Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Thursday, November 27, 2008

My final post in this series will be to look at God and how He relates to our sin through the metaphor of "wanderlust" and Shepherd. In this metaphor there is ample Scriptural evidence that portrays God as a Shepherd that tends to, protects and even rescues members of His flock. The most common examples of these ideas are "I, Myself, will send a shepherd" passage in Ezekiel 34, Jesus' parable of the lost sheep and Jesus looking at the crowd in Mark 6 and seeing them as sheep with out a shepherd and, finally, the "I am the Good Shepherd" identification Jesus makes in John 10.

In this metaphor the sense of what sin is seems to be more implied than stated and I see it a a sort of desire to go off and blaze our own trial without the protection or provision of God. It is the impulse to rely on our own skills, gifts and wisdom in order to "do our own thing". In perhaps Jesus' best known teaching on this, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the son, who represents us, disowns his father and treats him as if he is dead with nothing left to offer the son. The son takes his inheritance and leaves the protection of the father's lands. He seems to be afflicted with a sort of, as I put it in the opening to this post, wanderlust.

In the same way, I think our sin nature, or nature to follow our own will, drives us away from what God offers in terms of guidance and protection. The Father offers some pretty clear instruction as to pathways that lead to danger and peril for us and still we choose to follow them. It's like we're hiking along and we see a little used trail that leads down into a dangerous box canyon or something. We know that the area is prone to flooding, that the trail might be unstable, that it might lead us down with little chance to climb back out of the canyon but we are still drawn to it. Our curiosity and sense of invulnerability tell us that nothing bad will happen to us even though we see the bleached and dry bones of others who have gone before us.

In this metaphor, God is the Shepherd that can lead us out of the canyon. He will establish a place for us to be safe and guard it with His life in order to keep out the Predator who stalks around it like a wolf or a "roaring lion seeking whom he may devour." In the Ezekiel passage, He is the Shepherd who provides for His sheep when the strong and unjust seek to steal, take and hoard. Branching this out into David's great psalm, He sees that we will want not but will have ample pasture and clean water in order to rest and to be restored.

In seeing sin this way, we can understand that not every tuft of good looking grass is what it seems, especially when it's pretty close to the edge of the path or pasture. Just as importantly, seeing God as a Shepherd changes how we respond to His voice when we have wandered far from the "sheep fold" and have become separated from the herd. If we see Him only as Judge then all we see is judgment and our tendency is to run. But if we understand that He has come to rescue us from the perils we have gotten ourselves into, we will run to the sound of His voice. When we see others as fellow sheep and we understand how sin has drawn them away we are less likely to judge and more likely to understand and help the person hear the voice of the Shepherd. We will realize as a fellow sheep or another Prodigal that we have little ability to lead a person back to the fold. Instead we will understand that by listening for God's voice and recognizing and responding to it positively, others will be drawn to listen for it as well. In this way, we follow St. Seraphim of Sarov's advice when he said, "Save yourself and thousands around you will be saved."

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

If we acknowledge that the metaphor of sin as rebellion and God as "Just Judge" is limited and of use in describing both sin and God's way of dealing with it in limited circumstances then we must wonder what other metaphors may be used to describe these things. In Eastern Christianity a very common set of metaphors is to describe sin as a disease which infects the human condition and to think of God in all of the persons as The Great Physician who heals the afflicted and brings wellness and wholeness to those who are sick. This picture of sin and God is derived mainly from Matthew 12:9-13 and offers a compelling metaphor as it comes from the mouth of Jesus itself.

When developed theologically, sin becomes an affliction or disease that affects all of humankind. In the West, it is the sin itself that infects us all while in the East it is the heightened desire to sin the we contract from Adam and Eve and their choices in the Garden. In either case, God is seen as the Physician who comes in to heal all those who seek his aid. As with all untreated disease, the end product of sin is death. God comes to restore wholeness to all who desire it. The passage in John 5 that relates the story of Jesus healing the lame man at the Pool of Bethesda is an example of this. When Jesus asks the man a question, He asks him, "Do you want to be whole?" (Contrary to most translations which translate the passage as "Do you want to be well?" or "Do you want to walk again?") When the man is made well but then denies any responsibility for being healed of his lameness on the Sabbath, Jesus finds him and tells him to stop sinning or worse things will happen than being lame. In this we see that Jesus seeks to do more than just help the guy walk; He wants to make him whole again.

As another example, when Jesus describes the person of the Holy Spirit as streams of living water, He calls forth the life-giving, healing and cleaning properties of running water as a curative to the thirst that keeps one from eternal life. A Jewish reader of this passage would have clearly seen the symbolism of running water as a source of cleanliness and healing. Several passages in the prophetic writings of the Old Testament say that God withholds water due to the sinfulness of the nation of Israel and that He uses water to both save the people and heal the land.

What is interesting is the sense I have that over the last twenty of thirty years, this metaphor, once in more common usage in the mainstream, more liturgical churches in America (as evidenced in songbooks, calls to worship and scholarly commentaries), has slowly fallen out of favor for the more juridical model discussed previously. I think that this is really unfortunate. John Burke is his book, No Prefect People Allowed, suggests that the two issues facing emerging, postmodern generations are addiction and sexual brokenness. Addiction in our culture is usually described as a disease which allows for the use of a "God as Great Physician" model in a very natural way. In addition, such a metaphor leads to the drawing in of and opening up to God to deal with sin rather than Him being separate, distant and judgmental. For this reason, I think it may be time for the North American Church to re-examine and re-energize this particular metaphor. Healing and wholeness are both processes rather than events and thus the metaphor also works well with a model of spiritual formation that focuses on deification or growing closer to God through a lifelong practice of spiritual disciplines. They work well with the idea that our growing more like God does not rely on a single event (justification) but that sin is dealt with through time as a process (sanctification).

For those reading this, I would ask you to consider what it might mean to view others as struggling with a disease rather than looking at them as rebels or criminals. The "Just Judge" model leads one to think of others not as fellow travelers on the journey of faith but as transgressors against it or highway robbers along the trail. Shifting the ground by shifting the metaphor leads to seeing others as battling a hideous sort of cancer that only the best Doctor can treat. The idea then becomes one of helping someone "get an appointment" and supporting them as they try to get better. As a culture we're very good at this sort of relational approach to dealing with real disease (though we still struggle with applying this to addiction) and I think it would help the Church to reach out so much more effectively.

Thanks for Reading. More to Come on this topic.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Sunday, October 19, 2008

As promised, this is a follow-up to my previous post on the metaphors for sin and God found in Scripture that we commonly use to help us understand how to view both. As I mentioned in that entry, I feel that there are at least four commonly used metaphors in Christian literature but the conversation in evangelical Christianity here in North America tends to be dominated by one of those metaphors; that of sin as either rebellion or crime against the kingdom of God and God as the "Just Judge" who passes sentence on those who are sinners.

The Scriptural support for this view is found in several places in the Bible, most prominently in the Psalms in the Hebrew Testament and in Romans, and to a lesser degree in Hebrews and Galatians, in the New Testament. In my discussion here I'd like to focus on the metaphor as expressed by the apostle Paul to the church in Rome. Many commentators have noted that the language Paul uses in discussing sin and the process God has in dealing with it is very technical. It is loaded with specifically judicial words from Greek that any citizen of the city of Rome, the seat of the greatest empire of the time, would have been familiar. Much like Washington, D.C. now, Rome was filled with law and policy makers from all over the Empire. While the Romans weren't always known as the most artistically creative people ever, they are notable for their abilities to administrate, legislate and engineer. This led to a society that placed a lot of emphasis in good law making and good law enforcement which led to a very strong judicial system. So, when Paul writes to the church in Rome he chooses to use a metaphor with which they will be familiar to describe how God deals with sin. In this metaphor, he describes sin as an infraction against the kingdom of God (either as a crime or, more seriously, a rebellion). He explains very clearly that the sentence for this infraction is death (which was always the Roman penalty for rebellion). In the dealing with this sin, God is described as the adjucant or judge; the One who will decide whether rebellion has taken place and what the sentence will be by an examination of the evidence. If the rebel is found to be innocent, not only is a verdict of innocent registered but the very accusation that a crime has ever occurred is removed from the defendant's "record". The way in an innocent verdict is arrived at is through the intervention on behalf of the rebel by the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who vouches that He knows the defendant that that the accused is "with Him", as it were.

This is expanded upon by the church in the West through the inclusion of other Scriptures to produce a fully judicial model wherein the defendant (you and me) will stand before the Judge on the "last days". At the prosecutor's table will be the Accuser or Adversary whom we usually refer to as Satan. As our side will be the Paraclete, which is the name given to the Holy Spirit by Christ at the Last Supper as recorded by the apostle John. In the Roman legal system the defendant had to conduct their own defense but could have someone to stand beside them to offer counsel, advice, support and comfort. In this court the Accuser will offer up to the Judge all of the ways in which the defendant has committed crimes against the realm. He will exhort the defendant to admit to the guilt of his or her actions and to accept the punishment of death for the rebellion they have lived out. The Advocate will stand beside the accused and counsel them to confess their rebellion and beg for the court's mercy, unwarranted though it may be. The Judge will then call but one Witness, the Lamb, to speak. The One will speak and either say that He knows the defendant and that He has taken upon HImself all of the guilt for their crimes or He will say that He knew them not. On the basis of this testimony the Judge will render His verdict.

