Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Why, I continue to ask myself, do I torture myself with these movies? Tonight's was Welcome to Sarajevo, a 1997 film about the Bosnian war, mostly about the children and one man's heart and work to help them, ultimately getting one girl with him to England and others into Italy. Why, I continue to ask, do I live in such comfort and take it for granted while so many others live in fear, minute by minute, of their lives and the lives of their loved ones. I know this is cliche, but it haunts me, contantly. And I fuel that fire by continuing to watch the movies and read the books, but I desire nothing else.

A quote struck me...A UN official was asked why they aren't doing more for the war and more for the children and he responded by say that they were doing all they can, but at the time there were 13 places around the world that were worse off. Woody Harrelson's character responded by asking what those 13 countries were and if Sarajevo was moving up or down the list. Good Stuff!

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

It seems they found another suspected Serbian war crime fugitive living out in the open with a changed identity and look.

This reminded me of Samantha Power's A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, where Power writes on the policy of nonconfrontation in Bosnia and refusal of the Clinton administration to make arrests of these criminals. It wasn't until the organization Arrest Now! published "the suspects' home and work addresses, as well as the places they liked to drink coffee, take walks, or work out." (493)

The late Senator Jesse Helms compounded the situation by sending a letter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (after the State Department offered a $5 million award for info leading to the arrest of leading Serb culprits) saying, "I have the information that you are looking for:"

Mr. Milosevic and Mr. Mladic both are residing in Belgrade. Mr. Milosevic recently laid a wreath at the Grace of the Unknown Soldier on Mount Avala (to mark the first anniversary of the NATA bombing of Serbia). His address is: Presidential Palace, 15 Uzicka Street, Dedinje district, Belgrade.

Mr. Mladic is apparently unaware that he should be in hiding - he took a leisurely afternoon stroll down Knez MIhailova Street on Friday, March 24, waving at Belgraders as he walked along, and was spotted just this weekend at the Belgrade stadium taking in a soccer match.

Mr. Karadiz (who they just found according to the link above) remains in the Pale area of Bosnia - living in the midst of thousands of NATA peacekeepers - where he has been seen regularly in public in recent months.

Reward payment should be made to Rev. Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse, a well-known and highly respected charitable organization in North Carolina.

Kindest regards.
Sincerely,
Jesse Helms
(493)

Monday, July 21, 2008

Just began reading David McCullough's Great Bridge about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, good first 50 pages! I'm struck by two things already:

1) New York was already considered overcrowded before 1870 (though, as the book admits, no one had really dreamt of building upwards yet) and crime was an issue: "The Times, for example, described the bridge as a sort of grand long-needed pressure valve that would do much to alleviate New York's two most serious problems, crime and overcrowding." (25)

2) I don't know if McCullough means to show the gravity of the oppositon to the bridge, but I am amazed at the outcry to its building from various angles:

"The editors of Scientific American said a tunnel would serve the purpose as well and cost less...Warehouse owners along the rivers and others in the shipping business were calling it an obstruction to navigation and a public nuissance...Even in Brooklyn the Union said another bridge and a tunnel besides would probably be built by the time everyone finished wrangling over the details..." (28)

And yet, as I preview maps for our upcoming trip to New York, I see the Brooklyn Bridge still standing and I look forward to travelling over it.

It seems that as much as things change, things stay the same.
This is a really good article from Freakanomics on the state of financial literacy in the US.

A couple of things that stood out:

Which brings us to Question No. 3: How important is widespread financial literacy to the health of a modern society?
Well, I would say very. So would Lusardi. When you have a society with a modern and fairly complex financial system, it’s probably not a good sign that more than half of the citizenry can’t handle even the basics: how a credit card actually works (I know some teenagers, e.g., who really think it’s “free money”); the beauty of compound interest and the ugliness of paying the minimum balance on a credit card; how to save and invest even when you don’t think you can; how to learn the amount of insurance you need, etc. Lusardi wonders whether people shouldn’t be required to get a license in order to take out a mortgage. That certainly would have dampened the subprime mess a bit, yes?


