Guesswork Theory by Justin Scott

So Long, For Now

2012-02-27T23:06:00.000-05:00

I have some news, so I'll cut straight to the chase: starting today, Guesswork Theory is taking an extended, perhaps permanent hiatus.

I made this decision about a month ago, when I had the unsettling realization that I will turn thirty next year. I know to some readers thirty will sound very young—and it is. But many heroes of mine produced exceptional work in their twenties. I've had one of those terrible moments when you realize just how quickly life is moving. When I think about all the things I hope to accomplish and experience in my life, this blog just doesn't leap to mind. But when I think of what I spend my time on each week, this blog certainly does. So a disconnect has arisen.

I have no plans to take down what I've written here, though if I do decide to start blogging again I will probably restructure it. I will also continue sharing things that fascinate me on my tumblr, bigfind.justinis.com (which is connected to Twitter, if that's your thing).

Garrison Keillor has taught me well the reason you should never quit: because when you do, it won't make that big a difference to people. I understand this decision isn't terribly significant. But as I read the words of the impressionable guy who sat down to write his first post here seven years ago, I can see I have learned from this experience. It was worth doing. I'm so glad I did.

If you are someone who has read this blog from time to time, left a comment or brought it up in conversation, there is no way I can thank you as much as I want to. It has meant a great deal to me.

* * *

"Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a [blog]." Edward Gibbon

"Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." Emerson

"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the internet, we know that is not true." Robert Wilensky

"But he allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves." Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing poorly." G.K. Chesterton

Image: Michael Kalus

Top 10 Things That Have Recently Blown My Mind

2012-02-21T09:18:00.000-05:00

1. Two weeks ago a video of an inventor asking the internet to suggest names for "the greatest toy in the universe" went viral. The inventor's name is Jaimie Mantzel, and he is one of the most endearingly eccentric people I've ever encountered. He lives completely off the grid on twenty acres in the Vermont woods, in a house he built himself out of boards he cut from logs using a home-built sawmill. One level of his home has a trampoline for a floor. His most (perhaps only) successful creation is a one-foot tall six-legged spider-like robot, which he recently sold to a British toy manufacturer. For the last five years he has been working on a twelve-foot tall version which will carry a human operator; he calls it the Giant Robot Project.

2. The cadavers used in the popular Bodies exhibit were procured from the Chinese police. It is possible they are the bodies of prisoners who were tortured and executed by the Chinese government. The company who owns, operates, and profits from the exhibit has admitted it cannot verify where the bodies came from.

3. In response to a Newsweek article that claimed they live in a "dying city," five thousand people in Grand Rapids, Michigan took part in the largest (and in my opinion, most heartwarming) music video ever created. It's a slice of pure Americana.

4. Segregation continues to die. All-white neighborhoods are now effectively extinct.

5. After trying for seventeen years, the New York department of education has finally won a ruling enabling them to evict congregations that meet in public schools on weekends, citing the separation of church and state. Erin put it best: people have truly begun to take "shall make no law" to a ridiculous level.

6. An incredible letter from a former slave to his old master.

7. For the past three years, Russian director/megalomaniac Ilya Khrzhanovsky has been filming a biography of physicist Lev Landau. To do this, he has created a full-scale replica of a small city from the 1950s USSR, in which thousands of actors live, in character, 24/7, and over which he rules as their Stalin stand-in.

8. A judge in Britain has ruled that the similarity between two separate photographs of double-decker buses in the same location is enough to warrant copyright infringement.

9. Last year a study found that for 8th graders in the United States, homework in science, English, and history had little or no impact on students' test scores.

10. Nevada has become the first state to make self-driving cars street legal. The car of the future is here.

Bonus thing: How close we are to having invisibility cloaks.

The Idea Clearing House: Part III

2012-02-14T09:46:00.000-05:00

This post is part three in a three part series in which I clear out my backlog of blog post ideas and present them in a few short sentences. Here are parts one and two.

13. Just as religion has been twisted to support the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials and the like, science has been twisted to support atrocities like eugenics and genocide. It has been used to excuse the brutal racism displayed in the Tuskeegee and Guatemala syphilis studies. New Atheists like the late Christopher Hitchens draw causal link between religion and perversions such as the Crusades, while religious people like Ben Stein (in the film Expelled) draw a causal link between science and perversions such as the Holocaust. Both are woefully wrong. Neither science nor religion as a whole is responsible for the evil misapplication of its ideas.

14. Despite having been whole-heartedly against 2008's bailout of Chrysler and GM, I am finding it very hard to argue pragmatically that they were a bad move. GM has completely turned around and is taking advantage of its dominance in Asia, the fastest-growing car market in the world. Though the turn-around was largely to GM's credit, the government's decision to keep GM from going under saved millions of U.S. jobs from destruction. On the whole, TARP helped prevent a string of bank failures which could have led to a second Great Depression and the nationalization of banks across America — and most of it has been paid back. I have to hand it to ol' GW: if you set ideology aside, TARP was a resounding success. What's an Austrian economist to make of it?

