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(08/23/07 4:00am)
After a three-year absence, 2K Sports has returned to the gridiron with its first effort since the NFL signed an exclusivity contract with EA's Madden franchise.\nBut with more than 200 former NFL stars on board and a ton of options to customize your teams, if you really miss the things the NFL license brings to the table, they're not that hard to recreate.\n"All-Pro Football 2K8" begins with you naming your team, stadium and selecting 11 legends that will make up your roster. \nThere's a ton of stuff to do here, and hard-core football fans will have a field day building the ultimate dream team, but it's unfortunate that there's such a limited number of players to choose from.\nThough missing the ESPN license from the highly-regarded "NFL 2K5," "All-Pro Football 2K8" hardly misses a beat with an excellent TV-style presentation. \nAnd though the commentary from Dan Stevens and Peter O'Keefe is solid (and much less senile than Madden's rants), all too often it can't keep up with the action, and several of the lines have been ripped from the three-year-old spiritual prequel, making the commentary stale from the very first game for 2K vets.\nFor some reason, the developers also decided to take a near-perfect control system and needlessly complicate it. Running now involves either holding the A button to charge it, or tapping it to sprint, which is downright annoying during long runs.\nKicking has also been complicated with a system similar to Madden's "Kick Stick," but with much trickier timing.\nOverall, the controls feel much stiffer, which has also resulted in a much more difficult passing game. Some might argue that's realistic, but when John Elway is throwing two or three interceptions per game, something is seriously wrong.\nThen there's the season mode itself, which lasts exactly one season. That might not be so bad if there were as many unlockables as in past 2K football games, but that feature which added so much replay value to those other titles, has been stripped down a few trophies and achievements.\n"2K8" is not a horrible football game, but like most athletes to come out of retirement, it's a mere shadow of its former glory. I would recommend this one for the hard-core football fan only.
(04/19/07 4:00am)
On Monday, an educated young man massacred 32 people at a college in Blacksburg, Va.\nIn 1999 an educated young man – a former IU student – went on a murderous rampage across Illinois and Indiana, which culminated in the killing of a graduate student in front of the Korean Methodist Church here in Bloomington. \nIn the 1970s a very educated man from Washington blazed a trail of violence from Tacoma to Florida, abducting and murdering nearly 30 young women.\nSuch violence is abominable. And while it might be rare in any setting, there is a crucial lesson we must learn from the wretched lives of Cho Seung-Hui, Benjamin Smith and Ted Bundy: Education is not our salvation.\nThere’s an almost palpable delusion pervading academia. The collective intellectual hallucination goes something like this: “If only people were more educated, that would solve all the world’s problems. Utopia is within our reach, if we could just educate everyone.” This is hogwash.\nTo make a blunt illustration: Last year I gave a presentation at a high school for gifted students in Muncie; the program was about the Rwandan genocide. As part of the program I asked the students – Indiana’s best and brightest – to speculate how genocide could ever happen, be it in Rwanda, Bosnia or Germany. After some awkward silence, a student finally suggested it’s because “people are stupid.”\nTed Bundy certainly wasn’t stupid: he held a degree from the University of Washington. Cho Seung-Hui wasn’t stupid: he had nearly earned a degree from Virginia Tech.\nNo, monstrously wicked men are not stupid. And on the other side of that coin we see that education does not a saint make.\nMost damning is the example of Charles Taylor. In 1977 he obtained a degree in economics from Bentley College in Waltham, Mass. Some years later – after embezzling nearly $1 million, escaping from a Massachusetts prison and (allegedly) collaborating with Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi – Taylor began waging a brutal uprising in the jungles of Liberia. His army employed child soldiers, mutilated innocent civilians, smuggled guns into neighboring Sierra Leone and traded blood diamonds to continue the insurrection.\nCharles Taylor was certainly not stupid, and that B.A. from Bentley College did not make a saint of him. In the same way, very highly educated (not stupid) medical doctors slaughter over 5,000 unborn children every year in Indiana. Clearly, the letters “M.D.” are not an indication of virtue, either.\nOf course, I’m not saying that every college-educated man will become a serial killer or war criminal. And I’m not suggesting that education is evil. (Honestly, I’ve spent the last 17 years of my life getting educated; it’s not bad.)\nBut in the shadow of Cho Seung-Hui’s massacre we must be honest with ourselves: Classrooms and diplomas don’t offer some mystical infusion of virtue.\nThe children in “The Lord of the Flies” discovered that the monster on the island doesn’t stalk the jungle at night: It’s inside each one of us. It’s embedded in human nature, and Ph.D.s cannot exorcise it.
(04/05/07 4:00am)
On Monday in Lookout Mountain, Ga., four activists from the militant homosexual liberties group Soulforce were arrested for trespassing on the campus of Covenant College. They had been participating in an “Equality Ride,” a seven-week tour of demonstrating and pamphleteering at Christian colleges and seminaries, with the intent of undermining those institutions’ commitment to biblical sexuality.\nCovenant College, a liberal arts college affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America, was informed several months ago that the Equality Riders intended to visit the campus, whether they were welcome or not. Responding to this manifesto, Covenant suggested a compromise with Soulforce and sent the group a proposed itinerary for the visit, which would’ve included meetings with administrators, faculty and students, as well as lunch – courtesy of the college – and a chapel service.\nSoulforce rejected the invitation, demanding it be granted unfettered access to Covenant’s students and freedom to roam the campus. The college received this rejection of their hospitality, and “after much prayer, counsel, and consideration of various options” decided to bar the obdurate activists from campus. However, according to Covenant’s Web site, the school still planned to provide boxed lunches for the Riders, and on Monday it allowed groups of students to meet with the Riders just outside of campus.\nThis is a fundamentally irreconcilable conflict of doctrines. The school states that “Covenant’s policy on human sexuality is based on the teachings of the Bible,” whereas Soulforce states that its mission is to oppose “spiritual violence.” According to its Web site, simply “quoting scripture” can constitute “spiritual violence.” Thus Soulforce – an ostensibly faith-based organization – is opposed to the document on which Covenant College and all of Christianity are founded.\nThere’s nothing peculiar about Covenant’s policy regarding homosexuality. Every student signs the College’s “Standards of Conduct,” agreeing to “abstain from sexual sins (such as premarital sex, adultery, homosexual behavior and the use or possession of obscene or pornographic material).” By labeling homosexual behavior as a sin (along with other enumerated sexual sins), Covenant’s administrators have simply followed two millennia of Church doctrine and the crystal clear teaching of the Bible.\nI know this sounds very holier-than-thou and arrogant, until you realize what is implied by “sin.” It’s like this: Every single one of us has the same terminal disease that happens to manifest different symptoms in different people. For some people, homosexuality is the most manifest symptom; for me, pride, greed and laziness are the most manifest symptoms.\nThere’s nothing special about homosexuality that makes “God hate fags” (as seen on posters and picket signs) any more than God hates other sins. If God has any special hatred for a particular sin, it’s probably pride; while homosexuality gets cursory mention with other enumerated sins, the Bible says more than once that “God opposes the proud.”\nThis week of all weeks I couldn’t end without noting that this is exactly the good news of Easter: Everyone has a terminal illness, but Jesus is the cure. That’s all of Christianity in a nutshell. It has stood the test of time, and it won’t be changed by any road-tripping activists.
