think hard, think well

Various news outlets (here and here) have picked up the story of David Epstein, a 46-year-old professor at Columbia University who is accused of having a “consensual” incestuous relationship with his 24-year-old daughter.

I find the public response to cases like these (see also here) to be quite fascinating. Everyone says, “Eeeew.” Conservatives say, “Prosecute!” Liberals say, “Disgusting, but we have no right to interfere.” William Saletan at Slate has tried to argue a middle position.

There are two issues at the heart of our society’s debates about sexuality. The first is whether sexual behavior is in its essence a social act–and by that I mean, the concern of society. The second is the pragmatic question of whether society can effectively regulate sexuality, and whether it should be done by government or by free associative (or dissociative) choices by individuals.

For Christians, it seems hard to escape the fact that biblical sexuality is a social concern, not a private matter. Sexual expression has social implications and should be regulated.

Practically, though, how should a secular government (or, more complicatedly, many secular state governments) encourage socially productive sexual behavior and discourage socially destructive behavior? If biblical standards regarding sexuality are not the standards we choose to uphold, what is the alternative standard?

If the social standard is just pragmatics, you can end up going down some weird lines of reasoning. If the danger of incest is birth defects in children, the government could require those engaging in incestuous sex to be sterilized. Or, perhaps the government could publish a list of HIV-positive people on the Web so that potential sexual partners could make informed decisions. I’m sure there’d eventually be an app for that….

All this to say: when we pervert God’s wonderful gift of sexuality, we end up tying ourselves up in knots trying to deal with all the social, political and personal consequences.

Happy birthday to me! Today is my 27th birthday, so I am 26 years old. Woot.

Apparently, I share a birthday with two coworkers, a child of a friend from church, and the great entertainers Donny Osmond and R. Stephen Taylor. That got me thinking about the rather remarkably high probability that two folks in any given set of people will share a birthday.

Obviously, the chance that you and I share a birthday is only 1 in 366 (including February 29). But if you and I don’t share, and we add a third person, the probability that he would share either of our birthdays is 2 in 366. The more folks we add, the better chance that two will share a birthday. If we have a group of 367, we are guaranteed that two will share a birthday. So, the probability that two of us will not share a birthday is expressed as follows:

P = (366/366) * (365/366) * (364/366) …

Try this at the next boring party or business lunch: see if you can find two people who share a birthday. I’ve attached a spreadsheet that calculates the probability for any size group.

BTW, I will accept cash or check for my birthday; also, my Amazon wish list is fully stocked and prioritized for your convenience…

Birthday Sharing.xls

“A Slain Lamb, Not a Dead Lamb” is a sermon I preached at Preakness Valley United Reformed Church in Wayne, NJ, in November 2010. The text is Revelation 5.

Here is the MP3 audio (28:49, 26MB), and an excerpt:

Revelation also connects us with the grand, overarching story of God’s plan to save his people and redeem the world. Have you ever read an epic story, such as the Iliad or the Odyssey, or watched a movie like The Lord of the Rings trilogy? There’s a reason why you feel relieved, satisfied, exhausted after getting deep into, and then finishing, a story like these stories: they are tales of cosmic battle between good and evil—and the good king wins. If we could boil down the message of Revelation into a single, simple sentence, this would be it: the good King wins. By “reading the words of this prophecy,” and by “keeping what is written in it,” Revelation tells us, we become part of that story—and we are on the side of the good King.

Audio and text: ©2010 by Benjamin D. Giffone. Reproduction and distribution are permitted, providing that the author is properly credited and that no fee is charged.

“God’s Freedom, God’s Purpose” is a sermon I preached at Preakness Valley United Reformed Church in Wayne, NJ, in November 2010. The text is Deuteronomy 7:1-16.

Here is the MP3 audio (29:34, 27MB), and an excerpt:

God himself is completely sufficient to meet his people’s needs. Remember, we talked about the fertility cults of the Canaanites? Well, in the Ancient Near East, one of the things you did when you conquered another tribe, another country, is you would adopt their local gods as your own. The idea is that your gods help you in your country, but now you need to appease these new gods of this territory, so that you don’t make them angry like the people you just conquered made them angry. After all, that’s why you were able to conquer them, right?

But YHWH God is saying to Israel in this passage, “You don’t need these other gods, these idols of wood and stone and clay. I will provide for you—I, YHWH, the one true God, the almighty God, the giver of all fertility.”