15. French novelist Honore de Balzac said, "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." I think how true or false a person believes this quote to be really gets at the heart of their political beliefs. As a centrist, I struggle deeply with it.

16. I am so tired of people assuming Christians are confined to the 'Christian' media industry ('Christian' record labels, 'Christian' publishers, etc). Stephen Colbert is a Christian. So is John Grisham. There are Christians working at Pixar and Apple and Random House and thousands of other creative companies. Christians as a whole are not responsible for the artistic swamp that is the 'Christian' media industry.

17. In 2009, a web developer in Brooklyn decided to splice up Star Wars: A New Hope into 15-second segments and ask Star Wars fans to recreate them in their own backyards. He instructed them to submit their creations on his website, and where he would splice them together into a new, fan-film version of the original called Star Wars Uncut. The result was posted to the internet at the same time the SOPA and PIPA bills were being protested. If these bills had made it into law, projects like Star Wars Uncut would be impossible without permission from Lucas himself, because current copyright law forbids derivative works. I encourage you to take a look at Star Wars Uncut and consider if it is a re-creation of George Lucas' film that steals his ideas, or instead a completely new piece of art. (On this point, it is worth noting that the vast majority of YouTube's content is illegal due to copyright infringement, but is not taken down because YouTube only removes videos at copyright owners' request. This fact appears completely unknown to most YouTube video creators.)

18. I cannot think of an election in recent history in which the leading candidates from the two major political parties (Romney and Obama) were more loathed by voters, both in their own party and the opposition's. This is the ripest time for a sensible third party presidential candidate in decades. Would that we had one.

19. As my friend Nathan Elmore discussed recently, so much of the worship music in the current American Christian consciousness focuses on the guilt of sin and the atoning power of the cross rather than the call of redeemed Christians once their sin has been expunged. I think this is reflective of the evangelical obsession with sin and checklist lifestyles that are so easy to understand and live, at the expense of what I believe is the deeper call of the Christian life: to love your neighbor and your God. As a worship leader, I hope to root out more good music that focuses not just on life after the cross, but life after the resurrection.

Image: LA Wad

The Idea Clearing House: Part II

2012-02-08T06:00:00.000-05:00

This post is part two in a three part series in which I clear out my backlog of blog post ideas and present them in a few short sentences. Here is part I.

7. Everywhere I look, I find more smart people who think the world is not actually getting worse, we just underestimate our past depravity. Here's Marilynne Robinson: "There has always been a basic human tendency toward a dubious notion of beauty. Think about cultures that rarify themselves into courts in which people paint themselves with lead paint and get dumber by the day, or women have ribs removed to have their waists cinched tighter. There's no question that we have our versions of that now. The most destructive thing we can do is act as though this is some sign of cultural, spiritual decay rather than humans just acting human, which is what we’re doing most of the time."

8. I am uncomfortable with the modern tendency towards churches which revolve around one personality. A friend of mine (theologian Matt Tapie) shared a fascinating essay with me by John Yoder, who argues that the very idea of a lead pastor or minister was unknown to the early church. You can check it out in chapter four of Yoder's Body Politics.

9. It may be that Obama did not allow American citizens to be indefinitely (and unconstitutionally) detained by signing the latest defense appropriations bill. It may be that the president already had this power since Congress gave it to President Bush in 2001. Regardless, how could he sign a bill affirming it? If he feels so bad about it, how could he not demand it be repealed? How could a former Constitutional law professor live with such a decision? And where are all those folks who were so livid about the Patriot Act? Where is their outrage now?

10. You really should be careful about protecting your hearing. One in five kids these days has hearing loss, possibly because of the rise of earbuds and personal music players. The volume of the average rock concert is enough to cause permanent hearing damage after thirty minutes. No music is worth that. Get yourself a pair of these and be careful out there.

11. It is possible for taxes to be used as a force for good. Here in DC, a five cent tax on plastic bags has made huge strides in decreasing the number of bags dumped in the Potomac River (our main source of drinking water). Personally, the tax has been very effective in motivating me not to use plastic bags unless I absolutely have to, when before I wouldn't have bothered. As far as I can tell no one has been hurt by the tax, except perhaps the plastic bag industry—but I think they're doing alright. Other things I would support taxing more: oil, gasoline, carbon, and cigarettes.

12. Let's face it: you're probably never gonna quit Facebook, no matter what crap they pull.

Image: quinn.anya

The Idea Clearing House: Part I

2012-02-02T06:00:00.000-05:00

I decided to start the new year I would clean out my long list of blog post ideas, much like I did last year. Below are six ideas which at one time or another I intended to expand into full blog posts, presented here in abbreviated form. I'll be doling out more ideas in parts two and three of this series. Enjoy!