(03/22/07 4:00am)
Last week I found myself in New York City meandering around midtown Manhattan. Whilst I wandered, I chanced to see several advertisements of the Smoke Free Movies organization, which has been urging residents of the Big Apple to give an R rating to films that portray tobacco use.\nCreated by University of California at San Francisco professor Stanton Glantz, this organization intends to shelter children from implied celebrity endorsement of tobacco, thus luring fewer children into smoking, thus protecting their health.\nI’m not implying that it’s good to push cigarettes on kids, but Glantz, et al., have missed the boat. They’re like a mother who chides her toddler to wear a helmet when riding his tricycle, then sets him loose to cruise the interstate in rush-hour traffic. If she and Glantz were truly concerned for the health of children, they would realize that smoke-free movies and helmets don’t begin to address the dangers assailing children.\nIn his book “The Disappearance of Childhood,” Neil Postman brilliantly analyzes exactly that problem. Postman realizes that, unlike infancy and adulthood, childhood is not a biologically necessary station of life, but a socially created one. He uncovers the social forces that created childhood and, more importantly, those that are now destroying it (unsurprisingly, tobacco isn’t the culprit).\nI’ll neglect the other forces Postman identifies to emphasize that maintaining the segregation between childhood and adulthood requires the adults of a society to bear “a well-developed sense of shame.” That is, “children are a group of people who do not know certain things that adults know,” and shame among adults is the mechanism by which we keep kids in the dark regarding certain “secrets of adult life ... secrets about sexual relations, but also about money, violence, death.”\nThat’s why the movie “Little Miss Sunshine” was funny. Every beauty pageant is just a step above a striptease, and nothing but a well-developed sense of shame can keep the former from degenerating into the latter.\nSmoke Free Movies wants to add tobacco to the library of shameful adult secrets. It has no place there. While it may indeed threaten cancer and black lungs to children, the sanctuary of secrets exists to shelter children not from health risks, but from those unpleasant truths of life which would strip them of childhood innocence and cynically thrust them into a “pseudo-adulthood.”\nThe true dangers to childhood and children are the institutions and movements that threaten our society’s healthy sense of shame. This campus has been host and home to several such institutions and movements. They go by names such as “The Kinsey Institute,” “gender studies,” “feminism” and “The Vagina Monologues.” These are principally opposed to the shame with which we’ve shrouded the adult secrets of sex. They’ve taken sledgehammers to the wall that has historically insulated the child world from the adult world.\nYou’ll say that shame leads to hypocrisy. Perhaps it does. Even so, “if it is hypocrisy to hide from children the ‘facts’ of adult violence and moral ineptitude,” for their sake it is “nonetheless wise to do so.”
(03/01/07 5:00am)
Without a mirror you can’t know what you look like, unless someone tells you. Similarly, there are truths about us Americans that we’re blind to unless an outsider illuminates them for us.\nTake this quote published last week by Karoli Ssemogerere in The Monitor, a Ugandan newspaper: “Poor countries like Uganda cannot afford to institutionalise the mentality common in the western world that undesirable populations do not deserve to live.” \nWhile this quote certainly didn’t refer to impoverished and middle-class Indians, it’s particularly appropriate for us this week when the Kelley School of Business has invited the CEO of Dow Chemical Co., Andrew Liveris, to speak at the annual Indiana Business School Conference.\n(In case you missed the protests last year and the letters to the editor this year, Union Carbide, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co., was responsible for the deaths of 22,000 Indians in 1984, according to TheNation.com. Thousands are still suffering ill effects from the disaster at the Bhopal chemical plant, and American businessmen have largely escaped prosecution for the incident.)\nOf course, Union Carbide didn’t intentionally kill anyone, and it’s unlikely it would characterize the people of the subcontinent as “undesirable populations (that) do not deserve to live.” Nevertheless, the manner in which the Bhopal incident was handled certainly implies that American businessmen believe Indian lives are worth less than the lives of American businessmen.\nSeeing this blatant disregard for life, we must ask ourselves: Do we in the Western world actually believe that there are “undesirable populations (that) do not deserve to live?”\nIt’s easy to see from a map of Bloomington that we have an undesirable population we think doesn’t deserve to live among us. On the west side of town, between Highway 37 and Third Street, is an island of southern Indiana that has been enveloped by the Bloomington city limits, but not incorporated.\nThe city has greedily annexed the adjacent strip malls and shopping centers, but has rather conspicuously failed to annex a trailer park and its surrounding neighborhood, making a neighborhood that is “in” Bloomington but not part of Bloomington. Is the city government passively discriminating against a trailer park full of lower-class yokels? It wouldn’t be very surprising for a city full of University people devoted to “diversity.”\nBesides, they don’t pay as much in taxes as Kohl’s and The Olive Garden.\nHowever, Ssemogerere was not referring to Bhopal or Bloomington’s trailer parks.\nThe opening quote came from an article regarding the possible legalization of abortion in Uganda. And Ssemogerere has accurately diagnosed that we in the West believe unborn children constitute an “undesirable population (that does) not deserve to live.” That is, our fetal population is undesirable and subject to arbitrary execution.\nUgandans know what they’re talking about. They survived two decades of genocidal dictators who arbitrarily decided which undesirable populations deserved to live. This accusation would not be made lightly.\nSo, dear reader, consider: Will you write him off as another uneducated, dark-skinned, backwoods bumpkin? Or will you let Ssemogerere be a mirror to your soul?
