It was time to go to Germany, and discover the world of bicycle riding in Europe. Dr. Peter Tate was to meet me in Berlin with his bicycle, and I was bringing my Novara Element with the intention of leaving the bicycle with Onkel Herbert. Daughter Diane was able to get away from work and go with us, and she seemed content to take care of herself when Peter and I were out riding. Our plan was for a Blitzreise, spending three days in Berlin, three days in Leipzig with Herr Doktor Kretschmar, and three days in Krefeld with der berühmte Herr Doktor Feucht. Diane left us after Berlin to go see a friend in Frankfurt, and we met again in Krefeld. The trip included much learning about how to survive with a bicycle. It was especially the case with learning how to travel on public transportation with a bicycle, like riding the Bahn. Once arriving in Berlin, the first order of attention was to assembling the bicycle, and then to going out to get some Döner. We were able to take Peter on a walk around Berlin in order to show him the main sites, like the Bandenburger Tor.

21 AUG 20 km ride around Berlin– riding a bicycle around Berlin was easier than expected. Bicycles need to observe the same rules as cars, though they usually have special bicycle paths for bicycles. The rest of the day was spent taking a long walk with all three of us together and Diane as Stadtführerin.

22 AUG 108 km ride to Potsdam from Berlin, with bypass to see Sans Soucci and to loop around several lakes in the Potsdam area. This was a long ride, and the weather was perfect. On this trip, we learned how confusing it could be to try to find your way around, and we often went in circles. Streets are not often clearly marked, and they frequently change name for no good reason. To make matters worse, I was depending on a gps card for my Garmin Edge that would give me streets in Europe. The gps unit refused to accept the card, and so was left without a reasonable means of orientation and poor maps. I couldn’t have been more upset. Needless to say, the ride was awesome, and the palaces around Sans Soucci were overwhelming in their size and grandeur.

24 AUG Dresden. 4:30, 81 km3500 cal, 120 m– Peter and I arrived in Leipzig on 23AUG, and was picked up at the Hauptbahnhof by Dr. Kretschmar, whom I met last year while in Cameroon. He arranged for us to stay at a Ferienwohnhausrun by one of his friends. We were able to meet his parents and to have supper with them. The home-made sauerkraut was awesome. They also took us on a quick tour of Leipzig. On 24 AUG, Karsten, Peter and I were able to take off on our bicycles to the Elberadweg. We drove about 1 hour to our planned start, and off we went. The route was unbelieveably well cared for, and many people were on the road. It was fascinating to see a very large number of quite elderly people out riding their bicycles. We passed through the towns of Meißen, where the famous porcelain comes from, Dresden, and on. As we rode up stream, the canyon walls got steeper, and more impressive. There were multiple castles and elegant palaces along the way…. Nothing like one would ever see in the US. We then stayed in a very large Herberge, which looked like an old castle with a Turm, and nestled on the side of the canyon wall.

Peter and Carsten

Meißen

Peter in Dresden

Frauenkirche

Semper Oper

Our hostel was the upper right white “castle”

25 AUG. Konigstein to Neuhirschstein 90.6 km 5:17  3593 cal, 215 m ascent– the next day, we first rode 10 km up the Elbe to Konigstein, making a fairly steep climb up to the largest fortress (Festungen) in all of Europe. It was overwhelming. The trip back along the Elbe attempted further variations in order to see different things. At the end of the trip, it was very sad for me to have to say goodbye to Carsten, as I really appreciated seeing him and family again. I’ll definitely want to see him again in Cameroon, as well as spend time with him again in Deutschland.

Königstein

Königstein

Summer palace in Dresden

End of the ride in Hirschstein

26-27 AUG — we took the Bahn from Leipzig to Krefeld, and then rode our bicycles from the Krefeld Hauptbahnhof to Herbert’s Haus. The next day, Diane, Peter and I rode the regional transport to Düsseldof. We also spent much time looking for a bicycle box in order to sent Peter’s bibcyle back to the US on the airplane with him. We finally found a box for him at the Rückenwind bicycle shop.

28 AUG Krefeld to Ossenberg and back.   5:42,  100.7 km     3673 cal, 127 m ascent. Today, Peter and I took off on our bicycles to ride up the Rhein. The bicycle path was reasonably well marked, but the road was not in nearly as good of shape as the route along the Elbe. Also, since we were in the  Ruhrgebiet, we saw a huge number of very large factories. At the end, the weather got us, and we were caught in a squall. Peter wanted to stop for a beer, but I just wanted a warm shower and dry clothes.

It’s been hard saying goodbye again to so many friends. Carsten, Herbert, Katja and Hannes and Peter. Having left a bicycle with panniers at Herberts Haus, I now have no excuse not to return to Deutschland for another ride. I’ll either do the upper Rhein, the Schwarzwald, or perhaps something over in the Franken/Spessart area, heading to Prague. Hopefully, the next trip might be a little longer, and focused on just one region, to prevent spending a lot of time just getting from one place to another.

Six Easy Pieces, by Richard Feynman ★★★★

This, and the subsequent two books, are actually not a trilogy, though they seem to go together, in providing a layman’s read for modern physics. Feynman has written a number of other popular-read books. In this book, Feynman, the noted Nobel-prize winning American physicist, includes six lectures that he gave at Caltech to explain fundamental physics to non-scientific types. While these lectures are very rudimentary, they exhibit the sheer brilliance of Feynman, who has the ability to make those principles that one strained over in college physics seem quite simple. This book is a fun read for both the scientifically literate, and those who are otherwise.

Six Not So Easy pieces, by Richard Feynman ★★★★

Obviously, this is a continuation of the book reviewed above. This time, Feynman attempts the nobler task of explaining Einsteinian physics to laymen. He mostly succeeds, and even able to offer a rationale behind such formula as E=mc2. There are some formulae that he fears not tackle how they were derived, such as the Lorenz transformation. This book is a natural continuation of his previous text, and a fun read.

QED, by Richard Feynman ★★★★

QED is what made Feynman a Nobel prize winner, in that he was able to tackle one of the dilemmas of quantum mechanics, that of applying quantum mechanics to electricity, etc., thus quantum electrodynamics. Feynman makes one thing perfectly clear, and that is that ultimately, he has no clue as to really understanding the nature of quantum physics. Quantum physics doesn’t make sense, but it seems to give the correct numbers to most, but not all, calculations. It provides only a model, and as we learn more, even more confusing data seems to grab our interest, such as all the new atomic particles that continue to be discovered. Feynman diagrams provide a rough visual experience as to how photons and electrons interact, though it also demands such explanations like time going backwards. I won’t hold my breath too much on the next installment of physics explanations. This was a fun though somewhat bizarre book to read, and, together with the other two books above, helps a non-physicist see where we’re at in the grand world of physics.

Simultaneous with Dennis’ comments, I receive an e-mail from NH, a physician and Christian thinker whom I respect dearly. His note is as follows…

“I would commend to you a careful reading of these two items:

http://www.modernreformation.org/default.php?page=articledisplay&var1=ArtRead&var2=1137&var3=issuedisplay&var4=IssRead&var5=112

in which 8 geologists appeal to the PCA to accept the “old earth view.”  It is a pitiful piece when looked at from a theological perspective, and actually quite poor from a scientific perspective (the analogies in particular are often invalid). Hopefully when you read it you will anticipate the arguments made in this point-by-point rebuttal by another geologist:

http://www.reasonablehope.com/node/117

Both the links are worth reading, the second article being a rebuttal of the first. You may determine for yourself the strength of his rebuttal, though I consider it as standard classical argument of young-earthers.  Clearly, NH is a 7-literal day creationist. I am very reluctant to trash either Dennis’ or NH’s comments, yet offer a slightly different approach.  The first difficulty is in creating a discussion. The 7-day creationist (if you wish, young-earth folk) consider their stand as a litmus-test of orthodoxy, and any disagreement is considered either an inability of believe the Scriptures or inability to hold Scripture as the infallible word of God. The old-earthers look at disdain at young-earthers as somewhat scientifically naive and guilty of the sins that possesses many medieval theologians that fought against Kepler and Galileo. Neither side is right.

I proffer several foundational statements.

1. The word “day” in Genesis 1-3 does not necessarily denote 24 hour spans. This argument is ably developed by both Hebrew scholars and biblical scholars that look at the use of the word “day” throughout Scripture.

2. The genre of Genesis 1-3 is neither strictly poetic nor strictly literal-historical. Those who develop the construct of Genesis 1 as simply being an apologetic against the Egyptian gods are wrong, though an apologetic is implied by the structure of how Moses constructs Gen. 1. Nor does it utilize language and terms that suggest an accurate detailed historical approach to creation.

3. The implication that God commands events to happen in each of the days of creation suggest a divine interference on a “daily” basis. Dennis’ comments, of which I’ve heard many times before, suggests that there is a “anthropomorphism” in the very substance of the atomic structure of the universe, that demanded that this is the sort of universe only that could have come out of the “big bang”. This seems to lean dangerously to Deism, if not Animism, whereby Nature itself is offered the source of personality, and that the universe, once wound up, can take care of itself.

Thus, there remain a few questions of relevance…

1. What is the level of involvement of God in the process of creation/evolution? At what stage, or, at what time in history, did God decide to cease active interventional work in the universe outside of the laws of nature, and thus work through the “laws of the universe” in his actions in the world, including his miracles as described in Scripture? This is simply an unanswerable question. Scriptures give us no clues, and science could never answer such questions.