1. Despite all the news last year about NPR's alleged Liberal bias, NPR's fantastic economics reporting is one of the major influences in my life that keeps me grounded in Conservatism. See this story, or this one, or this one, or this one for a taste of what I mean.

2. Apple, Google, and Facebook's schemes for world domination include eliminating the middleman in the form of phone carriers and credit card companies. Their many free texting and talk apps are eating away at phone carriers' lucrative SMS and voice business, turning carriers into dumb wire companies like your internet service provider. In fact, Apple even attempted to bypass carriers altogether by creating an independent voice network powered by WiFi. Google is doing the same thing to credit card companies by enabling customers to use their phones as wallets. Once people are used to paying for things with their phones, it will be simpler and easier to use Google's payment and coupon products instead of credit cards and Groupon. As for Apple, mom and pop stores around the country are already using iPads as cash registers; just wait till you can wave your iPhone at one to pay. Apple will own both sides of millions of transactions.

3. I spend a lot of time on this blog writing about big ideas, but there are rumors that big ideas are dying. Neal Gabler argues in the New York Times that no one thinks any more (a common sentiment of folks his age throughout history), and Wired's Timothy Ferris counters that ideas aren't gone, just the "celebration of big, pretentious ideas untethered to facts."

4. The idea that Conservatives inherently do not care about the poor is a myth. Though I hesitate to play partisan politics (as the article I am going to link to unfortunately does), there is a decent amount of evidence that people who identify themselves as Conservative donate more of their time and money to both public and private charities than those who do not. This is also true of people who identify themselves as religious, possibly because empathy alone is a poor motivator for positive social change.

5. Can we just be honest for a second: politicians do not create jobs. Entrepreneurs create jobs. Sure politicians can make things more or less difficult for entrepreneurs, but saying that's the same thing as job creation is like saying you created a vase by not smashing it with a hammer. One of my favorite lines from The West Wing was from a Republican presidential candidate (saying what no Republican presidential candidate could ever say) when asked how many jobs he would create as president: "None. In fact, I'll cut jobs. I will reduce the number of jobs in the federal government. Now I know I'm supposed to tell you that my tax cuts are supposed to stimulate the economy and therefore create jobs. But entrepreneurs create jobs."

6. I'm convinced: should I ever have children, I will strive to praise their effort, not their intelligence.

Image: zetson

How to Convert PDFs to Word Documents for Free with Google Docs

2012-01-30T23:52:00.001-05:00

Anyone who does a moderate amount of word-processing has at one time or another needed to convert a pdf into an editable format, such as a Microsoft Word document. For $449, Adobe Acrobat will give you all the tools you need. If you're like me, that's about $444 too steep. Luckily Google Docs offers a completely free solution. The formatting in the end product won't be perfect, but at the very least it will keep you from having to type your pdf into Word by hand.

Here's how to do it.

1. Go to docs.google.com. If you don't have a Google account, create one. Log in.

2. Click on the red button at the upper-left that has a picture of a hard drive with an arrow pointing up. Select "Files...."

3. Browse to the pdf you would like to convert and click "Open."

4. Your pdf will be uploaded to Google Docs. Once the upload is finished, it will appear first in your list of Google Docs documents, under the word "TITLE." Select it by clicking the check-box to the left of your pdf's name.

5. Click on the "More" button at the top of the page and select "Make a Google Docs Copy."

6. While the copy is being made, a message will pop up saying "Making a copy in Google Docs format..." When it is finished, a new Google Docs version of your pdf will appear at the top of your documents list. Click on the title to open it up and take a look.

7. To download your document in Microsoft Word format, click on "File" in the upper left, click "Download as," and then "Word."

And you're done!

Image: amy allcock

Giving Up What God Didn't Promise

2012-01-19T15:37:00.000-05:00

I attended a church service a year or so ago during which the pastor spent some time illustrating ways Christians misrepresent Christ and the Gospel. He explained how Christians sometimes claim that if you come to Jesus, you will have happiness and contentment. Then someone comes to Jesus, and their family member dies in a car accident, and they reject him. Sometimes Christians claim that if you come to Jesus, you will be blessed with wealth and security. Then someone comes to Jesus, and a financial crisis takes everything they have, and they reject him.

The pastor explained: Christ never promised these things. He promised mercy, grace, and a relationship with him. But he also promised that this broken world would bring us suffering and persecution. When Christians make promises in the name of Christ which Christ never made, they set up new believers for disappointment and despair.

This much I've been taught before, but not in this way. It struck me that there is one particular false promise that I've bought for a long time. And every time God doesn't make good on this promise I've attributed to him, I'm left with disappointment, confusion, and often anger.

I believe God promised me that if I came to him, he would make the world make sense. He didn't, and it doesn't.

