Flying Kangaroos, Dustland Fairytales and Kraft Dinner

3 Venues. 3 Bands. 3 Shows. This is a review of the fall concerts I attended. They all were awesome, and all were very different.

The Australian Pink Floyd Show
September 3, 2009
Venue: USANA Amplitheater
Playlist
Speak to Me
Breathe
On the Run
Time
The Great Gig in the Sky
Us and Them
Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V)
Welcome to the Machine
Pigs
Sheep
Keep Talking
Learning to Fly
...
Wish You Were Here
Money
Another Brick in the Wall
Goodbye Cruel World
Hey You
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring The Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
Encore:
Run Like Hell

I found out about the show through a radio station promotion selling $10 tickets. I was able to convince Courtney to go with, along with Todd, Andrew & Hilary, Steve, and Paul. The show was amazing for anyone who a)Loves Pink Floyd's music and/or b)Loves the art of engineering rock music. Pink Floyd's music is incredible to listen to, but even more amazing is watching the artist make the music. The Pink Floyd sound is very intricit and takes a lot of work to produce on the stage. Each guitarist had about three different pedals to get all the effects they needed for the concert, they even switched to a slide guitar at one point. Watching them use the voice guitar in Sheep was a treat and he saxaphone solo in Us and Them, switching from alto to a baritone saxophone in, like, a half a rest was also pretty impressive. Overall I was just blown away by the musical talent of the original Pink Floyd even more so than I already was because I got to see it materialize on a stage in front of me. Aside from the music, The Australian Pink Floyd Show also provides the same visual shows the original Pink Floyd used. Lots of lights and lasers and a large round projection screen behind the stage featuring wild and crazy animations for each song. Great show. The venue helped, too. There's nothing like an outdoor concert. I give it 5 out of 5 marching hammers.

The Killers
September 26, 2009
Venue: The E-Center
Playlist
Joyride
Human
For Reasons Unknown
Shadowplay
Bling
A Dustland Fairytale
Smile Like You Mean It
Spaceman
Losing Touch
Read My Mind
Mr. Brightside
All These Things That I've Done
Encore:
Sam's Town
Jenny Was a Friend of Mine
When You Were Young

Courtney surprised me with tickets to this concert for my birthday. I really wanted to buy tickets for this show in the spring, but decided no to because I didn't feel like spending the money. I'm lucky my wife loves me so much. That was the take home message from this concert. Courtney wasn't feeling well but still came to the concert with me after she had worked a full day, justDe as she had done for the Pink Floyd Show. Such a great concert. The E-Center isn't the greatest venue, but Brandon Flowers sure puts on a show. He provided unlimited energy and vocal solos throughout the entire show. I was also impressed with the bassist Mark Stoemer; his energy and the fact that he looked like Paul McCartney. Guitarist Dave Keuning shared a resemblance to a muscular Robert Plant, but didn't carry quite as much energy. The highlight of the night was probably the outstanding Dustland Fairytale, ending with a guitar lead in to I Can't Help Falling in Love With You. I couldn't have picked out a more rocking encore set than the one they did, and I loved All These Things That I've Done. I give this show 4.5 out of 5 guitars.

Barenaked Ladies
December 14, 2009
Venue: The Depot
Playlist
Get in Line
What's So Maybe About Katie
The Old Apartment
Blame It On Me
God Rest Ye Marry Gentlemen/We Three Kings
New Song
Go Home
New Song
It's All Been Done
New Song
Pinch Me
One Week
If I Had $1,000,000
Encore:
Green Christmas
Feliz Navidad
2nd Encore:
When Doves Cry

I have to admit that I was a little nervous about this. I have been to one of their shows before, but now that Steven Page is gone I worried about how the songs he sang lead vocals for (nearly all of them) would sound. I have to say that everyone's picking up the slack quite well. And I mean everyone. Jim's sharing the load with Ed a lot, and sounds pretty good, although nothing can quite compare to Page's amazing vocal chords. I always love going to a concert that features an accordian, too. Kevin's great with the squeeze box and behind the keys, too. Anyways, the music is only half of why to go to a BNL concert. The other half is the outrageous antics of the band. Signature to any BNL concert are a number of ad libs ranging from SLC's new In-N-Out to geneology to how much Ed loves Kevin from the depths of his heart. The band is still hilarious. And feliz navidad was great with Tyler at the mic, but nothing was as great as When Doves Cry with an accordian, bass and maracas. And The Depot is a great place for a concert. This show gets 5 out of 5 Chinese Chickens.

Here's a movie of Feliz Navidad. Don't miss Tyler's scat in the middle.

Todd, Cindy, Courtney and I at the concert.

