bloggers in this group have or are currently in process of completing a liberal-arts B.A. Their Technorati rankings are above 20,000, and they’re thinking about writing a novel. They personally know more than 5 of their Facebook friends.

The Mosh Pit
$3,500/hour
All bloggers in this group can read at an eighth-grade level. They have posted more than ten YouTube videos. They have gone sub-one-minute on Mario-Kart: Double-Dash, Rainbow Road.

All Rent-A-Platonic-Friend bloggers would sign non-disclosure agreements, so patrons need never worry about disclosing embarrassing stories or trade secrets to their paid companions. The service would be 100 percent discreet.

Since this is MY idea, I expect anyone who actually executes this plan to offer me a royalty. I’ll be reasonable — just five percent of net income would work fine for me. And if you need someone to write copy for your web site, you know who to call!

Given the latest barrage of spam, I’m going to upgrade WordPress. Hopefully everything will work out all right, but if it doesn’t, that’s why.

Update: Upgrade complete! Everything seems to be okay, but let me know if something’s awry.

Google allows you to do single-letter searches. What’s the first result for each search? You can do it yourself or consult this handy guide!

a: Links in html documents

b: Physical Review B

c: the speed of light = 299 792 458 m / s

d: Dominion resources, Inc (stock symbol D)

e: e = 2.71828183.

f: Ford Motors (stock symbol F)

g: Gmail from google (who can fault them for a little self-promotion?)

h: Planck’s constant = 6.626068 × 10-34 m2 kg / s (However I had to do a second Google search to find out wtf it is)

i: Wikipedia entry for the letter “i”

j: Wikipedia entry for the letter “j”

k: Boltzmann constant = 1.3806503 × 10-23 m2 kg s-2 K-1 (what’s that?)

l: Wikipedia entry for the letter “l”

m: 1931 film by Fritz Lang

n: A horrifyingly addictive flash game. Jim and Nora played this game for endless hours in our Tuscan Villa this summer.

o: Realty Income Corp (stock symbol O). How’d they swing that?

p: html p tag — create a new paragraph, stat!

q: Qwest Communications (stock symbol Q). The James Bond character rated a lowly third place.

r: Open-source stats program

s: Craigslist. Huh.

t: AT&T (stock symbol T).

u: Wikipedia entry for the letter “u”

v: Visa, Inc. (stock symbol V).

w: W hotels. Whatever.

x: United States Steel (stock symbol X).

y: Yahoo! Mail

z: Wikipedia entry for letter “z”.

I’ve spent a whole lot of time in various medical professionals’ waiting rooms over the past couple of days. Yesterday I went to the dentist and eye doctor, and today I’m here at the allergist waiting for Jim to get his bee-venom shots. When it comes to waiting rooms, it turns out, eye doctors wipe the floor with everyone else’s ass. Not only does the eye doctor have the least shabby interior decor, it also arguably offers the best selection of reading material and visual entertainment (in the form of an infomercial for Lasik surgery on a 40-inch plasma TV mounted on the wall).

Here at the allergist nearly all the magazines are of the complimentary local shoppers’ guide variety. We’ve got Charlotte Woman, the area Seniors guide, and a holistic medicine brochure. The other magazines aren’t much better: Better Homes and Gardens, and a copy of Medizine’s Healthy Living featuring Christina Applegate.

No matter where you go, however, the Muzak is pretty much always running Classic Hits of the ’70s. It seems to me that Classic Hits of the ’70s have been on Muzak since about 1986. Will we ever move on to the Classic Hits of the ’80s or ’90s? Or will doctors’ offices in 2048 still be playing the Classic Hits of the ’70s?

Not that I have anything against the ’70s, but it would be kinda cool to stroll into the doctor’s office one day and hear the pulsating rhythm of Prince’s “Darling Nikki,” or maybe Soft Cell’s “Sex Dwarf,” or Janet Jackson’s “Nasty.” I’m just sayin’.

When you get your allergy shots, you’re supposed to sit and wait thirty minutes to make sure you don’t have an adverse reaction to the medication, but practically no one actually waits around. Am I just being a wuss for making Jim sit around? It’s not actually that big a deal since you can work on blog posts or text your friends or whatever, but there’s this sinking feeling that you’re not one of the cool kids when you sit down and wait instead of heading straight for the exit after your shot.

Maybe if they were playing better music I’d be more inclined to hang around. At least they could have a decent plasma screen.

Fortunately, our 30 minutes are up. ‘Til next time…

Yesterday was one of our most popular days ever at CogDaily — two posts were on the front page of Reddit and one was on the front page of Digg.com. Most of the visits went to this post, which explains an amazing illusion by Arthur Shapiro. Greta actually went to grad school with Artie, and he was a good friend of mine back in the day, so it’s great to see that he’s getting noticed.