I think Paul uses this metaphor not only because the church in Rome and it's descendants will understand it in the context of those things that were important in their culture but because it offered great hope. The time at which Paul wrote was a time of great political and judicial instability. For those who still followed the old Romans gods, they had to admit that Jupiter and the gang were a pretty capricious bunch. As one writer said, the gods were more like superpowered humans than some sort of moral force upon which to found an ethical system. They lied, cheated, had sex, fought wars and much, much more for reasons that had more to do with their own egos than any higher purpose. In his metaphor, Paul was offering a God that ruled according to just principles and the higher ethic of love. In addition, the Roman judicial system was often compromised by corruption and the machinations of the three immoral and increasingly erratic emperors; Caligula, Claudius and Nero. In describing God as a Just Judge, Paul was, in essence, telling the people of Rome that while true justice might not be attainable in this world, the One, True God would see that justice was done in the hereafter.

This is a powerful metaphor for an oppressed, minority church struggling to survive persecution and terror brought about by a system hostile to its existence. I believe that this metaphor still has a great deal of resonance in America in reaching out to the disadvantaged or to those who are locked out from social or economic justice. Many African-American spirituals sing of a God who is just and good and who will judge fairly. In addition, in third world countries where justice can be bought and sold and where right is determined by the people who have accumulated the most power, a metaphor of God who is above such manipulation is one of astounding hope.

The difficulty with the metaphor, especially when it is the only one offered, is that it can present a significantly distorted picture of God. In this picture, God sits far away from creation and humanity on some great and royal throne. His purpose becomes only that of pronouncing judgment while the other aspects of the Christian message are placed on the persons of either the Son or the Spirit. With that assignment, Christianity can become a faith of judgment rather than love and of division and separation instead of inclusion and unification. For those who have not suffered oppression from any place but a church that struggles with judgment this is a very difficult picture to accept. There is a real contradiction between the messages of "God so loved the world that He sent His Son to save and redeem it" and "God is a righteous judge that will send you to eternal damnation if you don't have the right relationship with Him." In a postmodern society which questions whether anyone, including God, has the authority to pronounce such judgment it is clear that a different metaphor is needed in order to reach out to those seeking to escape the emptiness of a culture that sets each person up as their own authority with no accountability to anyone or anything and that offers nothing beyond the titillations of the here and now. What is also clear is that this metaphor must offer things which the "Just Judge" metaphor does not; things such as unification, wholeness and rescue. In my next post I'll begin to speak to just such metaphors.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Saturday, October 18, 2008

In the Christian group for which I am the faculty sponsor there is a discussion that seems to arise every year regarding God and how He deals with sin. The specifics of this conversation change from year to year but one of the things that these students seem to want to do is to understand the theology of redemption beyond a mere "Jesus died for my sins" level. While such an understand is correct insofar as it goes, it doesn't offer much in the way of dealing with the often complex issues and situations that college students encounter.

This year, the conversation began in a conversation about whether we should remember our sins or not. My colleague in leading these studies, Gary, is Orthodox and much of the writing of the early church fathers on this topic indicates that perhaps it is better that we remember our sins as a way of reinforcing our humility before a holy God. Some of the students who came from an evangelical mindset found this particularly challenging as they've always been taught that since God has forgiven their sins and remembers them no more then they should endeavor to do the same. The great thing that happened is that we managed to avoid the occasional east/west impasse that develops in the conversation. I was able to do this by understanding that while east and west often times use the same words, they can have different meanings or implications. In this case, Gary meant that we should remember that we are prone to sin and use as evidence of that fact our past actions and present tendencies. What a couple of the students heard was that we should remember our guilt associated with that sin due to the Western emphasis of the association of guilt with sin. What ensued was a great discussion of how we can remember our sin even as we acknowledge that God has dealt with and removed the guilt. I think it was a real eye-opening insight for the students and for us as leaders to understand that while the traditions of the East and West often use the same language, we sometimes have very different understands of the words. This is especially true once you move to North American evangelical Christianity with it's roots coming out of so many different theological traditions.

The more interesting thing that this led to for me was a discussion Gary and I had about the metaphors we use as a faith to describe how sin gets described and how God deals with it. As an aside, I have to say that Gary and I end up having one or two of these sorts of extended dialogues a semester regarding Christianity and I have found it to be one of the most rewarding conversations I've ever had. What emerged in my mind from this specific part of the conversation is that Scripture holds within it several metaphors to describe both sin and how God deals with it. In the West, especially in the tradition of Protestantism, we have focused on one of these metaphors (almost exclusively within some faith traditions) while neglecting the others. There are good reasons for this but as Gary and I considered and compared views from the East the West it got me to thinking very deeply about how such metaphors inform not only how we deal with our own sin and it's affect on our relationship with God but also how we deal with and treat others who are struggling with these things.

The specific metaphors for sin that I've found to date are sin as rebellion, sin as illness, sin as a wandering away from God and sin as brokenness. Another metaphor that I've used is that of poison but I'm not sure I've found much Scriptural support for that metaphor beyond a few references to snakes. The corresponding metaphors for how God deals with sin are God as "Just Judge", God as "The Great Physician", God as "The Good Shepherd" and God as the repairer of the divisions. I'm sure that there are more metaphors than just these, I just haven't found them as of yet. The unfortunate thing I think is that here in North America there's a really strong tendency to focus on just one of these and then claim that anyone who doesn't see it the same way is somehow changing the meaning of Scripture or teaching untruths.

A better way to look at this, I think, is that each of these pictures are metaphors for God stated in terms that humans can understand. Each of them is true as far as the metaphor goes but they aren't exclusive to the other metaphors. In some ways the rebellion/Just Judge metaphor is true and in other ways the illness/Great Physician one is. Neither of them completely describes or explains God because no description, metaphorical or otherwise, in finite human language can describe an infinite God or our relationship with Him. What's important to understand is that whatever metaphor we use, it affects how we look at and treat others. Thus it's important for us to understand this topic through as many metaphors as we can.

I'll discuss each other metaphors as I see them in later blogs but this is a good start.

Thanks for reading and Grace and Peace to you.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Friday, October 17, 2008

I may have written this before but at the risk of repeating myself I have to talk about assessment for just a minute. One of the things that I've realized in my long years as a college professor is that while educators may say that assessment comes in basically two forms, summative and formative; there is really a third type of assessment: behavioral. The main reason I give roughly weekly quizzes in my classes is not because I want to assess what they know at a point in time or because I want the quiz to help them learn a new skill or piece of knowledge but rather because I want to them to keep up in the class. The assumption is that if I give quizzes every week, the students, not wanting to do poorly on them, will keep up with the work and studying in the class.

What this means is that I'm using a relatively minor assessment to drive the big thing I want to change, namely the students' behavior. The quizzes become the tail that wags the dog of behavior (using a metaphor often used to describe the escalation of response to Serbian nationalist killing the Archduke of Austria in 1914). A colleague of mine and I often refer to giving a quiz as "Wagging the Dog". Usually this is a pretty effective technique for modifying the typical student behavior of waiting until the last minute to study for the bigger exams in the class.

Not so much in one of my physics classes this semester. I gave a quiz today and the number of answers that showed that almost no preparation had been done was pretty high for a sophomore level course full of students who have said that they'd like to enter professional careers somewhere down the line. Most of those students who did poorly have also managed to miss at least one class period a week for each of the last three weeks which certainly is a contributing factor to their cluelessness. Again, usually the fear of doing poorly on the weekly quiz over the previous week's material at least motivates them to come to class but not some of this group.

Not to be a curmudgeon or a cynic (or that old guy that says everything's going to hell in a handbasket) but it really seems that there's this increasingly pervasive attitude among many students that a college education is an entitlement. Usually students who have this ailment of thought don't make it to my class as they are washed out in their earlier coursework. However, this semester I seem to have gotten a group of students whose really strong natural talent has allowed them to get through much of their first year coursework with sufficient grades to allow them to make it into my course. Unfortunately, most of these students have ignored the lower than hoped for grades in the two courses that are the best predictors of success in my class, Precalculus and Chemistry II, and so have not learned the lessons necessary to be successful here.

Unfortunately, the last day to withdraw from the class without penalty has come and gone.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Saturday, October 04, 2008

Well, in spite of my best intentions, the cycling season has come to an end. Unfortunately, that means I won't be racing the state TT championship. Before anyone gets too concerned, I haven't gotten injured or anything but I can tell that if I continue to try and push to extend the season I will endanger next season pretty seriously. I tried to stave off this occurrence by taking a week off a couple of weeks ago but when I came back it was pretty clear that my body wasn't having any of it. As I tried to ride with effort during the week I could get my heart rate to a good place but I was worn out after 45 minutes and I was suffering from a lot of post ride muscle pain. Add to that the fact that I can't seem to get enough sleep and I've had a couple of episodes of slight vertigo I see all the signs of overtraining. If I try to push for another two weeks I can see that I might push my body way over the edge or make a big training mistake and injury myself. So, it's three weeks off the bike and into some low intensity, low impact stuff. It's also time to go on a diet to make sure I don't put on a bunch of weight and maybe I can lose some without having to worry about negatively affecting my training.