2. Is it morally deceptive of God to create things that are aged? To what extent would he have done that? In my opinion, it is neither right nor proper to ask such questions.

3. Do the questions of creation/evolution really need to recruit discussions of a universal flood? Are these not ultimately separate questions?

4. Can we ultimately claim an exegetical basis for establishing the genre-type of Gen 1-3? I bring this up, because young earthers wail long and hard about the abandonment of a strictly literal interpretation of the Scripture. Yet, John Gerstner, in Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth, waxes long and hard against dispensationalists who force literal interpretations when the genre doesn’t permit a literal interpretation.

My own personal stance leaves me neither a strictly young nor old earth creationist. I feel that we assume too much when we attempt to engage in the creation argument. I feel that discussions have not allowed for a plastic middle position, and focused on how far from that middle one needs to go before one falls off the edge. It could happen both ways. I feel that Dempski falls off the edge, when he removes God from the much of the processes of creation. Morris from the Creation Research Institute falls off the other edge by pushing his agenda so hard he simply does poor science. It would be better for Morris to simply be a fideist than an apologist. Yet, I also accept that much of science will eventually be proven wrong, that our standard tools such as carbon dating will be replaced, and that new paradigms will replace old. Like Hugh Ross, and others of the conservative old-earth school, I see how we may use science as an apologetic for a Christian worldview, even though the science may evolve with time. As an example, the red-shift observation in the stars led to the “big-bang” theory, which is entirely consistent with Christian thinking that there was a time when the universe was not, and then came instantly (almost) into being. The intelligent design argument wonderfully argues against a laissez-faire universe explained entirely by random events. God clearly interfered with natural processes at all stages throughout the development of this world, though we will never know the balance of interference/natural process nor the speed/acceleration by which he had natural processes occur. To me, the arguments sit around trying to tell God how He did things. I’m sure He’s not so amused at our undertakings.

Since we are on the topic of God interfering with nature, there is one more thing that bothers me. I just wish to know why Jesus didn’t turn the water into beer rather than wine.

This is a staged piece with an empty audience, performed by the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1967. This was a time when Karajan, and many of the performers, such as Leontyne Price, and Nicholai Ghiaurov were truly in their prime. Luciano Pavarotti is very young in this production and appears a touch insecure, though Verdi gave the tenor a minor solo part in this work. The work itself is a compositional masterpiece, stylistically being very operatic. Karajan’s conducting is also demonstrative of the best that this piece could possibly be performed. Interestingly, he is usually found with his eyes opened during the conducting, a characteristic I find peculiar to Karajan conducting choral works. The filming is a little problematic at times, since the camera seems to stray off of the performers, and the view is often obstructed by microphone poles. All in all, this is one of the best performances of Verdi’s Requiem, and a must have by any music lover.

This opera is about the country of Santa Maria that started as a peaceful, happy country, until corruption encouraged the leaders into an arms race with a neighboring country, resulting in oppressive taxation and brutality to its citizens. The staging was not totally minimalistic, and so was endurable for a European produced production, and the singing/acting was well done. The opera was interesting in that if one simply closed their eyes and listened to the music, they would imagine that they were listening to a modern American move-musical, such as a Rogers & Hammerstein musical or the Wizard of Oz, etc. I am sure that Kurt Weill had a major influence on later composition of musicals.

So, why the poor rating? Weill was a Jewish composer that had to flee Germany during the Nazi years, eventually dying at age 50 in NYC. His political leanings tended toward Communism, and this opera represents a very strong leaning toward the same. Yet, it represents highly confused thinking, possible attributing to why the opera never really became popular. The corrupt government is the source of evil. Simple, primitive life is good. The government is hell-bent on destroying your life, while living themselves a life of luxury. Unfortunately, all of these traits were present in virtually all of the socialistic or communistic regimes of the 20th century. When Weill protests capitalism, he also glorifies capitalism by extolling the virtues of owning private property (a cow, which is the peasants means of producing a living). Such muddled thinking is so true of most liberals today, shooting a “capitalist” straw man. Weill seems to protest moral decadence by having the fat government officials relishing in a brothel, yet, had the brothel maidens dancing in the forefront at the end of the opera. Perhaps Weill needs better direction as to a real (I actually mean, only) system of morality.

This film has been produced in English, but I unfortunately have only the German version. I was able to follow most of the speaking, though there were critical sections where I was totally unable to understand what was going on. Thus, my review may not be entirely accurate. It is a quasi-historical film (historical fiction) detailing a young boy, good at boxing, who is asked to enroll in a special school system that Hitler had set up to establish an elite system of education. This boy goes against the wishes of his parents to attend the school, and does well at first, until questions start arising. There is an unusually high attrition rate at the school, and certain classmates are treated in a very embarrassing fashion, such as the kid who occasionally has a problem with bedwetting. The turning point was when the students were asked to hunt down and shoot some young escaped Russian POWs. This led the star character to give up, and in the end get thrown out of the school.

Reading the reviews of this movie, many comment on how this film represents a resurrection of rethinking some of the crimes of the past Nazi regime. I’m not sure such an episode is worth re-thinking. The mistake made in this film is that they do NOT engage in a re-thinking, but rather, a re-creation or a re-invention of what actually happened. They imply that young Germans actually knew better, that they had hearts and souls that defied the evil of their elders and wished to correct those evils. One wishes that were true, but such is not the case in any epoch, in any time, in any place. Such is human nature to defy the elders, but in such a fashion as to generate an even worse ethic or morality. So, Napola doesn’t satisfy the wish for a therapeutic re-think of past sins. It excuses the past by claiming that the youth really knew better, and often did act in defiance of Nazi policy. A few did, such as Sophie Scholl, but most did not.

This was a hard series to rate, in that, while holding my interest, I fell asleep at the end of about all 24 of the lectures. Schumacher was not boring, so I couldn’t fault him. He also generated enough interest on my part to pull out some light reading books by Richard Feynman on Physics, and enquire about more substantial quantum mechanics textbooks. He brought back memories of Physical Chemistry which I took for one year in college, in which we used the essentials of quantum mechanics quite heavily for our calculations, but of which the third term was spent doing simple solutions of the Schrödinger equation for the hydrogen atom. It seemed a little strange trying to teach quantum mechanics without mathematics. So, it ended up being more a “Quantum Mechanics for Psychology Majors” class, something which nobody could really take seriously. Dr. Schumacher covered the history of quantum mechanics, some of the basic ideas, and discussion of how quantum mechanics differs from how we see and experience the macroscopic world. I found the discussion of his work in quantum informatics to be most interesting. Should he edit this course for a new edition, I would like to see him a) include more mathematics, even if it is not totally understood, b) speak more about the history of quantum mechanics, especially in the most recent several decades, and c) include more discussion of sub-atomic work, such as quarks, muons, etc. and discuss how they tie into the quantum mechanics discussion, and d) discuss more fully how relativity and quantum mechanics conflicts and interacts in understanding the universe.

26JUL2010   Total travel time 2:49, 68 km, 120 m ascent, 2958 cal.
I finally have been able to break away for a week to do some cycle touring. Russ A and I were dropped off in Darrington by Lucas, who rode about 40 miles with us. We spent the first night in the park lawn of Newhalem, having grabbed dinner at the country store, which closes about 5 pm. We were able to order some cold sandwiches, and even a beer. I was then able to finish Pat Buchanan’s book, and finish writing a review for this book on Betsy’s iPad, which she so graciously let me borrow. I’m beginning to love these little devices, as they are perfect for travel, since all I need is some word processing, and occasional Internet connection on WiFi. It is awesome at holding a charge. I thought that I’d never like the bugger, but I now prefer this over my laptop for travel, which is heavy, an energy monster, and not as versatile in many ways. I especially liked the iBooks option, which is a color improvement over the Kindle. The General (Pat C) had a Kindle on our ACA trip last year, and I was quite interested in it’s ability to provide availability to multiple books.

27JUL2010   Time 8:40 distance 120.3 km 1594 m total ascent, 6680 cal
Today was a most challenging day. We started from Newhalem, WA and rode to Winthrop. In the process, we needed to cross the North Cascades, and the pass is not an easy one. Actually, there are two passes, Rainy and then Washington Pass. After completing Rainy Pass on fully loaded touring bicycles, we were getting pretty beat. By the time we arrived in Winthrop, we were exhausted. It didn’t help that the last ten miles was greeted with a very strong head wind. Russ and I survived, especially owing to the spectacular scenery on the Passes. We might be invalids tomorrow!

28JUL2010   Time 3:11, distance 67 km, ascent 166 m, cal 2259
As one could see, today was an easy day. We needed it after yesterday, and today was also quite hot, especially in the afternoon. So, we rode from Winthrop tp Pateros. I am now looking out on the Columbia River. We went swimming in the hotel pool to cool off, and am able to relax. We’ve encountered a number of foreign cyclists on the route who are hitting the North Cascades, and it is interesting how much this part of the world attracts everybody else, yet this is only the second time I’ve ever been across the North Cascades highway. The cycle ride itself was reasonably flat, but the heat was still oppressive, as we followed the course of the Methow River before it flows into the Columbia River at Pateros.