Yes, it would have and yes, some sort of financial literacy license would be a great idea!

A lot of behavioral economics, including the good ideas in Nudge, is about cleverly correcting harmful human tendencies — but many of these tendencies need correction only because so many people are so undereducated in such matters.
I am all in favor of a well-rounded education, but seriously: what good is it if high-school students learn about Flaubert, biology, and trigonometry if they don’t learn how to take care of their money? One bright side to the increasingly dark economic news these days is that more and more people will learn (albeit the hard way) Rule No. 1: Do not buy what you cannot afford.

Nudge is a great book, though I'm only about half done, there are a good deal of principles and ideas I've picked up from it for use both personally and professionally. Also, my experience in the high schools is opposite from the opinion of this article, I've found Economics classes on the downturn while simply Personal Finance and such on the increase.

Read down to the end where she states the five things she would do if President, even for a day. Interesting.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Unfortunately, this is all too common around Africa. As I mentioned in a recent post while in Kenya, I was amazed at the pure joy and adulation and cheering when my team brought in an envelop of Ksh1000 (just over $15) for each lady at a center for women with HIV who are recovering and receiving job skills and work. I was sort of ashamed when I was told this amount would be sufficient for them, and humbled when I saw their reaction. The good thing is that they will use it to feed them and their children, keeping them healthy for a few more weeks anyway. The problem, though, is that this is only a temporary solution and will only last until the organization we went with brings in more food or another group of Americans come in. That isn't a good solution to the problem.

I continue to read how much of an issue food is becoming in the developing world and saw it with my own eyes this year, with no mention of methods of solving the problem. I reflected on this last night when I went to the grocery store for my weekly stock-up session. Yes, food is costing me more as well, much more in some cases, but it means for me that I simply have a little less disposable income to go out to eat or to go and have a $4 cup of coffee, for the women and children in Kenya or Burkina Faso, it means going without, sometimes for a day, sometimes more, and sometimes it means selling yourself so you children can eat. I pray for these women and children and I pray for the situation, that the Lord may move His people to care and pray and love and give and develop methods and solutions so that this may not continue on the course I fear it is headed.

Friday, July 18, 2008

This is exactly what I meant in the post below:

US Africa aid is increasingly military
This week's Economist published an article called "They came, they jawed, they failed to conquer" on the G8 summit last week in Japan. One paragraph stoodout to me:

On Africa, higher food prices seemed to make a mockery of G8 pledges made three years ago to raise annual aid levels by $25 billion until 2010, even before NGOs warned that the commitment was already slipping.

My mindset on aid to Africa is slowly but surely changing. I am beginning to see the absolute uselessness of it and how it actually may be keeping the people down in poverty. Not to say that some aid isn't needed, but it has to be with the mindset that it is a temporary help to pull the people up and make them self-sufficient. A while back (2002) WorldNetDaily published an article on "What Africa Needs: Sustainable Truth" and was a response at the time to street protestors in Davos and Seattle over the World Economic Forum that same year (you may have to check my facts on this, but I believe this was the reason for the protests). Anyway, two points stand out in the well-written (and almost prophetic, seeing it was written more than six years ago and many of the same issues have continued and even grown more serious) article:

Africa needs to face the fact that its famines are man-made, from Ethiopia (because of Soviet intervention), Zimbabwe (because of Mugabe's anti-white farm cleansing) and Malawi (because the World Bank said to sell off all the grain reserves). Perhaps GE foods can be blamed on the current famine in Malawi, but the issue goes far deeper than that.

Second, the world throws away enough food to feed billions. Argentina, if farmed properly could most likely feed the entire world's population. Koreans are very keen gardeners, so why is South Korea flooded with food while North Koreans only 50 miles north of Seoul eat bugs and the roots of trees? It's Stalinism, stupid - from Laos to Cuba to the Ukraine, Marxists create food shortages through their misguided, collectivist policies and lack of support for agriculture while spending money on arms.


