TIME visits my Applebee's

How truly bizarre - TIME Magazine's staff writer John Cloud turns in this article In Defense of Applebee's. In particular, my Applebee's, the one in Jamestown, over and against the more local establishments. It clearly goes against his inclinations, but after several hit-or-miss dining experiences ("My meal was prepared with indifference. My bison sirloin was so tough and flavorless that I couldn't finish it; the fries tasted of old grease. And apart from the two deer heads on the wall, virtually every other decoration at Frontier Fort was supplied by national beer companies; the clockface read "Miller Lite, A True Pilsner Beer." The undersalted cole slaw was delivered in a plastic Dixie cup; the Heinz 57 bottle had old congealed sauce around the rim."), Cloud finds himself returning to the predictible, if uninspiring, Applebee's experience.

For what it's worth, he does recommend downtown restaurant The Brass Rail quite highly. But overall, Jamestown cuisine doesn't fare very well.

Truly bizarre to have the Applebee's phenomenon examined through the merits (and lack thereof) of the nearest Applebee's to my little burg.

πολύτιμος μαργαρίτης εἶ...

Πάλιν ὁμοία ἐστὶν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν ἀνθρώπῳ ἐμπόρῳ ζητοῦντι καλοὺς μαργαρίτας·εὑρὼν δὲ ἕνα πολύτιμον μαργαρίτην ἀπελθὼν πέπρακεν πάντα ὅσα εἶχεν καὶ ἠγόρασεν αὐτόν.

- Jesus

A little political clarity

I've often found it hard to place myself on the traditional political "line":

On some issues, I definitely lean "left" (meaning, in common usage, "liberal"). Those tend to be social and economic issues, particularly those regarding civil liberties. On the other hand, I'm fairly traditional in my approach to morality and ethics, and more "conservative" theologically than people sometimes realize. In high school, I used to call myself "libervative," as a way of trying to work this out - I didn't care for moderate, because that seemed to imply being in the middle on most things. I, on the other hand, found myself on one side or the other on many issues... just not consistently the same side.

The Political Compass helped sort some of that out for me. Instead of using a single axis (Left vs. Right, Liberal vs. Conservative), the Compass sorts a person's political views into a two-axis system: The horizontal axis indicates the approach preferred to economic issues, while the vertical axis reveals one's social bias - particularly as regards the tension between government authority and individual liberty.

Although it didn't necessarily cast a great deal of illumination on my theological perspective, it did place me a little more precisely in the world of political ideas. Here's a chart showing where my own ideological bias lies, compared with that of prominent world figures:

The survey takes about ten minutes to complete, and is completely anonymous. It might help you put your finger on something that's hard to describe in one dimension. If you score yourself at the Political Compass, let me know - I'm very curious the political inclinations of the folks who read this blog.

Podcast updates

Two new semons posted to the podcast. Find out what canoes, brides, and sanctuaries have in common...

Your morning dose of perspective

We all know that there are lots of people on this earth. But most of us have only a handful of close friends. We've got a social circle of dozens. Our acquaintances number in the hundreds. Our towns, for the most part, can be measured in the thousands, if not the hundreds. Few of us have been part of a crowd more than 40 or 50 thousand people, and even then only for a few hours at a concert or sporting event. Maybe we've seen pictures of massive demonstrations attended by hundreds of thousands - or even more than a million - but the odds are we've never been part of one ourselves.

How do we wrap our head around a number like 6.5 billion - the number of souls living their lives at this very moment on our earth?

We visit Population : One, that's how.

When you click over to check it out, you'll find a colored box on the right-hand side of your screen, with a single white dot in its upper-left corner. That dot, as the arrow that points to it, is you. The colored box is me. And Al Gore. And David Hasselhoff. And Maya Angelou. And Charles Klau. And, well... everyone else. All 6,499,999,999 of us.

Not impressed by the picture? Ahhh... that's because you haven't yet noticed the scrollbar that's quietly appeared at the bottom of your browser window. Go ahead - hit the right arrow key. I'll wait.

This is taking a while... maybe you'd better click on the scrollbar instead.

Aw, heck, just drag the thing all the way to the right, or we're going to be here all day.

