The Stokes Kith and Kin Community Blog

"Lars and the Real Girl"

2010-03-13T18:00:00.003-05:00

Carol read the review of this movie at the Christianity Today website, we ordered the film from Netflix, and saw it last night. Despite the unusual premise (very shy young man orders a life-size sex doll over the internet and then has a chaste relationship with "her"), it will grab your heart and not quite break it.

Furthermore, it makes Christians look good. That's probably even more unusual than the premise.

Anatomy & Physiology Camp

2010-03-13T07:20:00.003-05:00

This sounds like fun!

The purpose of these camps is to enable 9th - 12th grade students to better understand human anatomy and physiology by engaging in a variety of unique, in-depth, hands-on experiments, labs, and assessments . . . and have fun doing it! There are no prerequisites for attending this camp.

Anatomy and Physiology Camp is appropriate for all high school age students but is especially geared toward students interested in careers such as medicine, physical therapy, physician's assistant, dentistry, nursing, biology, exercise science, sports medicine, chiropractic, athletic training, nutrition, forensics, etc

And all from a Christian worldview.

Goths, Spain, and Bibles

2010-03-10T19:42:00.006-05:00

When Carol and I visited Spain with Mary in April of 2008, one of the highlights was Toledo. As our guidebook reported: "In a landscape of abrasive desolation, Toledo sits on a rocky mound isolated on three sides by a looping gorge of the Rio Tajo. Every available inch of this outcrop has been built upon: churches, synagogues, mosques and houses are heaped upon one another in a haphazard spiral which the cobbled lanes infiltrate as best they can." We had a very nice hotel, located a vegetarian restaurant with tasty food, and saw terrific sights, about which we posted a little here.

Among the sights was Toledo Cathedral. There at the cathedral we learned a little more about the Visigoths, because a mass in the "Gothic rite" continues to be celebrated there. In Cordova, we had first learned about the Goths at one of the museums. This Germanic tribe had ruled Spain before they were driven from power by the Moors. They were Christian, and their sect persisted during Islam's rule, to emerge on the other side of history when Isabella drove the Muslims from Spain. After some tension between those who followed the Gothic Rite and the Catholics, they made their peace. On Thursdays one could go to the Toledo Cathedral and celebrate the Gothic mass.

I am reading Metzger and Ehrman's The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (Fourth Edition), and today I read there an account of the Gothic Version of the Bible:

Shortly after the middle of the fourth century, Ulfilas, often called the "apostle to the Goths," translated the Bible from Greek into Gothic. For this purpose, he created the Gothic alphabet and reduced the spoken language to written form. The Gothic version is the earliest known literary monument in a Germanic dialect.

As I read this fascinating book, it becomes evident that the development of literacy in the Western world was propelled by the Bible. That is, there was such a thirst for the Gospel, the Acts, the Pauline and Catholic epistles, that there developed profound advances in the technology of books (moving from scrolls to codices, that is to books), the adoption of a cursive form of writing Greek to replace the block form that made copying so slow, even to the invention of written languages (such as that which was a precursor of German), and the rise of a class of educated people who were not necessarily among the nobility. All of this a thousand years before the printing press, itself an invention the crucial market for which was the production of Bibles.

MORE:

With the exception of St. Jerome, more is known of the life and work of SS. Cyril and Methodius, the apostles to the Slavs, than of any other translators of an ancient version of the Bible. Sons of a wealthy official in Slavonica, they are credited with the creation of the Glagolitic alphabet, as well as the so-called Cyrillic alphabet. Soon after the middle of the ninth century, they began translating the Gospels (probably in the form of a Greek lectionary) into Old Bulgarian, commonly called Old Slavonic. - Metzger and Ehrman, op cit., at p. 121

Change: Removing the Shoe, Shooting the Foot

2010-03-09T16:47:00.006-05:00

One reason that so many of our jobs have "moved overseas" is because of the way we tax the US corporations who create those jobs. If a US corporation has its operations division here in the US, the corporation is subject to income tax on the profit the people in those jobs produce. However, if the corporation moves those operations overseas, then it can escape the US corporate income tax on those earnings, at least until it decides to "repatriate" those earnings, which may be never.