(02/15/07 2:54am)
A man of more wisdom and discernment than I once suggested that the things we hear the most about are the things we understand the least: peace, freedom, love, Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.\nWe talk ourselves blue-in-the-face trying to chase down each of these nebulous ideas and, when that fails, we talk some more.\nEvery politician has a solution for "winning the peace." Every political action league warns us our freedoms hang by a thread that those politicians are itching to cut. And Saddam's WMDs -- well, when they turned out to be less than nebulous, we stopped hearing about them.\nParticularly around the middle of February, it becomes clear the people who talk the most about love understand it the least. For example, every jeweler in Bloomington claims he has the key to love locked up in the front room's display case. Just give a jeweler a few hundred greenbacks and he'll unlock that bulletproof glass door and help you unlock all the love you could ever want -- at least until your next Valentine's Day, anniversary or when you finally decide to marry the woman.\nBut it's too easy to pick on jewelers; Tom Shane would probably starve if The Shane Co. didn't push that sentimental hogwash.\nNo, the jewelers sell sappy claptrap because we buy it. We buy it because we believe it, and we believe it because we don't understand love.\nThe most obvious symptom of our ignorance is how often we use "sex" synonymously with "love." Besides the expression "to make love," it seems like even a vaguely romantic movie has to seal the deal with sex (think "Garden State"). We wouldn't know that the man and woman are really in love without the Big Nasty.\nOr take this very newspaper: It was no coincidence that "The Sex Issue" of the IDS's INside magazine was published the day before Valentine's Day.\nSex is not love and love is not sex.\nNot to be outwitted by a highly determined and obtuse reader, I'll clarify what I'm not saying: I'm not saying that either sex or love is bad. I'm saying that if you use those two words interchangeably, then you don't understand either.\nJesus told us there is no greater love than a man who would lay down his life for friends. This is to say that the very essence of love is self-sacrifice. Every one of us is alive because a woman gave up her body for nine months; and unless you're a loathsome child, you recognize that to be the most tangible sign of your mother's love. Any child, wanted or otherwise, will demand the love -- willing self-sacrifice -- of his mother's body; how wretched to deny that love because it's inconvenient.\nLove isn't jewelry or sex. Love is selflessness for the sake of someone else, and if it's never manifested, it's meaningless. If at every opportunity you choose your own comfort and convenience, you must question whether you actually love anyone other than yourself.
(02/01/07 2:28am)
I have a Super Bowl prediction: At half-time the Colts and their cheerleaders will switch roles. Peyton Manning will spend the second half prancing about the sideline half-naked, while the cheer squad blows a double-digit lead over the Bears.\nOK, it'll never happen. I concocted this ridiculous scenario to draw attention to an equally ridiculous but nonfiction blunder being enacted in Britain: the legalized adoption of orphans by homosexuals.\nLast week Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, the head of the Catholic Church in England, announced that Catholic adoption agencies on the island will shut down if new anti-discrimination laws force them to place orphans with sodomites.\nNow, it's worth noting that four of my five siblings are adopted; additionally, for about 15 years of my childhood my father and mother were foster parents and gave shelter to the orphans of Indiana. I've had a short lifetime of experience with orphans.\nFor an orphan, life in an orphanage is better than death. And miserable as it may be, growing up in the foster care system is better than the orphanage. Believe me, the foster care system isn't perfect, but it's far better than an orphanage for one reason: A handful of dedicated nuns can never be a father and a mother; certainly if anyone could come close to approximating the love and care of parents it would be godly Christian women who have sworn-off their own lives to do only that. But we designed the foster care system because nuns can't replace parents.\nThe NFL knows that men and women are different, and it is banking on its fans appreciating that. On Sunday those differences will be inescapably lucid for anyone watching -- even if they're emphasized in a distasteful way. \nIf men and women are different in such a triviality as the Super Bowl, how much more so in the very weighty task of raising children? Through the mechanism of certain biological necessities, God has given every child a father and a mother because that child needs a father and a mother.\nAn orphanage cannot be a father, and two men cannot be a mother. Homosexuals cannot be the parents every child was meant to have.\nI don't know what the impetus behind homosexual adoption is, but I'll posit a guess: It's thought that raising kids might somehow lend legitimacy to the sham of gay marriages. If this is the case, it's nothing more than an unscrupulous political move that takes advantage of the most-vulnerable among us. \nIf Britain -- or America, for that matter -- cannot find a father and mother for each of her orphans, it might be time to reopen the orphanages.\nCertainly, 20 nuns are not a father and mother. But for the good of the orphan, he's much better off in the hands of 20 Christian women dedicated to caring for orphans than in the hands of two men dedicated to having sex with each other.
