"Do you work out?"

I don't think a young lady had ever asked me that before, but it happened last week. And no, it wasn't like, "I thought you said you were in shape, Gramps; do you even work out?" How did that happen? How is it that after more than a half-century, I got that question last week?

I'll tell you: John's cycling class at the Sequoia YMCA, 6-7AM Mondays. As I wrote last week, you get a good workout, nobody will hassle you if you're not up to standing up on the pedals when everybody else is, and at least for my fifty-plus knees, ibuprofen wasn't even needed after the 3rd week. Just going once a week was enough to get me into good enough shape to be asked that.

And who was this young lady who asked me that? A cardio tech -- I was undergoing a treadmill test involving an EKG and some ultrasound movies. One young woman was monitoring my EKG, and the other took my blood pressure from time to time as I exercised on the treadmill. They were talking about interval training and remarking on how quickly one can get the heart rate up using this treadmill on an incline.

Of course, if too many of you come to class, we'll run out of stationary bikes and some of us will have to switch to another day or something. By the way, John is reputed to offer brownies to the winner of his Tuesday night quiz on facebook (which I haven't tried). After eating these, you'll feel like you need to come to class on Monday. A beautiful scheme, is it not?

Kissing the face of Jesus; serving at CityTeam

This weekend is Compassion Weekend at our church, where rather than meet on Sunday morning, we go into the community and serve, mostly on one of these projects. At our San Mateo campus, we kicked the weekend off with a terrific meeting.

First up was Brent leading the worship band -- a "youth" band featuring one dad who claimed to be 29, his teenaged(?) son Matt on keyboard, Ivana on violin, a teen flutist, and a trumpet player. Oh, Henry was on drums and I think there was one other person on rhythm guitar.

Next, Eric shared some stories and gave us some motivation for the weekend ahead: Even if we were "just" painting or landscaping or moving furniture, we were on the mission field.

Then Kevin delivered a message -- a summary of something he heard from John Ortberg at a conference. You can read parts of that in pages 2 and 7 of this transcript, but basically the idea is that if you look at what Jesus preached, it's all about something he called "the kingdom of God." Passages like Mark 1:15 and Luke 8:1 and Luke 9:2 and Acts 1:3 suggest that this concept of the kingdom of God is pretty important to Jesus. What's my "kingdom"? Basically that's the "range of my effective will," a place where things go the way I want them to. You have a kingdom; so do I. Wherever a two-year-old can say "No!" and make it stick, that's also a kingdom. The two-year-old's kingdom is limited and temporary, but it's a kingdom nonetheless.

When we say "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," we're asking God to make the earth his kingdom; we're asking him to do his will on earth the way it's done in heaven. And the good news is that the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, the range where everything goes the way God would like it to go -- is coming near to this sorry, dark world. When we do God's will, we're part of that; we're bringing God's kingdom to earth.

Something else I remember from that message was an astonishing insight from Matthew 25. You may recall the passage -- Jesus is describing the day of judgment, where his sheep will be separated from the goats:

Then the King will say to those on his right, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."

Then the righteous will answer him, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?"

The King will reply, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

Matthew 25:34-40

So Mother Theresa was caring for a dying leper. This fellow had been out on the street for months (maybe years). She was holding his hand and kissing his face. Probably his last day of life, and how long had it been since he had last been kissed?

Someone asked her if she didn't feel any revulsion at all because of the leper's open sores, etc., and she said that she was, according to the above passage, actually kissing the face of her king, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Wow.

CityTeam Painting Project

Last month, the lovely Carol talked with Charles, who directs the men's shelter at CityTeam in San Jose. Was there something that we could do for the men? He described a renovation project that some groups have done -- paint and replace carpeting in one of the dorm rooms. These are 20'x20' rooms housing six men. We settled on painting, and decided we could probably do two rooms. Steven drove to San Jose to go over some details with Charles and to eyeball the rooms, and Carol bought paint and tarps and brushes and roller covers.

On Saturday morning, we drove down to CityTeam -- Carol, Christina in one car and Steven and Suzie in another. We had ladders and brushes and rollers and a brush-cleaner in our car too. The lovely Carol wrote more about this on her blog. It was a great time, and we were quite tired at the end.

We went downstairs with the stuff we were going to take home. I told the receptionist that there was some work still to do in the lounge: switch and outlet plates to be replaced, thermostat cover and cue rack and other stuff to go back onto the walls, the TV cabinet to be moved back against the wall and so on. No problem, he said. Then there was the matter of the screwdriver I'd borrowed. "I wouldn't want José to get in trouble," I said, as I handed it to the receptionist. (José had taken me to see the tool-man, who was understandably possessive of his equipment.)

The receptionist was effusive in his appreciation. "You guys worked hard all day and did a great job," he said. The residents and the maintenance man would be happy to reassemble the room.

What a blessing, to be able to support these guys who are working hard to make their lives better. I pray that they may experience the reality of God's promise: To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. (Romans 2:7, NIV)

Darwin's Dilemma

My buddy John sent me the DVD by that title, though the title apparently also belongs to a DOS video game from the 1990s. The film summarizes a startling event -- the Cambrian explosion. In Darwin's own words:

ON THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF GROUPS OF ALLIED SPECIES IN THE LOWEST KNOWN FOSSILIFEROUS STRATA.

There is another and allied difficulty, which is much more serious. I allude to the manner in which species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks.
...
The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained.

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 6th Edition
(Project Gutenberg EBook #2009), chapter 10

As the film explains, Darwin's theory predicted gradual change over long periods of time, but what the fossil record shows is the sudden appearance of several phyla over a very short period of time.

Now I'm not a biologist and I'm not going to argue for or against intelligent design. What I would like to do is make a few observations that struck me.

First, and this is something I heard some time ago (not in this film) about Chinese biologists conversing with their American counterparts. "We can criticize Darwin but we cannot criticize our government. You can criticize your government but you cannot criticize Darwin." I don't have names, dates, or even the exact wording, but anyone who thinks scientists aren't dogmatic needs to look at the evidence. Some are, some aren't -- just as some Christians are dogmatic and some aren't, and the same for other religious groups and political parties. In connection with this, you might enjoy reading Lewontin's comment on dogmatism in science.

By the way, is censorship is alive and well in the politically-correct scientific establishment even today? I suppose yes; you might want to check out the claims made in this article from an admittedly conservative source.

Second, a few years ago we heard a fascinating recap of the debate over evolution, presented by a venture capitalist who attends our church. He has no axe to grind over evolution, though he's a product of our educational system he believed as most right-thinking Americans do -- that natural selection is how we got to have all these species, Darwinian evolution is established fact, those who disagree are willfully ignorant, etc.

Some years before that, he was at some retreat or something when he discovered that people at our church don't all believe the evolution story. Apparently someone heard him mutter, "What kind of whackos am I getting myself involved with?" He does not remember saying this out loud, but apparently...

His comment was this: Darwin's "tree of life" has remarkable similarity to what geneticists have discovered by analyzing so-called "junk DNA" in various species. These markers seem to be consistent with Darwin's ideas; that is, with no knowledge of DNA, Darwin came to many of the same conclusions that modern biologists have by looking at analyses of the genetic material of many different species. In other words Darwin was spectacularly right about the relationships between species as confirmed by inspecting DNA. But Darwin's theory was also spectacularly wrong in its prediction that various species would appear gradually in the fossil record, whereas the fossil record shows just the opposite: a veritable explosion of life in the Cambrian era. I am not sure what the producers of this particular film would say about the discoveries related to "junk" DNA. To be fair, though, the subject of the film was Darwin's dilemma -- which has nothing to do with DNA, junk or otherwise.

Third, is Darwin's Dilemma actually still a problem for the theory of evolution (or "conjecture" -- but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt)? A search on the topic yields a reference to PNAS June 20, 2000 vol. 97 no. 13 6947-6953, titled "Solution to Darwin's dilemma: Discovery of the missing Precambrian record of life" by J. William Schopf, who writes “those of us who wonder about life's early history can be thankful that what was once “inexplicable” to Darwin is no longer so to us.”

But 8½ years later, Science Daily announced that Darwin's dilemma had been finally solved:

Solution To Darwin's Dilemma Of 1859

ScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2009) — A solution to the puzzle which has come to be known as ‘Darwin’s Dilemma’ has been uncovered by scientists at the University of Oxford, in a paper to be published in the Journal of the Geological Society.

This article by Jonathan Wells disputes that those scientists solved the dilemma; indeed, Wells concludes:

But this was not Darwin’s dilemma. Darwin’s dilemma was the absence of intermediate fossils showing that the Cambrian phyla diverged from a common ancestor. Callow and Brasier didn’t solve Darwin’s dilemma. Instead, they put one more nail in the coffin of Darwin’s attempt to salvage his theory from it. The truth is that “exceptionally preserved microbes” from the late Precambrian actually deepen Darwin’s dilemma, because they suggest that if there had been ancestors to the Cambrian phyla they would have been preserved.

So just googling around doesn't give me a really good feeling for The Answer. I used to think this was a Really Important Issue; now, though I don't think it's exactly trivial, I'm not nearly as concerned about it. Part of the reason is that I no longer believe Genesis 1 was intended to be a chronological account of creation; rather, I think it was a polemic (more on this here). And if you're interested in some comments from a website that's not quite so conservative or religious, you might enjoy reading the DVD's customer reviews on amazon.

赤じそ it ain't

The lovely Carol signed us up for a weekly bag from Two Small Farms. Basically, they drop a bag of stuff for us at an undisclosed location once a week. Since we don't always recognize what's in the bag, we sometimes face a challenge in figuring out how to make the best use of this fresh organic produce.

Such a challenge came to us in the previous week's grab-bag (more properly a drop-bag) in the vegetables you see at right. My first thought when I saw them was "青じそ" which is obviously wrong, since the plant is red (赤) not "blue" (青). Too bad, because I really miss that taste sometimes.

But this plant doesn't have much of a smell. I sauteed a few leaves this morning and scrambled them with some eggs and sliced sausage; they turned everything pinkish. Disappointingly, not much of a taste or aroma. I cut off the thick part of the stems, but these aren't like woody like the bottom parts of some Chinese broccoli stalks; they probably would have been OK to add.

Fortunately, the folks at two small farms have a "What's in the box?" page, where we found that this particular vegetable is called "Mystery" -- well, we clicked to discover that our mystery vegetable is called "orach" -- also known as goosefoot -- pictured at left. According to the Wikipedia article, it was used a lot more before spinach became more favored (I wonder if Popeye the Sailor Man had anything to do with that). There's a lot more information about this plant in this essay from Mariquita Farm.

I can't say I'll look for it in my grocery store. Apparently nobody carries it, but even if they did, the chief reason I'd buy it would be to mystify guests. It doesn't have an exciting taste (like fennel bulbs) or a nolstagia-inducing flavor (as 青じそ would, at least to me); you don't get a lot of volume out of it (like you do with leeks)... but there's nothing to really hate about it, either. It's just not very exciting.

What kind of vegetable are you?

Purple orach.

Proposition 16 -- ebola in sheep's clothing

This time it's PG&E, saying you should vote yes on 16. They call it the "Taxpayers Right to Vote Act" but the attorney general says "Imposes new two-thirds voter approval requirement for local public electricity providers." Why should you vote yes on this? Here are some reasons I can think of:

• You're hate cheap public power and would rather pay more to PG&E;
• You own bazillions of shares of PG&E;
• You think responsible corporations like Duke Energy and environmentally sensitive PG&E, not irresponsible, polluting municipal governments, should provide utilities.
• You hate government so much that you'd rather pay more to those corporations.

I guess it's time again to post a pointer to http://newappeal.blogspot.com/2009/08/government-cant-do-anything-right.html.

What is it with these guys? Why can't they be content to make an honest buck? Why do they have to come up with these deceitful tactics? I mean really?

This loop is a piece of cake if you take John's class...

It was a beautiful day today, sunny and warm (77°F/25°C), and I felt the need to get out there and not waste it, even though we did this 7-mile hike yesterday (with 1400' elevation change, too).

So I got out my trusty old Centurion LeMans, and set out on a 15-mile loop I've done a few times with the ex-teenager. It took me a full 80 minutes, but nothing hurt afterwards.

Now I have to say that this is unusual for me at this time of year. For nothing to hurt I mean (and I didn't even take any ibuprofen before starting out). What's happening, you ask? It's not glucosamine/chondroitin or any other fancy drugs; it's John's cycling (or "spinning") class at the Y-M-C-A, the Sequoia YMCA to be specific. Schedules can be found here. You want the Group Exercise Schedule for the current version, but we meet Mondays at 6:00am. Yes, there are two 6:00s in a day; this is the one before most people go to work.

John will give you quite a workout. He leads us through warm-ups, then we get going. When you come for the first time, please come early so he can adjust the bike for you. Speaking of the first time, if you haven't done this before, you might want to take some ibuprofen before coming to class. I took two tablets before the first class, and my right knee started hurting about half-way through. I took two more after I got to the office, and apparently there was no permanent damage.

For the second class, same drill with the medications but that time there was no pain until we were almost at the end. Ever since then, my knee hasn't bothered me at all in class -- which is probably why it didn't complain to me today. And if you're out of shape and feel you can't keep up with the rest of the class, don't worry; I didn't stand up for the first few months (yes, he does tell us to "come out of the saddle" during class) because I wasn't ready for it, and nobody scolded me or looked at me sideways. It's a great group.

Back to today's bike ride -- I took the route shown at the above link, and shot the photo at right with my phone just after the 280/Sand Hill interchange.

It was a beautiful day and I'm so thankful to be able to get out on the old bicycle and enjoy it like that. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

The Answer Man, only he wasn't

We heard by email about the Windrider Film Forum Bay Area, and went with another couple to see The Answer Man (2009, formerly "Arlen Faber"), a delightful film, though its score on rotten tomatoes wouldn't lead you to think so.

Jeff Daniels, who doesn't look at all like Anna Paquin's dad from Fly Away Home (1996), turns in a convincing performance as the complex and confused title character. But the story is really about fathers and sons -- something that the reviews don't exactly put front and center.

What made the film for me, I think, was the Q&A we had afterward with the director/screenwriter. Mr. Hindman gave us a lot of interesting detail about the film, his creative process, the casting, etc., and caused me to think of the film as the result of a socio-political-economic effort with a lot of logistical issues. I hope the DVD has some "making of" features on it.

The theme of "heroes" not being all they're cracked up to be was echoed in Educating Rita (1983), which we saw this past week. It's a good reminder that everyone we look up to, however genuinely respectable, also has nontrivial weaknesses and issues. Whether someone is a professor at a big university, an author of some brilliant book, big-time executive, pastor or whatever, all have feet of clay and need our compassion, not just our respect.

And in the case of pastors especially, our prayers for protection as well.