There is double taxation on corporate earnings, as you may know. (This applies to "C Corporations" not to "S Corporations" which small businesses use.) The income is taxed at the corporate level first. Then, when what is left over of a corporation's earnings is distributed to the shareholders as dividends, the shareholder is taxed. The corporation gets no deduction for what it distributes to the owners. So an earnings dollar is taxed twice, once at the corporate level and once at the shareholder level. By putting operations overseas, however, the US corporation defers indefinitely the tax at the corporate level.

There is change in the air! You might think that the change is to reduce the negative impact of double taxation and encourage US corporations to bring their offshore operations back to the Homeland. Such a thing would surely help the US economy, no?

It would help the economy, but that's not the change that Washington has in mind. For one thing, the tax on dividends will go back up next year. And, for another, and this is big change, there is a movement to tax US corporations on their "worldwide" income, whether or not the US corporation chooses to bring the overseas income back home. Will that bring the jobs back home? Not so much, I think.

How may the tax on a US corporation's worldwide earnings be avoided? Here's an idea, let's not be a US corporation anymore. There's change for you. This is exactly what Rupert Murdock seem to be contemplating with News Corporation. He is moving News Corporation to Dubai. There is nothing in the article at the link about this motive, but my bet is that the prospective change in the US corporate tax system is behind it.

Hardly a great American, one might say of Murdock. But America was built on entrepreneurial spirit and a distaste for taxes. I would say, then, that he is a great American.

"[A] huge, wealth destroying, regulatory machine . . ."

2010-03-08T16:20:00.002-05:00

There is one of those in Ottowa, according to David Warren. (Thanks, Macon.)

There is one of those in Sacramento, but not in Austin, according to Michael Barone. (Thanks, Glenn Reynolds.)

There is at least one of those in Miami-Dade County, but you would have to add the word "corruption" somewhere in the tag line.

Tallahassee is trying very hard to grow one.

The common denominator in all of these is the public sector union.

Miami Youth for Christ

2010-03-03T09:58:00.002-05:00

More Lego!

2010-02-25T21:38:00.002-05:00

Here.

And of course at GlennzTees:

Heah und

Cheer.

Blizzard Heading Mary's Way

2010-02-23T19:19:00.004-05:00

This second storm will be nothing short of a monster. Even in light of the blizzards earlier this winter that targeted the southern mid-Atlantic, this may be the one that people remember the most this winter in parts of New England and the northern mid-Atlantic.

At its peak, the storm will deliver near hurricane-force wind gusts (74 mph) blinding snow falling at the rate of over an inch per hour. For some people in upstate New York and eastern and northern Pennsylvania, this may seem more like a "snow hurricane" rather than a blizzard.

Cities likely to be impacted by heavy snow for all or at least part of the storm include: New York City, Albany, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton, Scranton, Allentown, Reading, Williamsport and Burlington.

So much for the weekend plans. (Better stock up.)

UPDATE

Weekend in Rochester

2010-02-22T17:44:00.017-05:00

Carol and I worked on President's Day last week, so we could take a three-day weekend to Rochester, beginning just this past Saturday, to see Mary. This was a rare interval in her grueling medical school program, the most recent academic unit's exam having been last Monday and the next unit's exam several weeks from now. So she could spare us a Sunday, so off we went Saturday morning, headed to Philadelphia on USAir to change planes to Rochester and get there mid-afternoon. Walter was coming from Austin too, a super bonus, and we planned to do some cross-country skiing at a resort about 30 miles south of Rochester and near the town of Bristol.