The Moral Dimensions of Teaching

I feel like I write too much about education, but on the other hand, I'd rather write about education than my other areas of interest. All the world needs is one more sports blogger. I'm not about to post up pages and pages of statistics and shock jock opinions about what happened in the Toronto-New Jersey basketball game last night. Every once and a while I will see the need to roast somebody, but that time is not right now. Similarly worthless is a political blog. Aren't there enough Hannitys and Coulters and Frankens and Limbaughs to make the world vomit already? Nobody should have to read that stuff when it's already filling the airwaves TV listings. But just like sports, every once and a while I'll see something that I feel inclined to write about. Another subject I could write about is my own life. I'm sure everyone who reads my blog would love to see pictures of me at ESPN's gameday when they came to Provo, Courtney and I going camping and our cat Spock donning the Cone of Shame following her declawing and spaying. As much as I'm sure about that, I'm not that sure of that, so I don't post it. (Not here, at least. I post albums on facebook, and I don't like doing it twice unless it's something really entertaining or important).
To be honest, what I write directly correlates with what I read (although correlation does not infer causation; I read a whole lot more than I write about, and you ought to be glad, what with all the comparative politics studies and adolescent development crap I've read this semester). Two weeks ago I picked up a great book from the Jerome library book sale for $1. It is titled 'The Moral Dimensions of Teaching," and caught my interest because the teacher education program at BYU teaches the importance of the moral dimensions of teaching. A few years ago this agency was going to deny accreditation to BYU''s teacher education program because they did not teach the moral dimensions of teaching as addressed by John Goodlad (the editor of this book). In a couple of months they scrounged together a plan that incorporated Goodlad's ideas and started educating future teachers in its ways. The result is S.A.N.E., BYU's version of Goodlad's teachings. S.A.N.E. stands for Stewardship, Access to knowledge, Nurturing Pedagogy, and Enculturating democracy. I was first taught this in my teaching class earlier this semester, but it came up on the first day of my second block teaching course (adolescent development). From then I could tell that it's pretty important, which is why I bought the book.
The book is a collection of chapters written by Goodlad and some of his buddies. I finished the first one earlier this week, written by Goodlad, titled 'The Occupation of Teaching in Schools.' The focus of this chapter is to describe teacher education and to identify the disconnect between teaching in the classroom, policymaking in the boardroom, and administrating in the Principal's office. At the end, he introduces the moral dimensions of teaching as necessary to describe the mission of teaching, and thus create a uniform basis of training teachers across the country.
The problem all began when a famous historian was hired by Harvard for an exorbitant salary, and he was allowed to not teach his first year at the university. From that point on universities became houses of research first, and education second. "By the 1980s," Goodlad wrote, "professors in these schools, if involved with future teachers at all, were more likely to be studying them than preparing them to teach." The conditions were rocky in the teacher-administrator relationship at this point, too. Before my great-grandpa Vern died in 1990, my father visited him on his deathbed. Coach recalls this about their conversation: "Grandpa Vern asked how teaching was going and I said fine. He responded with, 'Be sure to keep those damned administrators out of your classroom.'" The preparation for administrators in schools focused more on management techniques and less on education. However little the principal actually knew about education, it was generally assumed from the outside that they have authority in regard to the evaluation of teachers, when in fact, they knew very little about what goes on (or is supposed to go on) in a classroom. These administrators are the ones that go on to write the policy that outlines what should happen in the classroom. Luckily this is in most cases, not the situation of today. Most schools offering a masters of educational administration require at least three years of teaching, making for more prepared administrators founded in principles of teaching and education.
Goodlad mentions the appeal of teaching as a calling. He brings up examples of future teachers he interviewed who recalled disappointed parents, teachers trying to talk them out of it, and friends who think they're crazy. Many, however, described teaching as "exceedingly important and potentially satisfying--as a calling." According to Goodlad those who take upon themselves this calling--where good judgment and exceptional skill is involved in order to be effecient--must abide by a set of normative principles he calls the moral dimensions of teaching.
Enculturation: Educators must provide their students with "critical perspectives on the nature of democratic societies." As a poli sci nut, I couldn't agree more. This is necessary for the "induction of the young into our culture."
Access to Knowledge: Every young person deserves an equal shot at being educated. As much as many Americans believe this is actually carried out by our great nation, it is not, and to them I refer Jonothan Kozol's Shame of a Nation or Savage Inequalities. "Opportunities to gain access to the most generally useful knowledge are maldistributed in most schools, with poor and minority children and youths on the short end of the distribution." How could this be the case? "Casual, misguided, decisions with regard to grouping and tracking students, apportioning the domains of knowledge and knowing in the curriculum, allocating daily and weekly instructional time, scheduling, and other practices often distribute access to knowledge unfairly and inequitably." Teachers carry the responsibility of recognizing programs that do this within the school and standing up for the fair and equitable distribution of access to knowledge.
The Teacher and the Taught: Teachers must realize that their students are in a compulsory setting and that they did not choose to be there. Anything we can do as teachers to bring the subjects we teach into the students' realm of importance will give them more motivation to succeed. Students are only motivated in the core subjects (English, mathematics, social studies and sciences) when they aspire to more schooling. Teachers must be focused on making the subject matter important for the individual.
Renewing School Settings: There is an overwhelming trend in the nation calling for reform in schools and requiring results. When positive results of one reform aren't seen immediately, another reform is enacted to "fix the problem." Goodlad says, "If schools are to become the responsive, renewing institutions that they must, the teachers in them must be purposefully engaged in the renewal process...'School renewal' becomes a nonevent, one more in the cycle of nonevents that characterize the school improvement enterprise.
More teacher involvement in the reform/renewal process requires more time. "Teachers employed for 180 days and required to teach 180 days simply will not renew their schools. It is ludicrous and self-deceiving to believe that they will. Further, such an expectation borders on the immoral. The answer...is 180 days of teaching and 20 or more additional days of institutional renewal. We can begin to look seriously at teaching as a profession when it no longer is a part-time job. Teaching will become a full-time occupation when the public sees the need for it." Nationwide reforms will not provide all the answers for every single school because the contextual factors for every school are different. It is up to the teachers to provide insight into how the school should adjust to best meet the needs of the school's unique conglomeration of students--not some suit in DC. Any teacher could tell you this is true, yet, like Goodlad said, to ask teachers to effectively do this in the amount of time their given every year is more than slightly ridiculous.
The opening chapter provided an excellent hook for me, and I hope the rest of the book is as good as this.

Watching for Credits

I'm taking some fairly interesting classes this semester, including Human Biology and Theories of Comparative Politics, but the first half of this semester (now coming to a close) I've spent an exceptional amount of time for one class in particular--Exploration of Teaching. For two weeks we met in class every day and talked about what we like about the idea of teaching as a career and things we would have to do as health teachers. We read from a really good textbook written by our professor and her husband and watched Cipher in the Snow (sooooooo depressing, yet somewhat necessary for people who are going to work with children). Then everyone in the class was assigned two schools in Utah valley to go to and observe the health teachers. For the past month I've been to American Fork High School and Springville Junior High School watching a couple of teachers from different sides of the spectrum teach health and love doing it. It may seem silly to have a class where all you do is watch someone teach, but I learned more about teaching in these five weeks than I did in my Sociology of Education and Foundations of Education classes combined...okay, I don't know if that's exactly true, because I absolutely LOVED going to those two classes and doing my work for them, but I have learned more about teaching in the classroom watching someone teach than reading about the sociology of education or discussing the foundations of education.
American Fork High School is a very impressive high school. They have lots of technological resources and lots of money and a new looking school. The health teacher, Anne Johnson, has been there for 42 years. The students like her class and respect her. She showed me a file cabinet filled with folders of stuff she's used over the past 40 years to teach health, all organized in folders for every lesson of the year. And the first pages in every folder are prints of power point presentations she has made and presents for each lesson. As much as I got tired of the blonde jokes she told at the start of every class, she does a good job with those kids, and I hope that I can still love to teach just for the interaction with the students like she does when I'm her age.
Springville Junior High is an old building with an old intercom system and probably some asbestos. Teachers still had access to technology, though, and all classes are electronically connected so teachers can actually help students study what they need to during their advocacy period. Ryan Chambers played outfield and pitcher for BYU and did some time in the minors pitching in the Cubs' organization in 2005 before coming back to Utah to teach health. He's in the process of getting a masters in sports conditioning and performance online from SUU. It's his first year in junior high after three at Payson High School, and he loves how much more excited the kids are to learn at this age. He has the kids work on activities making brochures and pamphelets to internalize the information. His favorite part as well is the interaction with the students.
Both Ryan and Anne are excited to be teaching. Anne after 42 years and Ryan after spending a summer with Single-A Boise, and being lights out in rookie league. I hope that I will have no regrets when I start teaching; that I can be as excited as Ryan and Anne about what I'm doing. I wish that I could watch all of the health teachers in the Utah valley and see what I like and dislike about each of them so I can shape my teaching style even better. A year from now I'll be in the classroom, by myself, everyday, teaching health to young people; I feel too far away from being adequate to teach to be this close to needing to be ready, but I guess I don't have any say in when the time comes, only in my level of preparedness.