Audio and text: ©2010 by Benjamin D. Giffone. Reproduction and distribution are permitted, providing that the author is properly credited and that no fee is charged.

“Nice Guys Finish Last?” is a sermon I preached at Preakness Valley United Reformed Church in Wayne, NJ, in October 2010. The text is Mark 10:35-45.

Here is the MP3 audio (28:18, 26MB), and an excerpt:

We have a choice to make; Mark makes it very obvious. It’s so simple, and yet so difficult. The very natural human mission is to look for pleasure, not pain; for glory, not humility. And yet the paradox of Jesus’ message is that the joy is found in the pain, and the glory in the humility.

This is not something that we can do on our own. Dare I say it, but this was not something that Jesus could have done on his own. As both a man and the second Person of the Trinity, Jesus trusted his Father completely, and relied on the Holy Spirit. And we must do no less if we are to humble ourselves for the sake of the gospel and to become great in God’s kingdom.

Audio and text: ©2010 by Benjamin D. Giffone. Reproduction and distribution are permitted, providing that the author is properly credited and that no fee is charged.

Some thoughts for those of us traveling during the holidays…

I think most people are concerned about the full-body scans and invasive pat-downs that are now required at airports. Here’s some information, and more here.

As I’ve been thinking about this issue and complaining/commiserating with friends, I have a few observations I’d like to share. Please tell me if you agree.

First of all, everyone agrees that there needs to be some sort of trade-off between safety and convenience/productivity. The only precaution that would eliminate terrorists use of commercial airplanes is the banning of commercial airplanes. No one would agree to that, anymore than we would tolerate a 5-MPH speed limit, which would eliminate auto fatalities but bring our economy to a halt. The real question is, how much precaution is enough? More specifically, how much security are we “buying” for ourselves in exchange for the sacrifices of privacy and liberty?

Next, let’s think back to pre-2001 air travel. There were metal detectors, baggage x-rays, etc. Flying was still pretty safe. There were isolated acts of terrorism: planes were sabotaged, and bombs and weapons were occasionally smuggled aboard. But hostages were held with weapons, usually the terrorists would take control of the plane, land it in some Middle-Eastern country, and then hold out for concessions.

But 9/11 changed the way we think about air terrorism: no longer can we simply worry about the safety of the passengers and crew, we now worry about the damage that a plane could do to those in buildings on the ground.

If we’re really concerned about commandeered planes flying into ground targets, we should take steps to make sure that planes cannot be commandeered. This could include sealing the cockpit (which I believe is standard procedure now), or creating a “destruct” sequence that could be triggered from the cockpit or from the control tower. (This may seem shocking, but if you think about it, this is exactly what the heroes of Flight 93 did: they sacrificed their own lives so that the plane would crash without killing others.) The most important thing is to signal to terrorists that they will not be able to commandeer a plane; a hostage situation will at best divert the plane to an emergency landing, or at worst, kill everyone on the plane.

Lest you think that this policy would declare open-season on airplanes for terrorists, consider that a bomb on a plane probably wouldn’t kill any more folks than a bomb in a crowded bus, train or office building. There are no full-body scans or x-ray machines protecting those areas, but we still see relatively few acts of terror in the USA.

The additional security measures recently instituted will be repealed soon, and rightfully so. My point is that there are more effective and more efficient ways of dealing with the threat of another 9/11-style attack–ways that allow us to keep our dignity and privacy. In my opinion, the TSA is partly a costly but ineffective signal to the public that the gov’t is concerned about safety, and partly an excuse to create a new bureaucracy of gov’t employees who will vote for incumbents.

On November 17, 1968, NBC made a crucial programming mistake that altered the course of entertainment history. With 65 second left in the AFL game between the Jets and the Raiders, NBC abandoned its coverage and went to its scheduled airing of Heidi, a new made-for-TV version of the classic children’s story. Shocked football viewers everywhere (except on the West coast) were deprived of the thrilling ending, in which the Raiders scored 14 points to shock the Jets, 43-32. The subsequent outcry signaled to the networks just how popular pro football had become, and to this day, autumn Sunday programming is dominated by and scheduled around the action on the gridiron.

Why do I bring this up? In order to protest the NFL’s current policy of cutting away from a 1pm game right at the end to show the beginning of the 4:15pm game. This makes absolutely no sense.