Now I didn't expect God to give me a reason for everything that happens, or to fully reveal the inner workings of the human condition, or give me a bankable answer to every spiritual question I have. But I'm starting to realize that deep inside me I expect God to provide a cognitive, cohesive belief system. A basic set of ideas which fit together in such a way that the world can be intellectually approached without fear of contradiction or complete confusion. I know that God is truth, and that he created this world, and therefore somehow my gut has concluded that if I follow him I will find a sublime coherence.

But I've looked in the Bible, and this promise isn't there. At no point does Jesus set a pile of philosophy texts on the ground in front of five thousand onlookers and promise, "Follow me, and all this will fit together."

I understand why Christians think it's there. Throughout the modern age religion has been accused of lacking any semblance of intellectual integrity. We have been accused of being sheep, of lying to ourselves, of believing in contradictions we pretend aren't there. We are accused of choosing fairy tales (dangerous fairy tales, at that) when plain and simple facts are laid before us. We want to defend ourselves, and to a certain extent we should. God is the creator of all truth and knowledge and we should seek this truth diligently and passionately. He has revealed much to us and he has even more yet to reveal. Belief in Christ is not a conceptual balm for the simple-minded.

Still, this world is full of mystery. There are many things God has chosen not to reveal, though sometimes they grate against my desire for truth and justice. God has given me himself, his son, and I am charged to let that be enough.

Image: TheOtter

Quotes: Frontier, Mystery, and Problems that Do Not Disappear

2012-01-16T06:00:00.000-05:00

"The spiritual life cannot be made suburban. It is always frontier, and we who live in it must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed." Howard Macey via Melissa Guthrie

"The ideal mystery is one you would read if the end was missing." Raymond Chandler

"God offers a way to live with questions that do not have answers, and problems that do not disappear." Del Glick

Fred Rogers, My Hero

2012-01-12T23:42:00.001-05:00

I am one of those people who tries not to let cynicism run so deep inside him that he no longer has heroes. And one of greatest heroes is Fred Rogers.

I grew up on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, as perhaps you did, and his ever-present voice of assurance in my young life still gives me confidence in my place in the world. Just the way I am.

As an adult I have found a few videos and articles that have solidified my belief in the extraordinary goodness of Fred Rogers, a man for whom grace was a way of life. I wanted to share them with you.

1. My favorite piece of creative non-fiction, an article about Mr. Rogers by Tom Junod titled "Can You Say... Hero?" (I know it's long. After you've read the first two paragraphs I promise it will be very hard to put down.)

2. CNN's fifteen reasons Mr. Rogers was "the best neighbor ever."

3. Mr. Rogers' speech after receiving a Lifetime Achievement award at the 1997 Emmys, a beautiful display of humility and kindness and truth:

4. Mr. Rogers goes to Washington and convinces the Senate not to cut funding for PBS:

5. Mr. Rogers' farewell speech, which I just can't watch without crying:

Thank you so much, Fred.

Quotes: Socialism, Generalizing, and Beethoven's Sonatas

2012-01-10T01:11:00.002-05:00

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." John Steinbeck

‎"I realize that I'm generalizing here, but as is often the case when I generalize, I don't care." Dave Barry

"Life can’t be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years." William F. Buckley

Top 5 Things That Have Recently Blown My Mind

2011-12-28T12:00:00.000-05:00

1. In countries as widespread as Brazil, Rwanda, Turkey, and the United States, researchers have found that rises in soap opera viewing are correlated with lower fertility rates, more rights and responsibilities for women and girls, and increased stickiness for messages about public health.

2. A prominent historian in California has gathered compelling evidence that it was the Soviet entry into the Pacific conflict, not the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that forced Japan's surrender and ended WWII. If this is true, it raises provocative questions about the morality of the atomic attacks and the concept of nuclear deterrence, a cornerstone of global military strategy.

3. The United States military owns and operates a secret robot space plane.

4. The first openly gay presidential candidate from a major political party in American history is running right now. He is a Republican.

5. In 1941, a Japanese pilot who participated in the bombing of Pearl Harbor crashed his damaged plane into a small Hawaiian island. Assistance given to him by three local Japanese immigrants (which included freeing him, arming him, helping him take hostages, and helping him burn down a villager's house) may have influenced the creation of Japanese internment camps in the United States.

Waiting

2011-12-20T10:21:00.000-05:00

How then should we live?

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear

If this ball of hate and pain is headed for destruction, if almost everything we encounter here is irredeemable, if we have been rescued from a perpetual downward slide which still remains around us, if the only hope for anyone in this life is salvation when it's over—then we do our best to help others be rescued from sin. We serve the poor because Christ did. We spread the word so when Christ returns, there will be many to greet him. We are waiting on God.

O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny
From depths of hell thy people save
And give them victory over the grave

If this ball of hope and promise is headed for redemption, if almost everything we encounter here is redeemable, if we have been called into a perpetual renewal which is all around us, if our hope in this life is to see God's kingdom come—then we do our best to remake the world. We serve those who are in need, we fight for justice, we battle oppression because God has instructed and enabled us to join his ongoing work. God is waiting on us.