The plane flights up were troublesome. I got bumped in Philly because USAir had overbooked the flight, but Carol went on. There were no other flights to Rochester that day. However, a USAir flight to Buffalo was boarding about two gates down the concourse, and USAir put another bumped passenger, a younger lady, and me on it. She told me that she was calling her husband to drive from Rochester to pick her up, and they would be happy to take me with them. So I arrived only a little more than 2 hours after Carol's plane arrived. (The drive from Buffalo to Rochester was a pleasure. The husband was a researcher at UR, and the young lady was a PhD who was staying at home taking care of their 4 year old, who came over with his dad. This young couple had met in college and were active in IV both at college and grad school. They are active in a Christian Reformed Church in Rochester.)

Walter had much more difficulty than I had with his connections, and finally arrived not in Rochester but in also Buffalo. So, after Mary gave us a tour of the hospital and med school (I'll post more on that later), back we went to Buffalo and picked Walter up about 6:30PM. But as long as we were all finally together, it didn't much matter, although I wish Walter had been spared the difficult time he had getting from Austin to Rochester that day. It was a consolation to have a fine supper in Rochester at a cozy table at Mediterranean restaurant on Monroe Street called Aladdin's. The food was very reasonably priced and very, very good.

Finally at Mary's house together, we settled down, Carol and I on the air mattress and Walter curled up in a sleeping bag, and had a good night's sleep.

Where Saturday was overcast and gray, Sunday morning was bright, clear, full of sunshine, with a beautiful winter blue sky. The day just begged us to come out and play. So down to the Bristol Mountain Ski resort we drove. Carol and I had a few trepidations about putting on skis again, but this time we would not do downhill ("Alpine") skiing but instead "Nordic" or Cross-Country. Friends of ours here who are from up north warned us about how strenuous it was, but we decided we would try it anyway, and, of course, Mary and Walter were more than game.

We had a wonderful time, and it was well within our physical capabilities. The resort had a terrific teacher who held a one-hour class for Nordic beginners, and he led us through the basics. The cross-country trails had been "groomed," so that made it much easier for us too.

We skied until about mid-afternoon, and by that time Carol and I were pretty tired, although we simply rejoiced at the beauty of the day, the woods covered with snow, and the time with Mary and Walter. And we did pretty well with the skis, and would be ready to do it again.

We came back to Rochester simply famished. Mary called her great friend Liz and we all went out to a Thai restaurant for dinner. The food was delicious there too, and just what we needed to fill us back up.

This morning, however, came all to soon. We had a good oatmeal breakfast, but Mary was soon ready to go school. She put on her white coat for a picture with Carol, and then it was good-bye. I took a photo of her out the window of her upstairs apartment, as she was crossing the street in front of her house to go up to the entrance to the hospital. Walter took us right to the airport, but would spend a little more time with Mary today before beginning his air journey home. We made our connections and arrived in Miami on time, already missing our loved ones, the one in Rochester, the eight in Austin. But so happy to have seen Mary and Walter this weekend.

Not So Enthralled by Pawlenty

2010-02-19T15:17:00.002-05:00

Myself, at least. Not after reading this. Come on, Republicans. Is this all you have?

Not Enthralled with Palin

2010-02-19T03:01:00.006-05:00

Rabinowitz of the WSJ. George Will, too. It's not just the Left.

Glenn Reynolds also writes:

"Okay, she’s a lot more qualified [to be President] than Obama was. But that’s setting the bar way too low."

If we are dealing with a charismatic woman with mainstream economic views and traditional values from out West who didn't go to Harvard Law, then of course there must be a much higher standard.

Lego! Let's Go!

2010-02-18T04:44:00.002-05:00

From Lego's Technic Line.

Dick Francis: 1920-2010

2010-02-17T07:56:00.004-05:00

I really enjoyed his books (as did my mother), mysteries built against the background of horse racing, reflecting his career as a jockey before he turned to writing. The WSJ yesterday described his genre as "horse-themed thrillers." Here is the article from the NYT, which doesn't (yet) require a subscription. One thing fascinating about the WSJ article is the account of his wife's involvement in his writing. What a happy and productive marriage that must have been.

UPDATE: Evan Bayh as [NOT A] Wuss

2010-02-16T21:22:00.005-05:00

On further reflection, I disagree with those who think he's not much. (Thanks, Ann Althouse.)