(01/18/07 2:31am)
On a crisp autumn evening as I jogged past Bryan Park, a crunchy old townie stopped me and asked me to sign her petition. I replied that I would need to know what I was petitioning before providing my signature. So this old, gray hippy lady -- let's call her Alice -- informed me that her organization wanted to end the euthanizing of animals at the Bloomington Animal Shelter.\nThings went downhill from there.\nWe agreed that puppies are cute; and we agreed that it's really a tragedy that lots of them must be killed, and that in a perfect world it wouldn't be necessary. But finally I told Alice that I would not sign her petition.\n"Alice," said I, "you're obviously very concerned about the death of cute animals in this town, but what about the ongoing murder of human beings?"\nJust a few months prior to this meeting I had spent a week in Rwanda, a nation that a decade earlier had been both victim and perpetrator of the one of the worst genocides the world has ever seen. I told Alice that my experience proved the histories true: that there are no dogs in Rwanda; they had been exterminated after the genocide.\nI asked Alice if she knew why, and she confessed her ignorance. "Because when anarchy erupted, the dogs turned on their masters. The dogs ate the victims that had been murdered in the streets, and then attacked the walking survivors. So genocide survivors and perpetrators alike -- even the supply-strapped U.N. forces in Rwanda -- shot dogs on sight.\n"Alice," said I, "did they do the right thing, exterminating the dogs?" She flustered that she didn't know, and that she hoped to never be put in a situation like that because it would be "a difficult choice."\nI told her, "That's why I won't sign your petition. Because a few miles away from this slaughterhouse of cute puppies is a multibillion dollar, international business (Planned Parenthood) that is raking in money by the boatload to kill human beings. And you're worried about puppies."\nAdmittedly, unborn children are not particularly cute; even a newborn infant isn't very cute until he's been around for a few weeks. But thank God cuteness isn't the criterion for a right to live. If it were, Yours Truly -- as well as some of the readers -- would have an obligation to recuse ourselves from life.\nWe in the Western world have inherited the Christian teaching that man is a unique creation on this planet, made "in the image of God." And as image-bearers of God, whether or not we're cute, happy, "loved" or enjoying a positive "quality of life," the intentional taking of that life is a sin against God.\nAt 2 p.m. this Sunday local churches and citizens defending the sanctity of human life will hold the Rally for Life to mark the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion in America. We will meet on the lawn of the Monroe County Courthouse, 100 W. Fifth St., and we welcome everyone -- cute or otherwise.
(12/06/06 5:14am)
Call me Scrooge, but I'm just about sick of smarm. American culture is saturated with hollow happiness and empty smiles. The facade of every advertisement tells us our wealth will make us happy, but only if we use that wealth to buy Product W from heartless Corporation XYZ. The hollow ringing of our spiritual emptiness is most deafening in the first three weeks of December, when we all bustle about, burning our wealth in an annual attempt to make the American Dream come true: Maybe this will be the year that I can finally buy happiness.\nOf course, we know we can't buy happiness. Yet we're somehow surprised when, after weeks of shopping, it doesn't appear hiding behind the next PlayStation. So we get discouraged.\nBut the finely tuned American economic machine doesn't let that disappointment get us down. Just pop in "A Charlie Brown Christmas" or "It's a Wonderful Life" to be reminded of "the true meaning of Christmas." Invariably, this nebulous "true meaning" has something to do with being grateful, not being selfish or spending time with your family -- all while still spending that fat year-end bonus to buoy the economy.\nI would never suggest that we should all be more ungrateful and selfish, but all of this sugar-coated nonsense is more nauseating than chugging a quart of eggnog. Gifts and "family time" have nothing to do with Christmas. Yes, they're nice, but if that's where our messianic merriment ends, the holiday is as empty as an inflatable lawn ornament.\nThe boundless joy of Christmas is incomprehensible without understanding the love of Easter: that God didn't abandon his creation to wallow in our misery but loves us enough to die for us. Jesus' suffering for us only began at Christmas and climaxed with his death.\nThe old Christmas carols overflow with this message of boundless love. I used to think "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" was just another sugar-coated feel-good song. Then I read the lyrics. \nThey say Jesus was "born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of Earth, born to give them second birth" and that through Christ "God and sinners (are) reconciled." This promised joy is not found in a Wal-Mart shopping cart, but in Christ's death and resurrection, reconciling us to God.\nOne of my favorite carols implores Emmanuel -- a title for Jesus meaning "God with us" -- to come and "free thine own from Satan's tyranny; from depths of hell thy people save, and give them victory over the grave." The carol depicts us as a band of refugees that "mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appears." Exiled from God's presence by our sin, we can only be restored by his unmerited favor.\nSo Christmas actually is about gratitude, selflessness and love, but it isn't the empty tokens of love wrapped up under a dead conifer. It's the selfless love of immortal God dying for his creation. For that, we're grateful.\nIsn't that a bit more substantive than "Jingle Bell Rock"?
(11/29/06 4:23am)
Two weeks ago the ghosts of George Orwell and Josef Stalin appeared in midtown Manhattan. Orwell was carrying a placard that read: "I Told You So," while Stalin's read: "Russia Did It First."\nThe characters in the fictitious scenario above were drawing attention to a rule under consideration by the New York City Board of Health that would allow a citizen born in one of the five boroughs to legally change information on his birth certificate. The New York Times reported that the proposed rule allowing revision of historical documents will likely be adopted soon. \nIn Orwell's "1984," the protagonist is employed by the government's Ministry of Truth. But in the nightmarish novel, the Ministry of Truth is actually a propaganda machine that churns out lies while erasing and eliminating any evidence contrary to its mass-produced deceit. Under Stalin, the USSR dabbled in historical revisionism akin to that in Orwell's dystopia.\nThe puppet-masters in Orwell's hell believed that the revision or elimination of history could change the present. So, too, those in New York City's Ministry of Truth think that the alteration of legal documents will alter reality.\nWhat would anyone want to change on his birth certificate? \nWhy, the "his" part, of course! \nThe proposed rule would allow a person born with testicles to change his birth certificate to indicate that he was actually born with ovaries, and vice versa. NYC's Board of Health would allow a man who thinks he's a woman to revise a legal, historical document to indicate that he really is, and always has been, a woman. \nSuppose Cher, being obsessed with the illusion of her youth, changed her birth certificate to indicate that she had been born in 1977, not 1946. A legal document would then indicate that Cher is 29 years old, contrary to all appearances and the inconvenient truth that she and Sonny hit the big time earlier that decade.\nBut forget the Orwellian-ness of the situation, bending truth to conform to someone's desires. The real issue is the blurring of the very clear distinction between men and women. New York City's Ministry of Truth is just doling out another piece of propaganda to androgynize America.\nGay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender groups will probably slash my tires for pointing this out, but men and women are different. It's a truth that's older than the hills, and a few Orwellian pen strokes on a few pieces of paper can't change it. Reproductive organs produce hormones that control physiological development from the first nine months of life in utero through puberty and adulthood. Even if a doctor removes those organs, their effects are irreversible. Creating a class of androgynoids can't change reality.\nMany people, including professors at IU, would like you to believe that ovaries and testicles are exactly the same. But this is an intellectual Pandora's Box. Once you go against all common sense and accept that there's no difference between men and women, you can be duped into anything. The sky's the limit!\nAnd I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell to you.