Last weekend, I was watching my beloved New York Jets botch and stumble their way through a heavily-penalized contest with the Lions. The Jets trailed by 10 with only a few minutes to go, but had just scored a touchdown to cut the deficit to 3. With two minutes remaining and the Lions about to punt the ball back, CBS switched to the pre-game coverage of the Eagles, which are the home-market team. I was forced to follow along on ESPN.com as the Jets kicked a FG to tie it as regulation expired, and then won the game with another FG in OT.

Now, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that even the most rabid Eagles fan would like to watch an exciting football ending, no matter who’s playing. There is something quite foolish about a policy that forces a network to cut away from a thrilling ending in order to show the last of the pre-game warmups and the opening kickoff. *yawn*

This seems to be a problem every week. There are two very easy solutions: either change the start times of either the early games or the second games (12:50pm, or 4:30pm), or just ditch the policy! Let CBS and FOX play it by ear; give them the flexibility to put the best entertainment product out there.

Then I won’t be forced to constantly click “update” on my iTouch the next time the Jets win a close game they don’t deserve to win…

—-

While I’m on a sports rant, I’d just like to say that I’m in favor of using instant replay in baseball on close plays. I never understood the complaint that IR would eliminate the “human element” of the game. In my view, the umpires should be as invisible as possible–if we could get all the calls right, that would be optimal. Any tool that helps the umpires get the calls right should be available to them. The human element of the game should be limits and skills of the players, not blown calls that overshadow a great human performance like Armando Galarraga’s “perfect game.”

But here’s another point in favor of IR: it’s exciting TV. Who doesn’t like the tension in an NFL game when the coach throws the challenge flag, the referee goes under the hood to look at the play, and the audience sees 17 different angles on a close play. The announcers argue and give their predictions, or debate whether it was a wise move for the coach to demand review. The referee comes back and announces the conclusion to the sporting world waiting with bated breath.

It’s fun, it’s exciting, and it doesn’t take more than two minutes. Surely this could be incorporated into baseball without difficulty. The umpires would get more calls right (and be more relaxed, knowing that their mistakes wouldn’t haunt them forever like Jim Joyce’s will). The fans would get more exciting TV. The (human!) players will be rewarded for their own achievements or mistakes rather than those of the officials. Everyone wins.

—-

It’s puzzling to me that I haven’t been elected despot-for-life–yet…

As I’m working on some papers for the spring conferences, I found that Alessandro Angelini at InsideHigherEd has written a wonderful guide for graduate students looking to make a good academic presentation.

Here’s a particularly catchy excerpt:

Graduate students especially, I observed, seem to gravitate toward one of two unfortunate oratory personas. One archetype is the perhaps well-prepared but painfully meek presenter who races through her text without pausing to take a breath. Hunched over the lectern, terrified and yet robotic, like a contestant on a game show with no reward but to avoid public humiliation. The other type is the scholar who doesn’t regard the limits — neither of chronological time nor of the attention span of the audience. Shuffling pages of marked-up drafts, it’s all excess, aggregated thoughts without conclusion. A verbal Pollock painting, some method but mostly mess.

I witnessed variations on both kinds of presentation and, content aside, each is symptomatic of the same underlying features of post-graduate life: one is often at a low point in intellectual confidence, one has yet to produce original work, and most importantly, one is new at this. So one either communicates this felt fragility or compensates for it with unmeasured bombast.

About 6 weeks ago I received a free Kindle as part of a credit-card offer. I’m not usually in the habit of signing up for credit cards to save a few bucks, but this offer looked excellent: a free Kindle 3G (worth $189.99) and a $100 Amazon gift card. I had had my eye on the Kindle for a while, but could not justify spending the money. This was my chance; at the very least, the gift card would be great to have.

So far, I’ve used the Kindle at home, at work and in my travels. I have a few observations about the Kindle, and then I’ll tell you why I don’t think I personally would have spent the money on it.  If you’re a Kindle owner, I’d appreciate your comments; if you’re a prospective Kindle owner and have more questions, feel free to ask.

First, the Kindle device is a very neat design. It’s light and thin, and it rests nicely in either hand without your wrist getting tired. I purchased a cheap sleeve to protect it; there are nicer ones out there, but I didn’t want to spend a lot on something I wasn’t sure I was going to like.

The screen is an EPD–electronic paper display–which means it takes very little power and is very easy on the eyes, because there is no backlight. It’s really uncanny how closely the text resembles a printed page. However, it also means that the appearance is not as smooth when scrolling pages or changing menus. But the Kindle is not for browsing the internet or playing games–it’s for reading, and it presents the text well. You can highlight and bookmark text, and the device remembers where you left off so you don’t lose your place.