I have a good plan for the time off. I'll do yoga/Pilates work three days a week to develop core strength and flexibility and on three days I'll do some light weightlifting to prep by joints for some heavier work in late October. I'll probably add some swimming to the mix to keep the aerobic systems active and to help rebalance by nervous system from mostly lower body to a full body state. I'm hoping that the pool work will also help me to work on breathing in rhythm for time trialing next year. It's weird how everything is planned in my mind for the three week "off season" to make for a better next season. I really want to take a biger step up next year. I'm tried of being a great time trialist and then not seeing anything for it in many of the stage races. I think that with some coaching I can develop enough of a burst that I can be threat to win road races that have any sort of selective section. It's all going to be in the training I do from January through March that's at or above my Lactate Threshold that develops my VO2Max system more fully.

I'm amazed at how much I've learned about racing and training this year. The high point of the season has to be the Tour of Atlanta and my second place finish in my first race for the Security Bank team. That's the other really great aspect of the season. For the first time I'm riding for a team that actually rides as a team. To work with Robert, Ron, Bill and Doug to get an excellent set of results has been fantastic. I really believe we've been the best team in 4/5 in the state. We've managed to start changing the culture of negative racing in the cat 4 group thats plagued racing in Georgia for a long time. That's a hugely positive development and I think next year will be a much more wide open season because of it. Add to that the fact that we've moved Doug and Jake into higher categories and have something that's looking like a good small Cat 3 team and I think we have a lot to be proud of. We won every team time trial in our division including the state championship and took a first and second in the ToA.

Looking forward to next year I'm not sure if we'll all try to race Masters class (and get our butts kicked around for a while) or if we'll try to move more guys up but I'm game for whatever it is. For me, I'll do a better job of managing my season so that I don't end up digging myself a hole in late May and early June and then spend the rest of the year fighting to stay out of it. I think the new Georgia Cup schedule with a big break in the summer will really allow me to work hard in the spring, take the good break and rest in the summer and then finish a lot stronger in the fall. I'll definitely restructure my training and see if I can breakthrough in '09.

As I write this I'm witnessing some thing I never thought I'd see. By beating Auburn, Vanderbilt is in first place in the SEC East division ahead of Florida, Georgia and Tennessee. I remember the days when Vandy was the doormat of the SEC East and now they're leading it. They still have to play Florida and Georgia but 5-0 is an amazing thing. Nice to see the geeks doing well.

Thanks for reading and I'll update a little later in the week.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Thursday, September 25, 2008

I have been digging on the music of U2 over the last couple of weeks. It all started, at least in it's most recent manifestation, with hearing about a Bible study someone did using the music of the Dublin band as the lead in to talking about faith in a post-modern era. I thought, "What a cool topic," so I broke out some of my old albums and got some books on the topic from Amazon. As one thing led to another I've gotten more and more into both the music and the message.

As a guy in his early 40's I got into the band about the same time everyone else my age did in the early 80's after hearing Sunday Bloody Sunday and seeing the Live at Red Rocks video of the song on MTV (back when MTV was worth a damn and actually changed the world). Al the geezers who read this will know what I'm talking about. Like a lot of teenagers, I was really only interested in what got airplay and so I didn't listen to much of Unforgettable Fire outside of Pride (In the Name of Love). It was my first exposure to Martin Luther King Jr. because out in rural Oregon the race troubles in the South were something that might as well have happened in a foreign land. I had never thought of King's life in the terms the song presented and it changed me to some degree.

I was a sophomore in college when the Joshua Tree album came out and it was one of three great albums of the time; the other two being Paul Simon's Graceland and and Sting's Dream of the Blue Turtles. The first three songs on the album, With or Without You, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and Where the Streets Have No Name, may be the best three song album set ever (and Joshua Tree may be the best rock album ever). I couldn't have told you why at the time but I Still Haven't Found... was maybe the best three minute song I had ever heard. I was hooked on the band and when the Rattle and Hum movie and album were released I was first in line. I still think it's the best album the band has ever done or maybe back in the day it would have been the second LP in a two LP set like those old 70's bands used to do. I remember that I used to sing Angel of Harlem and When Love Comes to Town in the shower. Blues was undergoing it's subculture rebirth at the time and seeing U2 perform with B. B. King, who I had recently discovered, was fantastic. The perfect song in the movie was the gospel version of Still Haven't Found. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it now but I cried in the theater when the gospel choir came in the first time on the song in the movie because it was so perfect. It has taken me 20 years to figure out why but the song is so true.

In grad school came Achtung Baby and that was not exactly what I expected. It was a lot harder and edgier than I was wanting, though that was mostly because I was still thinking that bands should do the same thing they had done before. Still there were a couple of the best songs U2 had ever done: Mysterious Ways and One. The first has a groove that rivals just about anything and the second just reveals such a deep hurt. I wish I had remembered the second tune later in my life when I felt like the Catholic church rejected my marriage because it hadn't been performed by a priest. The words of the song perfectly express how I felt and wish I could have given it to my wife to explain what I was feeling inside when I couldn't say the words.

After Achtung Baby U2 took it's foray into electronic music and parted ways then. I sort of got the parody of rock star culture the band was doing on Zooropa and PopMart and I thought it was cool and all but I just didn't dig this kind of music. So for about 8 years I didn't listen to the band much unless I was pulling out "the good old stuff". Then All That You Can't Leave Behind came out and it was like the old U2 was back but with cooler lyrics. It was as if something had come unfettered in the band and they were expressing themselves as truly as they knew how. The song Elevation is a great example of this with a funky tune and elliptical lines that could be taken more than one way but that somehow led to something so much deeper than just the stuff of typical rock tunes.

The truth is that the lyrics weren't cooler but I had grown up a lot. More importantly I had decided to really follow and investigate my Christian faith and all of the sudden I found this well-spring of Christian thought and expression that was a thousand times more authentic than the stuff Word and Sparrow and Integrity and all the rest were spoon-feeding the contemporary Christian subculture. I found this band that was Christian but that sang about sadness and anger and lament and joy and love and all of the rest of the human conditions that connected it all to a holy God who loved His broken creation. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb has just continued this and made it all the more obvious.

Now when I listen to Still Haven't Found I don't just hear a modified 12 bar blues but a Biblical lament worthy of King David and Psalms. When the New Voices of Freedom sing "I Still Haven't Found..." I just connect with the old black spiritual sense of searching for God and finding Him but not finding Him; of loss and hope, of triumph and tribulation. To me it's the best piece of Christian rock ever recorded and maybe the most authentic. Listen to the lyrics and tell me you haven't been there; that you haven't searched and serched for the answered and not been satisfied. Tell me you haven't looked in passionate relationships and emotionally based religion and come up feeling empty. And then you find that something more and you know the Truth and that "All the colors are leading to water". You believe it but like the man with the demon possessed boy at the foot of Mt. Tabor you find yourself at the foot of the One saying, "Lord, I believe...but please, God, help me with my lack of faith."

"But I still haven't found what I'm looking for."

Grace and Peace.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

OK, so the Prez is concerned enough about the "public who elected him"'s reaction to the huge bailout plan he and his appointees at the Fed and Treasury have put together that he decided to address that same public on national TV. Here are a few of my thoughts about his statement:

(1) We've seen this song and dance before. I can't speak for anyone else but I know I'm dubious. Is this just another theatrical exercise of political spin? I can't help feeling that our President is about as clueless as a guy can be. His speech was not reassuring but seemed broken and halting.

(2) No new regulation for financial institutions who got us into this in the bailout legislation? Are you kidding me? We're expected to pull these guys' asses out of the fire and we don't get to tell them how they're going to use our money? Incredible.

(3) Did he blame this on foreign financial institutions? Somehow I don't think those foreign institutions wrote all those mortgages after our government deregulated the lending market. As far as I can tell, Countrywide was an American company. Another sign that our government is no longer capable of taking responsibility for it's failings. What was a campaign strategy has now become policy.

(4) I don't feel better and I don't feel like our leaders have a handle on this thing. Bernanke and Paulson have told us too many times that the latest government intervention will work. Why should I believe them now? These are guys are supposed to be smart guys but I don't see it. I can't help but think that they're just anther bunch of dupes that really work for the huge financial companies and not the American people. It's kind of like Cheney cutting the energy deal with the oil companies a few years back or the intelligence industry who were supposed to warn us about terrorism and weapons of mass destruction but who convinced the President to lose focus on the war in Afghanistan in order to get bogged in Iraq.