To be in Congress?! To be a US Senator?! Give that up when you are in your mid-fifties?! Only if your eyes are on the Presidency. If Palin can give up the Alaska governor's office to run, why can't Bayh step out of that train-wreck known as Congress?

Obama is toast. Let the games begin.

Dr. McDougall's Recent Letter to President Clinton

2010-02-15T08:40:00.005-05:00

Dear 42nd President William Jefferson Clinton:

With all their good intentions, and the use of sophisticated, expensive technologies, your doctors are allowing your heart disease to progress as if it were a runaway train destined for a wreck. Your cardiologist, Dr. Allan Schwartz, at New York Presbyterian Hospital is telling you further blockage is the normal course of your disease, and your diet and lifestyle are not involved. Medical experts expressing their opinion in the news since your surgery are misleading the public into believing that the proper management of this disease is through constant surveillance and repeated surgical interventions. This is big business talking, and in addition to mismanagement of your personal care, one result will be an increase in the already more than one million angioplasties and 500 thousand bypass surgeries performed annually in the US.

Recall your first painful encounter with the heart surgery business on September 3, 2004 when you were hospitalized following an episode of chest pain. You had quadruple bypass surgery three days later. A couple of days ago, on Thursday, February 11, 2010, you needed the heart surgeons again. You had two bare metal stents placed in your heart following a few of days of mild chest discomfort. This history will continue to repeat itself until you seriously change your eating habits and get these meddling doctors out of your life. You are missing another “teaching moment” and bypassing another chance to change health and healthcare in America.

In a letter I sent to you the day following your hospitalization in 2004, I pleaded with you to refuse bypass surgery. I told you that bypass surgery does not save lives in most cases, and I warned you of the brain damage you would suffer from being on the heart-lung bypass machine. Likely you did not read that letter. Following your quadruple bypass you were a noticeably different man. Your sometimes-irrational behavior during Hillary Clinton’s campaign was in part due to your surgically-induced mental decline. I sent another letter in the spring of 2008 apologizing for the harm my colleagues caused you and their failure to offer you intensive medical therapy founded on a healthy diet. I believe you received that letter or read the Wall Street Journal article that followed about your brain damage. Since you became aware of your functional loss you have seemed to me to be in much better control when before the public.

I am taking the opportunity in this letter to try to help you again. By helping one of our country’s greatest statesmen, I may be able to help other heart patients (which happens to include most adults following the Western diet). This is my third attempt, but likely not my last, because, after all, your heart doctors (Dean Ornish, MD being an outstanding exception) believe your disease is unstoppable. Remember what they said: they are going to manage your future health by constant surveillance and repeated surgical interventions. These well-educated professionals are dead wrong on how to care for a patient such as you.

In order for you to stop having false hope you need to be told that heart surgery, including bypass surgery and angioplasty with or without stents, does not save lives in the vast majority of cases. You have not been fixed by either procedure. The reason for this is that the bypass surgeons and cardiologists are operating on the stable hard fibrous plaques that do not kill people. Why do they operate on nonlethal lesions? Because they can. These large fibrous stable plaques, which have been present for years, if not decades, are visible by technologies like angiograms and heart scans. Once visualized, they become targets for knives, grafts, sutures, and catheters.

The disease that really kills is largely invisible to your doctors. Tiny festering sores that rupture cause heart attacks, and the deaths that follow these heart attacks in nearly half the cases. In order to understand the underlying problem, think about pustules or pimples rupturing on a teenager’s face, but in this case the deadly activity is inside your arteries. In medical terminology, these tiny sores are called “volatile plaques.” When they pop, substances generally referred to as “products of injury” are released. The body’s response is to form a blood clot to cover up the wound (similar to the blood clot that forms when you cut your hand with a knife). If the blood clot (called a thrombus) is large enough, then the flow in the entire heart artery can be blocked off. The heart muscle that lies distal to this sudden blockage usually dies—and that is how a heart attack occurs.

