Help me to help myselfkudos to Guamo

This is a neat psychological exercise that actually uses the interconnectivity of the internet rather than being merely accessible on the internet. Don't follow that second link until you've followed the first one. And as always, be honest, this is for posterity. Thanks, TFG

The next step is to ask several of your friends and colleagues to say which words they associate with you. You can do this by directing them to the following URL:-

http://kevan.org/johari?name=lucretius79
To watch how your Johari Window changes, and get HTML results to paste into a journal or email, bookmark this URL:-

http://kevan.org/johari?view=lucretius79

I believe

I believe that I mentioned earlier that this is the city motto of Baltimore. I was so excited to see all the lists of mottoes on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_motto,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_mottos, and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Military_Unit_Mottoes_by_Country
I'll put those to good use in the classroom. Maybe I'll make some more stickers later.

I also added some more pictures to Bebo. Maybe I can't show them to you here, but I don't think my Lenten prohibition applies to Bebo. Especially because I'm taking Saturdays as my Lenten feast days.

http://mattlind.bebo.com
I ran for life today. Fortunately, life only demanded a 5k. I held back a little, but my wife kicked my @$$. At least I came out ahead of her co-workers.

It's so fascinating to run a race. It seems like such a microcosm of life. For instance, the key to running a race is not to peak too early. You want to start out nice and slow, and for the first few minutes, let people pass you by. Then you want to progressively improve your pace until, at the very end of the race, you kick it into high gear and give it the rest that you've got. However today, I was too afraid of peaking early and I didn't push myself as hard as I could throughout the race. Therefore, although I was giving the last quarter-mile everything I had, I still had gas in the tank when I crossed the finish line.

Of course, what really makes it a microcosm of life is being surrounded by several hundred people trying to accomplish the same goal. Most folks run too hard, either to impress their friends or to impress themselves. Then, at some point in the run, you see them take an awkward step or two and then slow to a walk, just as if they had actually run out of gas.

To pace myself, I picked two people from the crowd wearing distinctive shirts that I could easily see to follow and who seemed to be running at about my speed early on. When I passed these guys on the tail end of the race, I felt palpably happy to see them give way. However, I didn't know these guys from Adam. Why would I care if these complete strangers "lost" to me. I surely didn't have that same reaction to all the moms walking the course with their dogs and strollers.

So, I added Google Ads to this website. If its annoying I'll take it down. I just want to be like Nevsky. We're going to need all the money we can to get him off on those public urination charges.

Of course, we could always get C-bass's old roommate to get him off. I saw in the Calvin Spark that he recently became a lawyer. I remember that he used to unnecessarily antagonize his peers in college. However, when I saw his picture, it looked like some part of him died during law school. Maybe I'm reading into it too much. I hope he enjoys (un?)necessarily antagonizing others as a lawyer. I'll admit that my reaction to that picture was very similar to my reaction to passing up those random people during the race today.

paulatim progedior cotidiebaby steps

Thanks for the comments on my last post. It is always lovely to have visitors at my blog. I am trying to practice the spiritual discipline, which I have heard called, "gratefulness." Of course, if you've read my last entry, you'll probably understand when I prefer to call it "gratitude."

Let's consult the Bible.

Rest for the Weary
²⁵At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. ²⁶Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. ²⁷"All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

²⁸"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
--Matthew 11

Now, I'm not claiming to be wise, but I would dare argue that I could jump on a piece of "learned." Especially because in this instance I am claiming that it provides me with a distinct disadvantage in the area of spiritual growth.

Lately, I have desperately wanted the world to be fair, just, reasonable, beautiful, and welcoming inter alia, or failing all that, just one of the above. However, the fact of the matter is that things are what they are. Whether we are brains in a vat, motes in God's eye, or intricately crafted repositories of the mystery of the universe, that is what we are, and no amount of straining my brain will make it one way or the other. In fact, the only things my mental effort can effect is my interaction with that same universe.