That, friends, is 6.5 billion people. That is the population of our earth. That is the reason that selfishness = silliness. Spend a while taking it in - if it doesn't take your breath away and make your head spin, then you need to go back and press the right arrow key a while longer.

For the passive-aggressive chef in all of us

Why confront someone with your frustrations directly, when you can nurse your grudge and stab them in the back repeatedly? That's the premise behind good ol' Midwestern passive aggression. Now you can let both your hostilities and your pot roast simmer while you carve something (or someone?) up, using the Voodoo Knife Set!

One hears a lot about "kitchen art" these days, but I have yet to see a toaster to compare with this. Clever, useful, and more than a little creepy, it's an ideal conversation piece for the modern kitchen countertop.

And it's probably a decent stress reliever, too.

Women like me...

Alas for me, in this context, "like" is a preposition and not a transitive verb.

See, I got a letter from Marie Claire magazine recently. Seems a magazine I'd gotten a free subscription to went belly up at the turn of the year, and their subscribers were being offered to receive Marie Claire for the remainder of their subscription period.

OK, funny enough that Marie Claire - definitely in the "women's magazine" genre - would be arriving monthly in my mailbox.

But the stroke of true brilliance came in the third paragraph following "Dear Bob Schaefer:"

You will love Marie Claire because Marie Claire was created for a very special reader like you... a woman who demands substance, style and reality. Marie Claire helps you to expand. Takes you to the corners of the earth to experience its sensations.

Apparently one of those sensations I get to experience is the loss of my Y chromosome... yippee. Emasculation, thy name is Marie Claire!

Want to be scared?

If you're in the mood for a horror story in the making, spend some time considering this article in Maclean's, compliments of Mike. David Walker, comptroller general of the United States, and numerous other financial experts warn, Cassandra-like, of an impending economic crisis in the US of unthinkable proportion:

A trillion is a hard number to wrap your head around. Most people know it's a thousand billion -- 12 zeroes -- but even that is difficult to fathom in terms of value. So think of it like this: a trillion U.S. dollars is roughly the size of the entire Canadian economy. The world's six biggest oil companies had combined 2004 revenues just shy of US$1 trillion. And if you piled a trillion dollars in $1,000 bills, the stack would be more than 109 km [68 miles] high.

As of February, the U.S. national debt stood at US$7.7 trillion. And this year, the country is projecting another record deficit of US$427 billion, increasing its debt by about US$1.2 billion a day...

To most observers, it's becoming increasingly obvious that, within the next 10 years, the U.S. government will simply not be able to borrow money fast enough to keep up with its exploding expenses. That has huge implications for everything Americans do, from funding the military to protecting the environment. The Economic Policy Institute recently projected that under the current tax regime, by 2014 all government revenue would be consumed by four areas of spending: health care for the elderly and the poor, Social Security for retirees, national defence and interest on the debt. There will be no money left for such fundamental initiatives as education, transportation or justice, which means the government would be forced into ever-escalating borrowing to pay for basic programs. Walker's department projects that, under the current tax rates, interest costs on the skyrocketing national debt would be about half of all government tax revenues by 2031. Ten years later, the cost of servicing the debt will exceed all government revenues. [emphasis added]

Where the red flag flies

With temps expected to hit 105 or so this afternoon (and already rising above 80), the Litchville area has been swallowed up into the Red Flag alert I mentioned yesterday. The record-breaking heat and the typical North Dakota gustiness, along with our crackling-dry grass, makes this a perfect environment for "explosive fire growth potential," to use the National Weather Service's reassuring words.

Star Wars ASCIImation

When I first discovered the Internet, it was strictly a text-only affair. Although some hearty souls were trading images through clever tricks like binhexing, most of us were limited in our online expression to what we could depict in QWERTY. Or rather, in ASCII - the designation for the standard set of text characters.

But images were compelling, and the clever and the artistic among us developed ASCII art. Smilies are the simplest form of ASCII art. Roses were a common subject:

@}-`-,--

Cows were also a favorite:

                                         /\                  __
                                        /  \                 ||
             (__)                 (__)  \  /               (_||_)
             SooS                 (oo)   \/                 (oo)
      /------S\/S          /-------\/    /S          /-------\/
     / |     ||           / |     ||    /  S        / |     ||
    *  ||----||          *  ||----||___/    S      *  ||----||
       ^^    ^^             ^^    ^^                  ^^    ^^
    This cow belonged     Ben Franklin owned       Abe Lincoln's
  to George Washington       this cow                   cow

It was only a matter of time before someone would try their hand at ASCII animation - and what more likely candidate for ASCIImation than the original geek movie - Star Wars?