(11/15/06 3:53am)
In 1948, IU zoology professor Alfred Kinsey published a book broaching all social taboos surrounding the sexual activity of American men. That same year, renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead reviewed Kinsey's work, which became known as "The Kinsey Report," and commented, "In every society, sex patterns depend on a careful and meticulous balance between ignorance and knowledge, sophistication and naivete ... between the things we don't mention and the things we do." Mead lambasted Kinsey's report for upsetting this necessary and delicate balance, noting that "quite a good deal of our virtue has depended upon people not knowing what other people were doing."\nEvery Wednesday, the Indiana Daily Student publishes a small section of smut sandwiched between the comics and the crossword puzzle. The institute bearing Kinsey's name has continued his embarrassing crusade of upsetting the "meticulous balance" upon which our society depends and, on a weekly basis, assaults the readers of the IDS with its brazen turpitude.\n"But 'The Kinsey Confidential' delivers valuable information!"\nLook, I don't want to read about some girl's Pap test while I'm doing the Sudoku puzzle. In fact, I don't ever want to read about anyone's Pap test. Yes, I know a woman needs to be informed about that kind of stuff. That's why she goes to the gynecologist. Seriously, guys, I eat lunch while I read the paper.\nOf course, the above example is only the tamest of those gathered from a brief perusal of recent publications of "The Kinsey Confidential." Typical fare is invariably far more explicit and immodest. And what is the benefit to the reader? Why should we destroy the barrier between "the things we don't mention, and the things we do"? Didn't ignorance of some things used to be bliss? \nWe don't really want to be like Jeff Foxworthy when the lingerie catalogues come and declare, "Victoria doesn't have many secrets left!" The regular reader of "The Kinsey Confidential" might honestly report, "Ain't no woman got any secrets from me!" I think I can safely speak for the male population when I say we already spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about sex; we don't need to be ambushed by on the comics page.\nMargaret Mead was no prude. Her claims to fame included reports with titles such as "Male and Female," "Coming of Age in Samoa" and "Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies." But where Mead simply wanted to understand society, Kinsey and his ilk are hell-bent on overturning it.\nRecently, in the Jordan River Forum, there has been a discussion regarding the newsworthiness of "The Kinsey Confidential." It's true that the weekly column is no more newsworthy than the comics, crosswords and my beloved Sudoku puzzles. However, the ghost of Margaret Mead would warn us that every topic has a time and place to be discussed. The time for "The Kinsey Confidential" is not lunchtime, and the place is not my newspaper.
(11/08/06 3:41am)
As I was hustling down 10th Street last week, late as usual, I was accosted by a smarmy grin poking a piece of paper at me. "Hey man," the smarmy grin said. "Want a free ticket to a concert next week?" \nEager to make haste, I accepted the proffered piece of paper and plunged on to my late appointment. As I bustled along, I examined my "ticket," only to discover that it was the very same uninformative and ubiquitous advertisement I'd already seen about a million times in the previous days, inviting me to an ambiguous event called "AFTERdark." Par for this course, the "ticket" listed the program's name, date, time, location and little else: no description, campus affiliation or sponsoring student group could be found. Apparently cat-killing curiosity was the intended enticement.\n"Who," I wondered, "would try to conjure up 'the campus event of the year' anonymously?" Having grown up in evangelical Christianity, I had my suspicions. And, sure enough, five minutes on the Internet proved those suspicions right: a Billy Graham-styled Christian rally/rock concert was being promoted in such a way as to draw a crowd that would otherwise shy away from such events.\nI should be clear that I generally sympathize with the goals of AFTERdark and the involved organizations but not this promotional tactic. Try as I might, I cannot convince myself that a deceptive advertising campaign is anything but detrimental to Christianity and the reputation of Christians at IU. What is the culmination of such deception? People are lured into the IU Auditorium, taken by stealth and surprise under the cover of darkness. Is this Christianity? Did Jesus train disciples or ninjas?\nWriting this on Monday, I could only imagine that the immediate aftermath of this promotional campaign would be that Christians at IU will be considered shady, untrustworthy characters, stalking our friends and always waiting to spring a trap on them. But deception is not what Jesus taught; rather he told us that "you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." People cannot be conned into the Kingdom of God; rather they must have the straightforward truth, that the holiness of God demands justice for our crimes, and by God's unmerited favor, Jesus bore the penalty we deserve.\nI can only assume that the decision to run a sly promotional campaign was made very high up in the organizations concerned and that most of the well-intentioned students involved never considered the ramifications of such tactics. Let us then remember Paul's exhortation to the Corinthians when he wrote that "by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God."\nJesus has always been a hard pill to swallow. He called himself "the stone the builders rejected" and said that "he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed." We shouldn't deceive ourselves either: No cunning spoonful of sugar will help this medicine go down.