Here's the thing--the idea of predestination is a dangerous one. It makes one cling to life choices as being either totally right or totally wrong. If one believes that God has foreordained a path for you, then you either have to blindly stick it out or you have to abandon ship. The problem is that the real solution is almost always somewhere between the two.

Now, I should be doing my Latin homework right now, but it is important that I process something. So, here's what I have.

God wants me to be his servant, but he did not design me to be miserable. Nor did he foreordain me to any specific role in his creation. I have always been someone who desired to, if not actually, help others. I have made a career out of being an educator. I have always tried to volunteer, and I find satisfaction in making others' lives somewhat easier.

However, God has a message for me, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10)." I need not be a martyr. I need to live life fully. If not, I have rejected the gift Christ has offered me.

Now, I've had several major complaints about my job--first, I never wanted to teach Middle School; second, I hate my textbook; third, I don't like having to teach students two years in a row who do not choose to be in my classroom--fourth, I am exhausted by teaching six classes. All of these complaints will be redressed next year.

If I don't feel consistently joyful doing my job next year, that means it is time to leave teaching for a while. This doesn't mean I'm any sort of failure--I desperately want to be a success. I can tell myself that most teachers leave in their first five years, I've made it six. I can tell myself that the system isn't designed to make teachers successful. I can continue giving excuses, or I can practice gratitude.

God has given me a young life with a thousand options. If he doesn't want me to serve him as a teacher, then he will provide something else. I don't have to define my life in one way or another. I haven't been miserable as a teacher, but it hasn't made me feel totally fulfilled. The sheer amount of work has been daunting; however, I've always bitten off more than I can or need to chew.

Here are some ideas that I've had lately of what I could do with my life.

Get an MBA: I could go to business school, and get an MBA. Having regularly worked 50 to 60 hours a week as a teacher, I think I could hack it in the business world. Especially if I could find a job doing something with alternative energies such as biodiesel, ethanol, solar, etc...

Become a librarian: Why not follow in my brother's footsteps? I've been working in libraries a lot longer than he has.

Become a police officer: I think I could do well with wierd shifts. I've always been able to adjust my circadian rhythms. I think I'm smart enough, and I've been into working out a lot lately. Plus, there's that whole following in my brother's footsteps things. Cons: I'm a lousy shot. However, I could use this opportunity to start practicing my marksmanship. Maybe I'll buy a handgun. I mean, if Hilary wins this next election, they'll take away all our guns and forcibly sodomize us with them, won't they?

Become a personal trainer: I like working out. Maybe I could get a degree in exercise physiology. Of course, that kind of seems like a dead-end job.

Become a secretary: I enjoy creating, editing, and publishing documents. Of course, I guess I could also work at Kinko's.

Go to J-school/Law school: If I'm going to be a parasite, why not just own it?

I don't really know

So, I've been getting lovely letters and phone calls from lawyers in Maryland demanding I pay $20,000 for a hospital visit which I never made. Of course, I always call them and whine and they apologetically tell me that there is too much information available, and I may never get off their mailing list, yada, yada, I've heard it all before.

Now, I never thought I had a tremendously common name, but I had heard of at least three others with my name before I had left high school. I guess it could be worse, I could be John Smith, or probably even worse for someone my age, Matt Smith. (There's another Latin teacher at my church named Matt who graduated from high school the same year I did.)

Of course, this is the problem with the information age. However, does that excuse these companies? I guess now I should just check my credit every so many weeks and make sure no hosers are ruining my good name.

However, I would like to think that this guy is the douche who racked up all these bills and then skipped town. I like to think this primarily because of his response to, "Something about me that you may not know:" I'll save you the trouble of following the link. It is, "I listen to sermons online while in bed at night." Of course, later on, he tells us the value of the "humbleness of Christ," which apparently removes all need for oneself to be humble. (That, and my pet peeve is the back-formation of nouns with "-ness" when there are perfectly good ones that already exist with "-tion" or "-ity" such as "humility.")