I know we have to intervene in order to avoid a depression (not a "long, painful recession" like Bush suggested; yet another sign of denial) but if it's my money then I want strong regulation now that can be reworked later. I want independent oversight from a body that has no vested interest in the success of the institutions and no political hay to made made. I want the executives who made the investment decisions removed from their positions of power (with no "golden parachutes") and I want the boards of directors of the companies dissolved for one year as they are brought under independent, non-partisan oversight. In one year the boards will be reconstituted after new regulations have been crafted and then CEO's can be hired.

That's what it'll take to restore confidence in the system for me and I think that's what it will take to restore the confidence of those who are going to have to buy the Treasury bonds to make the $700 billion rescue package happen. I certainly don't have confidence in the all the President's men.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Sunday, September 21, 2008

So...here's some random thoughts from commercials I've seen...

When a car commercial says their new model is the "roomiest ever" does that mean the car has three rooms now? What would the new rooms be? I mean, there's obviously a driving room but what are the others? Maybe there's a TV room where the DVD player and iPod ports are. What else? Perhaps a powder room for those nights out on the town. What about a kitchen for a little snack on a long trip? Hmmm...what rooms you you like to come as standard equipment on your next car?

Are all creepy hotel desk clerks required to have Northeastern accents? Maybe they're the New England version of a redneck but with an Oxford shirt and sweater instead of a stained "wifebeater" shirt like we have down here in the South.

Is StubHub legalized scalping? And the kid who gets the Viking helmet...is he really a man now? I mean, the ability to control the DirecTV remote is a skill that does separate us from the primates but are we really expected to believe that this kid could heft a broadsword and a round shield and take his place aboard the clan's longship bound for parts here-to-fore unpillaged just because dad gives him a hat with horns? I don't think so.

Did Dan Patrick just say that the kid in the stands on the highlights would need a dose of laxatives after consuming too many Twizzlers during the game? And they pay this guy?

I'm stunned that the banks/brokerage houses are still running commercials. Do they still have any money left? I mean, didn't the US government and we the taxpayers just buy them? If we did I'd like to see less cliche commercials. I mean, honestly, wouldn't you like to see some guy like Sam Waterson get up on you're High-Def and say, "Our core values are greed and rampant stupidity. Our investment advisors thought it would be a good idea to buy a bunch of low grade securities built on mortgages for houses they'd never seen written by guys who attended a one afternoon seminar with an open bar. Our solution...we're flogging those guys in a back room right now and if you open an account with us we'll give you online trading tools and the right to come down to the local office and get a couple of good lashes in. Cruelty, that's our policy."

Once again Microsoft has stolen stuff from Apple. "I'm a PC"? Seriously? First the company thinks we'd be swayed by having Jerry Sienfeld hang out with that laugh a minute comedian Bill Gates and now we get this amazingly creative and original ad campaign that tells us that Gates both uses PC's and wears glasses. And obviously the famous TV pop psychologist isn't a "human thinking". He's using a PC. First Vista, then the Seinfeld commercials and now this. Someone needs an intervention I think.

And that thought I'll bid you good night. Remember to tip your wait staff.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Yes, I am still riding and training and even racing (sort of). I haven't written about this in a while simply because I figured most of my readers either know what I'm up to or are bored by my spinning my wheels. Never-the-less, I thought I'd update those who might be curious as to my goings on in the two-wheeled world.

The racing and training season is definitely winding down. I find the motivation to get out and really put in a hard effort harder and harder to come by, especially when fall seems to be delayed and the weather remains not only warm but almost unbearably humid. My two hard time trial training rides this week were carried out in muggy morning conditions which conspired to play havoc with my power data gathering equipment. Tuesday's ride I managed to get a good data set but Thursday was a loss. I was hoping to do a long ride this weekend but my body was pretty clear with me that sleeping was a good thing and shorter rides were better than longer ones. I managed to get in two good indoor rides but neither was as long as I had planned and there was much napping to be had.

I was supposed to race in Augusta last weekend but the threat of a hurricane and the resulting low registration led to the event's cancellation. That was going to be my last competitive event of the year which would have allowed me to switch over to long tempo rides for the month of September along with a few charity rides and centuries to enjoy the fine fall weather we usually have. The problem is that the state time trial championship got moved to October 18th. That was one of my BIG goals when the season started and so I'm loathe to give up on it. That means I'm still training and will be for another month. I managed to find another time trial at the 40 k length to race on Oct. 4th that's going to give me some intermediate motivation but this is going to be hard.

To be honest, I've never raced this many races in a year and the toll is beginning to show up. As I mentioned before, I don't have the motivation I did and my body is demanding more rest and recovery time. I'm worried I'll either overtrain or I'll do something else stupid that'll put my season next year at risk. Still, I can't give up on this goal. The one thing I wanted to do this year when I decided to come back and race was to get to the state championship and race really hard.

On the positive side, I've switched about 50% of my hard training rides completely over to the the TT bike (up from 20-25%) and I can really tell the difference it's making on my position. I'm a bunch more aerodynamic and I can feel the muscles in my hips getting stronger. The rides are mentally very challenging because the intervals basically consist of going at my threshold power for between 15 minutes and 1 hour depending on what I'm doing. That means there are only a few routes I can do that'll let me maintain that effort uninterrupted for that length of time and that don't have overly steep climbs or descents. That means the routes get boring quickly. The other thing is that there's little variety in the workout itself which makes getting on the bike difficult. Hard to get excited about putting your head down for an hour and suffering when what you'd really like to do is crawl back into bed or sit on the porch with a cold Harvest Moon.

During the next four weeks or so I'll be looking at coaches and doing a few interviews to see about hiring the right coach to work with me to take me to a few new goals next season. I'm tired of being a Cat 4 racer. I'm know that I can be better and stronger than that but I seem to have plateaued. I know that with the proper training regime I can make that step up but I don't have the experience or mental energy to figure out all the training based on power to get there. I decided that I'd rather hire someone who knows how this works and who can teach me and include me in the decision making process. Who knows, maybe I can find someone who wouldn't mind taking me under their wing after I get one racing in a few years and teach me how to coach. I know I'd be a good coach, I just need the experience of being coached. If you know of someone who I might contact (Gary, send me the name and email of that coach you've worked with) let me know and I'll include them in the interview process. I figure that with something like this, they'll want to interview me as an athlete and I'll want to know more about their coaching process and skills.

Well, another week is about to begin. Have a good one and I'll be back soon.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Saturday, September 13, 2008

At this point in the process I am utterly sick of politics in this country. Both campaigns and the parties that run them have devolved to the point of merely uttering babble. The mainstream media takes positions and passes them off as news and these positions basically have nothing to do with what's really important. What are the issues that really matter?

Restraint of Government Spending and Debt Creation
The Future of Energy Production and Use in America
Regulation of the Financial Industry
Avoidance of Economic Stagnation
The Role of America in World Democratic Expansion

Right now there are really only two of these issues that the campaigns need to be focused on and that's the first two. The problem is that both campaigns have dropped any pretense towards balancing the budget or tax reform at any level. American businesses are taxed at the highest rate in the industrialized world. Republicans have overseen the greatest expansion of government spending in modern American history. The discussion, according to various groups independent of both campaigns, is not whether we will deficit spend but by how much over the next 10 years. Neither candidate is willing to tell the American people that it's time to tighten their belts and that the government is going to do the same. Neither will take on some entrenched group and say, "I know your cause is important but, you know, it's not as important as getting our debt problem under control." Especially senior citizens. Conservatives are ready, willing and able to rail against anything that looks like socialized health care or welfare assistance until it comes to seniors (or veterans). What to you think medicare and medicaid are? Why do we do a better job of providing government benefits for people who can still work to provide for themselves than we do for children who can't? Because kids don't vote and seniors no longer care about anybody, and I mean ANYBODY, but themselves.

I wanted to believe in Obama. I liked his message of hope, at least when that was the focus of his campaign. That's really what won Reagan the election in '80. Both men painted a picture of an America that could be believed in. But Obama's campaign has lost that message and is now involved in a snipe fight with McCain over who will change Washington more. Without some sort of major shift in the legislative branch, neither will do much changing at all practicing a politics of division as they are doing now. I'm not voting for or against McCain because I believe that he's in cahoots with the banks and financial institutions that have caused the mortgage and credit meltdowns and that cancels any "maverick" status he might have had. Besides, he won't survive eight years in the White House. If you look at what those eight years did physically to Reagan, Clinton and Bush I can't vote for McCain because I honesty believe he has less than a 50% chance of surviving to his 80th birthday. With Palin I see a complete continuation of the Republican politics of the last eight years. Sketchy insider deals, abuse of power at the edges, lack of oversight in the middle. I'm a Republican but I believe my party has lost it's way in the last 10 years. There is no longer any restraint amongst those in power in the GOP but rather a sheer lust for power and it's continuation. I honestly wonder what Reagan would have thought about the expansion of government under the Bush administration.