Why do I do this?

I sometimes find comments on facebook that I feel need a little expansion/correction. This one is from today. (Names and most photos have been censored to protect the individuals' privacy)

Lisa Empey Hall (my mom) is having trouble paying medical bills because her preimum sucks to much money out of the paycheck. Somethings not quite right here.

7 hours ago · Comment · Like / Unlike

Unnamed
I'm waiting for a big bill from my hubby's two stents the past month..,one bill was 32,000.00 bucks don't know what my protion will be...thankful we met our deductable & out of pockect this year!

6 hours ago

Unnamed

Well, we soon could be going to socialized medicine, where you don't have to pay anything. Except sky high taxes. But, just remember, you get what you pay for. The taxes go to pay the administrators, and everyone else gets bubkes.

6 hours ago

Keith Hall

Actually, the only people who would be on the 'public option' (not socialized medicine, which sounds like everybody gets free prozac, viagra and percoset), called the National Health Insurance Exchange would become availible to everybody, but if you like your current plan you can keep it.
The catch is, yes, your tax dollars will be going into the NHIE even if you aren't in it. So while the new plan is supposed to foster competition, it makes private health care more expensive for everyone just by entering the market. That sucks.
The taxes do go to pay administrators, just like your premium does. Health insurance, be it from the state or from the private sector, is a lot of paperwork and administration. In the end, paying for health insurance sucks, which is why so many Americans don't have it.
Under the NHIE millions of people who cannot afford insurance will gain some sort of minimal coverage, and we're all paying for it.
The question we're all asking now is why this is a good idea. It's not a good idea for people who already have insurance, just for those who don't. The Dems wanted to do this for them. Aren't you mad at them? Don't we all believe that they're all just waiting for a handout? They don't work hard enough, do they? Maybe if they'd get off their butt and food stamps they could afford some health care. Maybe if they didn't drop out they would have gotten a job and a hc package, but no, they don't deserve it now. This is the land of opportunity---one opportunity. "You only get one shot do not miss this chance to blow this opportunity comes once in a lifetime," in the words of a great American. Those people who are denied coverage based on preexisting conditions should suck it up or make more money so they can afford coverage and treatment. ... Read More
Of 304m Americans, 40+m don't have coverage. That's
13%. Who's letting the minority have a say in this legislation? Doesn't the majority rule? Or in this case, the Haves? (pardon my Marx, I couldn't resist)
Whatever, it's gonna happen. And you know what makes me mad, we're raising taxes in a recession. What an idiot! This never would have happened if Mitt wouldn't have lost all those votes to an optimistic cutthroat anti-Mormon Mike Huckabee (what a schmuck).

6 hours ago · Delete

Keith Hall

Yes, I just did that.

6 hours ago · Delete

Lisa Empey Hall

Thanks alot Keith. This is what you education is doing to you. I am still not sorry that I complained that my health insurace sucks.

5 hours ago

Keith Hall

Rest assured that at least you aren't paying for my education

5 hours ago · Delete

Lisa Empey Hall

Well, I do pay tithing.

5 hours ago

Touche mother.

The Economy of Poor Fan Support

Many students may be disappointed with the football team's performance on Saturday. Most of us, I believe, expected more of a game than we saw. But for the most part, what happens on the field is beyond our control. For the most part, all we can do is watch. For the most part, at least.

There was a day when BYU fans all across the East side of the stadium would stand and yell the entire time we were on defense. Teams had trouble in the huddle and audibling because of the noise in the stadium. Alas, Saturday after the third play of the game Florida State had a first down and many fans were so amazed by this that they felt they could no longer rise and shout, for these were not the Cougars they thought would be out. Fans continually lost momentum as FSU scored, O'Neil Chambers fumbled, and the halftime show put them to sleep. By the third quarter, there had been enough turnovers and Florida State touchdowns for many fans to consider the unthinkable and leave the game a whole quarter early. Fans were already streaming out of the stadium causing traffic problems with twenty minutes left in the game, when Max Hall completed an 80-yard touchdown to McKay Jacobson, and missed that completely. There was still hope for the mighty cougars, yet they lacked the loyal strong and true, who claimed to join in song in praise of the team, with strong faith.

Why did this happen? That's easy to answer--adjustable rate mortgages. Yep, I believe the financial crisis made many of the best fans turn away from buying tickets this year because of their high price. The selling price was also too lucrative for many poverty-stricken fans to hold on to their tickets, but instead sell them to lessor fans in order to pay for food, rent, dates, etc. A small few of us stood the entire game long, cheering for a comeback, having heard stories of how the faith of our fathers brought miracles to pass in Holiday Bowls of past days, knowing that there was still hope for a comeback.

In the future I hope those who intend to leave the game early will sell their tickets, or even give them away, to someone who will rise and shout for four quarters of football. It's better for the team, it's better for fans, it's better for BYU.

Who's Talking To Your Kids These Days

Your child is going to have one professional visit their school. Both of these men spoke in public schools yesterday. In case you haven't heard of either of them, I've listed their credentials and recent newsworthy events in their lives. Who would you rather have?