Of course, as I read in I John today, "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death." This was, as always, followed by, "If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?"

So my question is, if this is really the person that racked up $20,000 in hospital bills for which strange law-firms are threatening to sue me; and that, in every industrialized nation, except for our own, these same hospital bills would be covered by the government, which would spend far less on health care by treating people before they got crazy sick and not treating people with ridiculous treatments when they were crazy, crazy sick; and that this kid is probably going to vote for Republicans, who will probably never, ever make any effort to nationalize health care, but will justify the financial destitution of hard-working people by some ridiculous neo-Pelagian theology which retarded Hollywood movies made by Jerry Bruckheimer will portray as a more humane alternative to Nicene Christianity, only furthering the problems of our society; then should I forgive him?

I guess I should ask myself, as W., who recently announced that we should invade Iran, the timeless question suggested by millions of bracelets the world over, "What would Mithras do?"

By the way, support one of my name-mates for "Most desirable guy looks and personality in tuzza?" A vote for one of us is a vote for all.

http://www.pollwizard.com/10226

live from Baghdad

Well, you may have heard about Francis Fukuyama's new book about how his own neo-conservative movement has overreached in Iraq.

America at the Crossroads
This book has been part of a laudable, if tardy, round of soul-searching on the part of neo-cons due to the lack of progress in Iraq. Andrew Sullivan poured out some of his feelings on the Iraq War in the latest issue of TIME.

In retrospect, neoconservatives (and I fully include myself) made three huge errors. The first was to overestimate the competence of government, especially in very tricky areas like WMD intelligence. The shock of 9/11 provoked an overestimation of the risks we faced. And our fear forced errors into a deeply fallible system. When doubts were raised, they were far too swiftly dismissed...
Fukuyama's sharpest insight here is how the miraculously peaceful end of the cold war lulled many of us into overconfidence about the inevitability of democratic change, and its ease. We got cocky. We should have known better. The second error was narcissism. America's power blinded many of us to the resentments that hegemony always provokes...
The final error was not taking culture seriously enough. There is a large discrepancy between neoconservatism's skepticism of government's ability to change culture at home and its naiveté when it comes to complex, tribal, sectarian cultures abroad.

Of course, as I was reading this, I was torn between the easy, "I told you so," and the feeling of, "Well, thank you for finally coming around to reality."

However, I feel like, for sake of clarity, I ought to look back at some of the things I wrote for my own benefit after 9/11, and see if there were any mistakes I could confess. Of course, directly after the terrorist attacks, I made a snap judgement that all political violence was wrong, whether state-sponsored or acts of terrorism. This led me to write the following things, which I now read with some regret...

The acts of the Taliban of Afghanistan are widely known, reported and understood. Those in the Islamic world know them to be consistent with an extreme, but in their eyes, just form of Sharia law. Although, in our eyes, the Taliban is totally illegitimate, in the eyes of its citizens, and more importantly, in the eyes of the citizens of its neighboring countries, it is justified. Osama bin Laden is a popular hero of the region, on the level of Sam Adams, John Brown, George Armstrong Custer, or Douglas MacArthur in the eyes of the average citizen in the Middle East. The demands to hand him over are met with derision or the anger that our own congress demonstrated towards an international war crimes tribunal, from which they have excepted all American soldiers.

In fact, the initial success of the Afghan War and arguments had in the run-up to the Iraq War turned my view from one of pacifism to that of a just warrior. Almost exactly three years ago today, during the first week of the Iraq War, I wrote the following. It was a long essay which I intended as a response to a colleague. I never showed it to anyone but my wife. As I read through it today, the only thing I would really want to recant is the poor wording and grammar. However, I said this gem three years ago, and I'll stick by this today.

The point is invading a country and toppling a regime may be something our armed forces can do with ease. However, even in the name of democracy, these things don’t always turn out the way we want them to.