29JUL2010  Riding time 4:40 distance 93 km, ascent 381 m, 3250 cal.
Travel today was between Pateros and Wenatchee, WA. The route followed the Columbia River all the way, though it was rolling hills, some as much as a persistent (2-3km) 5% grade. We started at 6 am in the morning, but by 10 am the heat was already quite sweltering. I couldn’t have ridden too much longer today because of the heat. The morning was absolutely gorgeous with sun glowing on the sides of the cliffs beside the Columbia River. We passed multiple fruit stands, affording us an opportunity to purchase fruit for the road. Peaches never tasted so good! Finally, in Wenatchee, we were able to catch the Trailway bus back to Tacoma. We wanted to take the train, but they would not allow us to check on our bicycles in Wenatchee, so, we took the bus. At first, Mr. Sourpuss at the checkout counter told us that we could not take our bicycles, but a very nice bus driver let us stick the bicycles In the luggage compartment anyway. So, it was a fantastic cycle trip with a fantastic friend.

I again did not take nearly enough photos. There isn’t much diffent that I’ll need to do for further road trips except to get in better shape. I hope that the issue is simply that of being a novice in cycle touring, and the more I do cycle touring with friends, I’ll be able to plan better, and utilize the time to not force mileage, but to enjoy each mile ridden. This will take time and experience. Further mid-summer trips should be planned for the coast, and not in eastern/central Washington. Maybe we could do part of the Pacific Coast route next summer.

Bach Organ Works, performed by Simon Preston ★★★★★

I was a little leery of getting yet another set of Bach Organ works, since both the Peter Herford and Helmut Walcha sets are superb. Preston offers a change of venue, with many of the Bach pieces not performed in a perfectly traditional manner. Yet, the performances were entirely compelling, and most interesting to listen to. Oftentimes, syncopation or variations in volume or tonal presentation made a completely different piece than is traditionally heard. This is a very worthy purchase for the Bach lover. Quite honestly, I think that Bach would approve entirely of this performance. Remember that Bach quite often re-worked the pieces of other composers in order to hear them in a fresh manner. These works are definitely fresh, and bring an intense amount of life and vitality to what might otherwise be considered fairly boring works.

Pat Buchanan, Day of Reckoning, 26JUL2010 ★★★★★

Buchanan, in his inimitable style, discusses the many things on his mind that he feels is wrong with America. His sweep of subjects is quite large, covering the destructive ideology of multiculturalism and racism, the loss of a public morality, our inability to develop a clear policy toward immigrants that supports American interests, the serious trade imbalance in the name of “free markets”, the loss of America’s industrial base, American imperialism throughout the world, with disastrous consequences on our friends and dose who are not our enemies, specific foreign policy blunders also being mentioned, from our recent treatment of Russia and Iran, all attesting to a direction that very well will lead to the downfall of the USA. This book is a valuable book for those who regard Ameica as home, and who choose not to expatriate. Highly recommended and an easy read.

Russ, Luke, and I as well as Peter decided to head off to eastern Washington to do some cycle riding.

The above photo includes Pete, Howie, Jake, Lucas, and Russ standing in the Blue Mountains after visiting an old family hunting site.

We stayed with a relative of Russ, Howie, who has a cabin in the Blue Mountains of eastern Washington, next to his charming bruder Jake.

Howie is on the left, Jake on the right. We did short and long rides each day. The weather was gorgeous, though a bit hot for my liking, being up to 33℃. The Palouse contains not only the Blue Mountains, but wheat fields as far as the eye could see. You can see our motley crew resting by a wheat field.

Each evening, we cooked up a meal, and Lucas would retreat to study. Study? My goodness, he has forgotten that he graduated from college!

Reality hit, and he had to pack off back home…

Total mileage was

15JUL 24.5 km, 414 m elevation gain

16JUL 120 km, 1173 m elevation gain

17JUL 95 km, 576 m elevation gain

18JUL 38 km, 325 m elevation gain

The main title of this book is a bit deceptive, in that it fails to describe the nature of what the book is about. Indeed, the subtitle is a better explanation, in that it is Dembski’s attempt at a theodicy, that is, an explanation as to why there is evil in the world. Dembski is best known for his work in intelligent design, and has proven himself quite capable as a thinker in that regard. Regarding his theological ventures, he proves less adept. Dembski develops a rather rigid form of old-earth creationism in order to develop his theodicy thesis, though he admits that his theodicy would work regardless of whether one was old-earth or young-earth. Thus, it is strange that Dembski spends so much time arguing for an entirely evolutionary scheme to the “creation” of man, the final transformation of man from animal to human happening by God creating a garden in which two hominids (Adam and Eve)  enter and thus become human, after which they promptly sin. To explain death and evil before the garden of Eden and the fall, Dembski evokes the possibility of retroactive effects of the fall, acting on the created world long before the fall had ever taken place. To defend his position, Dembski develops at length the comparison of chronological and kairological time, chronological time being literal time as one would observe on a clock, and kairological time being logical time, time that occurs in the thought process that exists outside of clock-time.  This explains the whole of Genesis 1-11, in that no attempt is being made to demonstrate a scientific view of how the world and first civilizations were brought about. Unfortunately, Dembski’s approach is easily generalized to suggest a logical fuzziness to any of the factual statements of Scripture. I tend towards old-earth creationism, but shudder when I see what Dembski wishes to do with old-earthism to accommodate science. Eventually, God must stick his finger into the world somewhere, whether it be the garden of Eden, or in simply making a man along the models of prior biological entities that he has previously created. Worst, Dembski never really accomplishes an effective theodicy of explaining why God would allow evil, save for answers already given by theologians, that is, that in some way, a greater good would be seen coming out of the evil that exists. Better theodicy works exist. I reviewed one recently (Paul Helm, The Providence of God) that was superlative save for the difficulty in following the ramifications of Helm’s thinking. The End of Christianity ultimately does nothing but contribute to the confusion of our existence. It is an easy read, and thoughtful read, though not a terribly exciting or informative read.

This is a series of 12 one half hour lectures on black holes. Betsy and I had watched Filippenko’s Astronomy series previously and thoroughly enjoyed it. This short series was no exception. One cannot help but notice the enthusiasm that Filippenko has with the study of Astronomy. This series was a set of lectures as much on physics as on astronomy. The first few episodes detail the original idea of a black hole by a German physicist Schwartzschild made while he was on the eastern front during WWI, and follows it with the original descriptions of black holes and evidence for their existence. Since they are black holes, they cannot be directly seen, but only inferred. Filippenko keeps the amount of physics equations to a minimum, yet later discussions on competing descriptions of black holes by the theory of relativity vs. quantum mechanics, the evaporation of black holes as described by Stephen Hawking, the possibility of mini-black holes, gravitational waves, and worm hole theory, all left one wondering as to the veracity of these claims. Since the Hadron collider at CERN and new space probes are intended to answer some of the questions of the nature of black holes, we have much to anticipate in the news as physics and astronomy works hand in hand to discover some of the “darker” secrets of the universe. Filippenko must have given us every possible joke about black holes ever written, and even demonstrated how he dressed up as a black hole every Halloween. Between his humor and compelling teaching style, this was a wonderful series to watch.

Herzog and Kinski made many films together, though the reportedly did not get along too well with each other. Most of their films will leave an overwhelming impression on you, and this film is no exception. Amazon reviewers either left it 5 stars or one star. I could argue both ways with this film. Kinski has to be one of the ugliest, brutish actors to ever hit the stage. It is amazing that he had such a beautiful daughter. His acting included almost no speech, and much of the movie is passed with silent imagery of soldiers marching through the Andes, or sailing down a tributary of the Amazon. Yet, the film tends to be very effective. It is quite a depressing film, where a expeditionary team of one of Pizarro’s army, attempting to find El Dorado, the city of Gold, ends up with mixed intentions and internal rivalry, ultimately leading to the destruction of the entire expedition. This is reportedly based on a true story, though I’m not certain as to it’s faithfulness to the historical narratives. The film was in German, though it is available in dubbed English, and could be enjoyed by American audiences. Don’t watch it as a film to lift your spirits. It won’t.

The Outer Limits, like the Twilight Zone, were the two serials that I remember as a child. Both of them tended to give me nightmares. They don’t seem to be too spooky anymore. Comparing the two series, I would say that the Outer Limits tended to be “scarier”, in that there were more scary monsters and creepy scenes. But after reviewing both series, I would say that the Twilight Zone had better episodes, tended to offer a clearer message with each episode, and had more compelling plots. Both series tended to repeat similar stories or themes, such as a travel back in time, or a monster appearing that either was actually benign, or that required uncanny skills to control or eliminate, or adventures of space travelers on another planet. Each episode of the Outer Limits was an hour long, compared to the Twilight Zone where the episodes were 1/2 hour, with the exception of one years worth of episodes that ran for an hour. All in all, I enjoyed the Twilight Zone more, but found both as interesting displays of quality television from years past.