Books like Giles Bolton's Africa Doesn't Matter are beginning to sway me away from some of my previous paradigms of small, localized aid programs (though I still believe those are the best methods to get the aid directly to the people) to more macro-economic aid to governments that prove they have integrity and are not siphoning millions into foreign accounts or bloated with tribal interests. (I'll also add that Bolton's book pointed out how stifling foreign aid can be on a government, with all the strings attached to the money given. Again, many times it actually accentuates the poverty.) I'm not there yet as I don't see enough integrity in all but a few of the governments (especially Kenya, where I have the most experience), but I can see myself being swayed in that direction.

In any case to summarize, Africa does need aid, but pretty soon Africa needs to step up to the plate and show that it is ready to jump into the global economy and become less reliant on foreign aid. And the West needs to realize that if it truly wants to help Africa, it must rid itself of self-interest and protectionism and truly help African in a way that will truly help Africa, not the US or Europe or especially China. Because right now, billions, almost hundreds of billions, are being sent over each year and nothing is happening save for another generation of people becoming poorer and most disease-ridden while dying at tragic rates.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Ten months before Sang died, the world cross-country championships took place in the coastal city of Mombasa, clear on the other side of Kenya. Brother Colm O'Connell wanted to give his students at St. Patrick's School in Iten a rare opportunity to see elite athletes in action. But the road to Mombasa is dangerous. Bandits patrol the long stretches of desolate terrain, which means breakdowns are potentially fatal. Corrupt police and bogus roadblocks also threaten motorists. So who could Brother Colm trust to safely shepherd a bus of innocent children to their destination?


My problem here is that I just drove this road last month and though my image of it is skewed since I am white and the police leave us along and I was in a fairly reliable vehicle during the day, I think the author drastically over-exaggerated the danger, which is not uncommon since he probably figures less than one tenth of one percent of people reading the article will have travelled that road, why not embellish a little? Good article, by the way.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Check out this article from the Freakanomics blog, very interesting stuff on climate change, and very similar to Lomborg's book Cool It which I reviewed here.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

I understand legal bills (and the massive costs of running a dogfighting operation), but my sources show that Michael Vick made over $60 million in his short career, just on football, excluding endorsements. Let's conservatively say he made another $30 million in endorsements, though I'd guess it would be maybe double that. So he made AT LEAST $90 million in the past 8-9 years, and now, according to this article, he is filing for bankruptcy. I can understand how Tyson blew through over $300 million after hearing his expense list, I find it a little harder to believe how Vick went through that.
Why in the world is this news, especially news on the front page of Msn?

Monday, July 07, 2008

I played probably the best and toughest golf course in my life today as I was invited to play the River Course of Blackwolf Run. The gentleman who invited me has played some of the best courses on every continent except Australia (and I'm assuming Antarctica) including basically any course you can think of in the US (except Augusta) and said it is not only his favorite course but also the toughest course he has played. I found it just as challenging and liken it to a Troon course I played in Scottsdale years ago, though Troon was a links course. The penalty for misplaying is severe, if you do not hit the exact shot you need to off the tee you are in ABSOLUTE trouble. The fairways are nice and a little wider than I expected (at least on most holes) but the greens are crazy fast and the pins were in terrible locations today - perched, it seemed, always on the top of a "hill" where anything long was going 15 feet past and anything short may well come back down to you...it happened to me a few times. Four putts were not uncommon for me, nor for some in my group, though more for me. We played some sort of skins-type game and our opponent had a five footer to win a hole and wrap up the front nine. My partner said that he very well could three-putt from there, and he did.

The most frustrating thing is that there were so many times that I felt that I struck the ball well and hit a great shot, only to find a bunker just off the fairway or even hit the fairway and see if roll into a bunker. And if you made a mistake, it could be three or four shots until you get back in the game, which is why I sprinkled in a few snowmen in my score.