I like the way the Kindle integrates with Amazon.com, the Kindle app for mobile phone/iTouch, and the Kindle Reader on a Mac or PC. If you purchase a newspaper, magazine or book through any of these vehicles, the others all sync and follow where you left off in your reading. You can also e-mail documents to your Kindle (fee via 3G, free via WiFi).

There are a few features that are still “experimental,” such as the web-browsing and the read-aloud feature. The web-browsing is clumsy with no touchscreen or mouse–definitely not for much more than reading a couple of e-mails in a place with no WiFi. The read-aloud feature is cool, and the device has a headphone jack.

In short, the Kindle is designed to carry and read a portable library of books, magazines, newspapers and blogs. It does this better than just about anything I’ve seen, mostly because of the EPD. I can’t read much for very long on my iTouch, and reading on a computer screen hurts my eyes after a while.

—-
As much as I think Amazon is onto something good here, I don’t think the Kindle fits my lifestyle, for a few reasons.

First, as a graduate student in Old Testament, most of the books I read are not available for Kindle. Perhaps this will be remedied in the future. But at this point the Kindle can’t handle footnotes and Hebrew characters, which is a lot of what I read.  (UPDATE: a friend also pointed out to me that citing page numbers in academic papers is difficult when using an e-reader.  Maybe some sort of standard citation format will develop for e-readers, e.g., Wright, N.T., The Crown and the Fire [2009 electronic ed., bookmark 299].)

Second, I still prefer underlining and writing in the margins, over highlighting and typing on a clumsy, hunt-and-peck keyboard. I like being able to flip back and forth between chapters, and sometimes when I’m looking for a phrase and can’t remember the exact wording, I remember the spot on the page and the shape of the paragraphs–not possible on an electronic reader. There’s still nothing like the smell of a new book out of the packaging and the feeling of the pages.

Third, many of the books are still too expensive for me. When I consider acquiring a book, I have a few options: borrow from the library, purchase new, or purchase used. I ask myself these questions:

• How long will I need this book?
• Will I read it twice or use it for reference?
• Will I want to loan it to people?
• Will I want to write in it?
• Will I want to resell it at some point, and will it be worthwhile?

Books that would want to loan (even to my wife!), I will usually purchase new or used–and a Kindle edition can’t be loaned out. Books that I want to read and resell, I will buy new, keep pristine, and sell quickly. If a book is not worth reselling, often I can find it very cheap used–much cheaper than the Kindle price, even. And, I’ve already mentioned the difficulty in writing/highlighting within an e-book.

Here’s an example: today I purchased books for a reading course on Paul Ricoeur and the philosophy of history. These are the prices on Ricoeur’s Memory, History, Forgetting:

I could have purchased the Kindle edition of this 600-page book for half the price of the paperback and “saved” $12 (I have Amazon Prime, so shipping is free). But the used prices on the Hardcover and the paperback tell me that this book has a good resale value. If I buy the hardcover (which is what I did) for $34.40 and then sell it in a few months for $29, I’ve only spent $5.40–and had a more enjoyable reading experience, personally.

The question is, what do I want out of my reading experience with this book, and how can I get what I want from it (content, ability to mark it up, ability to loan it) most cheaply? The answer for most of my academic and contemporary reading is not usually the Kindle. I have been able to get large classic works for free or a dollar; right now I have the complete works of Shakespeare and Jonathan Edwards, as well as the Talmud–each of which cost me $0.99. But then again, you can find many classics in used paperback for a dollar, if you know where to look.

A fourth concern about the Kindle is the issue of electronic formats. Will there be support/updates for my Kindle in 10 years? I doubt it. I might not be able to read new books in new Kindle formats without paying for another $200 device–and I don’t know what will happen to my old library.

—-

In summary, the Kindle does quite effectively what it is designed to do; however, it doesn’t suit my reading habits, and I still have concerns about file formats. I would not have paid $189 for it. Its primary function for me will be to house a lot of cheap, public-domain classics, and perhaps some cheaper recreational reading as it becomes available.

A reader with a different mix of reading needs, financial concerns and library access may find the Kindle very convenient for carrying a large personal library. And hopefully, prices will come down as Kindle can broaden its content delivery, or as Amazon is forced to compete with other e-readers.