charred paper, fractured plaster

for the past week, i've been forging my resume into a titanic juggernaut that thwart the most stubborn receptionist. or, for an entire week, i've been staring at the past three years of my employed life boiled down to 3 bullet points, fighting back tears and feelings of inadequacy.

why is i'm judged by merits my resume writing capabilities over what i have or haven't done? it just seems to encouraged embellishment. to be honest, this works to my advantage. i haven't actually been working that long. it still drives me crazy.

to spice things up, we decided to hang pictures, shelves, and maps in our apartment this week. mostly, this went according to plan. we generally bickered about the placement of items, moved them around, moved them back, and settled for something neither of us really loved. hanging on plaster is painful as well, but we figured out where we needed to drill pilot holes and where we did not and moved on.

the one piece we didn't argue too much about was our cheap, target "wine rack and glass holder." we both thought the most natural place was next to the refrigerator in the kitchen. dutifully, i pulled out the appropriate tools, measured, and marked the holes and began to drill.

about halfway toward the required anchor depth, i hit and impenetrable barrier. like any man, i assumed i just didn't have to right drill bit, accepted the excuse to go to home depot, and bought a masonry bit--fire wall be damned!

but this trick also failed. after several hours of sweat, tears, degenerate speech and foul oaths i managed to get the thing on the wall--crooked. which is where it sits now.

work at home

out of pity or boredom, a few of you have asked me what it's like working at home. today i decided to do a little documentation. by documentation, i mean that i took a few random pictures of myself and my desk.

working at home has pros and cons. you don't have to shower every morning, but then you stink most of the time. you get to see your wife most of the day, but that reminds her how annoying you are. you don't have to commute, but you find yourself staring at the neighbor's window wondering why they leave the their blinds closed all day long. you start going over scenarios in your mind: meth lab, video game addict, closet goose-stepper. then you realize that you've been staring at their window suspiciously for 45 minutes. you're the reason the blinds are drawn. so, with that problem settled you can go back to doing whatever it is you want to do--i mean, err...work.

then there is the co-worker arrangement. i do miss being in the office because i miss out out the everyday interactions with my co-workers. the squirrel who habitually hangs out on the roof just outside out stairwell has helped me knock around a few new ideas, but squirrels are so unreliable. there one day, gone the next. so that remains a pretty large negative.



the best part about working at home is that you get to one-up your friends about how gas-efficient and 'green' you are. i'm still trying to iron out the exact words, but i'm thinking my line to drop at parties will be something like this.

when it came to my occupation, i took a hard look at the world. gas prices, global politics, and climate change being what they are, i truly believe i have a moral imperative to work from home. and now that i've made the switch, i just sleep better at night. to be honest, i don't know how you could otherwise.

i've been looking for a good angle in making new friendships for a long time. i think this should do the trick.

move in

for the first post of my newly revamped blog, i'm letting the pictures do the talking. my hope is to keep this thing updated regularly.

here we go.

more graphs from the economist...

the above shows the prediction of premature deaths due to ozone defenicies by 2030. i know that on one hand, 57 people out a million doesn't sound like a lot, but i think we should be concerned.

the religious right

Not that I'm a particularly huge fan of Mike Huckabee, but I'm excited about what some are calling a shift in dynamics for the Religious Right. I'm tired of hearing about fellow Chrisitans blindly voting for Republicans simply because they put forth pro-life candidates. And even if huck was not the greatest choice, he was still a step in the right direction. If Christians believe that it is their duty to engage in politics, then they also need to realize there are more issues to debate than abortion.

This from Sojourners Magazine:

What's Next for Mike Huckabee?

Tuesday evening, John McCain clinched the Republican nomination for president, and Mike Huckabee, the last remaining contender, conceded defeat. Huckabee's campaign, and the failure of the Religious Right to support him, has been one of the most interesting and puzzling stories of this primary season.

While Huckabee is certainly a social conservative, he refused to toe the line on a number of issues. And that is more evidence for why I say the monologue of the Religious Right has ended and the evangelical agenda has broadened.In the Republican YouTube debate, the candidates were asked if they believed every word of the Bible. Huckabee said that while some of the Bible was allegorical, we needed to take much of it much more seriously than we do - such the words of Jesus that say, "As you have done to the least of these you have done to me." This is not the text that most conservatives quote when asked about the authority of the Bible.