Michael Vick

• Graduated from Warwick High School (VA)
• Attended Virginia Tech University for 2 years where he played football
• Drafted by the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League
• Played six years for the Falcons; voted to Pro Bowl three times
• November 26, 2006- gives Atlanta fans the bird after team's fourth straight loss
• July 2007- charged with a felony for running a dog fighting ring (Bad Newz Kennels)
• September 14, 2007- tested positive for marijuana while on bail
• November 2007-began prison sentance
  
• July 7, 2008- declared chapter 11 bankruptcy
• May 2009- released to house arrest
• July 27, 2009- reinstated to NFL
• August 13, 2009- signs contract with Philadelphia Eagles
• September 8, 2009- speaks to students at Nueva Esperanza Academy

or

Barack Obama

• Attended Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years before transferring to Columbia University and graduating with a degree in Political Science
• Director of the church based Developing Communities Project in Chicago
• Graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School
  
• President of the Harvard Law Review
• Illinois state senator 1997-2004
• Keynote speaker for the Democratic National Convention 2004
  
• U.S. Senator 2004-2008
• President of the United States 2008-present

I will concede that Michael Vick was one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL and nearly unbeatable on Madden. Also, Barack Obama used drugs and alcohol in high school, is a democrat, wants to give health care to everyone living in the United States and has mismanaged the country's economic conundrum. That being said, Michael Vick has been out of prison for four months, whereas Barack Obama has been the leader of the free world for eight months.

Was that an easy decision? The people with the easiest decision are probably those who chose Michael Vick solely on the basis that President Obama is a democrat and they disagree with his policies. Maybe they've lost a love one their job, maybe they threaten to hike taxes to an intolerable point, or maybe they're all just part of a conspiracy theory posing Barack Obama to be the next Adolf Hitler or the antichrist. Presidents aren't perfect, but they are the figurehead of this nation. Does anyone remember "My Fellow Americans?" Two former presidents (one democrat, one republican) find themselves at the bottom of a conspiracy and are on the run. At one point they find themselves hitching a ride with a family in their station wagon. As it turns out, the couple lost their jobs due to Jack Lemmon's budget cuts, and James Garner's economic downturn. You can watch it all on YouTube--I highly reccomend it.

James Madison provided for conflict to exist in the nation when he wrote the constitution. Without conflict, we see things like monarchy, facism and suffering. Conflict provides opportunities for the unhappy to formally rise against those in power and bring about change. President Obama and his supporters seemed to believe change was needed and did something about it. He's no better or worse a man than George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Al Gore, although he may be a better speaker. At the end of the day, I think all three of that bunch would agree with what Obama said in his speech to the kids. I've provided a link to that, as well as a recap of Michael Vick's message as well.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4455112

Democracy, revisited

Iran bled their true colors this morning. The controversial election has been legitimized by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamemei. "Eleven million votes difference? Sometimes there's a margin of 100,000, 200,000, or 1 million maximum. Then one can doubt maybe there has been some rigging or manipulation or irregularities. But there's a difference of 11 million votes. How can vote rigging happen?" I don't know Ali, have you looked at the MLB All-Star game lately (specifically 1999)? Moussavi instructed his followers to boycott the morning prayers. Apparently he didn't have much hope in the system. For the same reason I don't vote for MLB All-Stars;)
True democracy is not what Iran chose in 1979. It opted for sharia law and giving ultimate power to an unelected clerical leader. Today he spoke and the people have to listen. I wrote this back in May, "If democracy is determined by fair and balanced elections and fair process of law by those who are elected, Iran has been weighed and measured and is found lacking. If democracy is to be determined as a government doing what its people want it to, Iran is in the running." At this point Iran is right here. The people complained about the lacking nature of their electoral process, and the Supreme Leader has told them what's what. If the people are truly unhappy with the outcome, we may see the country's second revolution in thirty years (and this time the US might even lend a hand, if the Iranians play their cards right: ). But something tells me the Supreme Leader has a hold on the people, as he and all he says are connected with the people's worship. According to Shia Islam tradition a fatwa, or decree from a religious scholar, could be binding--his words are as good as sharia law.
"The 10th presidential election was actually a great show in which people indicated their responsibility towards the destiny of their country. It was a great manifestation of people's participation in the affairs of their country. It depicted very well people's solidarity with their establishment,"
And so it is.

Democracy....maybe

Yesterday marked the tenth Iranian presidential election in thirty years of a Shah-less Iran. Thanks to the revolution of 1979 the Iranian people have been protected from evil tyrants destroying their country with weak domestic policy and controversial foreign relations. What?!?!?!?! Do you mean to tell me that Iran isn't safe from that? What happened? Didn't Ayatollah Khomeini solve all social ills and institute the first democratic Muslim state? After thirty years of democracy, their 'democratically elected president' acts similarly to the shah? Why yes; with a wildly high voter turnout of 80%, 65% of the people voted for incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yes, 80% of all eligible Iranian voters showed up in a very important, very heated presidential election. Ahmadinejad's 65% of those constitute over 50% of eligible voters, which is quite amazing. His opponent received just 33% of the vote, and--like many other observers--cries "foul play". I'm usually not one to get too involved on foreign matters because every culture is different and some people don't give a rat for what America says about their politics, but I'm going to have to call foul as well.
1)Unrealistic margin of victory
This was a much closer election leading up to the election than it seemed to be on election day. Mir Hossein Moussavi did extremely well in debates and campaigning and caught fire in the last week of the election. I don't see Ahmdinejad legitimately doubling his opponent's vote count.
2)Why would anyone vote for this loser?
Ahmadinejad has ran the country into economic turmoil and made the country subject to even more foreign criticism than ever before. If a president did such things in America, we would surely vote him out of office, or vote his party out of office (see Election 2008).
The media has become increasingly skeptical of the results, which has led to greater media filtering in Iran: the censoring of a reformist paper, the jamming of BBC broadcast, and the mysterious malfunction of Facebook and Twitter. Moussavi's supporters continue to riot in the streets despite violent opposition in the form of clubs and chains in the hands of Iran's riot police. In all reality, this election has highlighted Iran as a government protectionist state than a thriving democracy.
The Supreme Leader has caved today and called for an investigation into possible election fraud, but with any luck, Ahmadinejad's cronies already head that department, too. Congratulations on drawing even more foreign criticism and spurring the most domestic controversy in your country since the revolution in 1979.