Star Wars ASCIImation is a continuing project begun in 1997 to depict the entire 1977 film using only ASCII text characters:

                                     /~\
                                    |oo )      We're doomed!
                                    _\=/_
                    ___        #   /  _  \   #
                   /() \        \\//|/.\|\\//
                 _|_____|_       \/  \_/  \/
                | | === | |         |\ /|
                |_|  O  |_|         \_ _/
                 ||  O  ||          | | |
                 ||__*__||          | | |
                |~ \___/ ~|         []|[]
                /=\ /=\ /=\         | | |
________________[_]_[_]_[_]________/_]_[_\_________________________

A remarkable amount of work has already gone into this, but the project has hardly left Tatooine. Expect another ten to fifteen years of animation before this puppy's a wrap. Still, it's worth checking out, just to stand in awe of its geektitude!

Blam!

Anyone doubting the heat around here need only look at my steering wheel - the can of Dr. Pepper in my back seat exploded sometime this afternoon, spilling most of its contents onto the seat, but giving a good spraying to the wheel and the backs of the front seats, as well. According to various sources, that indicates that the temp in my back seat hit at least 145° F (60° C) today. Yikes!

Tinderbox, ND

Got a weather alert in my e-mail this afternoon, and I can't say I recall ever getting one like this before - we're in a Fire Weather Watch tomorrow, it appears:

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN GRAND FORKS HAS ISSUED A FIRE WEATHER WATCH...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM SATURDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH SATURDAY EVENING.

VERY WARM AND DRY AIR WILL ENTER SOUTHEAST NORTH DAKOTA ON SATURDAY...COUPLING WITH SOUTHERLY WINDS GUSTING TO 30 MPH AND PARCHED GROUND TO ELEVATE THE RISK OF EXTREME FIRE WEATHER CONDITIONS. THE GREATEST POTENTIAL FOR THIS WEATHER WILL BE FROM MID AFTERNOON THROUGH EARLY EVENING ON SATURDAY. CONDITIONS WILL MODERATE ON SUNDAY...ENDING THE FIRE WEATHER THREAT.

A FIRE WEATHER WATCH MEANS THAT CRITICAL FIRE WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE FORECAST TO OCCUR. LISTEN FOR LATER FORECASTS AND POSSIBLE RED FLAG WARNINGS.

It has been awfully dry here. I keep hoping for a good rain when I see thunderstorms pop up in the forecast, but so far we haven't had much of anything recently. Since January, our precipitation has been only 50-70% of normal, and in the last 30 days we've received only 25-50% of our normal rainfall. Temps have also been a degree or two above normal (and way above normal this week), drying the soil out even more.

The area immediately arround Litchville is currently in a D0-D1 intensity, according to the US Drought Monitor. That's still on the low end ("Abnormally Dry" to "Drought - Moderate"); some parts of South Dakota are experiencing D4 ("Drought - Exceptional") conditions. Those areas, to the south and west of us, and slightly moister parts stretching into North Dakota, are in a Red Flag alert tomorrow, which appears to be the "Warning" version of our watch.

My lawn hasn't needed mowing in almost a month.

And it doesn't look like any significant chance of rain is being forecast for Litchville through the next 15 days. Of course, predictions that far out are almost always full of it - I don't usuallypay attention to the forecast beyond three days or so. Still, it would be encouraging to see a juicy storm icon on the calendar sometime before July is out.

Eminent domain: picking up the dropped ball

A year ago, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the city of New London, Conn., could condemn the home of Susette Kelo in order to give her property to private developers. The rationale of the majority appeared to be that the power of eminent domain can be exercised in the name of any project that can be painted as benefitting the public, even if that supposed benefit is simply replacing a low-dollar property with one that will generate much juicier property taxes.