07JUN2010 I’m currently sitting in the airport at Muscat, Oman. It is a very nice airport, and thankfully, all have been very helpful to me. I discovered only a few days before leaving that CheapOAir changed my reservations such that I was left with a 28 hour layover in Muscat, the thing that I dreaded most, being stuck in an airport for lengthy periods of time. There was no way that I could correct matters, though there was a glimmer of hope yesterday with Lufthansa suggested that I could be bumped for a day, which would have left me a 4 hour rather than 28 hour layover. Oh well. The trip started in Seattle. The checkout person was German, so we did the entire exchange auf Deutsch. I was pleased to discover that I was also able to fare quite well in the Frankfurt Flughafen, my German ever so slowly improving, though mostly in interpretation, and not in ability to communicate. I’ve been able to read two large books so far in my travel, well as study some German and Bengali. I sadly discovered that I left my light yellow rain jacket on the last airplane, but won’t discover until this evening whether it showed up in lost and found. The airport is quite fascinating, and am surprised at the amount of liquor that could be found here, even though it is a strict Muslim country. I’ll probably pick up some frankincense on my way back from Bangladesh. I wish that Betsy was with me. I miss her, even though she seems to be constantly anxious about any sort of imaginable trivia. I’ve seen only a few spooks so far, and most people seem to be dressed in Indian western dress. I am quite surprised at the prevalence of Western culture, and especially English, in remote parts of the world, such as here in Oman.  Watching Muslim and Hindu families come by, seeing people interact and converse, it amazes me that cultural differences are over-emphasized, and how similar the characteristics of all humankind tend to be.

08JUN2010 Finally in BD. Babil got me at the airport, and we went for lunch at a local Bangladeshi restaurant. I’m eating with my hands again! You don’t use a spoon and fork in BD but pick up your food with your hands. It was wonderful to see old friends here in Chabagong, including Steve K, Steve W., Jason & Anna, John Tripura, Poromil, Uttam, Sujan, and the Collins. They make the trip worth it! Please forgive me if I left your name out…

20JUN2010 A 12 day interlude is now noted. I have been quite busy at the hospital, and enjoying my interactions. Like before, I have spent much of my free time in either talking with friends (of whom are both Americans and Bangladeshis), and reading. A number of books have already been devoured. Several books will not be reported in my website for the sake of Christian charity. Dr. Lattin has also loaned my some old copies of First Things.  I find First Things quite fascinating with a mixture of feelings. About a 1/3 of the articles are delightful and of interest to me. They utilize English at its best, a subject which leaves me rather jealous, because, try as I may, I find it impossible to write well. Every time I re-read what I write, I find grammatical errors, confusing statements, inappropriate use of words, self-manufactured words, and other stupidities. Brother Dennis only points out the most glaring examples. Yet, while reading First Things, I am able to obtain a vicarious joy in the best use of the English language, and the thoughtfulness of the articles. I am less inclined to delight in First Things because of its replete Romish Catholicism, as well as its slightly too liberal stretch of “co-belligerency” to Rome, Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism, etc. Yet, Neuhaus is a first class writer, and often strikes a cord of agreement with me that I am able to appreciate.  My time is also spent in reflection on life in general. I miss Betsy tremendously. I do not feel complete without her. I’ve reflected much on the nature of missions, especially missions in a Muslim realm. Modern Western sympathies for Muslim culture and religion seem to lack an appreciation of the working of Muslims when found as the predominant cultural or religious group in a community. This has been seen by me both in BD as well as in Cameroon. It is a religion of slavery, joylessness, oppression. It offers minimal respect for women, disguising the depersonalization and subjugation of the female population all in the name of modesty. Yet, devout Muslim men seem to be the most lustful of all of God’s creatures, and the presence of a Burqua doesn’t quench their lusts. Generalizations tend to betray the large amount of quite decent living and courteous Muslim people that I’ve encountered, who have been most helpful in my travels. Like last time in BD, probably the hardest thing to endure is the persistent beggarliness of all Bangladeshis. It’s hard not to respond to that, though agreements with the mission to not give more than meager gifts to the natives must be observed. A typical BD native seems to view the missionary Christian as the equivalent of “wealth”, and I remain perplexed as to how to personally respond. I sometimes feel that my presence in BD is perhaps more a problem than good for the gospel.

27JUN2010 I have just finished my last day of call, and will be wrapping things up this week. Call kept me up both nights, the first to do a D&C, and then next night to answer questions about a patient who decided to go into the dying mode. It is monsoon season, and rain occurs unlike anything in the Northwest. It will rain torrentially for about twenty minutes, and then it will be sunny. Rains occur about 2-3 times a day. I tried going out once in a downpour, with an umbrella, and found that I was soaked from head to toe, as the rain falls horizontally with a small wind. You’re always given a minute or so premonition of coming rain, as the wind begins to blow. You don’t see dark storm clouds, just a wind. I’ve now met with all my friends on the hospital compound, and feel like I’ve been able to spend quality time with them. I haven’t taken enough photographs, and will need to spend one last day running around with my camera. Nurul (his name sounds more like Noodle as the Bengalis do a different sort of “r”) will be taking me up to Chittagong. Meanwhile, only one thing is on the mind of most Bangladeshis—the World Cup in soccer. Oddly, the nation cheers for only two teams, Argentina and Brazil. It will be tragic when both of those teams loose.

02JULY2010 I’m now sitting in the airport in Chittagong. It’s the first time in ages that I’ve been able to access fast internet (and free, also!!!!). A few Taka and the airport assistant was able to shuttle me through to the head of the line, and get me through without a problem. The airport scanner was broken, and so they quickly let me through when I told them that I was a daktar (doctor). The ride to the airport was with Nurul, who drove quite decently, and we arrived in generous time to catch the plane. Although Cameroon roads were the worst I’ve ever encountered, Bangladeshi roads are not exactly super-highways, and more than once, we almost hit a dog, rickshaw, and oncoming bus. I can’t believe that more accidents don’t happen in this country. Later… I’m now in the airport in Muscat, Oman, waiting for my Papa John’s pizza to cook. I happened to be the only white person on the plane from Chittagong to here, and it’s nice to see a few English speaking people around. Bangladeshi behavior is close to hilarious. They are very pushy in line, always trying to get ahead of anybody else. Once the plane hit ground, almost immediately, about half the passengers popped their seatbelts and were standing to fetch their overhead items. Strange. Papa Johns was quite good, not greasy, close to what one would eat at home. I ordered the super Papas, since they didn’t have the Arabian Always special. I presume it was halal. The checkout lady was in black dress, not a full burqua, but had absolutely no personality; no smile, no regard for people, nothing.

Papa Johns in Muscat, Oman

Flowers of Bangladesh

Selling Jackfruit in Chabagong

John and Nimmi with hospital schematic

In the market with Sujan

I now think about the trip summary. I feel that it was a valuable trip, especially being able to meet old friends, and acquire new friends in Malumghat. I was able to give Steve K. free time to work on the design of the new hospital with the architect. I especially enjoyed meeting John M. and his wife Nimmi, who live in North Carolina, though they come from Chennai (formerly Madras) India. What did I forget? 1. Insect repellent. The last four days, the bedbugs came out, and I was covered head to toe. Interestingly, at the same time, I read recently that an Abercrombie and Finch was closed in New York City because of bedbugs. Go figure. 2. Flashlight (headlamp) – the lights go out way too frequently, and I have to ride a very bumpy road on my bike at night to get to the hospital when on call. 3. Voltage converter/adapters- the only thing that wouldn’t work was my beard trimmer, but sticking a three prong plug into the outlets provided tended to put a terrible strain on the plug. It would have been better to have an adapter.

I am considering a return in late January/early February 2011 with Betsy. If we go, I think I will try the oriental route, and maybe stay several days in Bangkok. Jason noted that the town was quite interesting, and fairly modern, worth a visit. We’ll see how the Lord leads.

So, as soon as we arrived home, Betsy and I went out to purchase a new vehicle. Diane needed our RAV4, and we sold it to her since we were considering a pickup. We ended up with a Toyota Tacoma.

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, by DA Carson ★★★

This is actually a combination of two books, the first being a treatise on the sermon on the mount, and the second “Jesus Confrontation with the World” on Matt. 8-10. The latter were derived from sermons that DA Carson preached early on in his life, and the former is a exposition that we also wrote many years ago, though in a sermon type format. It is Carson in the “easy-read” mode, speaking in admonitions and encouragement towards a full Christian life. Carson is repetitive with other writings of his, and doesn’t offer critical insights that one is accustomed to in his more academic writings. This is a book that offers a good read of a “devotional” type.

Practical Religion, by J.C. Ryle ★★★★

This book is a series of 21 papers written by J.C. Ryle, former bishop of Liverpool, on aspects of practical Christianity. In it J.C. Ryle accounts the necessity for regular Bible reading, prayer, and other aspects of life which maintain the health of a Christian person. There was a moderate amount of repetition of examples, and the papers were more like sermons than expository articles. They provided good reading for self-examination and contemplation on how to live the Christian life in a better manner, focusing on the things that are most important in life.