Overall, though for this being my first time playing this year and having only played twice last year, I was very happy, I scored a 51 on the back (felt I would be mid 40's at worst on an area course)- mainly due to my poor putting - but the front was a little slowers...it took a few holes to figure out I couldn't hit my driver, might as well put that in the bag and bring out the 3-wood or iron. It gave me the itch to go back, and I hope to have the chance again someday in the future.
If you think this sounds crazy or far-fetched, you haven't read Shame, Under the Banner of Heaven, or Infidel. If you haven't, I strongly suggest you do.

Friday, July 04, 2008

I was in Cincy for a couple of days this week at the North American Christian Convention to help run a booth and work a little for Tumaini. In Wednesday morning's main session, the featured speaker was a gentleman named Jon Weece from Southland Christian Church in Lexington, Kentucky. There was not a dry eye in the building as he told stories and talked to us about focusing more on the "who" (person of) Jesus rather than getting bogged down in the "what" or the external issues that cause us to lose sight of Him instead of "fixing our eyes on Jesus" as we are told by the author of Hebrews.

Two things really stood out to me in his speech. First, in 2005 he cancelled their Christmas services, instead calling his congregation to out into the community to be Jesus and be Christmas rather than come to a building and put on a show. I thought it was a great idea and he told powerful stories of the life- and eternity-changing results of that day (people going to restaurants and leaving thousand-dollar tips, little kids saving money and working extra to personally deliver gifts to not just people they didn't know, but their own classmates...I said, there was not a dry eye in the building) and the baptisms into Christ that happened shortly after. I thought it was a great idea, I guess I was in the minority. A quick google search of his name shows you how many people disagreed with him, he said he received 20,000 emails blasting him for that decision. And the ironic thing, according to him, was that he was not even at the elders meeting when the decision was made, but he hasn't missed one since :)

On the topic of the power of story is the second thing I'll never forget, he talked about getting to the essence of things and keeping them simple when simple is called for. He told the story of Hemingway who wrote what he felt may have been his best work when he wrote the short story in "flast fiction": For sale, baby shoes, never worn. I will never, ever, ever forget that story...the power of words, the power of story.
Back in action, finally caught up on sleep, some housework, etc., wanted to get back into posting a little. I really liked the following e-article I get weekly, I post it in full:

A Dangerous Good
We can all do a little good for a little while -- at least long enough to make a few friends and establish ourselves as "decent people." Indeed, a little charity, a little service, and a little friendliness can carry us a long way. But not in God's sight.

Our ability to impress each other with a winsome smile, a kind word, a great effort, or a sacrificial act can distract us from vigilant attention to God. Indeed, as Oswald Chambers suggests, such "natural virtues antagonize surrender to God."

The heart of the gospel is not niceness or decency but death.

The good news is not only that Christ died for our sins and rose again, but that as we continually die to Christ we too shall know the power of resurrection life. Many of us accept Christ's death but resist our own, for perhaps two reasons.

First, we misunderstand the gospel. We reduce it to a series of steps that we took to be born again. However, the gospel is not a key to the door of heaven but a way of life with Christ.

Second, we may find ourselves afraid to die daily to Christ because we lack confidence in the resurrection power of the Father. Jesus' instruction to the rich young ruler to sell everything and give it to the poor seemed dreadfully risky and outrageous to the young man. What if that simply made him destitute, too? Thus, his doubt in the Father's power to bring life out of death and fullness out of emptiness produced a basic disobedience. A decent young guy ... out of step with God.

It's much easier to impress people than surrender to God. The superficial world of smiles, handshakes, and small acts of service seems safe. But to reduce our lives to decency is to live a dangerous good. What matters most to you this week? Decency or death?

The greatest gift we can offer each other (friends, colleagues, family, and spouses) emerges from our utter submission to Christ.

May God grant us the courage for crucifixion and deeper confidence in His power to create beauty from ashes and life from our deaths.

In HOPE --

David