No one argues that major infrastructure projects that necessarily benefit the entire population, like road construction, ought to be scotched because of the objections of a few property owners. It's regretable, but there's no other reasonable way to accomplish such huge projects - giving veto power to a single citizen is not workable. Likewise, there are genuinely blighted, and even dangerous buildings that are rightly condemned by city inspectors. It is not unreasonable to require the property owners of eyesores and hazards to keep their property in a state of minimal repair.

But when the government is given the power to pick and choose among property owners, ejecting low-income homeowners and renters in order to make room for a developer to erect luxury condos, the power of eminent domain is no longer a reasonable, regretable tool of extremity. The Court, a year ago, sent us into dangerous territory, so it's good to read USA Today's retrospective on the developments since then.

The Court actually suggested to governments that they might wish to legislate limits to the power of eminent domain, and many have done exactly that. The federal government has, for a change, led the way - conservatives and liberals finding equal (but quite different) reasons to be outraged at the Kelo decision.

As welcome as these developments are, the same legislative bodies that now reject the privatized use of eminent domain might well sing a different tune as their political and financial fortunes vary. Something as fundamental as a person's right not to have property confiscated by the state except in the most extraordinary circumstances should not be entrusted to the whims of a patchwork of lawmakers. If the Court won't enshrine it as precedent, then I suggest Congress get over its flag-burning fetish and propose an amendment to the Constitution that would acutally mean something.

All hail the Queen of the Scavengers!

All honor to Gretchen the Glorious, Mistress of the Hundred Points! Lady, I humbly do obeisance to thee, and beg thy good favor.

*LOL*

We now return you to your regularly scheduled snarkiness...

In the mood for some good music?

Last week a visitor to my blog mentioned his own web site in the comment he posted. Since I try to check out sites belonging to readers, I clicked on over.

Sean Dietrich's site contains some quality recordings. Sean is a gifted musician whose passion is using his music as a witness to his Christian faith. I've enjoyed the tracks I've already listened to, and there are 15 or 20 more I've yet to work my way through.

Sean's got a few CDs available on his site, as well. If your iPod playlist is getting a little stale, hop on over to his site and give it a refresh!

Update: I should mention that all of the music on Sean's site is available free - he believes that ministry shouldn't come with a pricetag attached. Each track is downloadable as an MP3. If you can't afford one, he'll even send you a CD free of charge - that's how strongly he feels about his ministry. Of course, your donation helps Sean extend his ministry. Go ahead and click on the "Make a Donation" button... I did.

I have no words...

...actually, that's not true.

"Ugh," for example.

What you're looking at is "The Statue of Liberation Through Christ," a 72-foot, 12,000-pound, $260,000 monstrosity unveiled this week in Memphis by the World Overcomers Outreach Ministries Church.

As described in the New York Times, "Lady Liberation" lofts a cross in her right hand and cradles the Ten Commandments with her left. Her crown is emblazoned with the word "Jehovah" (a mistaken anglicization of the Hebrew proper name of God, the Tetragrammaton "YHWH").

Down her cheek trickles a single tear for "the nation's ills" - legalized abortion, a lack of prayer in schools and the country's "promotion of expressions of New Age, Wicca, secularism and humanism."

The church hopes to draw nonbelievers to repentance and faith through the statue's "witness" - it stands at the corner of a busy intersection. "Lady Liberation" is also intended to bear witness against all of the bogeymen of fundie Christianity... and to draw "Christian tourists" to the struggling district of Memphis the statue calls home. Souvenirs will be available, according to the World Overcomers web site. Of course.

And there you have the theocratic yearnings of the religious right, etched elegantly into steel, foam, and fiberglass, as a towering memorial to Christian dominionism and its grandiose political ambitions.

Personally, I much prefer the Ghostbusters' use of Lady Liberty to the World Overcomers'. And I doubt that Jesus cares any more for the American Empire to claim his cross as its token than he must have when the Romans, the Crusaders, or the Conquistadors did so.

The cross must be lifted high for the world to see, yes. But that is the work of the church, the Body of Christ. We know the Good News about Jesus - the Light of the World - and "Liberty Enlightening the World" is an enduring symbol of the great freedom Americans have to share that Good News, to hear it and receive it... and yes, to reject it as well.

"Lady Liberation" twists the Light of the World into a political symbol, and misunderstands the light of liberty as a power to compel behavior, if not actual belief, to conform to a peculiar theological inclination. So doing, she shames both Cross and Colossus.