Why do heart surgeons not operate on the killing part of this disease? Because they can’t. They cannot see these tiny festering sores with current technology. Even if they could see these “silent killers,” they have no surgical techniques to stop them from exploding. The only solution is to allow the body to heal your steadily-progressing disease by making serious dietary changes. (Medications, such as aspirin and statins, when judiciously used, can be of benefit as well.)

I realize you were frightened by the chest discomfort on both occasions (2004 and 2010). Fortunately, changing to a healthy low-fat diet (like the Pritikin, McDougall, Ornish, or Esselstyn Diets) reduces the intensity and/or stops the chest pains very quickly. Improvement in blood flow begins with the first good meal. In a matter of hours the blood naturally thins and a blood clot is less likely to form if a volatile plaque does rupture (aspirin helps too). Spontaneous healing is a powerful force — within the first week the risk of pustule rupture is greatly reduced. In a matter of months, reversal of artery disease can be seen by current technologies (angiograms and PET scans).

The truths I have given you are indisputable and most of your doctors are well aware of the solid research behind what I have told you. Your problem now is the same as everyone else’s: making the change. This is not easy, especially when you have almost no conservative medical support. If you do not change you can expect your future to be more like the past, but probably worse, because you are getting older. So for your sake, and all those who benefit from your work, I invite you to attend the next 10-day, live-in, McDougall Program in Santa Rosa, California, March 19 to 28, 2010. You can call me at (800) 941-7111. In this short time together, I promise we will change your life dramatically for the better. When that happens I will stop writing you these cautionary letters, which so far have accurately predicted your future.

Sincerely,

John McDougall, MD
http://www.drmcdougall.com/

© 2010 John McDougall All Rights Reserved

(Used with Dr. McDougall's permission.)

For the MSM point of view, see this.

Slog Post

2010-02-14T17:35:00.002-05:00

Slough Slogging, that is.

Contact the Dove Avenue Outfitters to make arrangements before skeeter season starts.

Valentine's Day in Afghanistan

2010-02-14T15:36:00.004-05:00

A photo from Michael Yon, via Instapundit, to make you both weep and be thankful.

Prostate Cancer and Diet

2010-02-14T06:19:00.008-05:00

Two of my friends, both men in their sixties, were recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. One of my former partners at Smathers & Thompson, a man I had known 40 years, a fine amateur athlete all of his life, died of the disease last year at age 77. I continue to represent a widow of another partner, a man who died of prostate cancer in the early 1990s when in his sixties. "In men aged forty to fifty-nine, the risk of developing prostate cancer is one in fifty. In men aged sixty to seventy-nine, it's one in seven. And over the course of his lifetime, an American man's risk of developing prostate cancer is one in six." (Walsh at p. 45, see full cite below.) The disease has my attention.

I happened to be meeting with a client last Monday who is a physician. Although he is not a urologist, so many of his friends have been diagnosed with prostate cancer that he has made a study of it. Because some of those friends were/are also doctors, he has been able to discuss the matter with them at a high level. The subject came up between the two of us because one of the two friends of mine recently diagnosed is a friend of his.

He recommended Dr. Patrick Walsh's Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer (Second Edition), which I am now reading. It is well written and very informative. (Patrick Walsh is a world renowned urologist and the physician at Johns Hopkins who developed the modern surgical approach to the treatment of prostate disease.)

As to the influence of diet, Dr. Walsh writes:

Animal fat is bad for you, especially the fat found in red meat and dairy products. Men who eat a lot of those foods are more likely to develop advanced prostate cancer and die from it. Why? There is an enzyme in prostate cancer cells that craves the fatty acids in dairy products and red meat. Consequently, when a man with prostate cancer consumes a diet high in those foods, his cancer cells get nine times more energy than normal cells. Further, these cells produce hydrogen peroxide, which causes still more oxidative damage to DNA and more mutations, leading to further progression of the disease.

