Where the needs are

Germany has over 30 Autobahnkirche.

Wolfgang Fritz: "In my life I have to fight all day. In the construction business, we fight about everything. But I also have to fight to stay a human being."

One site is family-owned:

And at Exit 76 I find one of Germany's biggest motorway services. It is owned by Manuela Strohofer and her family.

"We have three gas stations, a garage, a hotel, a swimming pool, three restaurants - and our church, of course!" reveals Manuela.

The Strohofers decided to build their motorway church after Manuela's younger brother Anton was killed in a road accident.

"Our church has a motto," says Manuela. "It's from Matthew chapter 11; verse 28 where Jesus says 'Come to me, all of you. You're tired from carrying heavy loads and I will give you rest'."

R&R or R&W?

Tushnet

Eve Tushnet wrote how sin is like a child. She's an interesting and lively writer:

"I've done a lot of awful stuff in public, because I'm awesome like that, so if you know me just assume that this post is about something worse than the thing you're thinking of."

What do Zombies mean?

\I’m told that "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" drew on Cold War themes, in particular the fear of alien traitors among us who look just like friends. Or at any rate, this contributed to its popularity: it touched a nerve.

I’m not in close touch with pop culture, but it seems to me as though every few weeks there’s some new zombie-themed book or movie or game; and I frequently hear about "preparing for the zombie invasion."

We all know (I hope!) that zombies are fiction, but their popularity says something about what people are feeling. In this version zombies are living dead who reproduce by killing or infecting others. One zombie becomes many, and your only hope for survival is to physically isolate yourself, maybe with a few trusted allies, and kill everything outside that comes close, because they are probably zombies. All civilization disintegrates.

The coming of the zombies begins small, with only one or two, but avalanches into a complete breakdown of trust as those we thought were friends become poisoned and band together against us in mindless hatred. In some stories the zombie infection could have been contained at the start if the powers that be had acted wisely or decisively, but they never do.

I take it that zombies are a symbol of something many of us worry about. Not that we’re terrified, or we’d give over symbols and tell the stories straight out; but worried: something is happening, something is coming, and it is very bad. Perhaps the "end of civilization," just as in the stories, is what we see looming.

There seem to be a few parallels in modern society. I find less and less of a "we’re all in this together" feeling. Race relations are in some places better than ever with opportunities galore and a well-off black middle class; but with a third of blacks locked into a ghetto culture, and with demagogues hard at work, I can’t say that I find the black/white climate overall is very good. Hispanic/white and Hispanic/black relations are pretty uneven too.

But I don’t think race relations are the whole story, or even most of it. There’s a universality to the zombie invasion that doesn’t map onto "us vs them" racial splits. Even the intense political/philosophical divides don’t have that same universal threat. It doesn’t make artistic sense to equate them.

Despite the many electronic means of connecting with each other I see less interaction with neighbors than a few decades ago (I’m part of the problem myself here), and although we know more about people we don’t know them as well. By itself that’s hardly a thing to fear, but our inchoate sense of isolation magnifies other threats. Still, that doesn’t seem quite enough to justify the zombie myth.

But if we flip the order of events in the zombie story, the zombies start to make excellent sense. Suppose the economy collapses. Who can you trust? Nobody you don’t know (and in a city that is essentially everybody), and not even all of those you think you know. This isn’t an exaggeration: civilization can quickly break down: it did in Argentina.

Perhaps the zombie myth reflects the fear that we, already somewhat isolated, will be living in an "every man for himself" wilderness if the powers that be continue their feckless course.

Bon Mots

Youngest Son noted that up-to-date New Age types try to find a Spirit GPS instead of an old-fashioned Spirit Guide

Book of Days

by Gene Wolfe

This is a collection of short stories organized by holiday: Arbor Day has a story involving a tree, Lincoln's birthday is commemorated with a story called "How the Whip Came Back," and so on. The longest story is "Forlesen" (for Labor Day), a Kafka-esque piece about work in middle management with an acrid edge that suggests bitter experience with management fads. "St. Brandon" is a wonderful sendup of Irish folk tales.

You won't find many cheerful stories among them, but Wolfe is a skillful writer. I'd say "read it," but with the caveat that when I said that to my better half she found the stories she read depressing.