Above All Earthly Powers, Christ in a Postmodern World, by David Wells ★★★★★

This is the fourth in a series of books written by David Wells on the status of the church in the last 20 years. In all of the books in the series, he offers insights into how the church has drifted away from its doctrinal moorings and yielded to the Zeitgeist of pluralism, commercialism, and materialism, while turning the focus of worship from God to self. In this book, Wells takes a particular aim at the influences of postmodern thinking on the nature and behavior of church. In the first several chapters, he defines postmodernism. I tend to agree with his assessment that postmodernism is really just another form of modernism, a form which has run the experiment of the Enlightenment to its bitter deadly end. He then addresses how America has gone from a uniform white European Protestant community to being a multicultural hodgepodge, and how that has affected the way we think and act, as well as the way we “do” church. The next chapter addresses how Americans have actually become much more spiritual across the board, yet much less religious. This is a result of a lost basis for religion, especially the grounding of the authority of Scripture, while enhancing the authority of the inner self, and how one feels about god. Next, Wells discusses how the entirety of “meaning” has found a new home. Whereas the older philosophers such as Sartre and Camus spoke of our existential despair, the new think is almost a sense of giddy irrational joy regarding our meaninglessness. Unfortunately, the Christian response has been sociological rather than soteriological, i.e., has tried to answer man’s quest for meaning in terms of help groups rather than giving the gospel. Wells brushes with how the new thinking about Paul has contributed to the evangelical problem by diminishing the work of Christ on the cross. Next, Wells speaks of how our current age has lost its “centeredness”, attacking the openness theology of Clark Pinnock as contributing to the meaninglessness of events in the world where even God has lost control. Wells does a devastating rebuke of openness thinking. In the end, Wells ends with his characteristic theme of showing how all of these postmodern thought patterns has led to the behaviors that we now see in the church, including the Willow Creek phenomenon, church marketing, and the church as the focus of every sort of commercial enterprise. While Willow Creek style pastors have a true desire to help the church to grow, they have sacrificed truth in the process. Thus, they ultimately have nothing to offer the post-modern man, longing for true truth. Church must “preserve its cognitive identity and distinction from the culture” in order to truly flourish. Christians are not to incorporate into or conquer post-modernity, but rather stand for Christ, as post-modernity will die as all other philosophies have died. This book is a must-read for Christians who truly wish to make an impact on post-modern man.

By Faith Alone, by Gary L.W. Johnson, and Guy P. Waters ★★

I did not completely read this book, and skimmed many sections. It is edited texts of a number of talks given by Presbyterian Reformed people, mostly addressing issues of the new thinking on Paul, as now promoted by N.T. Wright, and on the Auburn Theology. The new thinking sections have been more clearly and better handled by others, such as DA Carson, and so little new is offered. The Auburn Theology issue is the creation of a straw man, attacking was they view as a Romish deviation of theology, as first suggested by John Murray from Westminster Theological Seminary. Their complaint is the tendency of Auburn Theology, that is, Federal Vision, to speak of a single Covenant, rather than multiple covenants that God has given to man. They offer no clarification as to exactly what they are contesting except for perhaps the different terminology being used, and I am left bewildered as to exactly where they view the problem with Federal Vision to be. Essentially, they resemble a group of academic Presbyterians with a severe case of constipation. Unfortunately, such name calling has led to potential divisions within the PCA denomination, and we are none the better for the sloppy theology that this book provides. They offer more name calling rather than arguments to defend or contest the statements of the Federal Theologians. Please understand, while I do not support theological orientation of federal theology, it is mostly because I am having such a hard time defining what is exactly is, and how it is so seriously deviant from covenantal reformed theology to lead to such rancor and discussion. My advice is to not waste your time with this book.

The Providence of God, by Paul Helm ★★★★★

This was a hard book to rate, in that it was not an easy book to read. A few sections had to be re-read a number of times, and still pretty much passed me by. I have reviewed other books in the past by Paul Helm. Dr. Helm is noted as one of the premier conservative Christian philosophers alive today, and currently teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C. In this text, Helm tackles the hardest of all possible problems, the issue of God’s providence. This book, as I understand from other sources, was written as the philosophical response to Openness theology. What does “providence” mean? How does providence fit philosophically with the thought of human freedom, with the idea of petitionary or intercessory prayer, with the idea of human responsibility, or with the idea of the existence of evil. Helm efficiently shows how all of these concepts relate to the same issue. He shows that if one believes in a situation where God is not knowledgeable of the precise future, or has not determined all future decisions that one will make (God taking “risks”), it does not lend to easier solutions to the problem of evil, the problem of freedom, etc., than if one believes in a God who ordains all that will come to pass (God in a no-risk situation). So, Helm concludes with a strong “Calvinistic” approach to free-will and providence, though remaining very gracious to disagreement. In the end, Helm does a laudable job at showing the consistency of one’s free will and a God who has determined all that is, was, and will be. Helm shows that not only is a no-risk God the most logical (as well as Scriptural) conclusion, but also the conclusion that offers the Christian the greatest comfort, knowing that the future is not in our hands, but in His. Thus, he provides a rational basis for life and obedience as a Christian person, not in “immobility” of feeling that there is no point in acting, since the fates will be what they will be, but, since we remain ignorant of the future, living out our lives as responsible moral agents under a God who will make all things, evil or good, work out for our best. This is not a book for everybody. Perhaps one needs to possess a certain insanity to even think about the philosophical implications of providence. If your are one of those tormented souls that troubles over philosophical details of good, evil, determinism, and the fates in a theistic context, this is a must read book.

Praying the Lord’s Prayer, by JI Packer ★★★★★

I’ve always enjoyed reading Packer, an have a special affinity for his writings since I took a class from him. He writes exactly the way he speaks, and so one can read him and hear him talking to you. Packer has a distinction of being not only one of the most brilliant people alive today, but also a most personable character. This short book must not be read in a single setting, though it could be easily read in 1-2 hours. Packer provides a gold mine, with every sentence and phrase loaded with gems to ponder. He skillfully brings new life to the prayer we have recited so often at home and at church, and yet really never considered the implications of what we are saying. From the rich manifestations of what it means to have God as our father, and how the prayer is more fitting of a child speaking to a parent, there remain glorious logical products of that relationship that few could ever boast. This book is a must read- but read it slowly, no speed reading, and let Packer help you grasp the Lord’s prayer in a new and fresh way.

Scandalous-The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, by DA Carson ★★★★

This book is the product of five sermons given by DA Carson to the Mars Hill Church in Seattle. It is a set of loosely organized sermons oriented around the cross, with a focus on the events that occurred at the time of Christ’s crucifixion, including Jesus being mocked, the raising of Lazarus, and the story of Thomas. It also had a sermon on Rom. 3 related to the atonement, as well as a sermon from Revelation about Christ reigning through the cross. I liked this book because Carson provided some fresh insights into the meaning of Christ’s death, spoken in a manner that is not just a theological rehash. Carson tends to always provide practical advise on living based on the theology of the cross. I do find reading sermons to be a bit tedious, since they would be better off listened to, yet Carson manages to hold one’s attention in a delightful fashion, making the book a worthy read.

How Evil Works, by David Kupelian ★★★★★

This book is the sequel to The Marketing of Evil, also recently reviewed by me, by the same author and published by World Net Daily Books. Kupelian systematically attacks the many cultural fixtures of our society, showing how their abandonment of the Christian ethic and ethos has led to the current morass that we are in. Chapters include discussions as to why and how politicians lie to us, the rise of sexual anarchy, the grip of terrorism, the cult of celebrity and Hollywoodism, the rash of “mental illness”, the turn to vulgar religions, feminism and its destructiveness, and finally the acceptance of hate in society. Kupelian not only discusses how these traits are seated in our society, but also suggests a solution, which is returning to the Christian base from whence we came. His is a harsh but accurate reflection on our society, which is typically not found in modern print as well thought out as Kupelian has done in this book. Thus, a book highly to be recommended.

Telling the Truth, edited by DA Carson ★★★

This book is written as a compendium of a series of talks given as conference held at Trinity Theological Seminary in Chicagoland. The subtitle suggests that the focus in on addressing the gospel to the post-modern world. The first few talks help to define in a very cursory fashion the nature of post-modernism, with a focus on the writings of Richard Rorty and Michel Fouchalt. Subsequent chapters deal with the issues of evangelism in the community. The book does a poor job of developing the thought structures of post-modernism. The development of evangelism specifically to the post-modern mindset was really not discussed well. The use of various post-modern terms, such as “metanarrative” was used in just about every chapter to make it post-modern oriented, though dealing with a post-modernist seemed similar to dealing the pre-modernist or modernist, i.e., speaking and living the truth. The book is written almost entirely by either academic or college evangelists, such as Campus Crusade or Inter-varsity personnel, with emphasis on how to reach students. It leaves the assumption that students and academics are the only post-modernists, and not necessarily the man on the street. The book thrives on the discussion of techniques, failing a Reformed perspective of God’s work in evangelism. Several chapters simply should have been omitted completely, such as a chapter emphasizing Christ-centeredness in all Biblical reading which does violence to best Biblical hermeneutic. Worst, as mentioned before, the lengthy advice given for evangelism is true regardless of whether one is witnessing Christ to a post-modern, modern, pre-modern or normal person. There was no connect on how to specifically engage a person devoid of truth concepts, outside of the normal engagement of the person. I don’t wish to be too hard on this book. There was much good thought and discussion about engaging the culture which I found relevant to my own personal life. I think that Francis Schaeffer, though writing 30-40 years ago but definitely not dated, offers still the best advice about the engagement of culture. A Teaching Company series by Louis Markos is excellent at exploring (in the last three lectures) the modernist and post-modernist mindset from a Christian perspective.With Markos, the Modernist is a person who rejects the ability to communicate or know truth but will never deny the existence of truth. With post-modernism, communication may occur, though you are communicating nothing relevant, since truth simply does not exist. Yet, as Schaeffer insists, the modernist (and post-modernist) cannot live by his own assumptions. Penetrating those inconsistencies in a clear and loving way was not discussed in this book. We live in a society which one would love to escape. The moral turpitude, the despair and mindlessness of even the academic elites, the wonton materialism and narcissistic hedonism which governs our culture makes it challenging to survive let alone thrive. Yet, God calls us, and this book challenges each of us to creativity at the task of preaching the gospel in an intelligent yet winsome fashion. Lord help us.