(11/01/06 3:07am)
The other day I was walking down Kirkwood Avenue when a bum hailed me with the familiar, "Hey brother, can you spare some change?" I stopped and pondered, then very deliberately drew out my wallet and removed a $50 bill; dangling the "Ulysses" in front of him, I declared to all within earshot, "If 50 people give me high-fives, I'll give this bum $50."\nOK, I didn't actually do that; I might be a knuckle-dragging caveman, but I'm not heartless. I created that illustration to make a point: If it's despicable to taunt the suffering of a homeless man in Bloomington, why is it OK to taunt the suffering of a few hundred thousand Africans on the other side of the world?\nRecently on Facebook, there has been a proliferation of users and groups promising to donate a certain sum of money "to Darfur" if other users meet an arbitrary goal.\nThe people promising this money are obviously not philanthropists; If they were, they would just give the money away without a self-aggrandizing Barnum and Bailey show. What kind of pathetic bloke needs half-a-million virtual high-fives before he can perform a simple act of mercy? Did Madonna go to Malawi to adopt a child because there weren't any starving black orphans in America?\nWhat is meant by donating money "to Darfur?" Are they hiring peacekeepers to stop the Janjaweed? Or are we just giving everyone free lunches and hoping they'll all get along? \nI bring as Exhibit A the refugee camp near Goma, Zaire, between 1994 and 1996. There, in the shadow of the Rwandan genocide, Western aide agencies gladly sheltered several hundred known war criminals at the cost of about $1 million per day for two years. Yeah, lots of people were giving money "to Rwanda," and their generosity was aiding and abetting known fugitives from the law.\nHonestly, what kind of callous capitalists are we if we think we can solve any problem by throwing enough money at it? Anecdotal evidence suggests that the very opposite is true -- that rich, unaccountable organizations are very likely to become corrupt.\nOur "caring" amounts to nothing more than latent racism; we don't care about the suffering of black folks on the other side of the world.\nIf you only care enough to trot it out in conversation from time to time; if you only care enough to click the "Join Group" button on Facebook; if you only care enough to throw the bum a nickel, you only care because it makes you feel good about yourself.\nWhich is to say, you only care about yourself.\nWhat if we actually cared? What if planeloads of American college students showed up on the Sahel of Western Sudan as a band of marauders swept into town?\nYeah, some of us might die. In fact, lots of us might die.\nThen the world would notice because Africans dying isn't news, but fresh-faced American college students dying, now that's news.
(10/25/06 6:44pm)
In two weeks, patriotic Americans will go to the polls to perform their civic duty, and I will, reluctantly, be among them.\nYes, I love America. I've been to several places that are not America, and that makes me love America even more. And democracy isn't half bad, compared to the alternatives. But voting is kind of a drag.\nOstensibly, voting is the vehicle by which citizens control the decision-making process and voice their concerns. But in our representative democracy, voting simply doesn't do that. You can never find one candidate who perfectly represents your every political concern, or even most of them.\nSuppose you vote for Candidate A because he'll protect your right to unionize, while Candidate B threatens that right. But once in office, Candidate A passes legislation that outsources your job south of the border. Thus, the voter's concerns are thwarted regardless of his vote.\nSo when you go to the polls, you just have to make the best of it. The way I see it, there are basically three ways you can vote.\nYou can vote straight ticket: You decide one party deserves your whole-hearted support, so you throw your weight behind it.\nOr you might feel the weight of responsibility in your decision: You investigate and inform yourself of every candidate's position and carefully weigh each against his or her opponent. This is probably the way the system was intended to work.\nBut too much democracy becomes overwhelming. The first ballot I ever looked at had roughly 1 million candidates on it, give or take a few. On the school board alone, there were three people running for each of a half-dozen seats. I couldn't even remember all their names, let alone their positions on banal issues that won't affect me.\nThat brings me to the single-issue voter. This method combines the expediency of the straight-ticket vote with the faithful execution of informed decision-making. Since no candidate represents all your concerns anyway, select the weightiest issue and make your decision based on that. Thus, in 13 days I will be using my vote to support the right of unborn Americans to live.\nObviously, there are flaws to this voting method, as with the other two. For example, in 2004 I found myself supporting some men who have codified a policy of torturing detainees; some of those same men also started a war in the Middle East that has killed a lot of people.\nBut patriotism demands that my first concern be for those fellow citizens who are tortured and killed before their birth. In fact, patriotism aside, sheer numbers dictate that 1.3 million infanticides demand attention before the misery of a few hundred detainees.\nI've heard it before: "You're throwing your vote away!" I realize legislation will not overturn a culture of infanticide; the fight is for the hearts and minds of the American people. So in fact, my vote of conscience might be most importantly applied not to the Senate, but to the local school board races.
(10/18/06 3:03am)
"Why on earth would you spend your lunch break standing on a corner, holding a poster of an aborted baby?" This unspoken question was visible on the faces of many passers-by Friday afternoon as a dozen IU students and alumni held an anti-abortion protest in front of IU's Sample Gates.\nThese members of the Church of the Good Shepherd, a local nondenominational church, braved brisk weather and many hostile encounters while politely distributing anti-abortion literature and displaying posters. The diverse group included six women, seven men, one infant and one IDS columnist. \n"Why would you spend your lunch break holding a poster of an aborted baby?" I wondered, after getting the one-finger salute from a car full of women. \n"I haven't been on a date in 11 months," I thought. "Making a social pariah of myself probably isn't helping my prospects."\nOf course, I already knew the rejoinder to my introspection. It came a year ago from a middle-aged African man. My friend, Jean-Baptiste Mugarura, was targeted for "extermination" during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. He lost nearly his entire family and only escaped by the skin of his teeth. \nJean-Baptiste took me to a genocide memorial near Kigali, Rwanda, where the church's floor is still blanketed by bones, left just as they were after a massacre 12 years ago. He showed me this grim spectacle of his nation's shame, then exhorted me to "remember the victims of America's genocide."\nJust as Rwandans have shone the light of the public's eye on their nation's crime, we drag abortion out into the light where it can't be ignored. Yes, posters of aborted babies are repulsive -- just like a church full of dead men's bones.\nG.K. Chesterton once wrote: "Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable." I haven't met anyone audacious enough to suggest that prenatal infanticide is good, but many accept it as a necessary evil. To be accepted as a necessary evil is not a commendation; rather, it's a condemnation of our complacency in excusing it. What is it that necessitates the commission of an act, the specter of which causes universal revulsion? \nWithout question, the Hutu peasants who murdered their Tutsi neighbors in Rwanda in 1994 also saw their act as a necessary evil. In their defense, though, they were given the urgent ultimatum "kill or be killed."\nGraduate student Josh Congrove, an organizer of Friday's demonstration, confirmed that future demonstrations are being planned. \n"As long as abortion continues, there will be cause for demonstrations," Congrove said. "We certainly don't savor that prospect, but we also recognize that to do nothing ... is to fail in our responsibilities before God, our community and our campus."\nSimilarly, Philip Gourevitch, chronicler of Rwanda's genocide, explained that "the best reason I have come up with for looking closely into Rwanda's stories is that ignoring them makes me even more uncomfortable." \nApathy is no excuse for God's law.
(10/11/06 5:09am)
As I write this column, the early news reports are indicating that the exclusive nuclear club has, amidst global protest, gained its newest member: North Korea.\nMost of us aren't old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, or even much of the Cold War. "What's the big deal?" we ask. "Lots of countries have nuclear weapons."\nAn hour northwest of Las Vegas is a relic of the Cold War called the Nevada Test Site. There, in a 1962 test named "Storax Sedan," a nuclear device was detonated a few hundred feet beneath the surface of Yucca Flats. In a matter of seconds the blast moved 12 million tons of soil, creating a crater 320 feet deep and 1,280 feet across -- quite easily the most efficient feat of excavation ever achieved. It also shot a plume of radioactive dust and gas 12,000 feet into the atmosphere, which drifted east across the country creating low-level fallout. Immediately following the blast, radiation levels at the edge of the crater would have killed a man in under an hour.\nStorax Sedan was the first of many tests under a larger program called Project Plowshare. The purpose of the project was to develop peacetime uses for nuclear bombs. (You can just imagine some guy at the Atomic Energy Commission saying, "I wonder if we can dig really freakin' big holes with it.") The name Plowshare was drawn from 2 Isaiah, where the prophet, speaking of the Messiah, said, "He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore."\nThe Sedan project's goal was to test the utility of nuclear explosions in excavation. Dependent on Sedan's success, applications could have included widening the Panama Canal, cutting a waterway across Nicaragua and excavating an artificial harbor on the coast of Alaska. Eleven years and about $770 million later, Plowshare was abandoned for being impractical.\nIn January 2005, under the blessing of the Department of Homeland Security, I rode a bus across the frigid, windswept expanses of the Nevada Test Site to Yucca Flats. Wearing a personal radiation dosimeter and my Department of Energy ID badge, I stood on the lip of Sedan Crater and smiled for the camera. The return trip to Hoosierland offered ample time to ponder the history and sights of Yucca Flats.\nThe failure of Project Plowshare definitively demonstrated that there is no peaceful use for nuclear weapons. Contrary to Iranian propaganda, the only plausible use for nuclear weapons is to kill lots of people in a hurry.\nOn Aug. 22, North Korea declared the armistice between itself and South Korea to be "null and void." Recently, Kim Jong Il made clear his capacity to kill lots of people in a hurry with a nuclear test. It stands to reason that this man is a very real threat that must be dealt with. We can't pussyfoot around anymore. If he will not negotiate, it is time for action.
(10/04/06 3:41am)
I'm in a bit of a pickle, and I think I share my conundrum with many of you readers. The dilemma is this: In a few short months, I will graduate. Then what? Graduate school? A career? The Peace Corps? Teach for America?\nI have spent 16 years going to school. That's nearly 75 percent of my life. I'm not sure I know how to do anything else. So helpful friends try to assist me; they ask: "What is it, exactly, that you want to do with your life?"\n"Oh, I don't know. Maybe take a vow of poverty and live on a hilltop in the Himalayas thinking deep thoughts."\n"Really?"\n"Maybe. I've been to the Himalayas. They're astonishingly beautiful, but that's only one of many possibilities."\nOf course, this option is a little facetious. As beautiful as the Himalayas are, I doubt I could think deep thoughts for more than a few days. And even if I outlasted my deep thoughts, it gets very cold, snowy and lonely in the Himalayas.\nThe truth is that I have a few goals for my life. But most of these goals have almost nothing to do with my future career. The one that most influences my career aspirations is this: I want to have a career that leaves my wife free to raise children (preceding this goal, of course, is the goal to "meet and marry the woman of my dreams").\n"You misogynistic pig! What kind of freedom is raising children?!" At least that's the response I always expect for my honest answer, so I pretend to consider philosophizing on a mountaintop instead.\nIt is abundantly obvious that the essence of love is self-sacrifice. From Hollywood to Holy Scriptures, examples abound. To cite only one, Jesus said that there is no greater love than that of a man who would lay down his life for his friend.\nIn this respect, a woman biologically has an advantage in her capacity to love: Procreating very literally demands a woman to sacrifice her body for her child. Given that every person needs to love and be loved, how could I possibly reciprocate in the face of such love? The most fundamental, tangible way to love such a woman is to provide for her and our child.\nOf course, such an aspiration is not particularly helpful in making career decisions.\nIf feminism has taught us anything, it's that women can do everything men can, and this seems to generally be true. On the other hand, no man can be a mother.\nAny career I take will require me to specialize: I will be Abram the Chemist or Professor Hess or the Philosopher on the Mountain. Conversely, the calling of motherhood requires a woman to be many things: teacher, linguist, counselor, confidant, etc. To paraphrase the philosopher G. K. Chesterton, is it better to be one thing to every person or to be everything to one person?