O come, desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind
Bid thou our sad divisions cease,
And be thyself our King of Peace

Rejoice, Rejoice
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel

Image: Pedro Moura Pinheiro
This post draws on a recent sermon by WCF senior pastor Del Glick and this previous post.

Why did he come?

2011-12-15T17:19:00.000-05:00

Why did he come?

Some say he came to free us from sin. They say this world of ours is corrupt beyond repair, and he came to give us hope that one day all its fear and pain and evil would be purged by fire, and through his sacrifice we would be welcomed into a new one, where there would finally be peace. Now ye need not fear the grave: Jesus Christ was born to save.

Some say he came to redeem the world. They say his ministry was an example of how to live in ways that daily bring his kingdom to earth through his power, his peace, his justice, his grace, his mercy which makes all things new. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.

Some days you leave the house and enter a world so marred by sin and evil that you cannot believe good could exist in such a place. Death eats at everything. The Bible delivers a message our society has forgotten: we are irreversibly prone to evil. In the turmoil of our time, fear is pervasive and commanding. We hope for Christ's return.

Some days you leave the house and enter a world so full of promise you believe you can see the hand of God reworking the soil. You find hope in community, in service, in humility, in signs of life. We hope for the redemption of our world.

Often it seems he can't have come for both. Either the world is head to hell in a hand-basket or heaven in a slow cooker. This is the tension of already but not yet resurrected fallen man: A world where there is hope and there is no hope. A person who is damned but sanctified. A savior who was God and man.

Image: Lehigh Valley, PA

Johnny Cash – "Ain't No Grave"

2011-12-08T12:30:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of the intriguing Johnny Cash Project.

All Your Show

2011-12-06T12:34:00.000-05:00

The following are lyrics from a song called "Instead of a Show" by one of my heroes, Jon Foreman. As someone who is involved with music at my local church, they are deeply convicting to me. I feel it might do us some good if every worship leader in every church across America had these words taped to their wall.

I hate all your show and pretense
The hypocrisy of your praise
The hypocrisy of your festivals
I hate all your show
Away with your noisy worship
Away with your noisy hymns
I stomp on my ears when you're singing 'em
I hate all your show

Instead let there be a flood of justice
An endless procession of righteous living
Instead let there be a flood of justice
Instead of a show

Your eyes are closed when you're praying
You sing right along with the band
You shine up your shoes for services
There's blood on your hands
You turned your back on the homeless
And the ones that don't fit in your plan
Quit playing religion games
There's blood on your hands

Instead let there be a flood of justice
An endless procession of righteous living
Instead let there be a flood of justice
Instead of a show
I hate all your show

Let's argue this out
If your sins are blood red
Let's argue this out
You'll be one of the clouds
Let's argue this out
Quit fooling around
Give love to the ones who can't love at all
Give hope to the ones who got no hope at all
Stand up for the ones who can't stand at all
I hate all your show

Instead let there be a flood of justice
An endless procession of righteous living
Instead let there be a flood of justice
Instead of a show
I hate all your show

Image: ollycoffey

The Unlikely Love Songs of Josh Ritter

2011-12-01T10:09:00.000-05:00

I love Josh Ritter's music for the particular narratives — sometimes joyful, sometimes haunting — he weaves in his lyrics. Here are four of his unlikely, moving love songs:

An anthropologist and a re-animated mummy

A nuclear scientist and a soldier in an underground bunker

An explorer and his ship

An extra and a star in a silent movie

Image: Kmeron

Paging the Doctor

2011-11-29T00:30:00.000-05:00

One month ago The Rum Diary opened in theaters across the country, featuring Johnny Depp's second portrayal of his friend, Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson (who acquired the title of "Doctor" from the Universal Life Church) was an infamous, alcoholic, drug-loving, anti-establishment hell raiser, the creator of Gonzo journalism, and one of my favorite writers. Most of what I love about his writing is his unmistakable, unparalleled style, but this week my mind keeps going back to the message behind his madness. Thompson wrote about social and political corruption in the era of Nixon and McGovern. What would the Doctor think of what has been going down lately?

My guess is he would bite hard on his cigarette and punch a visceral deconstruction of Peace In Our Time into his typewriter. He would start in Oakland and New York City, where riot police cleared out Occupy Wall St. protesters with tear gas in the dead of night, refusing to let reporters document their actions. He would move to U.C. Davis, where police pepper-sprayed a group of peaceful protesters in the face two weeks ago. I'm not sure he'd be all that thrilled with the Occupy kids; I would expect an ironic, pessimistic, fatalist send-up of both the 1% and the Merry Men in hoodies. But I suspect Thompson understood better than most the corrosive nature of power and the Undying Truth that the enemy of democracy is a can of pepper-spray, a baton, a taser, a fire hose, a rifle in the hand of an irresponsible policeman, regardless of whether he or she has the legal right to use it.

