Since gas prices are up (and will continue to go up) these days I, like most people, have become rather conscientious of how efficient my vehicle is. For a long time I never really knew what my 93 Toyota Pick Up got to the gallon, and assumed it was somewhere between 22 and 24. It never really mattered when it was $20 a tank. But after the price hike, I’ve been keeping tabs on my fuel economy for budget purposes and came across this handy little calculator that keeps track of everything down to pennies per mile.

To further the irrelevance of this blog I will now post pictures how amazing this is.

All you have to do is log the information at the pump. It’s fun because it gives you something to do instead of breathing in gas fumes. I was really surprised to see how well the Toyota performed on a long trip with the wind at my back. 30 miles per gallon! 30 MILES PER GALLON! So much happiness was experienced that day. Of course, you can see when there is a front wind that the truck does not perform all that well. 23 aint so good. But! Since I have a stick I can drive a little more efficiently. Instead of punching the gas I accelerate much more slowly and do a lot of coasting with the clutch pushed in. That yields a hefty 27MPG in town! Nice job Toyota.

With the trip estimator I can average out my expenses and distances and plan an accurate monthly budget or long trip in seconds. A little knowledge of MS Excel goes a long way. But the best part is this nifty graph:

Graphs just make everything better. They make me feel very mathematical and scientific. Just think of all the crazy theories I can come up with with that graph. I could chart the course of the planets as well as the personal future of each of you. People would come from all corners of the globe in search of my wisdom. No one would be able to stop me either. Not even the oil companies and the liberals combined!

But maybe Dick Cheney could.

An actual painting by Thomas Kinkade…

Good music has been in short supply this summer, but that was until I discovered Mark Mathis. I hope that Christian music continues to go this direction. The folk/country sound is more conducive to thoughtful lyrics and good storytelling than chorus driven rock N’ roll. The former allows theological insight to be woven intelligently through narratives, while the latter provides a platform for expressing raw (mostly stupid) emotions. If you have ever felt dumb after listening to the average Christian rock song, tune into Josh Garrels, Sufjan Stevens, orDamien Jurado to recapture your imagination. The banjo and slide guitar is the straight and narrow these days, and Mark Mathis travels it elegantly. Listen to “Sharecropper Takes A Colored Wife” if you can.

All I knew about John McCain’s military service was that he was a POW and experienced some torture at the hands of the Viet Cong. Yesterday I read the 12,000 word personal account he gave in 1973, and it is absolutely amazing. Yes, I know it is an election year, but no matter what you think of McCain his story is worth hearing.

Christianity Today’s Out of Ur Blog has an uncharacteristically shrill piece criticizing two high profile leaders of the emerging church movement and their latest books. The what’s-new-in-Christian-ministry blog is usually tepid and uninteresting as it follows the constant metamorphosis of Willow Creek’s seeker sensitive strategies, but today the author called Mark Driscoll “a preaching newbie in need of guidance.” My jaw about fell off. Tony Jones doesn’t fair any better as he is said to have “presented himself and the [emergent] movement as condescending, contradictory and closed.” The blog has invited a response from the two authors; whose reactions I’m sure will be predictable (Misrepresentation! Feminized men!)

In other news, I have spent two weekends now fixing bikes. First, my roommate’s bike got a flat tire while I was celebrating Uncle Sam day. I blamed the British for having to walk and bus it three miles home. Second, my own 50 year-old contraption nearly fell apart on me while I was riding down to the lake. The three-speed hub was out of snych and jamed up causing me to come to a screetching halt. If it wasn’t for the omniscience of this crazy old guy, I would have been lost on how to repair it. Lots of little gears, O-rings, and grease to go around, but I somehow was able to get it back together and working properly.

Truly it was a triumph. My mechanical aptitudes are sketchy at best. Sometimes I wish I was better at fixing stuff, because instead of being an aloof philosophy wonk, I could obtain the wisdom and social nobility of a Sheldon Brown.

Here are some books I’ve read/currently reading/planning to read this summer that have been enriching, fun, and provocative.

In the Name of Eugenics by Daniel Kevles. This is a book I’ve cited already a few times, but it is probably the most interesting book I’ve read in the last year. It’s themes are as relevant as ever in the current-day debates over bioethics. (read)

The Narnian by Alan Jacobs. One of the better bios of C.S. Lewis from a from a great writer and scholar. (read)

The Trouble with Diversity by Walter Benn Michaels. A very interesting critique of America’s obsession with racism, multi-culturalism, and diversity. Michaels argues that seeing things in color-bound terms results in blindness to real inequalities between classes. For example, Harvard boasts a “diverse” student population, but only of the very wealthy. (read)

Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics by Jeremy Schaap. A very fun and inspiring read about one of the most significant athletes of the 20th Century. (read)

Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis. I got this book in December and I’m only half way through it. It is very detail oriented and suffers from the psychoanalyst perspective that seems to plague modern biography. Nevertheless, it has been very insightful and observant at times. (reading)

The Reason for God by Tim Keller. Been reading this one with the men’s group at church, and it has been surprisingly good. Keller has a gift for saying a lot with few words, and is widely read on the relevant subjects. The books he cites in the endnotes are gold. Dumb title though. (reading)

God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens is an ass, but he is a very funny ass. Probably the most entertaining of the New Atheists to read, but also one of the most bereft of serious argument. Daniel Dennett’s book was much better. (reading)

The Devil’s Delusion by David Berlinski. The witty Jewish agnostic responds to the New Atheists. (unread)

A Game of Brawl by Bill Felber. A book about the early, and more Spartan, days of baseball (Lots of fist fights). Looks to be hilarious. (unread)

Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson. I’ve only heard good things about this recounting of an amazing story. (unread)

Comrades!: A History of World Communism by Robert Service. I’ve always wanted to learn more about how Communism arose and spread like wildfire the world over. (unread)

Original Sin: A Cultural History by Alan Jacobs. If Jacob’s newest work is as good as his on Lewis, this will be a fascinating study of one of Christianity’s strangest and most offensive doctrines. (unread)

Why Can’t We Be Good? by Jacob Needleman. A philosopher defends the case that humanity does not have the resources to be morally upstanding. (unread)

Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden. I’ve always wanted to read this, but have never got around to it. An amazing story of the heroic character of our military men in a very strange conflict. (unread)

Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. This was recommended to me by a pastor and every time I browse it at the bookstore my curiousity of how the conflation of two conflicting political ideologies works out in American politics grows. Should be provocative. (unread)

This year at Cornerstone a very good song was played. The video is semi-good. You can’t hear the vocals all that well, but it is still worth listening to.

Yesterday I read a newspaper column by Nick Coleman. Thinking some local commentary on the nearly completed (ahead of schedule!) 35W bridge would make for good reading, I was proven wrong. The article is a tangled mess of moaning and groaning and silly insinuations that somehow is supposed to pass for tough-minded journalism.

With a title like “As new bridge takes shape, let’s not forget fate of the old” the impression is obvious: there is no reason to be happy about the new bridge because we shouldn’t have needed one in the first place. Of course this non sequitur doesn’t go very far in the actual piece. Most people find it perfectly rational to be happy about the main artery of Minneapolis’ traffic infrastructure being re-opened despite the fact its closing was a glorious example of government incompetence. Getting to places faster is always better no matter how you look at it. So Coleman shifts gears to complain about how the company building the bridge is making a profit for getting it done ahead of schedule.

There is a certain trend today among journalists, perhaps influenced by the egregious profiteering of oil companies, to simplistically equate the desire to make a profit with necessary evil. “How dare they!” they say if it were somehow shocking to find out that corporations and contractors have a monetary self-interest. Maybe there would be a relevant point to be made if the company wasn’t delivering its product, but that simply is not the case. And so after running into this dead end, Coleman goes for xenophobia masked under the guise of fiscal responsibility and anti-global economics.

After pointing out the bridge builder is from Germany we are supposed to sympathize with a low-ball bidder from the hometown. The poor tax-payers supposedly got a raw deal by not getting the cheapest price for a new bridge, never mind the fact the cheapest price usually gets you the cheapest product. To his credit, Coleman seems to intuit this as he meanders back to the recollection of cheapskate ways in which Minnesota’s Department of Transportation tested bridges for safety. The moral of the story is that we should spend money on ensuring the well-being of our infrastructure. Of course, this is the same point that underpins the logic of the contract between the speedy bridge-builder and the state, but Coleman resists this and instead remarks that the spending on the new bridge is all about covering up the embarrassment of politicians who should have been doing their job in the first place. Thus we are left with a contradictory message that basically amounts to this: “We should have been doing then what we are doing now, but what we are doing now doesn’t benefit us.”

I can concede that spending an exorbitant amount of money on public relations for the new bridge is unnecessary, but the campaign to be complain about the new bridge by invoking unassailable should’a/could’a/would’a arguments from hindsight are more so. Perhaps that explains why money is being poured into a PR effort in the first place.

This 4th of July weekend I read Jeremy Schaap’s Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics. The subtitle is a bit strange since the story has been told many times, but Schaap’s account has a unique energy to it that makes for exciting reading. This is not something that should surprise us since he gave us the delightful account of Jim Braddock’s life in Cinderella Man.

Here’s a few items of note:

-At a young age Jesse developed a large fibrous tumor on his chest that almost claimed his life. Living in rural Alabama as the son of a poor sharecropper he could not afford adequate health care, and so his mother removed it with a kitchen knife.

-In search of a better life the Owenses moved to Cleveland, Ohio where the young James Cleveland Owens got the nickname “Jesse.” His southern accent was laid thick on his words to the teacher at roll call when he tried to say people called him “J.C.”

-In Junior High, Jesse was discovered by the track coach who saw him run extraordinarily fast on the playground. After an impromptu timing of a 100 yard dash the coach stared down at his stopwatch in disbelief; Jesse had run it in eleven seconds flat. He was 15 years old.

-Jesse was more or less unrivaled in College setting world records and winning a multitude of competitions. But he met his match in an upstart African American named Eulace Peacock who defeated Owens in four races leading up to the Olympic trials. Tragically, Peacock pulled a hamstring and was not able to go to Berlin, and Owens regained the number one US spot.

-The US almost boycotted the Berlin games due to the tenacity and foresight of a Catholic Judge who lead a strong protest movement that very nearly succeeded. If it was not for the work of a bigoted, racist, Nazi sympathizing athletic organizer who was in charge of the amateur athletes Owens may not have ever had the chance to compete. Nevertheless, the black athletes argued they should compete in racist Germany, because they have been competing in racist America. Both the Catholic Judge and the black athletes were right, but totally disagreed on what to do.

-The Berlin games were an orgy of Nazi pageantry. Hitler had a special stadium built, though he flew into a rage when he found out that it was to follow a modern design. Another architect assured Hitler he would revise the plans to fit the Führer’s classical-pagan sensibilities, but the end result was a mish-mash of designs that looked unsightly even to the architecturally ignorant Jesse Owens.

-Unsurprisingly, Hitler made himself the center of attention at the games as he reveled in the hysterical applause he received from the German crowd. He attended and viewed the games from a private box where he invited the medal winners up for a personal congratulation, yet conveniently left early whenever the black athletes won. The whole narcissistic and discriminatory affair irked the Olympic organizer who scolded Hitler for his behavior. Surprisingly, Hitler backed off his self-aggrandizement and personal honor of the athletes. He later confided to a henchman who wanted his photo taken with Owens that “The Americans ought to be ashamed of themselves for letting their medals be won by Negroes.” He went one to say he would never shake hands with them.

-Predictably, Owens dominated the competition winning four gold medals in the 100 and 200 meter dash, the broad jump (or what we call he the long jump) and the 4 x 100 relay. Against the legend that the German crowd received him coldly, the 100,000 strong cheered him exuberantly and sought his autograph. Each time he won Hitler appeared to wave at him, but no one could verify if it was for personal congratulation.

-Hitler had hired Leni Riefenstahl, a filmmaker he had used to produce propaganda films of the Nuremburg gatherings, to film the games. Much to the consternation of Joseph Goebbels, who wanted to sleep with her, Riefenstahl’s film highlighted the black American as the star of the games. Throughout the filming process Goebbels berated her often reducing her to tears, but in the end her movie would be a cinematic masterpiece that is still studied by film schools today for its aesthetic qualities. You can watching film here.

-Owens’ stiffest competition came from an Aryan broad jumper named Luz Long whose chiseled physique made for a menacing presence. The young American became so nervous that he faulted and failed to qualify in his first two jumps. Nerve-racked and afraid he might blow it, Owens found a comforting white arm rest on his shoulder saying, “What has taken your goat Jazzee Owens?” Long encouraged him to relax and reassured him he could make the jump easily, which he ultimately did. The sportsmanship Long displayed was further accentuated when Owens beat him in the finals for the gold, and Long, in true Olympic spirit celebrated the black athlete by grasping his hand and raising his arm into the air in front of Hitler’s box.

-The friendship between Owen and Long lasted after the Berlin games were over, but would end in 1943 when Long was killed in a battle for Sicily. Long was a reluctant soldier who believed the Nazi regime was corrupt and destine to fail. In a letter to Owens he asked for Jesse visit his son if he died in the war to tell him about his father. Jesse kept his promise in 1951 and said he saw the face of Luz in his son.

-Owens was particularly classy and an example of a sports role model, but he became increasingly political as he faced the discrimination of Jim Crow back home, the lack of social advancement in the wake of his career, and the charges of being an “Uncle Tom” from black radicals in the 1960s. Much of the lore about the German crowd not receiving Owens came from his own accounts to please his hearers.

The story is an amazing one that I highly recommend. It doesn’t always make me proud to be an American, considering our shameful racist history, but it does demonstrate the American spirit of a true champion worthy of admiration.

This story comes from Robert Velarde:

In 1960, Lewis and Joy took a trip to Greece. The trip was, at times, a struggle for Joy. During one outing in Mycenae to the Lion Gate, Joy, exhausted from the walk up a hill told Lewis that she needed a rest. They stopped off to the side. Then a tourist “came puffing up the hill,” as Gresham tells it, making “a snide comment” about Lewis and Joy not making it all the way up: “Well! You didn’t get very far, did you?”

And Lewis lost his cool. He walked over to the woman and punched her in the stomach. Just kidding. I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. But he did lose his cool and remarked to the woman, “Oh, go and have a heart attack!”

Not long after the woman was carried down the hill on a stretcher. Apparently, she did have a heart attack.

The plain fact is that Poland sucks. I blame this country for stealing Rebecca away from me, because it does not have adequate internet/cell phone service. Communication via phone card is impossible. How is a young fledging couple supposed to communicate in these kinds of circumstances? Not very well, it seems. And does Poland care? Of course not. Poland has never cared and that is why it is in the sad state that it is in. Poland is about as effectual as the United Nations. Except when it comes to stealing other people’s girlfriends. Poland is very good at that for some reason. I hate contradictions… let’s talk about something else.

Other than Poland sucking, this weekend was great! On Friday evening I went out to the Dodge Nature Center to do some star-gazing. The University of Minnesota’s astronomy department puts on a free event every Friday at various state parks called Universe in the Park. You sit through a half-hour slide show and Q & A where you get to listen to whacky astrophysicists explain how a black hole works (did you know that if the entire mass of the Sun was compacted into the distance between Minneapolis and St. Paul light would not be able to escape its gravitational pull?). Then afterwards you get to look through a telescope at stuff. Lots of little kids came and said “Hello Jupiter!” as they strained to look upward at the flickering gas-giant.

Saturday I went to Peter’s birthday party bearing great gifts and glad tidings celebrating the big 3-O. I found a great title at B&N called Stupid Wars which I hope to see future blog posts about. My personal favorite is the Whiskey Rebellion. We also displayed feats of strength with our bocce ball skills. Thankfully, no children were injured though they probably should have been.

Sunday I tried playing Ultimate Frisbee but only lasted one game. Too many good people and too much running. Plus my water bottle spilled and I had nothing to parch my thirst.

Yet since the weather was so nice I thought I would venture on down to Lake Calhoun and rent me a kayak. How awesome was that? It was a serious workout and I got so tired and thirsty I was forced to drink water straight from the lake (yes, I forgot my water bottle). I’m sure that wasn’t good for me, but I would rather suck lake than walk around it among the legions of scantily clad yuppies.

I’m not sure what’s worse: yuppies or Poland.