I wouldn't have mentioned any of this if I hadn't watched a truly transformative documentary. I would recommend that each and every one of you rent it as soon as you read this and watch it.

Gunner Palace
This was not a, "Don't we live in such a cruel, cruel world," movie. This movie was raw. It was real, and I think I have a small inkling of the thoughts and feelings of the soldiers in Iraq.

Everything having been said and done, I will offer up one more comment which I wrote in March 2003 and by which I still stand.

The idea that we will succeed in 2003 in building a stable democracy in Iraq that will last for more than a few decades is a nice thought and I pray for its success. If history shows us any patterns, though, it is quite likely to be a failure. At the same time, those who may have seen the United States as what it is—a beacon of democracy, freedom, and hope—may come to see it for what it should not be—an arrogant, overreaching superpower, which wants to impose its way of life on others.

I still believe that Iraq can become a functioning state, if our leaders don't keep fouling it up. I also believe that a Christian who is truly seeking the kingdom of heaven will pray for a stable and peaceful Iraq. Of course, only time will tell if the "Arab spring" has an early frost.

μυστηριον

Let no one say life is without mystery. I found this note lying on the ground in my driveway this afternoon.

Dear uncle yuannah
I was worred that you wouldn't come home
We miss you very much. I was wondering when
were you coming home because I still
want to play fight like we used to
do when I

This note seems to demand an explanation. Who is the author? What is the actual nature of the relationship between the author and the uncle? Why did the uncle leave? To where did the uncle go? How did this note end up in my driveway?

(I gave up posting pictures to my blog for lent. However, if you follow those links you can see the actual note. I guess that's sort of cheating, but it's the small inconvenience of it all that is supposed to remind of us how greatly Jesus was inconvenienced for our sake.)

Now this is less inscrutable but more unknowable, and moreover, shockingly tragic. My very first few months of teaching I worked with a troubled young lady. This young woman was not doing well in school, clashing with her parents at home, and acting out in self-destructive ways. Of course, as a naïve young college graduate, I assumed that these are the kind of things that always work themselves out. What adolescent—or person, for that matter—doesn't struggle in similar ways?

However, the last time I ever spoke with her, she was working at a cell-phone kiosk at the mall. She told me that she was almost done with her GED and that she was living on her own. This seemed to be encouraging news to me. However, not long after that, her subsequent murder by strangulation made the front page of the local paper. Apparently, however, the true identity of the killer remains elusive, in a case with multiple suspects which, if it were in a murder novel or primetime crime drama, would demand a deus ex machina in order to be resolved.

See what the local news had to say. Click on the video icon to watch the story.

one absolute solar-powered spring break

I do have spring break this week, but I don't. This is the lame spring break—the spring break from UVula (that's an abbreviation for "Universitas Virginiensicula"). This spring break means I don't have to meet for Cicero class on Wednesday and the gym schedule is all "F-ed" up. (I'm just speaking to my people; don't be hatin', be appreciatin'.)

However, it is also exam week, so it's sort of like a week in funky-town. I have to re-write my exams from last year, but as far as I'm concerned, they're grrrrreat (to quote Tony the Tiger). I can't wait until next year, when we only have to give two exams a year. It is going to be wonderful.

I think this whole exam thing is a perfect illustration of my favorite motto, "Because none of us is as dumb as all of us." (I believe that would be rendered in Latin as, "enim tantus stultus nemo nostrorum est quanti omnes sumus.") So, our school used to only give two exams. Then, someone thought that they should give three shorter, non-cumulative exams, to make life easier. Then someone demanded that the last exam be cumulative anyway. So, now finally, we are going back to only two exams, with the last one being cumulative.

However, to ameliorate my attitude about all of these things, my solar-powered battery charger just arrived, so that I can turn my new mp3 player into a lean, green, hippie music-playing machine. Of course, I guess that would require that I listen to free Grateful Dead downloads on it, but you get the point. Of course, now I need a cool battery case to hold all of my solarly recharged batteries.