There are times when the only way to affect political change is to throw out the people in charge and make everyone step back and think things through. With as bad as things are in the the GOP, I'm considering the possibility that now is that time. Yes the Republicans say they support my views against abortion but are we any closer to restricting abortions that we were when Clinton took the White House? No. It's an issue that's used to scare and rally the party faithful and then forgotten for four years until such a time that it's taken out and dusted off to get a Supreme Court justice some support or to tar another election opponent as a baby killer. Each time I see it I feel used and dirty. The Republican Party will no longer pay the political price for standing what it claims to believe in because it exists now only to perpetuate itself.

On the issue of energy, it's really quite sad that the only reasonable energy policy is coming from an oil tycoon who sees the dependence this country has on foreign interests and doesn't have to depend on campaign contributions from those who stand to benefit the most from the status quo and the slow, inexorable bleeding of our country. As this price spike we've seen due to hurricane Ike has shown, we are not just at the mercy of oil producing countries but also from the companies that process the sludge for our use. These companies are multinational in nature and stand to benefit from weak governments fighting over non-issues or who's electoral system can be bought. Over the last three or four elections, our systems shows evidence of becoming both. The only issue between the Democrats and Republicans no is how much drilling they're going to let the oil companies do and how much more they'll try to delay the inevitable while the mantle of world economic leadership shifts to governments foresighted enough to realize that the age of petroleum is over.

And where's the fourth branch in all of this? Obsessing over teenage pregnancies and "lipstick on a pig." It is truly sad that the most credible journalistic voice in this election season seems to be the host of a comedy program. But we're too selfish and too self-centered to see past the crap. Americans still cling to the idea that they can drive their gas-guzzling cars hundreds of miles per week and not suffer the economic fallout from it. We still think that it's always someone else's representative to the Statehouse or Congress whose causing the problem and not our guy (or gal). It's too inconvenient to ride our bikes, walk our own streets, learn to get along with our own neighbors and cook our own meals and so we turn to a government that's for sale to solve those issues for us.

I believe in the values and promise of America but I'm not sure I believe in us anymore.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

So, you've probably heard the news that Lance is coming out of retirement to race in 2009. While his program is still up in the air, he's been very clear about wanting to race in year's edition of the Tour de France. This blog is a collection of a few of my thoughts about this turn of events.

On the comeback itself, I think Lance can still be pretty competitive as a stage racer as long as he keeps his number of racing days to a minimum. From all reports, it sounds like that's the intention with him lining up to do most of his training races here in the States at high caliber events such as the Tour of California and the Tour of Georgia (if it happens) or in France with Paris-Nice and the Duaphine. There are a few reports that he might race the Giro but I really don't see that happening for this year. (Though one more year where he goes for the Giro/Vuelta double would be awesome...especially if he were to race the World Championships and find a way to win at the end of 2009.)

On the motivation side of things, it's clear that Lance has got a lot of things that are contributing to this decision. He's been very clear about this being about cancer awareness on an international scale but like all things Lance, this is a lot more complex. The first thing is that Lance is a huge competitor. When he was a part owner of the Discovery team he could get his fix by riding in the team car but once that ended the path basically had to lead back to the bike. I think also there's a desire to fix what is an increasingly tarnished legacy. Lance always claimed to have never doped but that's getting harder to believe. By coming back and living under the new regimens of transparency for blood work, he's got to be hoping to show that he can win clean. Finally, I think he'd really like to tell David Walsh to shut up and this is probably the best way to do it and to help rescue the reputation of American cycling in international eyes.

Where's he going to ride. Odds on favorite would normally to reunite with his old director who's now with the Astana team. The problem with this is that Astana already has a Tour champion who I don't think will take kindly to riding for another champion. I don't see Johann mortgaging the future of his team so that Lance can ride one or two more years to have a shot at an eighth Tour victory when he could get three of four more with Alberto Contador. Still, the ties that bind make tyhis a 20% possibility in my eyes. Lance has said that this will be an international initiative so I think he'd like to be on a team with that sort of scope. If he wants to remain with an American owned team, that suggests Team Columbia where his good friend George Hincapie is riding. Hincapie has been coy about this whole story so I think this is the best option, especially after Columbia' phenomenal Tour outing in '08. I give this the highest possibility of about 25%. I don't really see Lance signing with Garmin-Chipotle as his relationship with Vaughters is rumored to be tense and Vaughters has said some pretty uncomplimentary things about Postal/Discovery in the past. One interesting but very unlikely option would be for Lance to race for Michael Ball's Rock Racing team. This would definitely make for great marketing and have huge international appeal but there's very little chance Rock Racing with it's questionable riders would get a Tour invite. Oversees options include Lance riding for CSC who will be looking for a Tour contender and who has a team director, Bjarne Riis, that Lance admires. I think this has the highest probability for a Euro team and I place it at 20%. One final option is for Lance to put together his own team with his own money. There are a bunch of riders who need jobs with the Gerolsteiner and Sanuer Duval-Scott teams folding and Lance could probably make something happen out of that. I give that a 15% chance of being the solution. Some of the comments coming from the Armstrong camp sound like their doing all planning themselves and I could see them wanting the team to be about the "LiveStrong" brand. The biggest problem would be for such a team to get an invite to the Tour and, maybe, for them to get the staff to run a racing operation.

Which solution do I like? To be honest, I've always wanted to see Lance race for Bjarne Riis and I think the team has the same kind of work ethic and single pointed focus and training style that Lance is known for. For a lot of reasons I see Columbia as the most likely option in a traditional sense. I'm most intrigued, however, about the idea of Lance forming his own team that serves to promote the cause of cancer awareness and agitate for more funding on a global scale. To me, this would be the most compelling reason to come back even if the logistical issues are the most insurmountable.

We'll know more by September 24th.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Friday, August 29, 2008

I'm not sure if you've read the big education news from these parts but the Clayton County public schools became the first school district in nearly 40 years to lose their accreditation. Reading the news reports and some of the citizen reaction at various media outlets has been pretty interesting. In short, most of the problem stems from the long term behavior of the school board elected by the citizens of Clayton County. The board has shown over and over again that it has no ability to act in a way that is legal, ethical or proper; even when appropriately advised by its own legal counsel. This has led the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) to revoke the accreditation of the entire district which, depending on who you talk to, will have various impacts on the students and staff of the district. I guess what I'd like to do is give my two or three cents worth about the crisis in response to what I've read and from my understanding of and experience in education.

One of the protests that we're hearing a lot from people who I think are probably in denial about a lot of this is why someone is punishing the kids for something the adults (there's debate on whether that's the board or the voters or the "evil" SACS people or the Governor) have or have not done. My answer to that is that the kids have already been punished and continue to be punished by the dysfunctional school system in which they reside. What SACS has done is to wield about the only club they have left to get the adults to do something that will make things better for those who have no power. The truth is that on objective measures such as the SAT (and our own internal testing here at Gordon) the students from Clayton county perform worse as a group than the students from any other county in the state. Given that Clayton County is a suburban district outside of Atlanta with significantly greater resources both in terms of personnel and finances than most rural south Georgia counties, this says a lot about the culture of learning (or lack thereof) that exists in the schools. Because of the actions of the board, the schools don't do a good job of teaching their students (on average) and the removal of accreditation is basically an acknowledgment of that fact and a way to get the self-absorbed adults to change what they are doing. I hate it for the kids but, to be honest, they and their parents should know what the quality of their education is worth.

One of the questions I hear a lot from students at the College here is how the board's behavior affects the quality of education in the district. That's a complicated thing but the way I explain it is that a local board of education's job is to review and set policy, establish priorities and evaluate the administrators they have hired to implement those things. The board in Clayton vastly overstepped their role by going into specific schools to influence hiring and firing decisions (often in such a way to bring personal benefit to themselves or members of their families), to enforce or, more often, circumvent policy and to steer purchasing contracts in ways that didn't benefit the district but did line their pockets (or, again, the pockets of their family members or political supporters). All of these actions undermines the authority and morale within the upper and middle level management of the district. Principals and assistant principals become afraid of taking a stand on issues because they fear losing their jobs if a board member decides to take a personal interest in their decision making. The strategic priority at that level of school management goes from what's best for the school at large to "cover your ass". One of the biggest results of this (which I've culled from conversations with numerous teachers in the Clayton schools) is that administrators are no longer willing to stand up for teachers in disciplinary decisions and in areas of academic rigor. All it takes is for one angry parent to know one board member in some way for the administrator (or in some cases, the individual educator) to be called up on the carpet and be told to ignore some policy or overlook some infraction or find another place to work. Once that happens, everyone is looking over their shoulder, avoiding risk and confrontation and taking the easiest road possible. In education here in Georgia, that means giving everyone B's so they get their HOPE scholarship and trying not to make the students angry. The results of this are obvious.

So where does Clayton go from here? That's the $64,000 question (now there's a dated reference). The Governor, on recommendation of a state judge, has removed the last four members of the board that brought on the sanctions that haven't either resigned or been forced out. A couple of the seats have been filled through a special election a couple of months ago but the Clayton County school board basically consists of two or three people right now who have had almost no training on what it means to act in an ethical or proper manner. The other seats won't be filled until the November elections and the new members of the board may not be seated for a few weeks after that. In it's latest report explaining it's decision, SACS said that one of the biggest issues the district faces is that it hired it's interim superintendent improperly and that it gave him more power to run the district than is ethical or allowed by state law. In other words, they have said that the district will not regain its accreditation until this superintendent is either removed from his office or his contract is significantly rewritten to bring it within the bounds of the law. This is something only a legally constituted board can do and that doesn't really exist at the moment. So for the next two months, Clayton County's schools will be run by a super whose job description is illegal and whose power to run the district is illegitimate.