The Times They Are A Changin'

Bob Dylan was right. Things aren't the same anymore. I'm in Linden, California, packing cherries once again. Last year I said I wasn't coming back here. I told everybody that I was getting married, going to school for a year straight, and graduating August 2009. Plans have changed. I'm married, I'm not going to school, I'm not graduating until 2011. And I'm back here with my good friends at Prima Frutta Packing. The joke around here is that you can't stay away from this place, and apparently I fit the part. I'm coming back, though to a different job. This year I brought my old roomate Andrew for a job, and we're woking together on dialing in the consumer pack machines. After two years in the pit, I miss it. I miss the rush, the interaction with the workers, the interaction with cherries. The work we're doing is all just machine testing, optimizing the system. It's not bad, it's just a change.

I'm away from Courtney for an extended period of time the first time in our marriage. At least I know she's with friends, as she knows of me as well. In eighteen days Andrew and I will return to Provo to our wives late at night and go to bed and sleep for a day straight. I can't wait for that day, and we've only worked 52 hours this week--half of what we'll do next week. We haven't even started out here. I miss Courtney more than I miss all those things about a job working the pit. For a number of reasons, I won't be back next year. Now I know what you're thinking, it's early, and yes, I've said that at least once before, probably twice, but I really can't go. I'd rather not go this long again separated from Courtney, and if I'm really plan on graduating in 2011, which is late enough as it is, I have to go to school next summer.

We ran out of early last night so I went over to see the Rendulic family. My friend Dora with whom I graduated high school back in 2003 is in her second year of med school. In two years she'll be a doctor and I'll be a teacher. More change. My friend Chris King is graduating this Saturday. The joke there is that if we would have placed a 50 cent bet in 2003 that Chris King (pictured here third from the left with his roomies at Chico State) would graduate from college before me, Atlee, and Matt people would have told us to buy a Whatyamacallit instead, but alas, we would actually be millionaires today. I gained a new career track, Atlee gained a religion, and, heck, I think Matt might finish next year. Change isn't always bad, it's good. I'll be much happier working in education than in the West Wing. Atlee's plenty happy on his mission and Chris and Matt are happier now than they would have been had they pursued the path they were on after one year at Delta College. I'm happy with where we're all at today. I'm happily married, happily pursuing a career I feel passionate about, and happily writing blogs about Star Trek, concerts, things in the news, and things I learn about in my classes. Even if it's not what I imagined I'd be doing five years ago. There's a battle outside and it is ragin'. It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls, for the times they are a-changin'.

Kahn: The Real Nemesis

(I've found a great site with Star Trek motivational posters like this at http://echosphere.net/star_trek_insp/star_trek_insp.html. Check it out for a lot of good stuff)

In preparation for the new Star Trek movie Courtney and I have watched all ten previous Star Trek movies. Thursday night we finished it off with Nemesis, which I had never before seen. Turned out to be a great show, of course, because Patrick Stewart is awesome. As I thought about the movie more that night, I came to a realization of why it was such a great movie--it was fashioned after the manner of the greatest of all Star Treks, even Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. Here's why:

1) The villain who want nothing more than to kill the Captain.

Okay, so this is a stretch, because Praetor Shinzon wanted to destroy the entire human race, but it's no stretch to say that he couldn't live without killing Picard. In fact, that's the entire reason he tried to kill him. Both Kahn and Shinzon had beef with the captain of the Enterprise. One wanted revenge, the other wanted life.

2) Both involved the prevention of the usage of a weapon of global destruction.

Kahn stumbles upon the Genesis project which, while meant to create life, has the capacity to destroy entire planets, giving life across the globe to a new ecosystem, in which the former inhabitants are not to be found. Shinzon and the Remans tamed thalaron radiation, which instantly destroys all living tissue and can be used in controlled amounts and areas, and planned to destroy all life on earth with it. Kahn got away with detonating Genesis, but a heroic android prevents the use of the thalaron radiation. Which brings me to my next point...

3) Both required the sacrifice of the crew's inhuman pespective.

Spock, the logical half-Vulcan, sacrificed his life to manually repair the warp drive and dies speaking his last words to Kirk through the glass wall, soaking with radiation. Data the android jumped through space from the Enterprise to Shinzon's ship in order to beam the Captain back aboard the Enterprise and destroy the thalaron weapon before detonation. Both events leave you very discomforted at the end of the movie, but Spock is resurrected in Star Trek III: Search for Spock, and by mind melding with Bones before entering the radiation chamber, Spock leaves his mind in McCoy's to preserve it, and earlier in the movie Data transferred his memory banks to his older, incompetent brother B-4, who is in the Captain's care at the end of the movie. Sadly, though, with the newest Star Trek movie being a prequel involving the old guard, I don't see any resolution involving Data like that for Spock.

4) Both movies involve man's desires to harness the powers of God.

The Genesis project gave man the power of God to create worlds without number in one swift touch of a button. Shinzon, a clone of Captain Picard, represents the final day of creation, when God creates man in his own image. The latter of these was not done with good intentions. The cloning of Picard was done in a plot of Romulan trickery to take over the Federation. Picard points out, however, that although his life had made him a miserable, evil antagonist, Shinzon still had the capacity for good. It didn't take long for McCoy, upon learning the truth about the Genesis project, to criticize the destructive nature of the Genesis project. Kirk points out that in the wrong hands it could be used as a weapon, and Bones asks whose hands were wrong.

That's why the powers of God are God's. That's why the priesthood of God requires worthiness and faith of God. The powers of God are much too fragile for us to take lightly. The ill-advised use of his powers and trust carry with it the heaviest of consequences that can really hurt people. From the confidential obligations of a bishop to the financial matters of a clerk; from the way we take care of our bodies to the reactions of a missionary representative in confrontational situations; from the choosing a topic for a general conference talk, to choosing whether to honor powers of procreation meant to only be used in marital relationships. Imperfect, mortal men are not meant to create planets and life and dictate their actions for their own purposes. The powers of God are to be used to complete God's purposes by those he has chosen to empower. Not Sybok, in case you wondered.

That's my synopsis. It had some great action scenes. Picard's battering ram attack was very Kirk-esque, and was probably his best performance in military strategy in his whole Starfleet career.

It all came down to this...