Artie sent me another illusion that I couldn’t squeeze into the CogDaily page, so I thought I’d post it here (I also want to know whether this works on WordPress):

The illusion is in the pattern created. The central disks are oscillating in rows from light to dark. But it appears that only half of each row is alternating together. Neat stuff. There’s much more at Artie’s Lab web page.

This guy seems to think the reason Linux isn’t popular is because it is free. Since people can get Linux for free, they don’t value it as much as Windows (or Mac OS X).

I have a different reason.

Linux doesn’t work.

Yes, I’ve heard some geeks have been able to install it on their home machines, and they claim it works fine. I think even the very web site you’re reading now (installed by geeks) runs on Linux.

I had a Linux geek tell me about this wonderful, easy to use version of Linux called Ubuntu. You can go to their site, download it and burn it onto a CD, and it will run on your computer. You don’t even have to install anything, he assured me, it just works.

Easy to use? I figured I’d give it a shot. I went to the web site, followed the instructions as best I could (they were a little confusing — I wasn’t quite sure which type of computer to say I have; there’s no choice for “iMac Core Duo”). I downloaded the file and burned a CD. There were no instructions on what type of CD to burn. I picked the default option, figuring if there were no instructions, I should stick with the default. I put the CD in the computer. I rebooted. Was I transported to Linux bliss? No. I got the normal Mac bootup screen.

I searched their forums. It was still unclear, but best I could tell, it sounded like I might need to install an additional bit of software to get Ubuntu to work. This was no longer seeming so easy, but I downloaded the software and installed it. I put my CD in the computer and rebooted. Still nothing.

I consulted with my geek friend. He suggested that I download the software that I had just downloaded.

I gave up. Linux was not easy to use, and it was taking my whole day just to get the thing running. There was very little indication it was EVER going to get running. I’ve had problems with my Macs before, but there was always SOME hope, and the instructions on the forums were much clearer.

Maybe some geek could get Ubuntu to work on my computer, but I couldn’t — not without spending untold hours searching forums for an answer. These untold hours are not free, they’re EXPENSIVE. That’s why I gave up on installing Linux on my computer.

Until normal people can easily install and use Linux, normal people will not use Linux. Not for free, not for money, not for any price.

Per The World’s fair, here’s my six-word memoir (make sure you count!):

Still writing my life story.

I’ve been a longtime holdout. I think it’s important for Web sites to be able to support themselves with ads. So I’ve resisted using ad blocking software for years.

But recently, I’ve been noticing a disturbing trend: Web pages have been taking longer and longer to load because the ads were taking a long time to load. You go to a web page, and the page stops loading before there’s any content. Finally, slowly, an ad appears, and then the rest of the page fills in in half a second. The ads were stalling the page.

Even worse for the advertisers, you can’t even see the ads while the page is stalled. It’s not that advertisers are deliberately slowing page loading so we spend more time looking at the ads, it’s that the advertisers are too cheap to develop content that loads quickly.

A few days ago, I got fed up, and finally I installed AdBlock Plus on Firefox. Now nearly every page loads in a second or two. Only rarely do I see delays. I didn’t mind seeing the ads in the margin as I did my daily web surfing; I just didn’t like them slowing me down. I even used to click on an ad if it was marketing a product I was interested in. But no more. Until the ad companies can figure out how to deliver the ads without crippling my browser, I’m going to keep running AdBlock.

I just finished reading The Pillars of the Earth, a pretty good read. It’s certainly not Great Literature — on the literary front I’d put it somewhere above The Da Vinci Code and below The Lord of the Rings.

But one thing troubled me as I read. I’m certainly not a prude, and I do find that the occasional sex scene in a book can be fun, but the number of graphic rape scenes in this book was really rather alarming. One of the premises of the book is that its primary villain, William, can’t get sexually aroused unless he’s raping someone. I suppose I can buy that: even if most people find rape disgusting, clearly it excites some people or it would never happen.

But did we have to get it in such detail? The omniscient narrator is constantly going inside William’s head, letting us know how much he wants to rape this woman and that woman. When the rape finally occurs, the play-by-play includes abundant descriptions of his arousal increasing in direct proportion to the the woman’s pain and fear. It almost seems as if Follett himself has some kind of rape fantasy or fetish.

This Amazon review discusses the rape scenes:

A rape scene can be handled in any number of ways. If the author did not want to dwell on the rape, but to make the point that it did occur, he could have mentioned it and moved, quickly, on.