I know he would churn out page upon page about the Republican presidential debates, where audiences have cheered the execution of 200 death row-inmates, booed a U.S. soldier, and applauded the idea that people without health insurance should be left to die in the streets. Maybe what would burn him most, or maybe it's just what burns me, would be seeing a Republican candidate chewed to pieces for suggesting that we shouldn't round up illegal immigrants who have been living peacefully and productively in the country for 25 years, take them away from their families, and send 'em back on a bus.

Nevermind that no pathway-to-citizenship 'magnet' could ever compare with making seven dollars an hour in the U.S. instead of seven dollars a day in Mexico. In fact forget a pathway to citizenship, just declining to deport eleven million illegal immigrants is now a fringe position in the GOP. Apparently it's treasonous heresy to suggest that packing them on 220,000 buses covering roughly 14,000 square miles (or in layman's terms, Rhode Island) and carting them off to their country of origin isn't the best solution to our immigration problem. And heaven help you if you think spending billions of dollars on a 2,000 mile long super-fence is also a lacking solution. Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?

The kids are turned off from politics, they say. Most of 'em don't even want to hear about it. All they want to do these days is lie around on waterbeds and smoke that g-ddamn marrywanna... yeah, and just between you and me Fred that's probably all for the best.

Hunter S. Thompson

Image: zen

Unknown Mortal Orchestra – "Ffunny Frends"

2011-11-18T13:33:00.000-05:00

This is begging for a rap remix. Available free in this sampler.

Quotes: Church, this Country, and a Decent Cup of Tea

2011-11-15T15:33:00.000-05:00

"The goal of a church service should be to connect people's hurt to the truth of the Gospel." Amy Sawyer

"It's just amazing how long this country has been going to hell without ever having got there." Andy Rooney via Michael Costa

"[...] and she said no one is so busy they can't take time to make a decent cup of tea and if you are that busy you don't deserve a decent cup of tea for what is it all about anyway? Are we put into this world to be busy or to chat over a nice cup of tea?" Frank McCourt, 'Tis

Obama and the Race for Not Romney

2011-11-10T22:29:00.001-05:00

A year ago I decided to have some fun by posting a big prediction: Obama would win in 2012. This was primarily based on three beliefs. First, the economy would continue to improve over the next two years and jobs would start to return; second, the GOP would not be able to come up with candidate capable of taking on the president; and third, the Tea Party — as a creature of the waning recession — would not have a lasting impact.

Today these beliefs look a little foolish. Though the economy is growing, it is doing so at a glacial pace — practically indiscernible from standing still — and the job market has not shown significant improvement. The small group of Tea Party Republicans in the House managed to hijack serious, sorely-needed bipartisan reform efforts by Obama and Speaker Boehner, sending the government on wild stunts that wasted our limited political resources with threats of government shutdowns. These fiascoes not only made our fiscal problems worse, they killed what little confidence concerned Americans have in their government, sending Obama and Congress's approval ratings through the floor.

One thing's for sure though, finding a viable Obama alternative in this climate has not been easy. I remember thinking the 2008 GOP primary field was cartoonish, but they don't begin to compare with this year's set of recession-fueled populists (who still look incomplete to me without Palin on the platform). There is one serious candidate in the race, Mitt Romney, whose poll numbers — which mean almost nothing at this point — continue to stick in the mid-20s. But the Right is so dissatisfied with his wishy-washy blandness that every few weeks they cycle through a new "front-runner" (read: tied with Romney). First it was Bachman, who believes the 9-9-9 plan is of the devil; then it was Perry, who would ax whole government agencies, he just can't remember which ones; and now it's Cain, who doesn't believe Muslims belong on the president's cabinet and wishes they would "leave us alone." My hunch is it's going to be Gingrich next.

I wouldn't need to revise my prediction if anyone but Romney were going to win the primary, but I'm convinced he is. Which is bad news for Obama. Without a screwball opponent, he is going to have to hope hard for some job recovery during the next year, and with Europe on the brink of throwing a giant wrench into the global gears, we're all losing confidence he will get it. His retreat from uniting the parties and attempt to rally his base and go on the attack has fallen on its face with the failure of his jobs plan (a common sense set of measures which should have been 2009's stimulus package, were it not disingenuously paid for). Obama is an incredible orator, but Romney is a better debater, and answering Romney's tough questions about what happened during the last two years is going to be difficult for Obama next Fall.

The unfortunate irony for Obama is he has excelled at the very things the presidency is well-equipped to do (foreign policy), but which voters care little about; and failed at things the presidency is ill-equipped to do (improve the economy), but which voters care very much about. I shudder to think what our military commitments would be had a McCain administration taken us through the Arab Spring, Libya, and the withdrawal from Iraq. Who knows how many fronts we would still be fighting on, and how many rebuilding efforts we would be committed to. When you throw in the discovery of Osama Bin Laden, the nuanced, cool-headed, hands-off Obama Doctrine has proved not-too-shabby for a one-term senator.