Dr. Campbell addresses the diet-prostate disease connection in his The China Study. He quotes on page 178 from a 2001 Harvard review of the research as follows:

. . . twelve of . . . fourteen case-control studies and seven of . . . nine cohort studies [have] observed a positive association for some measure of dairy products and prostate cancer; this is one of the most consistent dietary predictors for prostate cancer in the published literature [my (Dr. Campbell's) emphasis]. In these studies, men with the highest dairy intakes had approximately double the risk of total prostate cancer, and up to a fourfold increase in risk of metastatic or fatal prostate cancer relative to low consumers.

Miscellany

2010-02-12T02:36:00.005-05:00

LOTR Prequel

Bananas as proof of God's existence.

Dairy and brain damage.

Soft-serve bananas. I skip the food processor step.

"Operation Cornflakes"

2010-02-01T20:06:00.000-05:00

A little WWII history.

Magic Mushrooms in Miami

2010-01-30T19:01:00.005-05:00

Read this wonderful article in Thursday's Miami Herald about Benjamin Masopeh, a farmer from Ghana, who came to Homestead to show a farmer there how to grow oyster mushrooms. (There's just no place on earth like Miami-Dade County.)

Kiffin Update

2010-01-23T09:19:00.003-05:00

There is a proposal to name a sewage treatment plant in Tennessee after him.

It seemed right to me at first. But after a very short moment of reflection, I think it's an entirely bad idea. Such plants are exceedingly necessary and useful. Good people design and run them. And such enterprises turn waste into something helpful. Obviously, it would be an inappropriate gesture.

Mort Zuckerman on President Obama

2010-01-23T08:39:00.003-05:00

Mortimor B. Zuckerman is the Editor-in-Chief of U.S. News and World Report and a regular panelist on the McLaughlin Group, which Carol and I have watched for years on public television. He usually sits to the right of McLaughlin, the viewer's left, and it is on that side thatpundits who are politically "left of center" sit. On the left of McLaughlin, the viewer's right, is where the pundits sit who are "right of center." McLaughlin, of course, sits in the center, and I believe he thinks of himself as politically in the center.

After listening to Zuckerman's comments over the years, I would say that he is left of center, but not very much. Of course, that's a subjective viewpoint, as all of this left-of-center, right-of-center, labeling is. That labeling is quickly less than helpful and even damaging to political discussion. In any event, Zuckerman very much liked Obama during the campaign and has said very hopeful things about him over the last 12 months.

But now he writes an article in U.S.News entitled "The Incredible Deflation of Barack Obama." It is well worth reading. He doesn't bash Obama. He expresses his deep disappointment and he describes reasonably and accurately the mistakes that the President has made and the political consequences of them. He also expresses the hope the the President will somehow get back on the right course.

Frankly, I don't see Obama being able to turn his administration around. I do not believe he has the experience, the political know-how, to do so. His character also seems to lack the sort of humility that it would take for him to start anew and act differently. Finally, I believe he has a sort of religious faith that government has the answers, all the answers, if only government were large and powerful enough and had bright people like him to run it. I hope I'm wrong about his ability to get on the right course. I fear, though, that he will simply "double-down" on his bet that he can shove his agenda through by doing whatever it takes.

But if he looses very bright, opened minded, articulate, centrist, and well-connected people like Mort Zuckerman, the President will surely, surely fail.

Legoland? Legoland!

2010-01-22T04:27:00.001-05:00

Aidan, did you know about this?

Returning to the SLR Mode

2010-01-21T22:14:00.006-05:00

I got a good price on a factory refurbished Nikon D40 from Adoroma by way of Ken Rockwell's great camera website. Here's what Rockwell says about the D40.

My D40 is too much fun. I own all sorts of serious cameras like the Canon 5D, Nikon D200, D80 and D70, but my D40, with its weightless 18-55mm lens and SB-400 flash, is what I grab most of the time as of May 2007 when I just want to make good photos easily. It works great with my other lenses like my Nikon 18-200mm VR.

The camera is no longer being made by Nikon and its factory refurbished ones are disappearing too.