In an interview with Reuters in January, Huckabee spoke about the broadening evangelical agenda:

Unquestionably there is a maturing that is going on within the evangelical movement. It doesn't mean that evangelicals are any less concerned about traditional families and the sanctity of life. It just means that they also realize that we have real responsibility in areas like disease and hunger and poverty and that these are issues that people of faith have to address.

And when conservative columnists such as Robert Novak attacked Huckabee for not being a "real conservative," this is precisely what they meant. When Huckabee was governor of Arkansas, he advocated spending money on poor people - behavior that is offensive to the economically conservative wing of the Republican Party. While Huckabee is a consistent social conservative, he is considered suspect by the party's economic conservatives who, of course, don't support spending any money on overcoming poverty. Huckabee disagrees with them.On immigration, in that same debate, there was an all-out attack on "illegal aliens" who became the new scapegoat, the new "other," for many of the Republican candidates - and the preferred way to energize their primary base. Except for the acknowledgement from John McCain that "these are God's children too," every Republican candidate preceded to demagogue the issue, beating up on undocumented immigrants for crass political gain.

But then Mike Huckabee spoke. He agreed that our borders need to be protected and enforced (I do too), but then defended his support for a failed bill in Arkansas to give scholarships to exceptional students - including undocumented children. He said he didn't want to punish children for their parents' illegal actions because "that's not what we typically do in this country." This educational plan, he said, was intended to bring people from illegal to legal status. He continued, saying that he had received a good education; but if he hadn't, "I wouldn't be standing on this stage; I might be picking lettuce; I might be a person who needed government support." Then he said, "In all due respect, we're a better country than to punish children for what their parents did." Although he later moved more to the right in the heat of the primaries, that response remains.

Is that ultimately why the leaders of the Religious Right didn't support Mike Huckabee until late in the primary season? Is it because many on the Religious Right are really more committed to economic conservatism than social conservatism? Have religious conservatives gotten so used to their access to power that are they afraid to risk standing for principle over pragmatism? Huckabee was the most consistent social conservative Republican in the race - he won a straw poll at the FRC Values Voters Summit this winter - yet most of the leaders of the Religious Right never rallied around him. But the evangelical base did, keeping him in the race until this week.Now that he is out of the race, what's next for Huckabee? The conservative Washington Times said that Huckabee is at the forefront of an evangelical revival, and quoted his former communications director as saying

He has become the leader of a new generation of Christian conservative voters. ... There is nobody else you can identify outside of Mike Huckabee as a leading person to take on that role, really in a new era where evangelicals care about a lot of things like the environment and working with the poor.

And, as former Bush staffer David Kuo wrote in The Washington Post,

That there's now a pitched battle for the soul of the religious right is a horrifying thought to Republican leaders long familiar with the old religious right, a hierarchical group dominated by larger-than-life figures who'd anointed themselves Jesus's political representatives. But that movement is withering at the top and in revolt at the grass-roots. ... What's new is how widespread social justice issues are in the evangelical world. Leading New Testament theologian N.T. Wright, a conservative, says that the greatest moral issue today is not abortion but the economic inequality between the U.S. and Europe and the developing world.

So, stay tuned. We haven't heard the last from Mike Huckabee.

what are we missing out on?

this is always a controversial topic. according to the map above (from the economist), our government is selectively blocking certain social (youtube, facebook, etc.) content on the internet. notice saudi arabia, iran, and sudan are among the worst. i guess it's no surprise that internet freedom correlates with government repression.

defying logic

“The important question for John McCain today is, is he going to learn the right lesson from this, and what is the lesson?” Mr. Limbaugh said, according to a transcript posted on his Web site. “The lesson is liberals are to be defeated. You cannot walk across the aisle with them. You cannot reach across the aisle. You cannot welcome their media members on your bus and get all cozy with them and expect eternal love from them.”

the above from an article in the Times, covering McCain's response response to their own report on his relationship with a lobbyist 8 years ago.

while a focus on limbaugh is not the point of the article, they included his quote at the end to show how staunch conservatives have reacted.

the us/them mentality of limbaugh et al really baffles me sometimes. i guess that sort of rhetoric is large part of what attracts his listeners.

maybe i'm being dramatic, but i feel like this sort of discussion IS NEVER beneficial. even in limbaugh's book, aren't liberals still americans, as in not enemies?

The PCA guru (cont.)

Here's a response to the article - with some thoughts from Keller himself on some of the content.

The PCA guru

Interesting Newsweek article on Tim Keller.

Ahhh McCain

THIS IS THE REPUBLICAN LEADER?
(Drudgereport Headline)