Double life

You should get to know the head of the Social Security Administration. Really. Go read it.

Morgan Hill

What in the world is going on in Morgan Hill High School? The administration claims they were trying to forestall possible violence, but if they were really that afraid of violence they should have cancelled Cinco de Mayo entirely (and if scuttlebutt is true, good riddance to a fake holiday).

I find no defensible reason for Mexican students at a US school to take umbrage at US students wearing US flags during an unofficial celebration of a foreign sort-of holiday. If they consider that to be "in your face" offensive, they’ve got a whole world of surprises waiting for them. I’ve seen substantially worse than that as an American visiting in Europe, and that’s a moderately friendly region.

Soldier of Arete

by Gene Wolfe

Years ago I read The Shadow of the Torturer and the three subsequent volumes (I hear there are more now), patiently waiting for the appropriate volumes to be returned to the library so I could read them in sequence. I thought it a very good series, and never got around to acquiring the set myself. (An odd contradiction, I know) His name came up recently and I figured I should see what he’d written recently.

Soldier of Arete turns out to have been the middle volume in a series—and it turns out not to matter much. Latro is a warrior, of hero caliber, who often sees the gods—but who cannot remember anything but the current day, and must rely on his papyrus diary as his memory when he has time to read it. The era is shortly after the defeat of the Great King by the Greek alliance. Wolfe has fun with the Greek names: which group is "Thought" and which is "Rope" and so on. Latro is traveling with his loyal slave girl, a mantis, a soiled dryad (shouldn’t have done that, Latro—now Artemis is mad at you), and "the black man" on what initially seems a simple but difficult mission, but gets deeply complicated by his new directive from Artemis. Gods and ghosts and magic are central to the book, and I suspect the confusing ending is related to the missing first volume.

Were it not for the ending I’d confidently say "read it," but I think I need to find the first volume before I can properly judge it. Wolfe is imaginative, has done his homework on ancient Greece and Thrace, and has the chutzpah and skill to pull off a prose passage by Pindar.

May and scrapings

I called Youngest Daughter to look at a bedraggled wet baby rabbit on our sidewalk at the garden border. It was no larger than my fist, and didn’t move a muscle. We’d had a steady light rain all day, and the temperature didn’t get above 46F all day. I set off on my errands, figuring that as soon as we were gone the rabbit would high-tail it for the burrow. I’d forgotten that most of the rabbits in the area seem to favor scrapings instead—and scrapings offer no shelter from rain and cold. It was fallen on its side when I came back with Youngest Son, and is now buried in the new garden I’m digging where the tree used to be. May in Wisconsin…

Bon Mots

Youngest Son noted that in contrast to books, you can tell a pop singer by her covers.

Sometimes by her physical covers too... she may even bald herself or streak if she's gaga for attention.

Worship Servants

The motto of a worship team needs to be "He must increase and I must decrease." The team stands before the congregation and plays and sings the songs they've practiced all week—and instead of looking for applause the way every other musician does they hope the congregation sings praises to the Lord and forgets about the team.

C.S. Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you may talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet if at all only in a nightmare.

All day long we are in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities it is with awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere mortal, Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations, these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit -- immortal horrors or ever lasting splendours.

When we look out at the congregation we see saints: priests appointed by God to sing praises and authorized to bring petitions and thanks before His throne. He hears them when they call. There is not an "ordinary" human in the group, and they have assembled to worship God in a special way together; with songs and prayer and blessing and recitation and instruction and a holy meal.

Our job is to shape the service and sing and pray and play our instruments to make it easier for the congregation to pray and sing their worship together. Applause is not a reward but a defeat.

Our brothers and sisters don't always have musical training, so we guide them in songs so they can sing their best. Some are shy to speak out in service or have trouble pronouncing long words—no matter, they are priests and we their servants in worship. Perhaps some have never thought before to pronounce God's blessing on their neighbor—we can model it for them.

That worshiper whose voice drifts between keys is an exemplar of humble service to poor children, and whose holiness I do not come close to emulating. Dare I interpose announcements about potlucks in between his praise to God and the reading of God's word?

No matter whether the culture has the congregants dancing the aisles or kneeling at the mourner's bench—our task is just to make it easier. They do not need us: God hears them just as well when they pray without a leader, or sing a capella without a director.

As for me—I enjoy being the center of attention and praise. So my current job is nearly ideal—the more perfectly I anticipate needs and adjust the monitors, the more invisible I am.

Newspapers

I've said before that I've never seen a science report on a subject I was familiar with that didn't contain at least one misunderstanding--unless it was an entirely fluff piece like some of the recent LHC stories. I don't think I can describe this effects of this better than Michael Crichton. Go read his speech about speculations. The "Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" is just a side note, but a good one.

Dissing and Consequences

Everything old is new again. Cyrano’s extreme sensitivity to any hint of insult works well enough in literature, but it isn’t so pleasant to meet it on the street. Once again, reputation is everything on the street. This time around, instead of "honor and the duel" we have the drive-by shooting (another one yesterday). Although I wonder how different it really is: how often did the prickly dandies of old resort to surprise in the alley? Risking your skin for your honor can be a little costly, unless you’re up against a hapless civilian. Maybe part of the mechanical brutality we see is a function of the organization into gangs; but that can’t be the whole reason for the difference since the duelists of centuries past were often members of deadly groups too.

I don’t yearn for the days of duels. A well-trained tough guy could throw his weight around secure that the ordinary Joe would just have to bite his tongue: just like gangsters do today. And the excuse of duels could mask a lot of ordinary murder. But I wonder if duels helped buffer a deadly focus on reputation by requiring that the offendee meet the offender on terms of a kind of equality. There’s probably no way to tell, though.

GM Dissembling

If you just watch the evening news, you might think think this was wonderful news. GM paying back its debt is great, right? Except that it is all smoke and mirrors. It is ironic in a grim sort of way: the banks, ground zero for the collapse, seem to be on their way to getting their loans repaid, and some of them are in such very deep trouble that nobody will talk about it. GM is using borrowed money to pay their debts in order to borrow more.

Juggler of Worlds

by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner

200 Years Before the Discovery of the Ringworld

This is a sequel/parallel to Fleet of Worlds and to Neutron Star. The story touches on and slightly ties together many short stories, which starts to get slightly annoying.

The thesis is that civilizations have to use the insane to manage relations with other civilizations: relatively courageous Puppeteers (defined to be insane by the rest of the herd) and paranoid humans. And so we have the interwoven stories of Nessus the Puppeteer and Sigmund Ausfaller the human.

Since Ausfaller (in charge of anticipating and foiling nefarious maneuvers by various aliens) is seriously paranoid, it is hard to make him a sympathetic character, and the book relies heavily on Niven's trademark puzzles. For a change, a character shows some jealousy when his inamorata goes for someone else--Niven hasn't been very realistic at portraying human love lives in the past. This must be Lerner's influence.

The Puppeteers appear as less than super-intelligent, with emotion-driven politics and sometimes surprising carelessness.

I don't want to introduce spoilers, but since the action all happens before Ringworld you know in advance that there has to be some benign resolution to the plots and counterplots and growing threats. Let me just say that the denouement ties together so many threads and puzzles that I don't see much more room for new stories in Known Space, without introducing an entirely new cast of alien characters. The Ringworld series is tied up and early Known Space is now pretty much tied up: pre-Known Space might have a few stories in it, but probably not many puzzles.

I understand that other authors have written some Known Space works (some in the Man-Kzin War series, for example), but I have read none of them.

Not the best, but if you like Known Space you should read it.

Fleet of Worlds

by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner

200 Years Before the Discovery of the Ringworld

Niven's “Known Space” series seemed to be tapped out, but four years ago the authors found a section where some new problem could fit. As you can probably guess from the title, Puppeteers figure prominently here: most of the characters are Citizens (Puppeteers) or Colonists (hmm....) most of the latter of whom work on the farm planets. Nessus (remember him?) is one of the main characters, and much of the story comes from his perspective. The time is set a little after the Puppeteers disappeared, and Nessus and three Colonists are serving as scouts for the Fleet of Worlds.

One rather startling new feature of this entry—something I haven't seen in Niven's Known Space before—is the importance of moral concerns. Niven's stories always have some kind of puzzle, and this is no exception—though its setting seems a smidgeon contrived. The Puppeteers are generally believable and the culture seems to work OK. The Colonist's reaction seems a little premature, but justified in the end. Fitting a story into an existing framework and tying up loose ends from other stories is always tricky, but Niven seems to have learned how to do it.

On the whole a competent book, and if you like Known Space you'll probably like this.

Media Woes are Old

"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed." Mark Twain

I'd love to read what that wonderful wordsmith would have made of the TV news and news channels...

An economic view of contraception

In an interesting exercise, Reichert looks at the effect of contraception on relations between the sexes using "microeconomic reasoning." He concludes that it has resulted in "a massive redistribution of wealth and power from women and children to men." Have a look and see what you think.

The Party of Death

by Ramesh Ponnuru

A wise man once said that the easiest way to learn to hate a man was to do him some injury. Because most of us aren’t eager to ask forgiveness, we try to justify ourselves—“he deserved it”—and grow to hate the man we hurt.

Ponnuru doesn’t deal with that aspect, but I think it is an important driver in the abortion wars. A person cannot “not know” that abortion kills humans, and the only way to keep from facing that knowledge is to deny the humanity of others, and begin clinging to a utilitarian view of people that measures value by what they can do. That view and its logic unites abortion, euthanasia, human cloning, eugenic policies, destructive embryonic research, and so on.

---

Ponnuru tells the story of Roe vs Wade and its lesser-known sibling Bolton, which together make abortion legal through all 9 months for any or no reason whatever. This pair of decisions didn’t arise in a vacuum, but out of a population control campaign and mindset, and they have corrupted the political, legal, and ethical framework of the nation. More than that, once such things are defined as rights there rises a guilty compulsion to spread abortion around the world.

It is not exactly secret among lawyers, even the most staunchly pro-abortion ones, that Roe had no constitutional foundation. Nor is it secret that Roe is not limited, nor that “health” is not restricted to meaning physical or mental health. But these details are not widely known in the general public because of the campaign of lies clouding the issue. I use the word lies deliberately and justifiably.

Ponnuru systematically goes through the many aspects of the debate, from the Cuomo “my personal beliefs cannot drive my public policy” equivocations through the partial birth abortion lies, the obfuscation and illogic, the insane logic of Casey (“the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” was taken as a reason to support killing), and the corruption of history (historians subverted their own research to provide a pro-abortion brief for Webster). The first point he addresses is the silly claim that opposition to abortion is necessarily religious. You don't need to follow any religion whatever to notice that there is no demarcation between a baby with one foot out of the womb and one still inside, and none between either and an adult--all are on the same continuum of development.

Ponnuru shows the cultural and logical links to euthanasia and infanticide. Singer (the proponent of infanticide) is alleged by pro-abortion stalwarts to be beyond the pale, but he was hired by and works without complaint from colleagues who march railing against pro-life speakers at the drop of a hat. The Clintons get applause in the media for “recognizing the painful decisions in abortion” and wanting them to be “rare,” but the record of both is unremittingly and extremely pro-abortion, rejecting even such modest modifications as requiring parental consent for minors. NARAL has evan objected to maternal care programs on the basis that they would discourage abortions.

The abortion issue has almost completely corrupted the Democratic party—Ponnuru tells of of member after member who changed their minds when their ambitions turned national and they wanted the backing of the party masters. The Republican party is nominally opposed to abortion, but in practice not very interested in protecting the unborn. The mainstream media is thoroughly in the tank for abortion, carefully labeling any restrictions as extreme and all opponents as oppressive.

Ponnuru’s analysis of the political situation is excessively rosy, not at all anticipating the election of a President who supported killing infants who survived abortion and a Congress and Senate to go along with him.

The book is not pleasant reading; as it is an expose of the lies and corruption that support this culture of death. Read it anyway.

Did you read the online contract?

Did you buy from GameStation?

You might want to review the fine print. You'll be eternally grateful :-)

And let no-one ever say that computer game manufacturers are soul-less money-grubbers.