An Inconvenient Book, by Glenn Beck ★★★

This is Glenn Beck’s latest publication, and hopefully his last. Glenn Beck has a lot about him to like. He tends toward economic conservatism, as well as moral conservatism. He is quite humorous in his presentation, though also profoundly arrogant. He is not a person that I would wish to engage with in a discussion, as I don’t find him a person capable of thinking out challenging issues. Yet this would also be true of most liberals. I’ve read several of Al Franken’s books in the past, and found them to be remarkable brain-dead thoughtless drivel, which is why Europeans, as well as American elites, devoured Al Franken. The only saving grace of Glenn Beck is his ability to back his statements with statistics and facts that support his arguments. Beck is sometimes quite nauseating in his narcissism, frequently modeling himself as the Phoenix of debauchery who rose from the dead to true wisdom, though found in an equally befuddling form of untruth, that of Mormonism, the co-religion of the likes of Reid and Romney. It is most annoying when he keeps talking about his marriage as eternal, not that I dislike it as a notion, save that it is entirely unscriptural.  Until Beck finds the true truth, his moral and economic dicta will only take us from a liberal cesspool to a conservative cesspool. I wish better for the US of A.

I thought at first that I would be disappointed with this book, but first impressions proved to be wrong. It is a further book on Photoshop technique, intermediate level. I does not come with a CD of practice material, but you are able to download the images off of the web, which helps keep the cost of the book down. Matt has a slightly different style from other Photoshop instructors, in that he tends toward a more casual approach, encouraging you to play and try out your own techniques. His tendency is toward simplicity rather than complexity. He doesn’t waste much time insisting that you label every layer, or create 50 layers for a single image. His teaching technique makes each step quite easy to remember. His projects are interesting enough that one could imagine using the Photoshop tricks for personal photos. All in all, an excellent text for the intermediate Photoshopper.

I’m a Vivaldi fan, but he is not in my top 5 composers of all time. Our friend J.S. Bach was far better endowed from our creator with the gift of music, and Bach remains the greatest musician that ever tread on terra firma. Ever. Yet, the fact that Bach listened to the music of Vivaldi, and often wrote modifications of Vivaldi, suggesting that even Bach held Vivaldi’s music in highest regard. This 29 CD set is no longer available, and that is a great shame, since this is the best performances one will ever get of Vivaldi. Between such performers as I Musici and the artistic direction of Vittoria Negri, you will never hear Vivaldi in a better light. It is a pity that the only piece that is usually performed by Vivaldi is his Four Seasons, as so much of his instrumental pieces have deep charm and compositional brilliance. It is even a more serious pity that virtually none of his choral music is widely known, as Vivaldi’s choral (sacred) music excels his instrumental pieces. How could one not be deeply moved by the brilliance of his Dixit Dominus, Nisi Dominus, his Glorias, etc. Vivaldi via Vittoria Negri is a absolute must for the discriminating listener. Make every effort possible to get copies of these performances and you will be greatly blessed through listening to them.

The best part of this movie is watching a bridge get blown up. Any movie that has bridges should eventually have those bridges blown up. This movie orients very loosely around the actual story of the building of several bridges over the Kwai River in Thailand by forced British and American war captives. It is true that the Japanese were modestly kind to their captors. It is not true that they allowed the British to essentially run the show. It is true that the bridge(s) were destroyed, but not by secret agents sent up the river; instead, it was aerial bombing which destroyed the bridges. It is true that the main theme song (Colonel Bogey march) was a war song, but it was a war song about Hitler, not about the Japs. This movie, as well as the effort to make it a classic soon after it was released for viewing, represents the brutal arrogance of the British. Included in the arrogance was the notion of officers defiantly refusing to work, but then NOT offering resistance to their captors. It made for a wonderful piece of literature regarding the value of integrity, but reflected on the dismal naiveté of a public who would actually swoon to that rhetoric. In actual fact, the leading colonel encouraged sabotage as much as was humanly possible, and for every attempt to escape as was possible. Most arrogant was the notion that the Japs were technical ignoramuses that required British leadership in order to do anything right, including, how to build a bridge. In actual fact, the Japanese were quite technologically capable of engineering feats without the help of British buffoons. All in all, the movie doesn’t deserve a 5-star rating, let alone the distinction of being a “classic”. The acting was good, the scenery (in Sri Lanka) was gorgeous, and the story line flowed well, saving the movie from a 1-star rating.

Known in English as “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny”, this opera by Kurt Weill rates among the worst of the Euro-trash operas. Though Weill has had occasional lapses of reasonable music that he has written, his ideologic drive for communism has clouded his thinking and produced a piece of trash that would not survive the kindest of the Soviet years. To be fair to this opera, I will critique separately 1) the musical performance, 2) the stage performance, and 3) the opera itself. First, the musical performance was not too badly performed. The only problem is that there was little the was overtly demanding, including no demands on the singer, save to sing weird, no lengthy segments, no  music that could even be thought of as likable. The stage performance represented a complete lapse of ingenuity. Isn’t one tired of the suitcase on stage carried by a Zoot-suited individual, as is now seen in just about every European opera production? I could wax eloquent about how virtually every scene lacks in creative imagination. The minimalist staging suggested that the producer really didn’t care enough for the opera to put much into it. And, that is quite understandable, because it was not an opera to enjoy or appreciate as a work of art. Brecht (via Weill) at the end of the opera spewed out a vindictive against capitalism, the stage designers and Brecht not-so-subtly implying that the greatest sinners of their communistic ideology are the Americans. A leading character named Jimmy is sentenced to death for a lack of money. I presume that Weill was attempting to make some sort of profound statement against greed and monetary avarice, but he fails dismally. Any thinking person finds the philosophical statements of this opera to be poorly developed non-sequitors with a forced conclusion, believed only by Brecht and Weill, and perhaps a few of the performers and audience. Such go the warm and fuzzy statements of the new art, promoting the warm and fuzzy sentiments of the new philosophy and the new politic. It’s one thing to have wasted one’s money on this opera, but even a worse crime to have wasted one’s time watching it.

These three films receive a uniformly 5-star rating by Amazon reviewers, and there is much to commend for this series, superbly well performed and directed. They are separate tales, but tied together by the French themes of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which is actually demonstrated very weakly in the series. The first film (Bleu) is about the wife of famous composer, whose family, including her composer-husband and young daughter are killed in a tragic automobile accident. She goes on to try to free her life from her past, but eventually discovers more to the life of her late husband than she expected. The second film (Blanc) is about a polish hairdresser involved in a messy divorce, with his wife mercilessly dumping him while living in Paris, he being unable to capably defend himself owing to language problems. The remainder of the film takes him from destitution to ultimate revenge on his ex-wife. The third film (Rouge) depicts a young model who chances across a retired judge who now spends his life eavesdropping on his neighbors. Ultimately, a deeper relationship is developed between the two, as they interact with the past of the judge and future of the young model. Kieslowski nicely incorporates the thematic colors in his films in an interesting sort of way. In Bleu, there are blue rooms and blue chandeliers and many blue objects, in Blanc, emotional episodes show a screen white-out, and in Rouge, there is an equal profusion of red, such as a large red banner announcing a fashion show with the star character imaged. I reduced the rating by one-star because of the overwhelming morose mood throughout the entire series. Only Blanc showed any humor at all. All were moderately dark, deeply-foreboding films, quasi-tragedies of ruined lives desperate for significance and meaning, and the films never offering a way out. Ultimate liberty, equality or fraternity are never achieved, but a cheap imitation. These are not films to soar with, but will put you in the gutter and leave you there. They would be nice films for conversations on philosophy, but not for conversations on a life of higher aspirations.

I’ve always liked the acting talent of Gerard Depardeau, and he is at his best in this film, playing the role of Auguste Rodin. With Adjani capably serving as the title role of Camille Claudel, this film follows the historical fate of Claudel in the late 1800′s to her death in the mid-twentieth century. Camille was an aspiring artist, dropping out of school, and eventually working/studying in the workshop of Rodin. Becoming his lover, and then breaking up, she develops a paranoid delusion of Rodin constantly plotting to ruin her. In return, this paranoia leads to her institutionalization for most of her life. It is a sad but true tale, all too true because it actually happened, but also because it represents life’s drama in so many of us who look for false sources of significance. Acting in this movie was superb, the cinephotography excellent, the French was not too difficult to follow, especially with the help of sous-titles, it was R-rated for some sexual depictions-but never in an obscene way, and the “fill-in” on the known historical facts of Camille C. to make a movie version seemed fairly reasonably as to what one would expect. Thus, a highly recommended film, though not for children.

This collection represents essentially five seasons. Each episode is 1/2 hour, except for the fourth season, where the episodes lasted an hour. Narrated by the familiar face of Rod Serling, and with over half of the episodes written by him, you cannot help but appreciate a distinct style throughout the collection. The seasons seem to evolve over time, with the productions being done a bit more professionally, with fancier props as time goes on. The first few seasons have a very distinct moral twist to each and every episode, something that partially lost as time goes on. In comparison to today’s television shows, many of these episodes would be considered too moralistic or “prejudiced” or “religious” to permit broadcast. Pity. Compared to the Outer Limits t.v. series, the Twilight Zone is not nearly as frightening, though some classic episodes exist that could be considered downright spooky.  Who cannot forget the episode where bandages are taken off the face of a young lady, only to be greeted with horror as she appears completely normal — until you finally see the faces of the physicians and nurses, who have completely disfigured, ugly faces. Even then, Serling presents it as a strong lesson that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The Twilight Zone should be considered a must-see if you haven’t seen the series before. If your only viewing was in the early 60′s when they were first broadcast, it is quite worth another viewing to realize how trashy prime-time television has become.