If the author wanted to make more of a point of it, he could have dwelled on what the rape did to the victim.

Follett chose to describe the rape from the point of view of the rapist, in a pornographic manner, in a way that would entertain someone who would enjoy such a scene by positioning himself as a vicarious violater. Follett dwells on the physical attractions of the girl, her complete powerlessness, how much she is hurt, and how much the rapist enjoys the rape.

Again, there is no greater point made about women as collateral damage in competitions waged by men for men’s prizes, no greater point made about the status of women in medieval society.

I think what Follett may have been going for was an “honest” depiction of the event, trying to see it through a 12th-century man’s eyes. What bugged me is that we never really saw it through a 12th-century woman’s eyes. Each rape scene — and there were several — went just about the same. There was one attempted rape that was depicted from the woman’s perspective, but in this case, the rape was foiled. Actual rapes were only depicted as male triumphs.

After the fact we do follow one woman as she recovers from her rape, and it’s clearly something that haunts her. But while men’s thoughts, fears, and desires are vividly depicted throughout the book, the rape’s impact isn’t given much treatment at all. It’s not ignored, but it’s not portrayed with nearly the passion as many other less significant aspects of the plot.

So what will I do about this? I don’t know. I wasn’t likely to read another book by Follett anyway — this one wasn’t especially interesting to me, so “boycotting” his work would have had little effect.

Besides, I don’t think Follett should be censored. He has the right to write about rape any way he wants. I just don’t happen to think he does it especially effectively.

Books that make you dumb. (via Kottke)

You troll Facebook to find the books people list as their favorite. Then you correlate that with the average SAT scores at their institution of higher learning. You’ve found the “books that make you dumb.”

Of course you haven’t, not really, and it’s quite clear that the page author, Virgil Griffith, knows that.

If you accept the suggestion of the chart’s title, the “smartest” people read Lolita and Crime and Punishment, while the “dumbest” people read the The Holy Bible and The Color Purple.

As Virgil notes, correlation isn’t causation. Reading the The Holy Bible doesn’t make you dumb. Virgil says “The results are awesome regardless of direction of causality. You can stop sending me email about this distinction.” Heh.

So what does this chart mean? Mainly, I think, it sorts people by the books they think are impressive. If you’re at Harvard, it’s impressive to say you like Lolita, but not so impressive to say you like Fahrenheit 451. Every Harvard student read Fahrenheit 451 in the eighth grade. They are so over it by now. If you’re at Podunk Polytechnic, by contrast, it’s impressive that you know Fahrenheit 451 is not a movie by Michael Moore.

Notice there are two separate listings: The Holy Bible and The Bible. Reading The Bible “makes you smarter” than reading The Holy Bible. This makes sense — by calling it The Holy Bible you’re adding your review of the book right into the title. Only idiots do this — it’s like saying “the HAWT Paris Hilton.”

That’s all I have to say about that.

Unbelievable news. I had heard rumors about this and hoped it wasn’t true, but apparently it is:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A Huntersville optometrist will serve 15 days in jail and must register as a sex offender after pleading guilty to one count of sexual battery.

Dr. Christopher Reynolds, 50, was charged after a patient of the Northcross Eye Associates came forward and said he grabbed her breast and fondled himself during a routine eye exam in June. Police recorded a phone conversation between her and Reynolds, in which he admitted to the crime, prosecutors said.

Twenty-seven other women then made similar accusations and investigators filed four additional charges, but four of the sexual battery charges were dismissed in exchange for the guilty plea.

The five women whose allegations led to charges spoke in court on Friday after Reynolds’ attorney entered his plea. Reynolds wouldn’t even look at them as they spoke to him and the judge, saying he groped them and they believe he fondled himself during their eye exams.

“You betrayed and jeopardized your profession,” one woman said.

The judge then sentenced Reynolds to 15 days in jail with a 60-day suspended sentence. He must also pay a $5,000 fine and he’ll be on probation for three years, in addition to registering as a sex offender. The judge told Reynolds to continue with counseling for sexual addiction.

Reynolds had no prior criminal record.

The women told Eyewitness News as they left the courthouse that they believe the punishment is not enough.

Reynolds no longer works for Northcross Eye Associates. Due to the conviction, he faces a formal disciplinary hearing before the state optometry board where his license could be suspended or revoked.

It makes me sick to read about it. I had been putting off a visit to the eye doctor for several months. They even called me once and asked if I’d like to schedule an appointment, carefully stating that his wife (a fellow optometrist and partner in the practice) would be handling the patients.

Now apparently the practice has been sold to a new doctor.