Anyways, I think having more than one spring break violates God's plan. Clearly, there is one God, one faith, one baptism, one Lord, and thence there should only be only one spring break. The requirements of absolute truth demand it.

However, today, I discovered, not that I wasn't aware of this already, that liberals can be just as absolutist as conservatives. Check out this website.

http://www.revjanespahr.org/
This is the quote that concerns me, spoken like a concerned grandmother scolding her naughty children, "Maybe We're Talking About A Different God." I thought that the whole point of Protestantism is that we all revere the same deity, but as if through a glass darkly, the glass having been splintered like a broken jar. In my mind, this sounds curiously like anathematizing one's enemies.

But, I digress. However, I'm playing poker with the Neveroosky tonight. Maybe he'll have heard about this movie. However, all that aside, I am still laying down the challenge for the Sixth Doctor to come down here and play Magic: The Gathering with me. (Or is it against me? Only time will tell. That or G.W.B. POTUS 43, Grand Vizier of the Skull and Bones society. Get it, either with me or against me? I'm just too darn funny for y'all's own good.)

prophecy

In my mind it is ironic that Bush 41 was associated with the word "prudent," which is a contraction of "provident," which means "looking forward," which is something his son rarely ever does.

Of course, after I read the Katrina video-conference story, I was reminded of something which was downright prescient. Check out this Onion article written on January 17, 2001.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28784

the beginning of Lenten time

I do know that the word "Lent" does not come from the Latin "lente" but rather, is related, in a round-about way to the word for "length."

You may notice that the time of this post is rather late/early in the night/morning. That is all due to a singular piece of bad planning on my part. I am taking a sick day tomorrow/today. I intended to leave all of my lesson plans at school tonight. However, after my run with Dave D., I left my school key on my desk, and proceeded home without out it. Therefore, I am going to spend the night doing all the things I was going to do tomorrow, go to school at 6:00ish ante meridiem and hope someone is already there. Then I'll work out and sleep during the day. That's the plan, at least.

Therefore, I am going to shave my beard as soon as I finish this blog post.

Which leads me to Andrew's latest post. I shall quote him briefly.

Hey: say I had been able to give a full pint of blood, and then someone received it in a transfusion. Does that mean some person has a pint of Andrew running through them? Or is blood just a “thing”, an object that’s “mine” insofar as it’s in me, but someone else’s as soon as it’s transfused? How much Andrewness does the blood that’s in me contain?

Of course, this is the kind of quandary that the ancients would have loved. If Titus Carus Lucretius were here, he'd surely have something to say to that. (It would probably be, "Ah, you sentimental fool, Andrew, your atomoi are merely only part of you for a while and then reintegrate themselves into the rest of the universe. Eschew superstition and don't fear death, because death is merely the ultimate rest of nothingness.")

However, recently on Nova, I watched a delightful introduction to the world of neutrinos. Now, I am certainly no expert, but I have always fancied myself an admirer of physics, if completely incapable of understanding the discipline myself.

If I understand anything about neutrinos I will sum it up as follows. All the physicists assumed that they had no mass, but some Japanese people made a super-high-tech hole underground that proved the opposite to be true. This allowed for two new calculations to be made. First of all, a new theory based on the massiveness of neutrinos could explain all the extra matter in the universe for which no could give account. Secondly, this could explain where ALL the matter in the universe came from after the big bang.

Strictly speaking, according to the state of the science, the big bang should have produced equal parts matter and anti-matter. Of course, as any good Trekk-ie/er knows, both should have annihilated each other in an awesome display of the destructive power of the universe. However, neutrinos, strictly speaking, neither find themselves in the matter or anti-matter camp, but rather remain neutral (hence "neutrino"), and therefore, if they had mass, would have been left behind in this incomprehensible apocalypse at the beginning of time.