This semester I took Middle East Political Systems. My professor Amr Al-Azm is Lebanan-raised of a Syrian father and Palestinian mother. Needless to say, he has some serious bias going on. But I was open-minded through the course and learned so much, even if it did come from his anthropological, anti-Israel, anti-Bush administration point of view. We had weekly assignments that weren't that interesting, so I didn't post them. I now feel competent enough to write commentaries about happenings in the Middle East and will do so in the future. (Iran's having an election this summer, expect something). As for now, I'll post my final.

Now, I spent two and a half hours building my argument as I went without proofreading anything, but I'm putting it up anyways. He must have liked it, I got full credit for it, but I wasn't trying to write what he wanted to hear. In fact, we didn't even talk about Saudi Arabia or Turkey in the class, I just did the assigned readings. I am actually very passionate about this subject. In Star Trek they call it the Prime Directive: "No Starfleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture." The Prime Directive is General Order #1 and the guiding principle of Starfleet. Maybe we could learn something from Star Trek.

The consistent instability of non-democratic, Islamist Middle East nations gives the appearance that perhaps Islam is incompatible with democracy. Because of this, many believe Islam to be the main deterrent to progress and stability in the Arab world. I believe, however, there is evidence to support the opposite. In this paper I give three examples of stable leaders of the Middle East—Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey—as examples of stability in the region, proposing an alternant view of democracy, progress and Islam.
The first model of a stable Middle Eastern country I have chosen is Iran. Iran has been a major player on the world stage since the Islamic revolution of 1979. By dethroning the Shah, however, Iran took the role of antagonist against the country that would become the post-Cold War hegemon, the United States. Recently American anxiety toward Iran resurfaced in the Bush administration’s inclusion of Iran in the modern Axis of Evil. Iran’s persistent drive toward nuclear proliferation is evidence of its desire not to crush all enemies of Islam, but rather to gain the respect it deserves as a major world power and to deter the thoughts of other country’s who may think otherwise and try to undermine the state. Iran holds a wealth of oil beneath its crust, and influence in a number of other Middle East nations, including Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon.
There is no question of Iran’s stability, or of its deep Islamic influence, as the country follows sharia law, and entrusts its executive powers to the faqih, or supreme leader, a Shiite cleric with expertise in Islamic law. Because so much power is given to the supreme leader, foreign nations give little legitimacy to the elected Iranian president and parliament. There is an overwhelming opinion in the modern world that there must be some sort democratic input involving elections and policy, and a supreme leader frustrates this image. On the other hand, the people of Iran voiced an opinion in 1979 that has given them the type of government that they have today. Sharia law as interpreted by a Shiite cleric clearly is not too problematic with a population that is 89% Shiite Muslim.
If democracy is determined by fair and balanced elections and fair process of law by those who are elected, Iran has been weighed and measured and is found lacking. If democracy is to be determined as a government doing what its people want it to, Iran is in the running. For example, current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his anti-U.S. rhetoric have filled media airwaves painting an awful picture, not of Ahmadinejad the president, but of Iran the country, in the minds of foreigners. Iranian discomfort with this misrepresentation will be seen in this summer’s elections, as Ahmadinejad will likely lose the election to a more conservative candidate.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia presents us with another example of a legitimate Middle East power. Unlike Iran, however, Saudi Arabia provides no cover for its undemocratic government. The Saud dynasty traces its roots back to the eighteenth century, and continues today in the hands of Kind Abdallah, who reigns in absolute monarchical power over his kingdom. The absence of democratic government institutions in Saudi Arabia, however, has not hindered its progress.
It is currently in the top quarter of the world in per capita GDP and holds a literacy rate that is probably higher than the United States’ real rate. But is their progress slighted by a high security, low freedom government? Saudi Arabia’s most powerful ally, the United States, has not indicated to their friend King Saud that authoritarian dictators like him who restrict the freedom of his people have no right to exist in this world, nor that we will include his kingdom in our next ‘Axis of Evil’ list and invade Saudi Arabia to free the Islamic people of their repression. Surely Saudi Arabia’s assistance in the Global War on Terror is a factor here, but in any other case the United States usually isn’t slow to call out monarchies that limit human rights and bar basic freedoms. It would seem that a country lacking in democracy is perfectly able to gain international acceptance and progress economically when counterterrorism efforts and crude oil are found.
In conclusion I present Turkey, a fully-democratic, stable nation in the Middle East. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey failed to establish a stable system of government until the 1980s, but since has seen a sound economy and stable government processes. It currently eyes membership in the European Union, trying to break the wealthy white European mould filled by other members. Clearly, acceptance into the European Union would solidify claims of being a stable regional power.
The ‘anomaly’ people find in Turkey is that the stable and democratic government exists in a country where 98% of the population practice Islam. Turkey is proof that Muslims can exist together in a society where the government is neither authoritarian nor determined by sharia law. Many accept Turkey’s success as proof that democracy is the only way in which a predominantly Muslim country can obtain stability, and would propose such secular forms of government (like the ones in which the accusers likely live) to other Middle East countries whose country’s future seems to be in flux. The examples of Iran and Saudi Arabia, however, cause reason to believe that perhaps different strokes really do work for different folks. There is not one form of government that is ultimately better than all others, an assumption made by those who claim that progress and stability cannot be attained without democracy. Progress and stability have taken place in the predominantly Muslim countries Iran and Saudi Arabia without the presence of a fully functional democracy, and such progress is possible for other nations in the region as well.

Good Idea, Bad Idea

What is the purpose of education in America? What are we trying to do? I tried to find a clear cut goal for our educating young minds on the U.S. Department of Education web page and had some difficulty. From what I gathered, we promote educational excellence for all Americans. Finally I found the strategic plan for 2007 through 2012 which declares as their mission statement, “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” That’s a big mission. To accomplish this monumental task, they developed three goals:
==>Improve student achievement, with a focus on bringing all students to grade level in reading and mathematics by 2014.
==>Increase the academic achievement of all high school students.
==>Ensure the accessibility, affordability, and accountability of higher education, and better prepare students and adults for employment and future learning.

The goals are followed by four or five objective, and each objective is followed with four or five strategies, following the strategic planning matrix used in the field of public relations. These are some good goals, good objectives, and they include many well-planned strategies, too. I’m not sure enough people know that this is the plan the country has for educating our children. Maybe they should work out a marketing strategy, too. The main character in our reading this week covered it all. The mission statement: “His whole education and training must be ordered as to give him the conviction that he is absolutely superior to others.” This man did not solely desire a competent, well-trained and educated country, he wanted the best, and he wanted his people to realize that they were the best. In this sense, he supports a magnanimous people, a people who have gained all the best virtues, and by so doing have gained Aristotle’s ‘crowning virtue’--magnanimity. Now, what are some of the goals he had to complete his mission?