But of course the average voter couldn't care less. Seeing the Left as weak in the face of adversity, the center has moved right.

There is still time. The Right could decide it just can't bear Mitt and send Perry to the slaughter. Jobs could come back. But these possibilities seem remote in comparison with the likelihood of a Romney nomination and high unemployment a year from Tuesday ... which would be tough for anyone.

Image: Paul Chenoweth

In Support of HR270

2011-11-09T13:47:00.000-05:00

I've been able to find four House Resolutions (215, 225, 270, 485) to make "America the Beautiful" the national anthem of the United States instead of our current British drinking song. I'm sure there are more. I support every one of them.

The Big Find

2011-11-07T22:37:00.001-05:00

Last week Google decided to eliminate the sharing features of Google Reader in an attempt to force users into Google+, or more politely put, to consolidate its social offerings into one product.

For three years I have actively shared links I found interesting on Google Reader. Reading shared links from my small community of friends on Google Reader has become part of my daily life and one of the primary ways I am exposed to new and interesting ideas.

Unfortunately, Google+ is a poor substitute for the sharing tools Google Reader provided. Without RSS, I am forced to either clog all my friends' Google+ streams with links (I tend to share a lot) or personally cull a circle of friends who I think will want to read what I have to offer. There is no way for folks to subscribe or unsubscribe from my shared links as they please, or keep track of what they have and haven't read.

I want to keep my small sharing community alive. I want to keep sharing the interesting things I discover on the web with whoever would like to read them. But as they say, if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold. Google isn't here to provide what I want, they're here to use my data to sell ads. So I've come up with an alternative: I've created a micro-blog called The Big Find.

Micro-blogging (if you're unfamiliar) is sharing very small pieces of content, like links or pictures or videos, in blog form. Mine is located at:

bigfind.justinis.com

If you would like to read what I've found interesting lately you can stop by once in a while or subscribe to the RSS feed here (using Google Reader, for instance). You can also check out the Big Find box in the sidebar of this blog. Or, if you're of the Twitter persuasion, you can follow @justinis–all my shared links and blog posts will be sent there.

I would also encourage you to follow my small community of friends who are slowly making the move to micro-blogs to keep the party going:
Erin Smith
Alyssa Buckley
Cheryl Swit
(More will be added as they arrive; if you decide to join in, send me your link!)

Image: Vector Hugo

You Say You Want a Revolution

2011-11-04T00:54:00.000-04:00

I come to you this week just back from McPherson Square, where the Occupy movement's DC chapter has been parked for the last month, complete with tents and drum circles and a swarm of disenchanted (disenfranchised?) college kids. I went because had I read, as perhaps you have, the litany of reasons reporters have given for why these kids are out there: from student loans to income inequality to greed and corruption. I wanted to hear it for myself.

If your stomach can stand one more story about these protests amid the deluge, well here it is.

Walking around the park felt like stepping out of my DeLorean into what I can only imagine a 60s demonstration must have felt like. There were tents covered in signs protesting everything from war to greed to fracking. There were sidewalk chalk drawings promoting love and harmony. It had the feeling of a close community; one woman was living there with a toddler whose toys were strewn in the grass. There were tents for information, media, and a big one operating a full service kitchen with crates of donated food. It was more or less a whirring operation.

After sitting in on a General Assembly and a long conversation with good-natured protester named Michael (who has a full time job but spends his evenings on the square), it was obvious: nobody out there knew what they wanted. Nobody knew how to attain their ideals. Nobody knew what would need to take place in order for them to feel it was ok to pack up and head home. They were there to figure all that out. What they knew was this:

They're mad as hell and they're not gonna take it anymore.

They're not alone. If the political and economic climate of this country doesn't upset you you're not awake. Nearly four years ago a toxic bundle of politicians, bankers, firms, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, home buyers, and a healthy dose of collective delusion sank our retirement accounts and put too many of us out of work. Then came an unprecedented federal spending spree that financed corporate bonuses, put our country even more perilously in debt, and arguably did little to improve our situation. We've been struggling with near stagnant growth ever since, and the entire debacle has quickened the pace of the hollowing out of the middle class and the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor. If anyone feels they have a real solution, we'd all love to see the plan.

I have little faith the Occupy movement will ever foster or even encourage workable solutions to our crisis. Its Achilles' heal is the very principle it is founded on: it must never imitate the inequality it decries. If 1% of the community must never be given sway over the rest, then unanimous consent is required for every action taken and every idea proposed. The Occupy movement is home to anarchists and socialists, libertarians and Democrats, folks who want to redeem the system from the inside and folks who want to rip it apart. Uniting people this disparate through unanimous consent is hopeless. Any charismatic leader who might unite the group under a common set of actions is doomed because the very principles of the movement preclude leaders. The Tea Party, a group with an equal amount of populist anger, was able to put like-minded people in office who affected national legislation (admittedly in an age group much more fond of voting); will the Occupiers fare so well? Winter is coming fast, and very soon eighteen degree temperatures may prove to be stronger foes than corporate fat cats.