This is probably the best of the Lehár works, but also the most expensive. The music is a bit more memorable, notably some of the late pieces in the operetta. Lehár uses a mix of speaking, singing, dancing and ballet in this work. The plot is not so crazy as many of his other works, with a plain-jane Viennese lady returning from Paris, whose very wealthy husband died on her wedding night, leaving her a supremely wealthy person, and now suddenly attracting many Viennese suitors. Ultimately, the Graf (Count) wins out, but only after many false moves and deceptions. This performance is a stage performance, nicely done, and worth having in one’s collection. Lehár will never be in my top ten composers, though he successfully creates a minor work of art in this operetta.

Translated the Land of Smiles, this operetta represents late 19th century Viennese “pop” art, similar to the Gilbert and Sullivan works in England. Like Gilbert and Sullivan, Lehár creates an operetta with a mix of song and spoken text, a profusion of catchy melodies, and a very lame story line. This operetta is the epitome of truly lame story lines, with a Viennese  lady of aristocratic descent falling in love with a Chinese prince, marrying, and then going back to China with him, only to discover that he intends to marry many women. The opera ends as a quasi-tragedy, though many tears are not generated. The singing is superb, so it’s hard to be too tough on the entire operetta. I wouldn’t keep it in my desert island collection, Lehár deserves a rightful audience, just as one needs to watch the Mikado at least once.

Brahms Complete Edition, by Deutsche Grammophon ★★★★★

I realized that I did not have collections of the complete works of Brahms, and so when these two editions came out on sale, decided that they needed to be in my collection. Both are very worthy editions to have in one’s collection, and are distinctly different. Brilliant Classics, though sold as a “budget” production, had notable quality that would be worthy of the sole Brahms of a less ardent classic music collector. Yet, the Deutsche Grammophon recordings were generally better. The symphonies had a livelier sound and better production, partially attributable to the conducting of von Karajan. The DG edition also had far better vocal works, making the vocal pieces far less of a drudgery, and actually enjoyable, to listen to over the Brilliant collection. The chamber works with the Brilliant Classics were quite nice, and quite on par with the DG productions. All in all, I’d vote for the DG edition, but enjoyed hearing both sets of Brahms works.

This is just another Photoshop book that I’ve read in the last 6-12 months. I have one or two more to go. This text taught me a number of things, including functionality and routines in Photoshop that I had absolutely no clue about in the past, like the “calculations” instruction for merging several channels to make a better mask. There are movies that accompany each lesson, but they only somewhat approximate the actual lesson. Deke is very careful to be exact in his instructions, but doesn’t always elaborate why you are doing a certain function in a manner that makes perfect clarity for when you need to do such functions independent of the instruction book. A number of things became quite clear on this reading. 1) Photoshop is far more complicated than I originally thought, and it will take years to master exactly what it could do for you. 2) Experience will eventually be the best teacher, and one needs to play with the program to glean all the possibilities of what you could do to alter or improve a photo. 3) There is always more than one way to accomplish a given task, and every book details a completely different style of accomplishing the same thing. Ultimately, one needs to develop their own style. 4) Many routines are discovered by chance and then shared. One should not imagine that any given photo alteration is intuitive. Rather, one needs to keep a number of “reference” books around when learning photoshop and use those books to walk through techniques. 5) Videos are nice, but the text ultimately teaches you how to do things. It would be nice to note a end product, attempt it first yourself, and then walk through how the teacher reaches the end-product. Unfortunately, most photoshop instruction books are not written that way. All in all, this is not the best photoshop book that I’ve read, but still is a book worth having on the shelves.

This book has been around a while, but still remains timely. Written by D.A. Carson as his magnum opus, it engages the themes to pluralism, tolerance, and the disappearance of the acceptance of true truth in our society. Such loss of respect for truth and ability to communicate that truth has sunk into all aspects of society including the thinking and behavior of Christians. Carson is a tour de force who tackles pluralism in a clear but uncompromising fashion. The book is broken up into four sections. The first details how pluralism came about, discussing the history of thought in regard to matters of epistemology and linguistics, ending in the modern despair that truth is unknowable and so that all truth, contradictory or not, is true. The next section covers how this secular thinking has pervaded the Christian community. Carson covers how pluralism has affected the Christian community, and what it has done for our thinking on basic doctrines and ethics in the church. The third section attempts to detail Christian responses to living in a society soaked in pluralistic thinking, and the last section details particular themes, such as speaking the truth in matters of evangelism, and doctrinal issues, such as loss of the doctrine of hell.

Carson began life as a chemist, and then went to divinity school, studying in England for a period of time. I have a deep appreciation for the way he thinks, in that he’ll take a particular matter, and then slowly whittle away at it, giving lists of 5-10 reflections on the subject, leaving no stone unturned. His thought processes are exactly how I wish all theologians would write. He is not an easy person to read. I’m sure that if I re-read the book, I would see much that I missed the first time around. One cannot read this book quickly and expect to leave understanding all that Carson has to offer. So, I recommend this book to anybody who has the patience and time to read it. Hopefully, you will be seeing yet more Carson book reviews coming on this blogsite.

This series by the Teaching Company is about archeology, and the discoveries of archeology in various parts of the world, including Africa (esp. Northern Africa/Cameroon and the great Zimbabwe), Egypt (though formally a part of Africa), the mid-east, India, China, and Central/South America (Mayan and Incan civilizations). Scott first spends six lectures detailing his philosophy for doing archeology. During this time, you get a delightful flavor of his biases, and intentions for doing archeology. Dr. McEachern spends most of his time working in Northern Cameroon, digging up ancient garbage.

You are not given a historical perspective in this study. Compared to an excellent Teaching Company series on the origins of civilization by Kenneth Harl, this series leaves you swimming a bit. You are told considerable amounts about what kinds of food are thought to have been eaten by ancient civilizations, and perhaps what sort of structures for housing they may have built for themselves, but that is it. The remainder of what we are left with is pure guesswork. Much of this guesswork presupposes that ancient civilizations might have been similar to the various cultures and civilizations you see today. Unfortunately, that gives you no information at all, except the obvious, that is, that mankind has remained similar over the course of its short history. I really don’t find it fascinating to imagine that people ate similar foods in ancient times as today, and that famines might have happened. Scott lacks better stories to tell, and though he is careful not to extrapolate to wildly, extrapolate he still does, and refuses to remain silent where the evidence is only foggy or unclear. He seems to suggest social structures based on remnant housing and graveyard goods, yet this could be utterly deceiving. In the end, I’ve learned very little about what we are to think about ancient civilizations, other than that they had analogous social systems and political constructs as we have today. It was very challenging actually making it through 48 1/2 hour lectures in order to glean this truth. This course has also persuaded me to stay far away from archeology.

Is there any benefit that I see for archeology? Yes. When we have purported historical narratives from the past, archeology might help substantiate the legitimacy of these stories. This is particularly true of the fall of Troy, the stories of Greece, historical narratives from China, etc. Most importantly, archeology could assist is further substantiating the veracity of Scripture. Yet, McEachern dares not tread on such a subject, even when it would have been entirely admissible. As an example, he is overwhelmingly astonished at how early urbanization occurred in civilization, yet Genesis suggests specialization (and thus urbanization) from very early times. He is amazed at the amount of trade occurring in ancient times, yet much Scripture speaks of international trade and commerce from quite early on. It is chronological arrogance that overwhelms some of the thinking of Scott that does not allow him to constructively best put together the data at hand.

I could not recommend this series to anybody, except for those who are deeply interested in archeology and the various schools of thought. Scott is not difficult to listen to, but his content would have a hard time grasping most people’s interest.

So, here is a quick catchup, mostly with photos…

1. Deutsch Unterricht– I restarted Saturday AM German class. Between reading the Magazine Deutsch Perfekt and going to German class at the Tacoma German Language School, I’ve been able to keep from totally loosing my language skills. Here are some photos of the class, as well as the teacher, Yvonne. She is from Dresden, Germany, and is unbelievably patient with us old farts.

2. Oregon Coast– in early February, Betsy and I took a trip to the Oregon Coast. The lead photo was from Cannon Beach. The Oregon Coast is one of the most beautiful coasts in the world.

3. Cycling & trainer– Betsky now has a new bicycle, named Meggie II, after her first bicycle. We took a brief 10 mile ride recently…

Betsy also let me get a Tacx Virtual Reality Trainer. These are quite nice at being able to cycle train in bad weather or when you only have an hour to spend on a bicycle and need a hard workout. It works by connecting a computer to a gizmo that your back bicycle wheel sets in. When you are going “uphill”, the wheel offers resistance in proportion to the steepness of the hill, and when going downhill, it may actually spin your tire for you. It is close to reality.

You can see that it really chews up your training tire. Meanwhile, you watch a video screen, which you set to a number of rides that you may wish to experience, throughout Europe. As you pedal faster, the scene moves faster, quite comparable to reality.