I think I understand what happened here. The guy wanted to have the power that Paul Vallis in the New Orleans recovery district and Michelle Rhee in the Washington DC schools have in order to move quickly to reform the Clayton County schools. In each of those cases, the voters chose to cede their local authority to the respective state boards of education in order to remove conflict of interest. Both Vallis and Rhee still have to report to duly elected governmental authority. Clayton's voters have not elected to do that and the board wrote a contract with the super that gave him all their power to set policy and priorities. That's not going to work and it's got to get fixed if SACS is going to reaccredit the schools. To his small credit, the super has suggested that he would be open to revisiting his contract (very big of him I think-given that he negotiated the original contract that has gotten the district into this bind in the first place).

All of this assumes, of course, that once elected, the new board will be able to get along and move quickly to address the issues SACS has cited; eight of the original nine of which still remain. Given the history of elected school official in Clayton County this isn't nearly as obvious as it might seem. There's a really good chance that the members of the board will spend as much time pointing fingers and laying blame rather than getting the training they need in ethics and how to be a proper board with proper boundaries. This will especially true if voters elect individuals that have ties to previous members of the board or their actions. Clayton basically has until May, about 5-6 months after the full board is elected, to make a fairly significant amount of progress. If that doesn't happen then SACS will close the window on the short process of regaining accreditation and the school district will have to start from scratch; a process that will take between 2 and 3 years assuming a functional institution.

As of now, the exodus of students out of the county and district that was a slow but meaningful flow is beginning to become a flood. Reports from yesterday told of stories of parents taking their kids out of school in the middle of the day in order to find a solution in an accredited school as soon as possible. I expect that you'll see the teachers begin to do the same as soon as they are able since they no longer accrue years towards retirement in the state's teacher retirement system and any professional development credit they might have gotten from within their own district is no longer valid. As these teachers go to other sites to earn those credits they'll see their colleagues going about their business without the stress of having your life controlled by the specific actions of nine or ten people far removed from them. Other districts will move quickly to hire the best master teachers from Clayton to replace their own retirement or attrition losses; a process made easier as classes are eliminated in Clayton due to declining student numbers. Any missteps by the new board or any waffling or further equivocating on the part of the superintendent will only serve to speed up the process. From this point forward, the district has to be transparent in everything that it does. There is no more trust and no more grace on the part of teachers and parents towards the district at this point as so everything now happens in a low trust environment. One of my biggest concerns right now is that the first statements by the superintendent following SACS' announcement do not show that he understands this. He wants the parents and teachers to wait out the storm but, as of right now, they don't trust that the boat is seaworthy enough to survive it.

I think if the voters were smart and objective they'd introduce a ballot measure to cede the authority of their locally elected board to the state board until such a time as the district can get itself righted and reaccredited. Such objectivity is rare in local politics however (which is why it took Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans to achieve that sort of change), especially when there are racial overtones as is the case here.

I'm torn as to whether this is for the better or the worse. If the loss of accreditation leads the citizens of Clayton County to do better by their students then I think people will look back on yesterday as the first step towards a solution. If county devolves further into backbiting and despair, then this is just another step on a long downward spiral such as those experienced in New Orleans and DC. I hope it's the former but only the citizens of Clayton County can really decide.

Thanks for Reading.

Grace and Peace.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Sunday, August 24, 2008

For two days now we've been dealing with the remnants and effects of Tropical Storm Fay. While areas of Florida have experienced rains of over two inches and places less far to our south are coping with 6 or more inches of rain, we've been laboring under gusty winds, frequent rain showers and an occasional thunderstorm or two. I think our rainfall totals may end up being in the neighborhood of two inches once tomorrow morning comes and, if the meteorologists are correct, we'll spend the next two or so days dealing with muggy/thundery conditions. While a bit of nuisance, the weather has done little more than force me inside on my rollers and trainer.

School's off to a seemingly slower start. I'm not doing Senate this year and I'm into the first year of our new course reduction schedule which means I only teach three classes and fifteen contact hours this semester (instead of four classes and 21 contact hours). Things just seem a lot more humane at this point. I have time to think and plan my classes. I can make adjustments to my curriculum that I've been wanting to make for the last two or three years. I may even have a chance of truly assessing whether or not they work. THe biggest change is going to be teaching the new Physical Science of Elementary Education. Part of me is really stressing out over the curriculum but another part of me feels like I'm finally making a real difference. All of the students in this class are studying to be K-5 educators and I get a chance to talk not only about content but how to teach it. I can't tell you how excited that makes me. For the first time, I actually have a community in the classroom that shares my desire to help people learn. I don't know if that will translate into learning for them but it makes the conversation so much more interesting. Don't get me wrong, I still love my engineers and I still want to help them grow into students we can be proud to send to Georgia Tech but this is a different thing.

I'm not an engineer by calling. I can understand them because of a shared love to understand how things work. I'm an educator by calling. I knew that in grad school when I realized that I enjoyed teaching those who wanted to learn more than I enjoyed modeling galaxies in a computer. What I didn't know at the time was how complicated a thing it was to teach someone something you already knew. I appreciate that a little better now and I know that I can teach that to others.

So next week is week two and I'll have a better sense of who my classes are by the end of it. I'll have my first assessments in and I'll know a bit more about them through their writing and their performance on their quizzes. Then I'll know where we'll go and how much work it'll take to get there.

Thanks for Reading

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Saturday, August 09, 2008

So, this weekend, as part of my birthday package, my wife took me to see the Dark Knight. A series of events (most of them not unfortunate) have conspired to keep us away from the film but today we decided to take the plunge. I was interested to see the film because a few Christians (and film critics) I've read have expressed their misgivings about the film and I wanted to see for myself.

Now, before I go any further with this blog, I want to warn anyone who hasn't seen the movie that I'l be discussing some of the specifics of the plot. If you don't want to know about those things you can think to yourself, "Well, at least he didn't write about that boring cycling stuff again..." and click off to some other, more entertaining and enlightening place and come back in a few days when this blog has been bumped down by something else I've written that is probably a lot more cycling related and a lot less interesting.

So, OK, back to the Dark Knight. Some of the critiques I've read (not just Christian by the way) have been troubled by the moral ambiguity of the film. To be honest, I'm a bit stunned by this. Come on, this is Batman. Batman has been from the beginning, in part, a study in the ambiguity of vigilanteism. If you don't think we as a society aren't just a bit uneasy about people taking the law into their own hands you need only look at the case of Bernie Goetz, called by some, "The Subway Vigilante". For those too young to remember Mr. Geotz, he was a middle aged man riding the subway during a more crime filled time in New York City's history (under the leadership of Mayor David Dinkins if I remember correctly). Mr. Goetz was surrounded by four young men on the subway and told to produce $5. He responded by shooting all for of the young men with an illegal handgun he had purchased after being mugged three years prior to the incident. At first, Goetz was acquitted by a grand jury as acting in self-defense during a time when the crime rate was over 70% higher than the national average and many New Yorkers felt like the city was out of control. A short while later, when new witnesses came forward about the events in the subway car, a second grand jury, indicted Mr. Goetz on charges of attempted murder and assault. The charges were then dropped due to subsequent criminal activity by two of the young men when threatened Mr. Goetz. The charges were reinstated by the New York Court of Appeals. The criminal trial only convicted Goetz in illegal handgun possession. However, in a civil suit, argued in a time when crimes rates in New York were dropping due to the newly instituted "broken window theory" measures (under the leadership of Rudy Guillini and his police chief), a jury found that Goetz had acted recklessly and dangerously and held him liable for damages in the sum of $43 million. The short of all of this is to point out that the movie is about a vigilante and his actions and what those actions mean to a group of people who feel as if they have little or no hope. As such, for the story to be told faithfully, there's got to be more than a little moral ambiguity and we, as an audience, as to leave the film with significant unease.

In addition, this narrative isn't going to have a nice, neat, tidy, happy ending. Batman is a postmodern fable. He's not Superman which is exactly what Bob Kane wanted when he dreamt up Bruce Wayne as a tortured soul who hunted other human beings to bring them to his form of justice. It's not going to be "Truth, Justice and the American Way". Batman is Kane's Noir Superman. While he has his principles (or maybe just one principle) he's also human and flawed and twisted by what he is and what he becomes. He's a fallen hero in a fallen city just like all those in Gotham City who want to stop crime but he desperately, and I emphasize desperately, has hope in something better.