Of course many praise the movement for starting a conversation about income inequality in America, but I have to wonder if they've opened a newspaper lately. To me the news has been a years-long barrage of questions about America's future, chief among them the future of the middle class (here's a whopper of an example). And I have to wonder if it's even the right conversation. Certainly the concentration of wealth in 1% of the American population has its consequences, but is it the ultimate source of our trouble? What of our crippled education system? What of rising health care costs? Immigration? The debt crisis? Militarism? And on a global scale, aren't nearly all of us the 1%? How then should we live?

But for all the pointlessness I perceive, I must admit these protests are distinctly American. They are a celebration of freedom speech, freedom of assembly, and redress of grievances. We should frown on efforts to squelch them. If this were Europe I suppose there would be looted businesses and cars burning in the streets.

Walking back to the Metro from McPherson square, one image stayed with me. It was of a homeless man, sitting on a bench with a warm plate of food cooked up by the Occupy DC food tent. The occupiers may never get the equality they seek but at the end of the day they will have spent months housing and feeding those at the very bottom of the 99%–and that's worth fighting for.

Image: TimWilson

Introducing the Yes! Button

2011-10-25T00:31:00.000-04:00

As a blogger, it is incredibly encouraging to feel that something you have written is reaching people. Every comment I receive on this blog, even the negative ones, is an encouragement to me because I know someone felt like what I have to offer was worth their time to read. It's an honor, really.

In turn, I try to be the kind of blog reader I hope will visit my blog; someone who comments whenever I read a post I like, even if it's just to say I enjoyed it. But commenting isn't easy. Sometimes I just want to read a blog like I read a magazine, without feeling the need to respond. Often jumping through the hoops of posting a comment just to say "cool" isn't worth the time and effort.

So today I want to try something new, something I hope will make it dirt-simple for folks who read this blog to let me know what they like. It's called the Yes! button. It's at the bottom of every one of my posts, and it looks like this:

This button is a one-click way to tell me you read a post, and you liked it. That's it. The button doesn't share the post on Facebook, or tweet it, or "plus one" it, or email it, or tell your mom and Mark Zuckerberg that you read it. It's just a little tally that sends me some love.

So if you like a post you read here, it would be just awesome if you clicked "Yes!"—and even more awesome if you left a comment. Heck if you wanna go crazy you could go back to a past post you liked and click "Yes!" on that too. I leave it to you.

Image: Artotem

Do You Hear the People Sing?

2011-10-21T00:33:00.000-04:00

I used to say that experiencing a performance of Les Misérables was the closest I've ever felt to God. Last night Erin and I went to see the show here in DC and I can say without a doubt this is still true.

I know that sounds too strong. I know it's a musical, in the same category as Cats and Rent and Showboat for many people. But G.K. Chesterton said every good story is a retelling of the Gospel, and that is what Les Misérables is. A story of a broken man who is shown mercy and grace and given strength to spend his life showing mercy to others. A story of how mercy does not abolish the Law but fulfills it. A story which calls all of us to look down in compassion upon our fellow men and women, caught in the muck of a hellishly damaged world. A story of how as we do this, we hasten the day when the wretched of the earth will live in freedom with God, how violence will cease and chains will be broken and redemption will be made complete.

I hadn't seen the play since high school, and I gained so much understanding this time through. In the context of DC, I finally realized how important the political themes of the story are. Here is a play that could have been about the triumph of the oppressed over tyranny. Until today I thought Victor Hugo's novel was set against the French Revolution, but it's not. It covers the June Rebellion of 1832 (a century later), in which a group of students tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the French government. Though the play is sympathetic to these students, it is obvious that their efforts are futile. And so the play isn't ultimately about political freedom, it is about the ransom of the miserable, and how the hope, love, and mercy of God will ultimately redeem what the systems of angry men cannot.

And the music, the music, the music. I don't know if you've ever listened to something so awe-inspiring you felt you couldn't hold it inside you, but I will admit publicly that I cried nearly nonstop through the first act. I used to complain about the synth-heavy arrangements in the show bringing down the beautiful melodies and blistering vocals, but it has recently been re-orchestrated and the new score is breathtaking. I just couldn't handle it.

Les Misérables makes me remember. It reminds me that there is deep beauty in the story I believe. It reminds me that beyond the Christian kitsch and corpreligion, there are creative people who see magnificent art in the Gospel and the Gospel in art. It reminds me of the ancient interplay of justice and mercy, and the call to serve the least among us. It reminds me who I am.

Image: daliborlev