At the time I heard the rumors, I was struggling with what to do. If the accusations were false, then it would have been wrong to abandon his practice.

There was one thing they used to do that I always thought was a little creepy. Whenever you came for a checkup, they’d automatically schedule you for your next years’ exam. That’s not so bad, you might think — isn’t that what dentists do all the time? The difference is, with dentists, they actually ask you when you’d prefer to come in. This place just handed you the appointment card with the time already slotted in. It was up to you to cancel or change the date if it wasn’t convenient.

I guess the moral of the story is if someone does something that seems creepy, it might just be because they are a creep.

2007 cities — via Kottke. Rules: no stopovers — must have spent quality time there. Asterisks indicate overnight visits

*Davidson, NC
*Charlotte, NC
*Durham, NC
*Snowshoe, WV
*Troutdale, VA
*Paris
*Rome
*Pompeii, Italy
*Minori, Italy (near Amalfi)
*Seggiano, Italy
Montalcino, Italy
Montepulciano, Italy
Chiusi, Italy
*Florence, Italy
Siena, Italy
San Gimignano, Italy
Abbadia San Salvatore, Italy
*Prague
*Vienna
*Athens
*Meteora, Greece
*Delphi, Greece
*Seattle
*Nordman, ID
*New York
*Kiawah, SC
*Park City, UT
Alta, UT
*Pullman, WA
*Spokane, WA

I think I did a little better than Kottke this year….

Update: Looking back at Kottke’s post, I changed the rules a bit. Oh well…

Kottke reports that Marshall McCluhan’s advice for book buyers was to read page 69. “If you like that page, buy the book.”

Here’s page 69 of my memoir Small Journeys:

“Well, Mom says we can only drink water between meals. Milk is too expensive.”

“Can’t you ask her for milk? You could tell her I don’t like water.”

“Why don’t we just get a glass of water.”

“Okay.”

We rumbled into the kitchen, and I boosted myself onto the counter to get two water glasses. As I was filling my glass, Mom came into the room. “Michael, would you like some milk?”

“Sure!”

My jaw dropped to the floor as I watched Mom pour my friend an enormous glass of cool milk. I was so surprised, I didn’t even think to ask for my own glass.

“Okay, I think we can remove the mouth dam now. Leon, can you get a spit cup?”

I finally let my arms relax as they peeled the rubber covering from my face and snipped it away from my teeth. My mouth was slack, and I was able to get even less of the bloody saliva into the cup. Leon wiped the spit off of my face, then told me I could go.

As I walked woozily back towards the waiting room, I could hear the dentist talking to Cynthia. “Congratulations, Cynthia, you’ve just filled your first tooth. Don’t worry about the mistakes–that’s what you’re here for. You wouldn’t want to put a paying customer through all that.”

“David, how are you?” Mom gently brushed the sweat-soaked hair away from my temples. “That took an awful long time. What were they doing in there?”

“They put me on nitrous oxide. I don’t like that stuff–it smells like cough syrup.”

That’s not bad. The chapter is about a horrific trip to the free dental clinic, juxtaposed with a few key anecdotes from my childhood. It was about being poor. Does it make you want to read more?

A couple of months ago, two men in bad suits knocked on my door and reminded me that I hadn’t posted much of general interest on Wordmunger.com recently. Then they handed me a cute little book and taunted me by saying “This stuff is so good that no self-respecting blogger can resist writing about it, especially an atheist like yourself.” Then they told me if I didn’t blog about it, they’d be back in a few weeks to mock me more.

It’s all true, every word of it. Okay, maybe they didn’t say it in so many words, but I could see it in the earnest expressions on their faces. If I wasn’t willing to publicly defend my atheism against the propaganda of one of the most twisted sects in all Christianity, I might as well just sign away all my worldly possessions to the estate of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

Sure enough, a few weeks later, they returned.

Actually, the front man was the same, but he had a different sidekick. Perhaps he was running a training operation. He must have given the kid a pep-talk before they approached our door — both of them were smiling and earnest.

“Did you have a chance to read the booklet I gave you the last time I visited?” he asked.

Here’s what the book looked like:

Snazzy, isn’t it? The book actually has four-color illustrations throughout.

“Yeah, I took a look at it,” I said. (I was striving for a hint of “is that all you got?” in my intonation. I don’t think he picked up on it)

“Do you have any questions about it?”

“Actually, I was a little curious about Chapter 14, which says the father is be the uncontested ‘head’ of families, and that women should submit to their husbands no matter what, that divorce is permitted only in cases of fornication. That bothers me. What if a husband is abusing his wife?”