So this brings us to this movie and to it's end (and if you're still reading and haven't seen the movie this is your last chance to not have it spoiled. After this, I take no responsibility for ruining anything for you). Bruce Wayne wants to be a normal guy. He wants to stop being the one who lives behind the mask so Gotham can have hope and courage. In the movie, he sees the new District Attorney, Harvey Dent, as the one guy who can offer that hope out in the open. But when Dent is scarred and split and becomes Two-Face, Batman realizes that Harvey can no longer be that for the people of Gotham. Not if they know what Dent has done and what Dent has become and what corruption still infests the Gotham City police department. So he tells the new Police Commissioner to tell the people a lie. His justification is something along the lines of "Sometimes the truth isn't enough. Sometimes people need more than the truth." This sentiment has gotten some people up in arms, which I can understand. Especially if you're a Christian fully schooled in hyper-rationalistic ways of thinking.

You see, in that way of thinking, there is only One Truth. And that's correct in a sense. The problem is that we can never approach that Truth so a lot of us invent our own version of it. We invent versions of it where it votes for our political candidates and espouses our causes and, most often of all, hates the same people we hate. But the Truth isn't that. And the truth is that we do need more than the truth, our version of the truth, sometimes. Let me give you an example that is germane here.

Let's take justice. Human justice is about right and wrong, guilty or innocent, determining who is good and who is bad. Our justice is about assigning blame and guilt and determining punishment. Sometimes, when we rise above our baser natures, we accept blame and guilt and not only accept punishment but seek reconciliation. But Truth's idea of justice is very different than that I think. Truth's idea of justice is about bringing all creation back to it in love. Truth's idea of justice is about bringing and giving hope to the afflicted and fallen and broken of this world. Truth's idea of justice is redeeming all of the two-faced hypocrites out there by bringing them to Him. Even if it means having to die to conquer death. even if it means being branded a criminal and an outcast so that all those who wander and are lost find Him. Too often I hear good intentioned but poorly informed people talk about a justice of truth that is really just a more powerful version of our human kind of justice; a justice of truth that punishes more perfectly, that assignes blame more accurately and that knows true goodness from sincere self-interest when evaluating motive. When I hear that presented as truth, I think that "truth isn't enough, I need more than truth." The truth is that I'm fallen and guilty and broken. The truth is that I'm every bit as fallen as Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin and so many others. The truth is that like Paul, I am "first among sinners." And if I look at justice from the eyes of men, I have no hope. In the movie, Batman tells Gordon to lie so that the people of Gotham can have hope that it is possible for a person to rise above the chaos and crime without having to resort to vigilanteism. His example for this hope is in the fact that people on two ferries don't blow each other up but choose to accept that they might die over killing a group of unknown others. It is similar with us. To have hope we must look beyond what we see everyday and beyond what our own minds can conceive. In truth, I have no hope. But in Truth, who seeks me and all those like me above all things, I have hope. And while the postmodern fable of Batman breaks down here in hiding the Truth in lies, it reveals that the Truth might lie beyond what we can "know" or "rationalize".

Grace and Peace.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Friday, August 08, 2008

For this blog I decided to hi-jack the term the Packers and Favre have been using all week. I have to say that I'm really glad that the situation there is resolved so that I can here about something, anything else on SportsCenter. So, moving forward, here's what's going on here:

Cycling: Last weekend was the Elberton race and it was a tough weekend for me. For the second time in a row, I flatted during the TTT. This time it seems like my tube just failed. I've decided that for my 20 mm tires, I'm going to go with heavier duty tubes to see if I can lower the incidence rate on flats. Still the team ended up winning the state championship on the work of Bill and Ron so I can be proud to be a part of that. I died in the crit and then worked for the team in the road race. My teammate Robert "DHo" Jordan got away in a break to Ron and I sat on the front and kept tempo. An unexpected benefit of racing with my power meter was that I knew Robert could hold 300 watts for about an hour so I rode at 250. It allowed the break to get four minutes and stay away. More interesting to me was the number of people just riding at that level put into trouble. We killed about half the field just riding tempo on the front and only once did anyone try to force the pace. We just sat on their wheels until they cracked (which wasn't very long) and then got back on the front. For all my work, I got dropped from the main field about 4 miles from the end of the race and ended up finishing about 15th. Not the weekend I have hoped for but it is what it is.

School: We start back on Monday for faculty back week. I can't really decide where I'm at with things attitudewise. I want to be fired up and I have a lower work load this semester but I'm just not quite feeling it. Still, this week I've managed to get some extra work done to get ready for classes including setting up to try a news teaching strategy to hopefully get students to look more closely at some of the misconceptions inherent in the physics they do. I'm kind of excited about that and I'm hoping it goes really well. I'd like to give a paper on the practice at a Georgia Academy of Sciences meeting early next year if it seems to work.

Weather: God it's been hot. That's part of what made this last weekend's racing so hard. Heat levels well over 100 degrees on both Saturday's crit and at the end of Sunday's road race. That combined with a Tuesday Night Word's ride that was over 100 degrees and I've been wrung out all week. That's probably part of the reason I'm feeling ambivalent about school starting I'm sure but I've done almost no good training this week due to my legs feeling so empty. Hopefully it'll break this weekend and I'll be able to do some riding in the morning.

More Later. Thanks for Reading.

Grace and Peace.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Here are a few random thoughts running through my addled mind:

The Brett Farve thing...would everyone just SHUT UP! The dude needs to just chill. If he really loves the game he'll take a trade to Tampa Bay, play hard there and take the Bucs to the NFC Championship. But he doesn't really love the game...he loves the fame and in doing so he's just like Jacko and Britney and all the other sucking up the oxygen I breathe wanna-be's out there.

Team Time Trialing...what an awesome thing to do. Practiced with the fellas last night and we were smooth and fast. It was a good...no, great...practice and we have got to be in the mix this weekend for the state TTT championships. I'm really looking forward to the race weekend. Now if I can just find a dogsitter.

Blue Moon...there may be no better summer beer. After a hard ride with an orange slice...about as close to heaven as a guy can get. As a side note, I had my Blue Moon today in what has to be about the best registration shwag I've ever gotten at a bike race. A few years ago, OMBA-SORBA gave out pint glasses instead of tee-shirts in the registration package for a MTB race. More events should think like this. Maybe Georgia Cup should give out pint glasses with the logo instead of clothing. I know it would get a lot more use in my house. Medal would be nice too...at least for the categories that they don't give money out...like ours.

Southern Heat...I think I need to work out something where my wife and I go to Salt Lake for about two weeks during the worst of the Georgia heat. It was funny to hear about everyone talk about how hot and humid it was as we sat outside and enjoyed a few cold ones at my brother's place. Had we tried to have the BBQ in my backyard we all would have melted. I don't mind a little heat and the dry air in the intermountain west is just great. More than that, I would really enjoy a two week training around Lamoille. I'd probably need to take a mountain to deal withe all the dirt roads and really rough pavement but riding in the morning and hiking in the afternoon would be about as perfect a vacation as I could imagine.

Two weeks off...I have about two weeks off before I have to go back to work. Thank God. I need a break to catch up on sleep, read and just not think about all the crap I have to do. Contrary to what a lot of people believe, education is a hard thing to do. Everything has to do with people and the really hard problem of how they learn. I can't speak for everyone but it's takes a lot of energy out of me to work with students and to think about designing curriculum that helps them learn, especially when the high schools no longer teach anything vaguely related to critical thinking anymore. I love the process of learning and the rush of seeing a student understand things for the first time but the process still takes a lot of energy.

Anyways, thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Friday, July 25, 2008

One of the reasons for this trip out to Salt Lake is to place my mother's ashes in their final resting place. To that purpose, we've gathered as much of my mom's immediate family as we could together and we took a trip out to the place where she spent much of her time, Lamoille, Nevada. Lamoille is a small ranching community nestled at the base of the Ruby Mountains about 15 miles from Elko. My grandparents bought a house there many years ago and then built a cabin in the canyon about the house and both of my parents spent much of their childhoods in the area. For all of us, the cabin was an especially beautiful and restful place where we spent time on vacations fishing, hiking and playing games. Much of the inspiration for my mom's painting came from the Lamoille Canyon and the wildflowers that filled it.

So, along with my brother, my dad and his wife and my grandmother, Kathy and I traveled out to Lamoille to bury her ashes not far off the trail that she hiked often where one can rest and see the cabin. The picture you see here is the tree under which we buried her ashes. As you might imagine it was a bittersweet trip in some ways and a wonderful one as well.

It's always great to go to the canyon. Many people who have visited have said that the Ruby Mountains and Lamoille Canyon remind then of the Swiss Alps with their souring pinnacles, glacier carved valleys, crystal clear streams and grassy, wildflower meadows. I love the sounds and smells of the canyon and it was wonderful to spend an afternoon with my family enjoying its beauty.

The somewhat sad part was that for my dad and grandmother there were lots of memories but few remaining connections. They both knew all of these people who have died or left. They helped write some of the history of the region and they knew everyone. Most of those people have died or moved on now and so there was a lot of the rest of us having to hear my tell relive memories in sort of a sad way. When added to the difficult task of place my mom's ashes, it made things a little hard.