1)“The nationalization of our masses will succeed only when, aside from all the positive struggle for the soul of our people, their international poisoners are exterminated.” Here we see the adherence to the all important advice to clean the inner vessel first. If the children we educate are greater than those of any country, we must purge our system of any outside influence perverting the minds of our children. There is no doubt the United States is working on this right now, but to the erroneous extent of depriving its children knowledge of the outside world from which the United States is isolated and to which is superior (specifically Europe and anywhere else outside the country where newsworthy events occur).

2) “Obedience is praised as a virtue.” Is there anything as true as this? The number one rule to life is really blind obedience to the talking heads that, in return, will grant you all that you could ever ask for. Degrees, certification, licensure, promotion, money, glory, laud and honor. All this can be anybody’s--it’s an equal opportunity system, only different than the U.S., because instead of just being a mandatory path, it’s the only path, and the what’s available at the end of the rainbow is actually good enough to motivate students to perform.

3) “This folkish state must not adjust its entire educational work primarily to the inculcation of mere knowledge, but to the breeding of absolute healthy bodies. The training of mental abilities is only secondary.” Absolute healthy bodies? This isn’t a plan to produce a bunch of obese computer techs and realtors, it’s a plan to edify the entire body, mind and spirit. The healthier a people, the more work they can accomplish, the less need for state health care, the greater ability to produce, and most importantly, the greater GDP. The United States may want to jump on the bandwagon with this mentality before as a people we’re too overweight to hop.

4) “It (the state) must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people.” He further claims that only the healthy (body, mind, and soul, remember), those troubled by sickness and deficiencies should bring children into the world, and that the highest honor is to renounce bringing impure children into this world. Each child is the absolute most important thing brought into the country each day. Babies have the greatest potential to learn and grow of all of the living things on earth. Every newcomer to earth deserves to have the best given to them; they deserve tender love and care to become truly magnanimous, not handicapping circumstances that prevents the state from reaching its great potential. Children shouldn’t be disadvantaged before they take their first breath by coming to parents and a state education system that is ill-prepared to serve the needs of the child’s body, mind and spirit. What if we treated every child this way. What if the living circumstance into which they were born didn’t define them? What if we could actually put faith into our educational system to produce model human beings? It’s a long shot, but I’m not sure we’re exactly on that path right now, and we might want to think about it.

These types of ideas certainly have potential for the greater good of society and an amazing education system that’s sure to produce similar results to those we want to see here in the states. The creator of such a plan?

No other than Adolf Hitler, who will always be remembered as ‘the incarnation of absolute evil.’ The man Elie Wiesel of Boston University said ‘thought to reign by selling the soul of his people to the thousand demons of hate and of death.’ His plans were to create a clearly superior people through the elimination of anyone and everything different, through the objectives I mentioned. It was a great plan for the education of his drone population, but they went on to carry out the evils of his cold, black heart. His system inspired masses of people to commit heinous crimes of humanity against another people solely on the basis of their differences.

Good Idea: Educate our children to be the best in the world

Bad Idea: Educate our children to believe others in the world are weaker because they are different

Good Idea: Eliminate feelings of incompetence instill feelings of self-worth and confidence

Bad Idea: Eliminate an entire race because they are different

A system that produces mindless, heartless drones of evil should not be the recipient of any praise whatsoever…but someone’s got to consider the amazing effectiveness of their training. An education can be great, but it must be accompanied by the right reasons. A Jewish survivor said, “"My eyes saw what no person should witness. Gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot and killed by high school and college graduates. So I’m suspicious of education.” If we use our wisdom for evil purposes, if we become magnanimous only to trample underfoot others who we deem as lesser individuals and peoples just for being different, something has gone horribly wrong. “Reading and writing,” continued the survivor, “and spelling and history and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our students human.”

The Great Inquisitor

Perhaps some of you have taken the time to read "The Brothers Karamozov." I have not, however this past week I did read the great tale of Book Five known as "The Grand Inquisitor." The book, as many of you may know, is about two brothers--one preparing to be a monk, the other agnostic. In this chapter the agnostic brother, Ivan, tells a story in attempt to paint an ugly picture of the Catholic church. The story poses the question "What if Christ came to earth to during the times of the Spanish Inquisition?" From reading this along with my other knowledge of the inquisition, fostered by Monty Python, among other things, freedom in the Catholic church during the inquisition is actually quite comparable to some of the problems children encounter in the classroom.

The passage that brought this thought to me came from the Inquisitor’s statement about Jesus’ living bread. “They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them.” And while the Inquisitor might be talking about the difficulty of mortal men administering an eternal gospel to their people, we can understand it in an educational context as well. We can allow students to have many freedoms and school, but giving them those freedoms will not allow us to educate all the children. Obviously some students will make choices that will hinder their ability to learn and progress in their studies. The Inquisitor’s answer was to deny freedom, for the benefit of the whole, whereas Christ’s plan (as we who understand the Plan of Salvation understand) gives us freedom to choose, and experience the consequences of sin and error. “Nothing is more seductive for man,” argued the Inquisitor, “than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.”
And yet we still send our children to these schools of compulsory learning, where we as well were sent, and where we chose to attend after high school. The Inquisitor tells his prisoner that “man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find some one quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.” It is because we often make bad decisions, and when we’re sick of feeling those bad decisions we decide that it will feel better if others made those decisions for us. The gospel isn’t as easy as this, for even though we are depicted by anti-Mormon media as conforming self-righteous drones, the truth is that making these decisions is incredibly hard. I haven’t met one member of the church who thinks it’s easy making righteous choices every second of every day, nor one member whose heart doesn’t fill with guilt the moment they do sin.
And that’s why compulsory school works so well for people. We would hate for our children to make poor educational decisions, and we would hate to be made responsible for their poor achievement, so we found a way that everyone is given the same path, and is forced to follow it until they crave it--until “it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony the endure at present in making a free decision for themselves,” as the Inquisitor said. Even if we really aren’t sure why we’re doing what we are, why the hoops have been held in certain places, or how we get good grades without learning or putting forth effort (which no one ever really second guesses, but should), we continue to go show up, go through the hoops, fail to learn and put forth minimal effort. “And if it is a mystery, we too have a right to preach a mystery,” said the Inquisitor, “and to teach them that it’s not the free judgment of their hearts, not love that matters, but a mystery which they must follow blindly, even against their own conscience.”
I’m not really sure who the Inquisitor represents in these present days. I want to say Rod Paige, but I won’t. Our system needs a fix, but to give freedom is too much, I believe. Even if it’s against the principles of the gospel, even if spiritual answers are the answers to all--even temporal--problems, even if I don’t like the idea and can criticize it to death, what have we that’s any better? And how do you implement change in an institution so set in its ways? (Like introducing universal health care to the United States--not even worth the work.) Freedom is a good concept, but not as practical as we might wish it were.