“Well, did you take a look at Chapter 3, where the book discusses God’s purpose for the earth?” Then he earnestly flipped through to a well-marked section of the book, which he said showed that God wants the earth to be a really great place. There were even pictures of how great the earth will be when God’s vision for us is realized. Check this out:

Accordions? Really? The last thing I expected in an earthly paradise was accordions. Apparently there are accordions, pan flutes, and guitars, but no booze. Great.

The thing we have to avoid is Satan. Satan, apparently, is responsible for all manner of evil, including women who divorce their wife-beating husbands — and of course, blood transfusions.

I didn’t get around to asking them about the blood transfusions. It was getting a little awkward, with me asking questions, and them avoiding them. They said a little prayer for me, then left. They haven’t been back.

But I was a little curious about the blood thing. I’m no Bible scholar, but it seemed odd to me that the Jehovah’s Witnesses alone are so opposed to blood transfusions. What Does the Bible Really Teach? cites Acts 15:28-29 as justification for it. Here’s what the passage says:

It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.

Seems pretty straightforward — a proclamation that people should abstain from blood. But the context of the quote was the Council at Jerusalem, which was all about making the Christian Church more palatable to “Gentiles” — recent converts from Judaism. In short, it was propaganda, which came out of this earlier statement:

It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.

See! Christianity is Jew-friendly! Hop on board!

Just because it’s okay to abstain from blood doesn’t mean that God commands us all to abstain from blood. And clearly this was all in a context where blood transfusions hadn’t even been conceived of.

For me, this all points to how ridiculous it is to frame your life based on decontextualized quotes from a 2,000 year-old book. I’m sure some Jehovah scholar could present me with a more principled scripture-based argument for why we should refuse blood transfusions, but my larger point is that if these books take so much hand-waving to interpret, then why should we take every single word of them as the overriding dictates of how to run our lives?

Why not pick and choose? Clearly some Christian philosophy is quite worthwhile, and a good place to start building a comprehensive moral system. But I’d also submit that there are a heck of a lot of other great philosophers and moral thinkers out there, some Christian, and some not. I try to live the best life I can, not because it’s written some book, but because based on the whole span of my education I’ve found that some moral principles work and others don’t.

One thing that doesn’t is the idea that there’s some God out there who really cares about the individual lives of billions of creatures on a tiny speck of the universe. We care, because we’re here. We can learn a whole lot about our world simply by exploring and studying it. Sticking our heads in a dusty old book and ignoring the world around us isn’t going to help us live better lives. Learning and thinking about the world just might.

I know, I haven’t been posting much lately. The problem is, I’ve been exceptionally busy. But for the most part, busy is good. Today I’m going to give you just a snapshot of the good stuff.

• The weekend before Thanksgiving, there were THREE Munger concerts involving all the Mungers except me. (Well, I was involved, too, but as an audience member only)
• The weekend got started with Jim’s public debut as a bass player, with the Cannon Jazz Orchestra, at the Concord Christmas Tree Lighting. We didn’t get to see the lighting because we needed to zip off to the next event.
• The next event was a Davidson College Symphony Orchestra (DCSO) concert, featuring two Mungers, neither of whom is a college student. Greta played exceptionally well on oboe, but 14-year-old Nora stole the show with an amazing performance on bassoon. The most dramatic moment was a very speedy bassoon trio that was so spectacular that the conductor gave the bassoon section the first bow in a standing-ovation performance.
• Then on the next day, the DCSO played side-by-side with the professional Charlotte symphony. Both Greta and Nora played, but Greta stole the show with an astonishing, totally exposed solo to start off Samson & Delilah’s Baccanale. Another standing ovation!
• On Thanksgiving, our great friends Pat and Suzanne came down from DC to join us for the long weekend. We had a wonderful dinner with them and friends Tara Chamra (the DCSO director) and Tony Chamra. Then on Sunday we all modeled our leather jackets (three of them purchased in Italy from genuine Florentine artisans):
  
• Then last week we got to see both Jim and Nora in concert with the Cannon Band and orchestra. It was difficult to get a decent photo, but I think you can see the top of Nora’s bassoon in this picture near the orchestra director’s right hand:
  
• Finally on Friday we attended the Cannon Jazz Orchestra’s second concert, featuring Jim on both trombone and bass. An awesome job, Jim!

Several other blog-worthy things have occurred recently, but I’ve just finished a run (preparing for the half-marathon in just SIX days), and in a few minutes I need to go pick up the family from church, so that’s going to be it for now. Busy, busy (but not too busy, I think).

Success! Word Munger has been transferred to a new ISP! Now all I need to do is transfer BPR3 over, and I can ditch my old ISP! Good riddance!