Yeah right, Mitt

Mitt isn't quite as much of a liar as Newt—at least this time around.

This is an amazing fact: Fox News—Fox News!—says Romney's case on women and jobs is skewed. Here's an excerpt:

ROMNEY: "This is an amazing statistic. The percentage of jobs lost by women in the president's three years, three and a half years — 92.3 percent of all the jobs lost during the Obama years have been lost by women." — Hartford, Conn., on Wednesday.

LANHEE CHEN, Romney campaign policy director, on the Obama administration Wednesday: "They've done a tremendous amount of damage to American women in this economy."

Source: FACT CHECK: Romney's skewed case on women's jobs
Published April 11, 2012 / Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/11/fact-check-romney-skewed-case-on-women-jobs

You know, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics (Mark Twain I think). Fox news adds:

When Obama took office, unemployment for men (8.6 percent) was already sharply higher than for women (7 percent). The rate peaked for men at 11.2 percent in October 2009 and for women at 9 percent a month later.

Since then, the gap has nearly closed. Last month, the rate was 8.3 percent for men and 8.1 percent for women.

Here's an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics commenting on MSNBC:

Brian Davidson, an economist at BLS, told First Read: “The math they use is correct; the terminology is completely wrong.”

Davidson noted that women actually make up a larger share of the workforce now than they did in Jan. 2008 before the financial meltdown, and since January 2009, it is a statistically insignificant change.

In January 2008, women made up 48.8 percent of the workforce; in January 2009, 49.5 percent; now 49.3 percent.

FACT CHECK: Romney's women jobs-loss claim paints incomplete picture
By Domenico Montanaro, Deputy Political Editor, NBC News

So where did these job losses come from? 64% (over 3 in 5) came from the public sector. That's right: government jobs. The Republicans want to do what to government? Make it smaller? Lay off more public-sector workers. Right?

So over 3 in 5 of the net job losses for women came from smaller government, and therefore women should vote for Mitt? Dude, most women are smarter than that. Next question: in which states did these public-sector female job losses occur?

This is so embarrassing (for them), but check out the chart at left. It's from the Atlantic -- Why Mitt Romney's ‘Economic War on Women’ Charge Could Backfire by Jordan Weissmann Apr 11 2012, 5:27 PM ET

The takeaway from this chart is: All those job losses for women Mitt's been talking about? 3 in 5 are from smaller government. Over 70% of those are in Texas (the "Rick Perry effect"?) and in states that went Republican in 2010. Look what the GOP has done for women's jobs in state and local governments; imagine what would happen with Mitt in the White House!

Unemployment figures worsened for the first 8-9 months of Obama's term, then they got better.

Mitt, guys like you make me feel embarrassed to be a Republican. I wish you'd tell the truth. "Yeah, we're for smaller government, which means even more job losses at the state and local governments, (and coming soon: federal government!)..."

The #1 cause of marriage problems

I started listening to a series of sermons about marriage; the lovely Carol found them on the Redeemer Pres website—on sale! The first sermon introduced the series; we heard that long passage from Ephesians 5, starting in verse 21. In the version I memorized, 5:21 reads: ...being subject to one another in the fear of Christ.

This verse (Ephesians 5:21) holds the key to the #1 cause of marriage problems, according to Dr. Keller. What is that cause? Self-centeredness! And from my completely arbitrary sample size of one (1) marriage, he's right.

I mean, in my marriage, the #1 cause of problems is self-centeredness: mine in particular. (It's all about me!) We were talking about this in my small group of guys, and I actually told them that. Well, not in those exact words; I think I said "selfish" rather than "self-centered". I mean, I really do want to put the lovely Carol at a higher priority than my ideas and projects and so on... just not right at this moment.

Right? Isn't that an illustration of the problem?

The point I really liked (sorry I don't have the link handy; you can find it just as easily as I can) was his comment that we all have woundedness and selfishness. Though my wounds might make my selfishness a little more severe, I was selfish from the day I was born (sorry, Mom). And so were you! And so were your kids! Little kids do need to be taught to share and to take turns; they do need to be socialized. The idea that kids are born perfect is truly silly.

Anyway, we have wounds, and we need to be cared for; we also have selfishness, and we need to repent. If two people decide that their need to be cared for exceeds their need to repent, that's like two fleas, each thinking the other is the dog.

What if both partners say/think this: "I need to repent of selfishness more than I need you to take care of me; I should put you first, rather than insisting that you care for me first"? Great things can happen. Unlimited possibilities!

May the Lord help us to keep on doing so.

Why do Christians call it "Good Friday"?

The Wikipedia article gives a lot of facts about the day and summarizes its events, how to calculate its date in any given year, etc. The short version is that on the Friday before Easter, the Romans crucified Jesus of Nazareth, or "Jesus Christ" as Christians call him. The death was particularly cruel and horrific, but not "unusual" at the time. Nobody liked to talk about this method of execution; you can read more in this excellent paper.

But what about this horrific death makes it even a mediocre Friday, let alone “Good Friday”? As we Christians believe, it was the day that our sins were atoned for. The guilt and shame of the whole world were on that day piled upon Jesus Christ, and (in the words of this hymn) the wrath of God was satisfied.

How does that work? Wrath -- doesn't that seem kind of, um, judgmental and archaic and so on? The short answer is "no," but let me unpack that a bit.

One of life's big questions is this: Does the universe, the earth, my life mean anything? Or is life, the universe and everything just a meaningless cosmic accident? I'm going to say that the only possible answer is that these things, this planet, your life all mean something. And in your life, your daily thoughts and activities, you also say that life means something. Do you ever get angry at the injustice in the world? When you read about greedy bankers on Wall Street, cruelty and oppression in Syria, the horror of human trafficking? You're angry because you believe these things should not be! They're wrong!

Where do the moral facts of the universe come from? They're not based on your opinion or mine; contrary to the non-cognitivist view of meta-ethics, moral statements are not in the same category as "Go Bears!"; they are rather more like "It's evil to kidnap children and force them to become soldiers or prostitutes because it robs them of dignity and crushes their spirits." And it's not reasonable to say "well, child prostitution may be evil to you, but it's okay by me."

Right? So where do such moral facts come from?

Christians believe that they come from the Creator of the heavens and the earth. We call Moses the Lawgiver, but he was the law conduit; the moral facts of the universe came from God the Creator.

Some of these moral facts are well-understood by most of us -- the obligation to treat each person fairly (Lewis wrote cogently about this in Mere Christianity) for example. "Hey, what did you do that for? What did I ever do to you?"

One of the facts which has become unpopular over the centuries is the need for atonement when we do wrong. Lewis gave a terrific allegory of this in the closing chapters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but the short version is that in the words of the Bible, "the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23).

Anyway, what all that means is: Christ lived a sinless life and his death paid the penalty for our sins (1 Peter 2:21-24). This was a wonderful day for you and me, even if you aren't a Christian (1 John 2:1-3), but a horrific one for Jesus, who gave his life for us.

And that's why we call it Good Friday.

De-google-izing search results

This keeps happening to me so I wrote a script to deal with it:

• Google search on something, say "measuring software modularity"
• See some PDF files in the results
• "Open in new tab" one of those PDF results
• The new tab has something that looks like
  http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=measuring%20software%20modularity&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CGEQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Frise.cs.drexel.edu%2F~sunny%2Fpapers%2Facom08_drh.pdf&ei=CC57T-XGBYb20gGJ7eSvBg&usg=AFQjCNF4WWHzd2WFkx-6_YupSut7Z4XVNA&cad=rja
• A "what to do with this file?" dialog box appears, suggesting
  • Save the file;
  • Open with something (Acroread, Preview, okular, kpdf, xpdf, etc.)

And what you've got when this is done is the ridiculous URL above

What I want instead of the above monstrosity is simply http://rise.cs.drexel.edu/~sunny/papers/acom08_drh.pdf.

Here's some code that'll do that. I have python2.3.something on this Mac OS X 10.4 powerbook (from 2006) and...

#!/usr/bin/python -utt
# vim:et
'''Given a google-ized URL on stdin return the URL of interest.
Example input:
    http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=measuring%20software%20modularity&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CEUQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww2.dbd.puc-rio.br%2Fpergamum%2Ftesesabertas%2F0410867_08_cap_02.pdf&ei=CC57T-XGBYb20gGJ7eSvBg&usg=AFQjCNEEhsr8h5IOUWtKMoIMk7eMSdi41A&cad=rja

Example output:
    http://www2.dbd.puc-rio.br/pergamum/tesesabertas/0410867_08_cap_02.pdf'''

import sys
import urllib

USTART = '&url='
UEND = '&'

def main(infile):
    for aline in infile:
        aline = aline.rstrip()
        ustart_at = aline.find(USTART)
        if ustart_at < 0:
            print "Can't find '%s'; ignoring" % USTART
            continue
        url_start = ustart_at + len(USTART)
        url_end = aline.find(UEND, url_start)
        if url_end == -1:
            url_end = None
        print urllib.unquote(aline[url_start:url_end])

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main(sys.stdin)
 

"Valero objects to being forced to fund its own demise."

That quote came from this recent Mercury News article; it made me want to bang my head on the wall.

What is it with these guys? Kodak invented digital photography in 1975, and then covered it up. They declared bankruptcy earlier this year. These clowns should have been leading the charge into digital photography; they had a 1.4 Mpixel CCD sensor... in 1986! The issue? With Kodak, as this Forbes article puts it, the company "had the nearsighted view that it was in the film business instead of the story telling business."

Nobody wants film—nobody has ever wanted film; what they wanted, and still want, is a way to bring the past into the present. I almost wrote "what they... want is photos" but that's too narrow, too; think 8mm movie film, video camcorders, and who knows what else; the Forbes article is right: Kodak were in the storytelling business, not the film business. And the film business has been in decline. Kodak could have exploited its early (early!) lead in digital photography so that the declining film business wouldn't have killed them.

This guy from Valero sounds like someone from Kodak: they're in the oil refining business. Dude, nobody wants gasoline; nobody wants diesel either. What we want is to move from point A to point B. Nobody cares whether that's a fill-up of electrons, hydrogen, hydrocarbons; what everybody wants is a way to get to their destination.

Here's a little more free advice: there is only so much oil on the planet, and we can't make any more (I'm talking economics here). Demand for the diminishing pool of oil is rising—and I don't just mean from China and India. Dude, the oil business is a business in decline. You gonna be Kodak and try to milk the declining oil business? Your shareholders should insist that you guys get into the hydrogen business, 'cause we're gonna be out of oil one of these days—yeah, it'll be after you retire, but how d'you want to be remembered? As one of those clowns who drove over the cliff you knew was coming? Or as someone with the foresight to steer away from the cliff and toward a bridge to a possible future?

You guys at Valero have some expertise that's not dependent on petroleum. You have real estate expertise, you have expertise in small retail operations, you have expertise in dealing with guys in cars with credit cards, you know how to deal with government regulators (city planning commissions and building departments, weights & measures guys, etc.). You guys need to take your eyes away from the microscopes and see what you're driving toward.

You guys could be the heroes of the industry; what would it be like, do you suppose, to have Shell and Chevron and Texaco chasing your taillights? If you're really an executive, a decision maker rather than a mere "operator" (see Drucker's The Effective Executive if you don't know what I mean), then your job is to think about the future, and I don't mean next quarter's numbers.

He loves you oppressively?

From Daughters of Song by Paula Huston (think "Huston, we have a problem"):

It feels good talking this way; she finds herself sighing with sad pleasure as she recounts the events of her vanished childhood.

Finally she stops… “Your father must be a very strong man,” Jan says.

“He is.”

“He must be proud of you.”

She laughs. “More than that. Much much more. You can’t even imagine it.”

“He loves you oppressively?”

Huston, p. 101

When I read things like this, I wonder, is that me?

Women in the church: Part 3, 1 Corinthians 14

Other posts on women as elders ⇐click

This is a continuation of Part 2, which began a discussion on parts of this paper (also online here) by Tim and Kathy Keller. The excerpt under discussion is:

The office of elder is forbidden to women.

Elders are to be men (1 Timothy 3:1-3). In 1 Timothy 2:11, Paul forbids women to "teach or have authority" over men. In 1 Corinthians 14:35-36, women are not to take part in determining whether a teacher is teaching sound doctrine. (Note: Paul's command for women to "keep silent in church" cannot mean that they may never speak publicly. That would contradict I Corinthians 11 where women are told to pray and prophesy. It means they are to keep silent when the prophets are judged.)

online here or here

Does 1 Corinthians 14:35-36 mean women can't discern truth?

Dr. Keller says that the passage means that women aren't to take part in determining whether a teacher is teaching sound doctrine. How does that come from this text? 1 Corinthians 14:1-25 summarizes Paul's argument that prophecy is more useful than tongues for edifying the church, a key part being 14:18-19, "I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue" (NIV).

Following that, 1 Corinthians 14:26-40 talks about orderly meetings. Here are 14:34-35 in context:

Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. ³⁰And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. ³¹For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. ³²The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. ³³For God is not a God of disorder but of peace. As in all the congregations of the saints, ³⁴women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. ³⁵If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. ³⁶Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? ³⁷If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord's command. ³⁸If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored. ³⁹Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. ⁴⁰But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.

1 Corinthians 14:29-40 (NIV)

Here's one possible interpretation of verses 34-35: Perhaps in Corinth some women were disrupting the meetings, particularly when others were prophesying or speaking in tongues. It's no stretch to say that the Corinthians' meetings were characterized by chaos rather than by edification. So perhaps the command in verse 34 was in response to this chaos; that is in fact what 14:30-33 are talking about, i.e., keeping things orderly so that the meeting brings glory rather than disrepute (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:23) to God. And what about "as the Law says"—what can that mean? I suspect there's something in the Law (where?) or in rabbinic tradition about interrupting a prophet who was delivering a message from the Lord.

This commentary offers (scroll down to the commentary on verse 34) the possibility that there were some conditions at Grecian churches in particular, i.e., Corinth and Ephesus (Timothy was in Ephesus at the time of 1 Timothy). “It is noteworthy that there is no hint of such a prohibition to any churches except Grecian.”

Dr. Keller's interpretation—viz., that women must not participate in judging whether a prophet is a true prophet or not—doesn't obviously emerge from the text. I don't see anything in the text about an assessment panel for prophets, or an examination board, or a church council; what I see is chaos vs edification.

The situation with this passage is somewhat similar to the situation with 1 Timothy 2:12, mentioned in part 2, in that the plain sense makes no sense:

• Women must remain silent in church? But they were praying and prophesying there! (1 Corinthians 11)
• Some women were unmarried; some were married to unbelievers (1 Corinthians 7); how could they ask their husbands about the faith?
  (Sumner, Men and Women in the Church, p.251, footnote)

So there is not a lot of disagreement that this passage refers to a very specific situation at a particular time and place; why do evangelical males want to apply it (albeit a nuanced and watered-down version of it) today in North America? How can we say that this only applies to certain kinds of discernment or assessment panels? It certainly isn't obvious how it emerges from the text.

Conclusion

I recently heard Dr. Keller's message at John Stott's memorial service, and I was impressed by his comments about the evolution of Stott's thinking and preaching around social justice issues. Dr. Keller said something to the effect that if a great thinker and preacher like John Stott took years and years to adjust his thinking and preaching to address issues of poverty and exploitation and injustice, "What are my issues?" (quoting from memory; he might have said "blind spots").

I think this showed great wisdom and humility. We all have blind spots, and if it didn't sound like bragging I'd say I'm the blindest of us all. I wonder if this issue of women as elders, or women in leadership in general, isn't one of Dr. Keller's.

And again I'll confess that I have an interest in a more-egalitarian kind of view, but that said, Sumner (who is no feminist) makes a compelling case for the view

• that 1 Peter 3:7 refers to physical/sexual vulnerability of women, not to mental acuity, spiritual sensitivity, strength of character, etc.;
• that 1 Timothy 2:11-14 (with Adam and Eve and all) and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 were specific to a time and place rather than universal; they are not normative for us today.

I therefore think the passages that are definitive on the question of women's roles in the church are Ephesians 4:11 (God calls some to be apostles, some prophets, some pastors and teachers) and Galatians 3:26-28 (in Christ there is no male or female, Jew or Greek; we are all sons of God through Christ). There are probably more, but hey, I'm no theologian.