Still, it was a good trip and it help close a chapter of my life. Each year I'll be able to travel to a place I love and spend some time in remembrance of my mom. I'll smell the pine and sage and "quakies" and hear the whisper of the wind and the rush of the streams and remember the times when my mom took my brother and I hiking up to the glacier along that trail. In time we'll place the ashes of my dad and my grandmother in the same place and their ashes will fertilize the mountain cedar and wildflowers and give back to the place that has given so much to us.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Monday, July 21, 2008

Sorry it's been a few days since I've posted but our DSL modem decided that this life was too great a burden and so departed for the great technological waste bin in the sky (or some such other metaphor as might come to mind). The break from the computer was good I think as I got a lot of reading done on topics as diverse as the negative perceptions of Christianity found in the last two generations of Americans, the confluence of epidemic disease pools in the years between 200 BCE and 1200 CE and the culture of fear modern advertisers, politicians and religious leaders have generated in order to manipulate others into following their agendas. You can check out my reviews of some of these things out at Amazon under the name Chad "Downhill" Davies.

The Tour has been interesting since I last wrote with the race tightening up with the last mountain stage. I have to wonder what might have happened if CSC had decided to lay down the hammer on the first climb up the Col Angel. I really think they could have cracked Evans like they had Valverde up the Tourmalet and he would have been out of the Tour right there. Of course, had they done that then Menchov may have had the strength to ride away from the worn out Schlek and Sastre on the final climb. Still, I think it was a risk I might have taken had I been Riis since my two climbers still don't have anywhere near enough time with only two hard stages to go before the final TT where Evans will get three minutes back (and Vande Velde and Menchov will get 2:30). Nevertheless, it's really exciting to have the race still have six riders all within a minute of the lead.

Tomorrow's going to be interesting as there's a huge risk/reward ratio here. If someone's willing to take big risks they could crack the race wide open. There are two HUGE climbs but the finish is 24 km after the last one. If one of the GC contenders can get away on the last climb and then take some risks on the descent, he could do some real damage. Of course, he could also pull an Ullrich and ride off the side of the road and into a ditch and end his chances of making it to Paris. More interesting is the possibility that one fo the guys who is lurking a little further back could launch an attack over the first climb and then race down the first descent and hold onto a lead going over climb number two. If I'm Valverde, that's what I'm doing. Go for broke.

"Alejandro, Senor, everyone knows you can finish top ten; doing so again doesn't really prove much. But if you can get away and win with panache then you'll be remembered and maybe you'll get back into this thing."

The same goes for Kirchen and the two Euskatel riders who are placed just at the top ten level. But what I really see happening here is that CSC sends Andy Schlek out for a suicide ride to make the other teams chase hard and do the work (with any luck, Cunego or Lang will go with him). That'll destroy Rabobank, Garmin-Chipotle and Silence-Lotto and leave their GCF riders isolated for the 1-2 punch of Sastre and Frank Schlek. The last thing the other teams want is to allow CSC to set up their crushing series of strong men of Cancellara, Voigt and O'Grady to get into one of those grinding rhythms that end up pulverizing the legs and egos of the men around them. You have to attack and shell those guys off early if you're going to have any chance.

I rode the final climb with the guys again yesterday on my trainer. It was a great ride and I got a wonderful workout but it killed me for the rest of the day. It's gotten really, really hot here in Georgia and the temperature out on the road has been 105+ so riding outside isn't really all that good of an idea right now. After riding I made the mistake of going out to run errands and ended up sick for most of the day due to heat and dehydration. This week is a recovery week so I'll take the better part of valor and do most of my riding indoors on the rollers.

Tomorrow, my wife and I head out to Salt Lake to visit family and take care of a few things. For me, that means recovery rides at altitude; a tricky proposition to say the least. But I figure if I keep my power output and heart rate down, my body will adapt well and I may even come back with a little more oxygen carrying capacity for the races in Elberton in a couple of weeks. I'll try to keep you updated from there as I have internet access.

Until then, Ciao and Allez!

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Thursday, July 17, 2008

You'd think they'd learn but no one ever accused professional bike racers of being particularly smart, especially the Europeans. This is the sport that once called Laurent Fignon "The Professor" because he had actually gone to college for a year. Now granted, that's a bit more difficult to do in France than here in the States but please.

Anyways, Ricardo Ricco, who thrilled everyone including your erstwhile commentator here with his daring victory, turns out to be just another cheater. And a stupid one at that. I guess someone told him that if you take this new type of EPO that stays in your body longer, you'll be able to avoid detection. Too bad the World Anti-Doping Agency has been working with the drug's manufacturer to make sure they have a test to detect it (and probably the manufacturer has engineered the compound to be easy to detect in a simple blood test). For what I've read, all three doping positives in this year's Tour were for the same thing. Like I said, no one ever said these guys were smart.

So Ricco's out of the sport for a minimum of two years (assuming that the UCI's doping code isn't thrown out with the rest of the organization now that the ASO has decided to form a new cycling league). My personal opinion, as I've stated on the blog before, is that he should be banned for life unless he does some sort of penance. I'm not Catholic but there are times when I think that the church has the right idea that it's not enough to apologize and serve some sort of sentence but that you've got to actively work to fix what you've done and make things better.

Here's what I think. Ricco should have to come to the US and work amateur races as a volunteer course marshall. If he does that for two years, he gets to ride his bike again with the slate wiped clean. Until then his jobs include standing at a corner on some forgotten country road here in the deep south and holding the cars while packs of men and women who really love this sport go careening past him every so often. He can sit on the side of a hill and hand out water bottles to those struggling up the climb at the back because they believe that there's something more to bike racing than winning. He can see the pride and joy in the fathers' eyes when their kids line up for their short little race and everyone cheers for them harder than they've cheered for all the other racers that day.

I have to say that one of the things I respect about Nathan O'Neil is that after his suspension he's worked at the local races here in Georgia to make them more interesting. He's great about interacting with us pack fodder racers and bringing a little star power to the events. He could have just gotten sullen and frustrated when he got popped but instead he decided to give back to the community with his time. All of these pros should have to do that to get their licenses back...kind of like community service.

For the doctors and other enablers who prescribe this crap and help the racers find it or pressure them into using it, they should be run out of the sport period unless they can show that can make their mistakes right in some way. Penance.

So, if you're sick of the Tour and the doping scandals, go out and find a local race in your area and cheer for the guys who are racing for the love of the sport and little else. It's like going to see a Babe Ruth League or American Legion or local softball league game after getting sick of the high salaries and prima donna behavior of steroid using major-leaguers. There are a lot of great crits being run and everyone should get to stand in the center of their city square and see cyclists contest the finishing sprint in front of their city hall. Go out and support that...it's as "American and Apple Pie" as almost anything I can think of.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Well, it's a rest day for the Tour riders which is good after yesterday's brutal stage over the Toumalet and up Huatacam. After watching the stage, I'm beginning to wonder if anyone really wants to win this race. The main GC guys all sort of spend the last climb marking each other and not really doing much else which means that the guys a ways back on the GC keep winning the stages. I can understand Evans doing this as he's going to put about two minutes into everyone else on the final time trial so he doesn't have to win anything.

The big loser was Valverde. As I wrote earlier in the week I thought he'd run out of gas before the Tour was over but I honestly didn't expect it to be this week. Maybe he can recover a bit and go for a stage win now that he won't be marked but I think it's all downhill from here on out for him. He takes one more big packet on a climb and I'm thinking he may pull a Moreau and fake an injury or illness to leave the race.

For me today it was another trip on the Pain Train at Tuesday Night Worlds but this time I gave as well as received. The team divided into two groups to do some race tactics work. I'm not sure how much we actually did but my team did some attacking and I put in three hard attacks to see what I could do. My third attack was a great move and I got a really nice gap and it looked like the group might just let me go when our resident former pro, Chad M., decided to bridge up to me and see if we could make something stick. While the group might give me some rope, they weren't going to let him get too much room off the front and they made short work out of our break. Still it was a good effort and I got some practice at giving it a really hard surge and then settling into TT pace. What I need to get to the point of being able to do is being able to put another surge in about two minutes after the first to see if I can't break the elastic. I got dropped on the big climb in the last part of the course but that's not too unusual. I have the power but I'm carrying too much weight to climb well. One of my goals for the coming off-season is to lose a pound a week of weight until I'm down below 150 lbs. That should give me some more punch on the climbs as long as I don't give up any power.

Tomorrow's a medium mountain stage on teh Tour with a big Cat 1 climb so I see a break getting away on the climb and staying away to the end. Cunego is definitely one of the guys who might try something to get away on the climb and Millar might try to form a break early though I think Garmin-Chipotle might start riding to protect VdV's place in the GC. Another person I could see doing something now is Sebastian Lang from the Columbia team. Finally, there are a couple of teams that don't have a lot to show for the Tour so maybe the Basque boys from Euskatel will try to put a guy in the break like Zubeldia. I could see CSC-Saxo send Andy Schlek out as well. So, a group of climbers gets away on the lower slopes and gets a two to three minute advantage over a select group of about 40 riders who don't bring them back.

We'll see what happens.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |