Start Of The Fire

Turns out, the big Agua Dulce fire that threatened so many homes right here in my area was started by a kid playing with matches out in the desert. 38,000 acres reduced to ash, 21 homes lost, and some beloved local institutions (like the Lombardi pumpkin patch) damaged, because a bored suburban kid decided to, literally, play with fire.

The boy's age has not been released, so it's a little early to start passing very severe judgments, tempting as it might be to do that. Kids do stupid stuff sometimes, but that doesn't mean that they're malicious. Parents don't always have the ability to monitor what their kids are up to. Parents are encouraged to tell their kids to "go out and play," but there's always a possibility that when they do that, something like this could happen.

I've never been one to say that parents should be held responsible for everything their kids do, because that doesn't seem like a reasonable interpretation of a parent's degree of control. And, to complicate matters, kids just don't always think things through or know what the consequences of their actions might be.

There isn't a good answer to the problem of what to do with kids whose adventures lead to serious consequences like this. This is why law enforcement officers and prosecutors and judges have to be given discretion to make judgment calls on a case-by-case basis.

What Do You Have To Do To Get Disbarred In Wisconsin?

People sometimes ask me, can an attorney be disbarred for filing a frivolous lawsuit? No, it takes misconduct more egregious than that. A lot more egregious than that. Apparently, extorting three-way sex with a client and his girlfriend, comingling funds, having a history of substance abuse, using one client’s money to pay another and other client funds to buy a car for yourself, snorting cocaine on camera, violating the very bail release terms the attorney had negotiated for his criminal defense client by doing drugs with him, and worst of all, keeping poor client accounting records is only enough to warrant a three-year suspension, according to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. So filing a frivolous lawsuit? No probalo!

Amusingly, a substantial issue in the case (see ¶¶ 57-59) was whether the lawyer’s three-way encounter involving himself, his client, and his client’s girlfriend constituted having sex between lawyer and client – they were “sharing” the girlfriend but did not “cross swords,” so to speak, themselves. This was the only one of the fifteen counts of misconduct upon which the Wisconsin Supremes found that the lawyer in question did not violate.

Hat tip to my man Eugene Volokh; if you have time, read the comments to Eugene's post, some of which are quite funny.

Making The Island

With a lot of work, the bulk of it done by The Wife, our house (particularly our kitchen) is starting to come together. We think we'll have everything ready to go around Thanksgiving. Just in time for the holidays, so no one will come to our housewarming.

(Is it really a "housewarming" if you've already been living in the house for a month or more?)

So, since we don't have enough to do to finish the remodel, we decided to take on a new project: building a floating kitchen island. One morning's worth of cooking eggs and bacon convinced me that there is inadequate storage space, so we needed more cabinets somewhere. The Wife's solution: buy pre-made cabinets, mount them on casters, and put a topper of some sort on there. We're staining the island cabinets to match the ebony stain on the mounted kitchen cabinets, and while ideally I'd like to find the same kind of granite tile that's in the kitchen now, we're settling for a butcher-block top. She also sold me on the idea of properly-stained beadboard to line the cabinets with; when it's all done it should be quite impressive.

I don't know how much things like this cost retail. Our raw materials were just over $400.

Some time over the course of this week, I'll assemble the various parts and we'll get the thing in the kitchen. I also have to finish cleaning out the last of the cabinet doors because the goopy stain remover didn't work as well as we'd hoped. The Wife's job is to finish the pantry doors and get the completed cabinet doors re-mounted (because the cats keep crawling in the cabinets that don't have doors, and eating the people food inside).

All the work is starting to wear at The Wife, whose mood today was not good. I'm sore, too, but I suspect it's worse for her. Breathing all of those paint and stain fumes can't be helping, either; we've both been fighting splitting headaches all day. All I can do is help her as best I can and hope she starts to feel better soon.

So Much For Rocktober

In the end, it came down to John Papelbon pitching to Seth Smith. Not names for the ages, I don't think, but the Red Sox's pitching was just too much for the Rockies, who got themselves swept in the Series. So I'd better enjoy using the phrase "Rocktober" while I can, because some playoff-happy executives in Denver decided that they would trademark that phrase, so beloved of classic rock radio stations nationwide.

The Real G.I. Joe

Apparently, for an upcoming movie to be directed by Stephen Sommers (of "The Mummy" fame), G.I. Joe is being transformed into a multinational rapid response force based in Brussels, Belgium. According to Variety, "G.I. Joe is now a Brussels-based outfit that stands for Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity, an international co-ed force of operatives who use hi-tech equipment to battle Cobra, an evil organization headed by a double-crossing Scottish arms dealer."

Huh?

G.I. Joe was based on a real guy. A U.S. Marine, to be exact, Platoon Sergeant Mitchell Paige, who literally singlehandedly held off more than 2,000 invading Japanese infantry from taking over a then-unknown island called Guadalcanal. That's why G.I. Joe has to be a U.S. Marine, a "Real American Hero," the way I got to know him as a child of the Cold War.

Take a moment to read the links, please. Particularly impressive was his solo, handheld use of a .30 caliber M1919 Browning, a weapon usually mounted on a tripod and controlled by a gunner and an ammunition feeder. His citation for receipt of the Congressional Medal of Honor reads:

For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry in action above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the Second Battalion, Seventh Marines, First Marine Division, in combat against enemy Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands Area on October 26, 1942. When t he enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, Platoon Sergeant Paige, commanding a machine-gun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he manned his gun, and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire against the advancing hordes until reinforcements finally arrived. Then, forming a new line, he dauntlessly and aggressively led a bayonet charge, driving the enemy back and preventing a break through in our lines. His great personal valor and unyielding devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

I'm no specialist in infantry tactics, but it seems to me the reason you orchestrate a bayonet charge in 1942 is because you ran out of ammunition. I don't think that Col. Paige, who died four years ago, would have liked being recast as a multinational force based in the chocolate confectioner's capital.

The movie, by the way, sounds suspiciously like a wondrous piece of B-moviedom from the mid-1980's. Now, I'm all for a cheesy B-movie. But, Hollywood, must you destroy the icons of my youth to create them? Yes, yes I guess you must. It's in your nature.

Evolution

As longtime readers of the blog know, I am consistently annoyed at attempts to teach creationism (the idea that the universe, or life, was created by a supernatural entity, such as God) in public school science classes. I don't have a problem with people who believe that God had a hand in these, but explaining a natural phenomenon by reference to the supernatural is not science by definition.

Rather, it is a reference to religion -- the only "creator" who is ever proffered with any degree of seriousness by advocates of "intelligent design" or other forms of creationism is God. The origins of the "intelligent design" movement are readily traceable to the end of the "creation science" movement after Epperson v. Arkansas. This is well-chronicled in the post-trial statement of decision in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.

First of all, let's not confuse "science" and "religion." Science is a method of analyzing the world and finding explanations for phenomena. Religion is a search for ultimate meaning in the world, either through internal meditation or study of some purported inspired or revealed knowledge. Science, by definition, excludes all reference to any kind of supernatural phenomena. Religion, almost always by definition, requires a reference to the supernatural, because it seeks answers to different kinds of questions, and in a different kind of way, than does science.

On to the subject at hand. It doesn't seem to me that the fact of evolution is subject to question by anyone rational. Evolution occurs; you can watch it happen in a laboratory. The well-documented phenomenon of microbes developing resistance to antibiotics is substantial, tangible, easily-replicable, and sufficient proof that the microbes in question do evolve, and over a period of only a few generations. It's just plain a fact that those microbes evolve; you can make them do it in a petri dish, every time.

Evolution is also not nearly as well-understood or as well-accepted a scientific theory as I would have thought. The theory of evolution is an attempt to explain the diversity of species by way of observation of the fact of evolution. The question that the theory of evolution seeks to answer is not "How was life created?" but rather "Why are there so many different species of life?"

A lot of evolution skeptics say that it takes as much, if not more, "faith" to "believe" in evolution than it does in a religion. Others (including my uncle, who I can attest is a very smart man) say that evolution is, itself a religion. I say in response to this that evolution does not meet the standard English definitions of a "religion" and requires no faith at all to believe in -- any more than it requires an iota of "faith" to believe in gravity or electromagnetism. Finally, another common criticism of evolution is that, like creationism, it is not falsifiable. This is not true -- an evolutionary biologist can come up with hundreds of examples of fossils that, if found, would substantially disprove standard evolutionary theory, like a 300,000,000 year old skeleton of a dog. This would not necessarily make the biologist start believing in divine intervention in the creation of humanity, but it would require a striking revision to what most scientists understand to be the history of the evolution of life forms.

The big objection to evolution is, ultimately, that it is inconsistent with the idea that God created Man, as described in the Bible. Whether or not the Genesis myth is taken literally or figuratively, evolution provides an explanation for the existence of homo sapiens that does not rely on anything but natural phenomena. Based on this, the most common criticism of evolution that I've heard is a contention that the fossil record, upon which a lot of historical suggestion of the evolution of homo sapiens is based, is some combination of incomplete, inaccurate, and/or ambiguous. Evolutionary biologists from the academy respond, "no, it's not," and those of us who lack training and expertise in archeology and biology are all at a loss to discuss, intelligently, who is right. To this end, it seems reasonable to rely on the conclusions that experts in a field offer -- knowing, of course, that it's always possible that evidence can be found that will require the experts to revise their position.

So with that by way of my initial thoughts, have at it. Can evolution and religion be reconciled? Should we even try? Should they be taught side-by-side as equivalents?

A Moment of Silence

It's astonishing to me that we're still arguing about prayer in public schools. I would have thought that this was a resolved issue -- schools can neither sponsor religious expression, nor prohibit voluntary religious expression on the part of students that does not interfere with instructional activity. But, some people just don't get it. So, the Illinois Legislature changed a law schools to have a moment at the beginning of class for "silent prayer or reflection" to instead require that the teacher have such a moment of silence. And it has earned the state (and a local school district) a lawsuit for its officiousness.

This isn't hard, people. A school can neither sponsor nor prohibit voluntary religious expression.

Examples of prohibiting religious expression include:

• Not allowing students to form clubs organized around religion
• Punishing students for prayer or Bible study during non-class time
• Dress codes targeting clothing expressing religious statements

Examples of sponsoring religious expression include:

• Invocations of God during school ceremonies
• Teaching religious doctrine in science or health class
• Telling students that it's okay to use instructional time for prayer

A public school can't do any of the above.

Yes, there are some closer calls than this. What if a student includes an invocation of God when giving a commencement speech? (I think she should be allowed to do so without penalty; she doesn't speak for the school.) What if a school's code of conduct requires students to not discriminate against one another on the basis of sexual orientation, and a student wears a T-shirt invoking particular Biblical passages condemning homosexuality? (The student is properly subject to discipline; the policy does not target religion.) What if the Bible study club wants to use a classroom during the lunch period to meet and have a religious activity? (No dice; public facilities cannot support private religious activity -- but at the same time, the Bible study club can meet in an area generally open to the student body, like a lunchroom, and school employees should permit them to meet and punish other students who might try to disrupt the meeting.)

But the "moment of silence" is not a close call. It is a transparent film over a public school's official encouragement of students to pray. Adding the option of "silent meditation" does not ameliorate the fact that the school is using instructional time to encourage religious activity. It's readily apparent that Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, Taoists, Shintoists, and atheists are not asking for this to be included in class time, and a reasonable student would infer that the school is making an official accommodation to people who want to pray to Jehovah and that the opportunity for non-devotional "meditation" is not the reason that the moment of silence is taking place. For that reason, it's an establishment of religion and a violation of the Constitution.

I realize this is not the greatest threat to liberty that we face in this country. But it's important because while small, it represents another step down a path leading to a very bad destination.

Medical Bleg

This afternoon, after some exceptionally dull depositions, I came back to the office, ate some take-out lunch, and sat down to do some other work.

At about 2:30, my back started to really ache. I wondered if it was bad posture catching up with me, or something bad that I'd eaten. But the pain was localized just on my left flank, a few inches above my waist. Within twenty minutes, the pain had become intense; it felt like I'd been stabbed and it hurt to stand up. I tried to go to the bathroom to relieve myself, but that was of no avail.

I made a few more phone calls but by quarter after three, I was starting to feel a little dizzy and sick to my stomach, and I couldn't really focus on anything but the pain. I felt a powerful compulsion to lay down, flat on my back. I let my assistant know I wasn't feeling my very best and drove myself home.

On the drive back to Soffit House, the pain began radiating out into my left thigh and up to my ribcage. I cried out loud several times on the drive home, shifting about uncomfortably because of the discomfort. I'm not usually weepy when I hurt (pain makes me angry, not sad), but I felt tears coming down my face as I drove.

When I got home, I fed the animals and let the dogs out, and then I went into the bedroom. There, I stripped down to my underwear and laid down flat on my back on the bed. That seemed to help a little bit; it took some pressure off my back. I began to wonder what was going on inside me to cause so much pain, and what I could do about it other than take a drive to the hospital to wait twelve hours for emergency room treatment.

Keep in mind, all this time, the pain is localized on my left side, in my gut, closer to my back than my belly. Since it was on my left, I knew I could rule out appendicitis (the appendix is on the right, and would have been somewhat lower than this) but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on because I was in so much pain. Granted, when you're in physical pain, it's not always easy to think clearly about what's going on, and I'd had a full plate of depositions and procedural wrangling already that day.

The best guess I had while I was laying there, trying to hold still because writhing around in pain just made it worse, was that I had not digested a part of my lunch properly, and the food had begun to impact my intestine. Nothing about that scenario sounded in the least bit pleasant to me. I knew the first treatment would be a two-pronged chemical attack -- some sort of strong agent to be taken orally, and an enema to make things work better on the other end. Then I wondered if there might be some kind of extracorporeal treatment available, like an ultrasound gun, to help break down the problem area. If none of that worked, I know from the very nasty experiences of others that the ultimate solution is surgery to remove part of the intestine.

Thus thoroughly horrified with my medical condition, I heard The Wife came home. She was understandably disturbed to find me home so early and so unwilling to get up off the bed to greet her. She had to deal with the guy who installed our blinds (I'd completely forgotten about that), and then she give me a cup of tea to drink.

At about quarter to five, I suddenly felt an intense need to urinate, so I did that. When that was done, the result looked murky and reddish-purple. Oh, great, I thought. I have porphyria. George III went mad when he was not much older than I am now, and this just in time for Halloween! But that didn't really make any sense; to my knowledge, there's no history of anything like that on either side of my family tree.

I stayed on my back and the pain gradually receded for about an hour or so. The next time I had to do my business, all was normal. My back and leg were still a little bit sore, and my mood was not what you'd call "elevated," but nothing really hurt and I felt comfortable walking and standing. The Wife made a spot diagnosis that I had passed a kidney stone. It seemed to make a lot of sense, and I wondered why I hadn't thought of that myself. Granted, I'm not House, but the more likely reason was I was in pain and not really thinking as well as I could because of that.

We went out to get avgolemono and dolmodes for dinner and I even had a glass of wine. While I've felt a little bit subdued, I seem okay again as I write.

So here's the medical bleg -- is The Wife right; did I pass a kidney stone? My symptoms, including the relatively quick onset of symptoms and then quick recovery, seem consistent with this. Many details of my story are consistent with it -- nausea, sudden sharp pain with radiating echoes in the region of the solar plexus, and what may well have been blood in my urine.

But I didn't feel any stone pass out of my body, nor did I see one (granted, they are quite small). And why would kidney stone pain radiate into my leg? And while this was painful, painful enough for me to send myself home from work early, it was not the most physically painful thing I have ever experienced.

Loyal Readers with experience in this regard (and you know who you are) or with medical training are especially encouraged to comment.

Probably Not A Coincidence

We all have morning grooming routines (hopefully). When I’m going through my ritual, part of what’s usually involved is putting in my contact lenses. Like most contact lens wearers, I wear what are called “soft” lenses, meaning they are made out of a flexible, water-permeable plastic. Because they are flexible, they can invert, roll, and fold. And when a person is freshly awake, they are clumsy and lack dexterity, and do not think quickly or clearly – not unlike being drunk. So it’s probably not a coincidence that on a morning when I have to wake up earlier than usual, and I have a time pressure to be somewhere quickly, that’s the morning that I f*** up and roll and fold my contact lens in my eye and have to spend five painful minutes trying to tease the damn thing out from underneath my eyelid.

The Right Ruling In A Sad Case

My heart goes out to the journalist who died, but I have to agree with the Italian court here -- it has no jurisdiction to try a U.S. soldier for a killing in Baghdad. The journalist was shot by the U.S. solider as his vehicle approached a security checkpoint on the way to the airport, and while it is unclear exactly why the soldier fired, a U.S. military investigation cleared him of wrongdoing. The Italian civilian court today found that it lacked jurisdiction and it appears the decision will not be appealed.

The incident has caused substantial tensions between the U.S. and Italy like nothing since the Cavalese ski lift tragedy, which is particularly painful to me. It's not like the U.S. and Italy stopped being allies and strong trade partners, but it's particularly upsetting when the cause of tensions between nations involves accidental bloodshed. But hopefully this ruling will help facilitate acceptance and our nations can mend fences.

A Diplomatic Coup

Citizens, rest easy. Your leaders are protecting you. And they are doing it through diplomacy, not force of arms. That's right, we've now reached a maritime search-and-seize accord with Mongolia, in case a rogue actor within the Mongolian merchant marine fleet tries to smuggle a weapon of mass destruction in to an American port.

This despite the fact that Mongolia possesses no open-water ports, and indeed precious little water of any sort.

Look, I'm not knocking Mongolia. They did their part and sent a couple dozen guys to help out in Iraq (the second time Mongolians have invaded there). Just not much of a naval threat, is all I'm saying.

Surprising Myself With My Own Disappointment

I'm old enough, educated enough, and cynical enough that I ought to be proof against disappointment in politicians. I do not imagine that there was ever a time that politicians were honest and that they said what they meant all the time; I do not think that the profession of politics and government lends itself to a democratic process that can be freed from the vagaries of pandering to interest groups with which I have little common cause or sympathy or from making promises and statements that any intelligent person who gave the subject half a thought would know were utterly impossible to fulfill and irresponsible to make.

So I surprise myself by being disappointed in Rudy Giuliani's behavior over the past several weeks. He's moved further to the right on abortion. He's promised to back a Constitutional amendment against gay marriages. Some people, probably even some readers of this blog, will be pleased by these things. But I can't for the life of me think of why gay people should not be able to marry each other if they want to, because I don't see anything inherently morally wrong with being gay. I can't make myself pleased with the idea that President Giuliani would do things to make abortions harder to obtain, because I don't think the public or the government gets to participate in the decision about whether a woman terminates her pregnancy or not. No one should get a vote but her.

In short, Giuliani is moving to the right on issues where I was perfectly comfortable with his original, centrist to even left-of-center position. He felt like a good ideological fit for me, in a lot of ways, enough so that I could look past trends towards authoritarianism. But with less ideological congruence between his, um, evolving position on these social issues, and mine, I find myself simply less attracted to him.

What's a pro-choice, gun-rights-loving, balanced-budget-advocating, religiously skeptical, pro-gay rights, shrink-the-government, defense hawk who takes individual liberties very seriously supposed to do when a guy like Giuliani caters to the Christian big-government types? Join the Ron Paul Brigade? Ron Paul is f***ing nuts.* So "Despair" seems to be the only option.

I'd hoped that Giuliani would be the charismatic, strong, and hawkish leader that the Republicans need -- one who would stand up to the Christian right and say, "When I'm calling the shots, you'll have a place at the table, but I ain't gonna be your bitch." Nevertheless, he's assuming a very wide stance for these folks -- a segment of the GOP that will never like or trust him, who will never be enthusiastic about him, and who have managed to demand that he pander to them to such an extent that Rudy's core attractiveness -- "This is who I am, damnit, and you are either going to like me this way or you're going to have to find someone else" -- has been substantially tarnished.

Giuliani's not stepping up to lead the party; he's not describing or creating the kind of party he wants to lead. He's being led -- into territory that is ideologically unfamiliar to him but all too familiar to those of us who have had misgivings about the Kool-Aid drinkers who are pulling the strings now. My hope that defense hawks and Chamber-of-Commerce types would take the leadership role in the Republican party seems to have been misplaced; the GOP may yet turn into a grouping of people who dream of reforming the Constitution to create the Christian States of America.

And the guy I saw as one of the last, best hopes of preventing that from happening seems to be abdicating the job of crafting a political coalition in his own image rather than trying to uncomfortable squeeze himself into the mold of someone else, someone he just isn't ever going to be.

I shouldn't be disappointed that Giuliani is being, after all, a politician, and trying to appeal to a segment of voters that he thinks he needs to get the party's nomination. I'd thought he had found a strategy -- not a sure-fire one, but one with a reasonable chance of success -- to do that without making so many significant ideological compromises. But I guess, once again, I am surprised to find bits of idealism within myself despite the lessons of something like thirty years of watching politics.**

It's a moot point, I guess. Hillary Clinton looks unstoppable right about now. I'd still rather see Giuliani in charge than her, but let's be realistic. She'd pretty much have to club a baby harp seal to death during a live interview on the Dr. Phil show in order to alienate enough voters to throw the White House back to the Republicans next year.


* Imagine Ron Paul in a political Ultimate Fighting Championship deathmatch against Mike Gravel. Gravel would strike first blood by dropping a rock on Paul. Then, he'd grow distracted by an untied shoelace and drool silently in a corner of the Octagon. Meanwhile, Paul would get up and squawk about the gold standard and jury nullification for twenty minutes. "Yes," you'd sigh, "I guess it really has come to this."

**One of my first cogent memories was watching President Nixon give a speech on TV, resigning his job. I knew something important was happening, and that the man in question apparently had the very odd first name of "President," but I didn't quite get it. My dad told me that this man didn't want to be President anymore, so he was retiring and letting someone else do the job. An accurate if incomplete explanation, but cut my dad some slack. How would you have explained Watergate to a kid who's only (almost) four years old?

Fire in Agua Dulce

NASA’s high-resolution satellite flew over Southern California Sunday afternoon. This is what it saw. The fire you see outlined on the right side of the picture is burning in an area called Agua Dulce, which is south-by-southwest from Palmdale. You can see a little smudge that looks like a baseball diamond made of brown dirt on the eastern edge of the shot – that’s a dry lake located on Edwards Air Force Base. Draw a line from the northeastern corner of the fire zone near Agua Dulce to “home plate” on the dry lake, and that’s about where Soffit House is located.

UPDATE: My previous description of where my house would be located on the map is, as my friend Spungen points out, incomplete. Go about four-fifths of the way south along the line I describe from the dry lake to the outlined corner of the fire. According to an interactive map from Newsweek, the "Buckweed Fire" in Agua Dulce is about 13 miles from my home (Spungen's home is even closer to it than mine, unfortunately).

Bizarre Inaccuracies

Baptist preacher and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee told the Republican primary debate audience last week that he admired the signers of the Declaration of Independence, "most of whom, by the way, were clergymen." That would have been true if by "most" he meant "one out of fifty-six."

But hey, this is politics, not Jeopardy!, after all. Gov. Huckabee isn't one to let history get in the way of pandering to the Christian right wing with weirdly wrong wording. Especially when he's secured a kick-ass endorsement for himself.

Then again, that sort of thing isn't confined to the Presidential race. Consider a few local comments about a local environmental problem: the reason a species of fish in the San Joaquin delta is endangered is because we have too many abortions and too much illegal immigration. Couldn't possibly be because we humans use too much water and are ten years into a drought.

Just goes to show you, the left wing's foggy thinkers have corollaries on the right. The difference is that I expect this sort of thing from left-wing weirdos and I'm disappointed to see it on the other side of the fence.

Happy 6,010th Birthday, Universe!

I don't think this advertisement is intended to be ironic. If you think about it, though, seeing this sort of thing on the internet is very ironic indeed.

And yes, I realize that not all Christians take this sort of stuff seriously; very few of them, I should hope.

A Thought For My Christian Friends To Contemplate

I'm not saying that this guy is right, because I'm really in no position to do so. But I think it's a telling and thought-provoking comment on why Christians should take Richard Dawkins' attack on religion seriously:

...theological writers and others can point out at length that what Dawkins does is to set up a straw man – or rather, a straw God – and then demolish it; they can show that Dawkins has not really got to grips at all with a true understanding of God and the religious dimension; but the straw God that Dawkins sets up and then demolishes is often uncomfortably close to the notion of God that we Christians all too frequently seem to talk about, pray to and worship.

What Dawkins demolishes in this book may well be a misrepresentation of God, but it is a misrepresentation, an idol, that we Christians all too have often set up and espoused as the real thing. We should listen to Dawkins because doing so can help us reflect on what we claim to believe, or think we believe, or imply that we believe. His views can act as an acid to eat away the false and phoney elements of our faith.

I'm not a believer at all, of course, and while overall I agree with Dawkins that it is better to accept the truth of the nontheistic nature of the universe, I also recognize that a lot of very smart people nevertheless believe otherwise. The author is right that it's particularly easy to attack the notion of the "magic man in the sky," and I'd be interested in learning more about the deeper, more complex and subtle vision of God that the author contemplates. (I presume, perhaps incorrectly, that the author rejects the idea of a passive creator God.) Bear in mind that you probably won't convince me that such a God exists, but I would nevertheless be interested in hearing others' points of view.

Full Spectrum Press

A documentary about my life over yesterday and today will have covered the six major activities that consume the bulk of my existence:

1. Working on my new house. Yesterday The Wife and I painted kitchen cabinet doors and ceiling trim.

2. Cooking. I prepared two quiches for the potluck breakfast for Bosses' Day.

3. Practicing law. I've got my hands full with a couple of cases that I don't want to go sideways on me, and I have to juggle all the facts and procedural maneuvering of the various parties to my client's advantage.

4. Volunteer judging. I'm sitting in traffic court this afternoon, hearing trials.

5. Teaching. I start a 21-student class tonight at one of the local career colleges.

6. Writing on this blog. I've managed to satisfy my graphophila nicely over the past few days.

Caesar Cries At Alexander's Statue

The legend goes that Julius Caesar came across a statue of Alexander the Great in his travels on assignment to be the junior governor of what is today Portugal. One of his companions noticed that Caesar was the same age as Alexander when he died. Caesar burst into tears -- at that age, Alexander had conquered everything from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River, and Caesar had managed to get himself elected to the equivalent of a municipal court judge and was on his way to be some other guy's lieutenant.

So with that story in mind, I congratulate Bobby Jindal on being elected Governor of Louisiana. Mr. Jindal, the son of immigrants from India, has just been elected the youngest state governor in America's history at age 36 -- one year younger than me. I don't aspire to the equivalent office here in California, but it does make me wonder what he had do in order to get this. Get elected to Congress, for one. Here I am all happy that I just bought a house.

World Series 2007

Well, damn. After proclaiming my support for the come-from-behind miracle Rockies, the Red Sox come back from a 3-1 deficit in the ALCS to put away Cleveland. Well, the Red Sox had their moment in breaking the curse already -- the Rockies, on the other hand, are virgins. So I'll still root for Colorado.

The series starts Wednesday, and if a weather system hovering over British Columbia right now moves over the central U.S. by Saturday, the first-ever snow delay for a World Series game may be called when the action shifts to Denver. Play ball!

They Knew What They Were Getting Into, But Still...

My parents have apparently been having a lot of trouble getting carpet installed in their basement back at The Estate At Louisville. They have my sympathies, but they can't say that The Wife and I didn't warn them that people in Tennessee struggle.