On "Wealth and Poverty"

"Wealth and Poverty" was written by a BYU professor in, like, 1994 (revised several times since) and is the heated topic of many classroom discussions these days. I couldn't find a link to anything on line, but I have it saved as a Word document and will send it to anyone if you'd like to see it.

My wife Courtney told me about this paper last semester when she read it for a business class. The class discussion got very heated as people began to defend their feelings about the poor. Johnson claims that he often finds “anti-poor attitudes” among students, and that they see the poor as lazy, stupid, satisfied with being poor, and that they deserve to be poor. These are exactly the attitudes that Courtney told me were being defended by her fellow classmates. And what’s worse, these people hide themselves behind the curtain of what they regard as religious principles.

One of their biggest issues is with government support of the poor. I will admit to being on that side while I was younger, but I was hit with a giant liberal bullet my Freshman year out here at the Y and became more tolerant of some things. Since members of the church are most often social conservatives, they throw their votes to the Republican Party, as well as other right-wing organizations, and subscribe to all their platform has to offer, including economic issues. Many of the statistics Johnson quotes in his paper (written in 1994) describe the change in economic climate from the late 1970s to the early 1990s--a twelve year period in which Reaganomics highlighted the American economic system. During that time the poverty programs set in place were what Johnson called “wealth-fare” because of the subsidies and tax credits the big businesses received through Reagan’s trickle-down plan. Without needing to poll a group, or run a survey, I could probably tell you today that Ronald Reagan with his conservative, capitalist Cold War agenda is the most popular president in LDS culture, most likely known as the thirteenth apostle in many a Mormon home.

Reaganomics “solved” the economy with capitalism, and President Reagan tore down the Berlin Wall, proving capitalism to be superior to the socialist way of the U.S.S.R.. The combination of these ideas in LDS culture have culminated in animosity towards the idea of the government helping the poor. A lot of it has to do with “where my hard earned money is going, and why isn’t it my wallet,” but I think that’s exactly what Johnson’s telling us the problem is. We should want to help the poor. The idea of small government has taught us that the government should be taxing us less, allowing us to make wise decisions with our money and do as we wish. Johnson has observed that this belief in free capitalism comes from a core religious belief in free agency. Thus earning more money is what God would want us to do. In doing so, we pay tithing and are able to make more generous contributions to other church funds, as well as other charities as we wish. Such charitable institutions eliminate the need for socialist governments consisting of the liberal devils of universal health care and employment safety nets, right? No.

(The following remarks do represent my feelings concerning policy adoption of the United States, only my approval of similar institutions in other countries and cultures)

What churches and charities do is not sufficient to care for the needs of those who need it. Government programs that give aid to the impoverished are not against the gospel, but part of God’s plan as we are to care for each other. Any society that believes in looking out for their fellow countrymen and creates government institutions which can do so deserves the respect of all practicing Christians. These programs are very expensive and create a heavy tax burden on the citizens, which is not a very appealing thought to Americans who live in a country where lower taxes lead the rhetoric of politicians smoozing their way into office. Countries that agree on such bold ideas receive my admiration, as our government finds it hard to agree on anything. Johnson declares the great unrecognized sin of our LDS subculture is that we do nothing or selfishly cling to one’s wealth while others suffer, and do so seeking protection under the flag of capitalism.

When is the government helping too much? Johnson cites economists who say that suffering and deprivation is a useful motivator for people to try harder. Many people say that such systems would not provide sufficient motivation for people to work. In the Christian picture of things, are we to judge what people do with our charitable gifts? Some argue that they don’t want to be an enabler to addiction or continued demotivation to work ethic. Whether it be a man with a sign at a street corner, or a single mother at the welfare office, the argument remains the same. I don’t think that people realize that welfare checks are written out to families on the basis of the needs of the children. How can we refuse to give aid to poor children despite what we might believe of their parents (considering the stigmas among Johnson’s students that poor people are poor because they’re lazy, or they’ve earned their position in life and deserve poverty)? I don’t see how we can judge others for their financial situation, seeing that most people’s wealth and socioeconomic status derives from having the right parents, the right genes or being at the right place at the right time. Don’t we believe as Christians, that people deserve more chances? Isn’t the Lord standing with his hand “stretched out still?” (Isaiah 5:25) If people mess up have they truly earned their situation, or do we as Christians believe that they deserve another shot at life? I think we know the answer. Further, I believe that we cannot judge others for not taking the same path we have chosen to follow when secondary education is as viable an option to poor children as earning a million dollars is to the middle class.

Wealth seems to be more situational than earned most times. We may not see ourselves as wealthy from our own situation, but what is ‘wealthy’ anyways? Johnson suggests that today’s ‘modest’ living could easily be defined as a ‘high’ level of comfort and convenience, whereas in times past such circumstances were only available to the upper class. Most people will put themselves into the category of ‘middle class,’ however I think the upper class not a static level, just the next one someone wants to reach. Johnson believes that wealth, materialism and self-indulgent consumption stand at odds with contemplation of Christian morality. Isn’t this what we do when we try to accumulate more and more wealth? The question is really is it morally acceptable to let the rich get richer while the poor get poorer (something that is really happening, not just said in rhetoric, mind you)? Thomas Jefferson is quoted in the paper to have said that if people forgot themselves “in the sole faculty of making money,” the future of the republic would become bleak. I think the Lord would make a similar bleak prediction for one’s spiritual standing. In the story of the widow’s mite we learn that the Lord’s judgment over the use of money is based not on how much we give away, but on how much we keep for ourselves.