(09/27/06 6:35pm)
Remember the Boston Tea Party? It's time to throw the tea in the harbor again.\nIf you missed the news, I'll fill you in: Our notorious athletics department, after implementing the student athletic fee and running a budget deficit for years, wants to spend $55 million that it doesn't have! \nSo who pays for most of this? You guessed it: We do! Whether it's through ticket prices, memorabilia purchases or eventual alumni donations, the current and former student body will pay. Collectively we are IU's sugar daddy. Without us, IU would be "living in a van down by the river."\nAnd yet, what do we get for this? When we raised a stink about the athletics fee, IU eventually removed it -- along with it the athletics department took away 500 student seats at basketball games and raised the price of tickets. \nWe've been told to look through rose-colored glasses and see that "athletics actually had ... a very, very good year financially," according to Kathleen McNeely, IU's executive director of Financial Management Services. So, OK - if it was such a good year, how about using some of those savings to lower ticket prices? Or maybe refund the student athletic fee? \nDon't get me wrong. I love Hoosier basketball and soccer, and coach Hep seems promising. What I find intolerable is the athletic department's cockiness regarding its financial woes. I did not sign up to be Director of Athletics Rick Greenspan's sugar daddy and foot every bill.\nThe trustees have shown that they don't give one whit what we think: They've given us no voice in the search for a new president ; they pulled our alumni coaches at Little 500 ; and they're talking about hiking tuition rates (again!). We're just a bottomless piggy bank to the athletics department. When those who pick up the tab -- the student body -- no longer have a voice, it amounts to taxation without representation.\nWith the civilized avenues closed to us, we must resort to some sort of action. We cannot boycott games; that would be treachery to our athletes. IU doesn't have a harbor, let alone any tea-bearing ships from the East India Company anchored in that harbor. It would be environmentally unfriendly to burn Rick Greenspan's office in effigy.\nIt seems to me that we are, for the moment, powerless. But it won't always be that way. When we become rich and famous alumni, guess who comes looking for our money again? I, for one, will not donate one cent to the IU Alumni Foundation, the Varsity Club or any other IU affiliate that supports the athletics department. When it comes time to donate, I'll give directly to elements of IU to which I am actually grateful and indebted: the chemistry department, African studies or the College of Arts and Sciences. But when it comes to the athletics department, I've already grudgingly given two $30 donations, and that's all it's going to get from me.\nAnd perhaps a few crates of tea dunked in the Jordan River.
(09/20/06 7:04pm)
On Tuesday, Sept. 13, IU played host to the king of red herrings when John Corvino and Glenn Stanton debated the merits of gay marriage. As the Indiana Daily Student reported the following day, the two-hour-long debate was "civilized."\n"Civilized" is an adequate description; it was certainly no Lincoln versus Douglas.\nAfter what seemed an interminable back-and-forth, the traveling duo reasserted their friendship despite their differences. This was the icing on the cake of what amounted to a colossal exercise of "let's just agree to disagree."\nOf course, such amicable disagreement is sheer lunacy if you recall that one side is staunchly defending the status quo, while the other is hell-bent on overthrowing it.\nDon't get me wrong; I think it's great that Stanton and Corvino can be friends despite their differences. I myself have many friends with whom I disagree. Nevertheless, their debate -- which, after so many performances, must be choreographed -- was unconvincing. With every argument either an emotional, empathetic appeal or a weak stab at common sense, the debate lacked a scholarly foundation. It would have been more convincing had either debater presented evidence from primary sources.\nIn this case, the most salient primary source comes from "The English Book of Common Prayer," the section titled "The Form of Solemnization of Matrimony." Since 1622, the marriage liturgy prescribed here for weddings has been the template for nearly every wedding in the English-speaking world. It is primarily through this document that we have come to understand marriage.\nThe marriage liturgy prescribes three purposes for marriage: First: "It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord." It is obvious that a sodomitical marriage could never meet this rubric. Corvino would like us to believe that such a union could serve to rear children, but the marriage liturgy presupposes that the rearing of children is best accomplished with a father and mother.\nThe second criterion given is that marriage "was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency (that is, celibacy) might marry, and keep themselves undefiled." This statement should need no argument. Only within the last few decades of the 20th century would anyone even dream of suggesting a homosexual marriage could meet this standard.\nFinally, marriage "was ordained for the mutual society, help and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity." I cannot guess whether a homosexual relationship would fulfill this or not.\nSo the final score for sodomitical marriages, when held up to the oldest rubric we have, is: against, against, maybe. By this test, same-sex marriage fails so heinously that it cannot possibly be considered marriage.\nI know that many heterosexual marriages fail on some or all of these criteria -- and that is a tragedy. But just because many marriages fail does not mean we should scrap the institution. That would be, almost literally, throwing the baby out with the bath water.
(09/13/06 3:09am)
The end of Western civilization is coming, and it's coming to your local grocery store as a green and purple shopping cart. That's right, Barney is invading Meijer.\nThe New Zealand-based Cabco Group recently introduced its "mobile children's entertainment" device to American markets: the TV Kart, a shopping cart with a built-in LCD screen. No longer will your ill-behaved and undisciplined child make a scene in the cereal aisle because you won't buy her Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. For the low price of $1, you can placate your little hellion with all the Barney, Bob the Builder and Wiggles her little zombified mind can take. The transition from the living room TV to the Escalade's headrest DVD player to the TV Kart will be almost seamless.\nAs tragic as it is that American parents have relinquished child-rearing to the "stupid box," a more sinister reality awaits the society that supports such a sedated life. In "The Closing of the American Mind," Allan Bloom distills thousands of years of Western philosophy into man's struggle between his selfish, brutish nature and his need for society. Bloom writes: "We have the same needs as the beasts, but we also create and must live in social groups for our survival; without society the human race would die out."\nChildhood is when we begin to understand society and our place in it. In the home, with siblings and parents, a child begins the slow learning process through trial and error: It's OK to play Legos with your brother; it's not OK to punch your brother. It's OK to kiss your mother goodnight; it's not OK to announce your hatred for meatloaf at the dinner table as your mother serves you meatloaf.\nAppointing the TV as the all-time babysitter deprives children of valuable lessons in socializing. Our kids' ever-increasing exposure to television can only decrease their opportunities to learn how to live. If the trend continues, we might eventually become a society of reticent misfits, contentedly rotting away before the new opiate of the masses and stalking each other on Facebook.\nI have no children of my own, but I like to think I have some parental experience. My little brother is 12 years younger than me. On many occasions I've been entrusted with his care for days or weeks. Most recently the two of us went on a 10-day backpacking trip in Colorado. There I learned that 9-year-old boys are content to eat Laffy Taffy all day long, to the exclusion of any other nourishment. But because I love my brother, his diet that week was far healthier than a Laffy Taffy binge. \nI'm sure that children are content to watch Barney while Mom shops. For that matter, they're probably content to watch TV all day long. But a loving parent will realize that children are not the wisest arbiters of their own fates.