Now, I know that there are some haters out there who truly believe that no moral lessons can be drawn from the laws and patterns of the physical universe. But, I would say that those haters don't believe in God. This news came to me as a revelation as if from on high.

Seriously, think about it. For instance, in the American Civil War, part of Grant and Sherman's strategy was, in a bloody war of attrition, to physically annihilate all of those rabid con-federates (anti-federals) with equal amounts of federal troops. This can be seen in almost any war. Everyone who cares about the cause for which they are fighting is generally killed until the preponderance of survivors would rather suffer the humiliation of peace than continue an insufferable war.

Then, a generation later, when people who do not have the taste of blood in their mouths come of age, the hostility is renewed. In the ancient world this often continued until one side was either totally destroyed (i.e. "Karthago delenda est"), or totally subdued (i.e. "They make a wasteland and call it peace.").

Or, for instance, take the repeated invasions of the Central Asian nomads into the more settled societies of Eurasia in the Christian Era—Germans vs. Rome, Attila vs. Rome, the Turks vs. the Arabs, the Mongols vs. the Chinese and then the Arabs. In each instance, the nomads from Central Asia rape and pillage the "civilized people" until they themselves, sated in destruction, adopt the trappings of the "civilization" which they have been destroying.

It seems that extremes always have a way of cancelling each other out. In much Modern Protestant apocalyptic fiction, "the remnant," is seen as a group of people who are able to continue their existence due to their fierce and extreme allegiance to their uncompromised principles.

However, take the Jews. The Jews have been able to preserve their religion when most of the religious practices of the pre-Christian world were violently destroyed. However, it wasn't the martyrs of Masada or rabble-rousers like Barabbas that were able to protect them. It was their moderation. Their ability to be "good citizens" and their devotion to the written word and the life of the mind.

There were few official Jewish governments to sponsor work on the Talmud, Mishnah, and Kaballah after the Maccabees. However, the rabbis kept scribbling away furiously. The Christians and Muslims could more or less tolerate their presence (Medieval Christians less than Medieval Muslims) because the Jews were "people of the book."

In fact, the one Jewish kingdom that may have existed, Khazaria, has a delightful founding myth. This kingdom, if it existed, was somewhere around the contemporary state of Kazakhstan. The king of Khazaria had decided to convert to one of three major monotheistic religions, so he invited a representative of each to debate their relative merits or demerits. After a lively and long-winded debate, the king was no closer to deciding the issue. So he asked each representative to choose which of the other two religions he would recommend that the king choose. Since neither the Christian nor Muslim representative wanted the Khazars to ally with a political enemy, they both suggested Judaism. And thus, off came the foreskins of many a Khazari man.

The Jews made it through these last two millenia through their sense of humor, adaptability, and intelligence as much as through their strong sense of cultural identity. And in the same way, I believe those left behind on this planet shall remain. After Sunni and Shi'a are finished devouring each other in an orgy of tribal and religious hatred, those who want peace more than war will be left. Those who live by the sword, shall die by the sword.

Of course, the tragedy is that this theory of annihilation can usually only provide peace for a generation. Then a generation of young people who desire a redress of their grievances will come to power. It only took twenty years for Hannibal to inherit his father, Hamilcar's, quest to destroy Rome. The blood feud between Rome and Carthage was only sated by the total annihilation of the latter by the old men of the former who had seen Hannibal sow the fields of Italy with salt.

A disillusioned foot soldier in the Kaiser's army led a resurgent Germany in a suicidal war against her former enemies. The real war, however, was won as much by the munificence of George C. Marshall, as by the armored divisions of George S. Patton.

So, in answer to Andrew's question, our particles are the survivors of untold horror, and our existence can only be sustained through the virtues of the media aurea, the path of moderation. Of course, that path is the narrow, winding road, and it is peopled by refugees made homeless by blind hatred and ignorant cruelty.