The screen will also show your power output (in watts), cadence (how fast you’re pedaling), heartrate, bicycle speed, time, and distance. This allows you to monitor closely how well you are improving on your endurance. Here is Jonathan on the bicycle trainer…

4. Bicycle Tour 15-18APRIL2010. This trip was to celebrate tax day, April 15. Russ A. and I drove to Chelan, WA, and took off from there. Our first stop was 52 miles later in Twisp, WA. The road either followed the Columbia River, or tributaries, leaving us at a resort town just east of the North Cascades pass.

The next day went from Twisp to Coulee Dam, a 85+ mile ride, with fully loaded touring bikes, and about 7000 feet elevation gain. Here was our first challenge, that of crossing Loup Loup Pass. We were concerned about the weather since it had snowed on the pass just a week before. It was quite cold, but we were working so hard to cross the pass that we were over-heated anyway.

We then ended up in Omak. We met a kindly elderly gentleman on the street to enquire about our options, and he suggested that we NOT go the way we had planned, but instead take an alternative route that was marked on the map as gravel road, yet in reality was fully paved. He also suggested that there were minimal hills. The route indeed was far less hilly than our planned route, but was persistent in multiple sections of 6-7% grade uphill, and a lengthy 8-9% grade section at the beginning and end of the new route. We were quite pleased to have done this alternative route, since it took us by some absolutely spectacular scenery, like Omak Lake.

We eventually ended up at nightfall quite exhausted but looking at the Grand Coulee Dam. We stayed in a motel that faced the dam.

The next day was 61 miles and another 5000 feet of climbing. From the photo below, the intuition would remark at how flat the terrain was, yet, on a bicycle, it was quite rolling hills, with lots of 6% grade climbing. We were still moderately tired from the previous day, which made it harder to do even simple hills.

Our last memorable scene was from the Columbia plateau, getting ready to descend down to the Columbia River. In the distance, you could see Lake Chelan and the town of Chelan. It was a 8-12% grade descent for about 5 miles. Awesome! I’d sure hate to come up that hill on a loaded touring bike!

5. Future– so much has gone by. A niece, Laura, won a beauty pageant.

Laura, we are so proud of you. It takes not only beauty but true talent and skill to get to Teen Colleyville.  Thankfully, you didn’t have to have uncles dying in the car and brothers spazzing out on you to get into your contest, like in Little Miss Sunshine. We had old friends from many moons ago, Aaron and Anita visit us. They remain quite special. I especially appreciate being able to do outdoor things with Aaron. We plan on seeing Jonny off to Belize for the summer, and perhaps longer, to visit and study with Uncle Dennis. Dennis has been doing well, as is attested by this recent photograph…

Once he gets out of jail and quits playing with poisonwood, he’ll be back to his old self, I’m sure. Dennis is not really in jail; he is just showing us the miracles of Photoshop. I’d really like to visit Dennis some day. Belize is looking increasingly appealing, especially with our Destroyer-in-Chief Obaminator as el Presidente ruining all that we count as precious in our country. He will go down with Woodrow Wilson and FDR as the worst presidents ever of the USA.

I hope to do a few more cycle tours this summer. I also plan on spending the month of June in Bangladesh, and will be in Germany for the last 2 weeks of August, if all works well. More blogs will follow. I haven’t had many book or movie reviews since I’m listening to 2 lengthy Brahms compendiums, which I wish to review together, watching a lengthy tv series with Betsky, and reading a very large and ponderous book. So, more blogs will be in the works in the future. Meanwhile, please stay in touch.

I’m all for airline standards, but not in the “pick and choose” standard that is being shoved down our throats. There are too many other airline industry differences that are simply ignored, at the patient’s peril. I’ve discussed many of them in the previous post. Let’s re-hash a few of them.

1. Airline personnel work hours. The airline industry, as well as the government, has strict standards on the amount of fly that a pilot can do, or work that a repairman can do, before exhaustion leads to inefficiency as well as mistakes. Nobody would ever dream of climbing on an airplane, where the pilot has been up the last 24 hours, and is now exhausted. I have personally called for reform in this area with deaf ears listening. It is hard to imagine that a truck driver is our state is forbidden from driving his truck for greater than 8 hours straight, and yet physicians frequently work for 48-96 hours straight with nary a comment from the state about the dangers that this is imposing. I’ve asked both the medical society as well as state legislators to consider this problem, and it is swept under the rug. Yet, if there are any actions that could be taken to eliminate errors in medicine, this is certainly the most important. Even airline pilots, on long flights, have replacement pilots in the plane to prevent the pilot from having to fly for over 8 hours.

There are 2 main stresses on an airline flight, that of taking off, and that of landing. True, decisions may need to be made in the air, but the main stresses are the start and end of the flight. In medicine, the initial patient consult, the care during a moment of extreme instability, or the trip to the operating room, may be likened unto the takeoff and landing stresses. The period that physicians spend on call sitting by their beepers could be likened to the time in the air. It is similar, since the physician is still being called, and must make consequential decisions. Many of those decisions are made when awakened from sleep, and more often than not, a night on call will rarely give more than an hour of straight sleep in a night. Yet, we not only have to make significant decisions during the night, but must show up at work and consult on new patients or operate the next day. Would anybody feel comfortable flying on an airplane where the pilot had no sleep in the last 24 hours? Thankfully, most patients have no clue how much sleep their surgeon had in the last 24 hours! Comparable to the airline industry, it would be like saying that the only legitimate work-time for the pilot was the time on takeoff and landing, and then who cares how much time is spent in the air, since flight time is low stress.

2. Co-pilots. It used to be that almost all surgical cases had two doctors in the room. For smaller cases, it was the surgeon and a family doctor, and for larger cases, it was two surgeons. Nowadays, it is almost impossible to get two surgeons both in the room at the same time. It is economically unfeasible, and we’ve been forced to adapt. This has mostly been to the greater risk of the patient. Two surgeons on a case always goes quicker and better than one surgeon alone. It could be compared to the airline industry deciding that a co-pilot is too expensive to maintain, and thus eliminating that position. Maybe it’s time to return to the co-pilot in surgery practice?

3. Retirement – My pilot friends tell me that the airline industry bumped up the age of mandatory retirement from age 60 to age 65. Frightening! Pilots need to go through more rigorous pyschomotor testing to assure that they have good reflex timing as they age. Why aren’t they doing this for doctors, especially those who do procedures on people? We are required to take ever expanding CME classes and tests to prove our mental competence, though it is dubious that either accomplish their intended task. At the same time, we are required to take courses in things we never intend to see or would not manage even if we encountered such a situation, since courses of themselves are absolutely no replacement for real-life experiences. I recently took a mandated pediatric trauma on-line course in order to maintain my ability to serve our hospital. I felt like I was in the military–dotting all my “i”s and crossing all my “t”s, yet realizing that I had not acquired any true competence at pediatric trauma. We don’t have simulators that can exactly match what a flight simulator can do for a pilot. There are no surgery simulators that will spray blood in your face and give you AIDS if you screw up.

At this time, I have no recommendations for the medical profession, but pray that it soon die the same death that all it’s patients will eventually experience. Physicians are unwilling to defend their profession from external abuse, but complain bitterly about the loss of their profession. Medicine – R.I.P.

Several years ago, tort reform became the cry of the medical profession. We felt that our profession was being destroyed by a litigious culture which was strongly supported by a government that seemed to thrive off of a healthy legal industry. We lost that battle. In return, the law industry laid claim that the health care industry was careless and did not attend properly to quality control or error reduction. In turn, we responded with multiple programs. There were state and national programs that were initiated, such as the 100,000 lives campaign (I await eagerly the 250 million lives campaign). Even in Pierce County, our medical society invited various quality control pundits to speak to us. The rallying cry was to become like the airline industry. After all, did not the airline industry take an intensely complex system, and produce methodological algorithms (such as checklists) to eliminate human error? As I learned in flight surgery school, the number one cause for airline fatalities was a loss of situational awareness on the part of the pilot. Checklists helped to reduce routine operational error, thus, decreasing the one aspect of fatal error.

The article by Atal Guwande in the New Yorker further fosters this idea that if only the health care industry model itself after the airline industry, then error reduction would significantly fall, and lives would be saved. I certainly agree with Dr. Guwande that checklists can serve some useful purposes in our profession. Yet, I also see certain problems with what he proposes. The first problem discusses differences between the airline industry and medicine, that disallow the airline model. The second details the evidence that Dr. Guwande himself provides claiming that checklists can solve many of our woes.

First, what are the differences between medicine and the airline industry? There are a number of issues that I can list.

1. We canʼt control the circumstances. In the airline industry, if bad weather hits, the airlines shut down. We canʼt do that. We “fly” in any circumstances. If a patient arrives in immediate need for surgery when the operating rooms are already filled and the patient already has multiple system organ failure, we arenʼt allowed to “stop all flights (surgeries)” and wait, in order to get control of the situation.

2. We donʼt aim for 100% survival. Ultimately, all of our patients will die, which is 0% survival. Unlike airplanes, we have a poor means of predicting personal survivability. We can quote population statistics, which do not apply to a given individual. Checklists or not, eventually everybody will die on us. In fact, we have very poor means of measuring when we are actually successful in medicine, as it is not necessarily survivability at low cost without complications.

3. We cannot set the circumstances for surgeons or health care personnel like we can with pilots and flight attendants, airline mechanics, etc.. I would love to have the same working circumstances as a surgeon as a pilot usually lives. There are strict controls of working hours, and time that a pilot is allowed in the cockpit. We have no such controls. Yet we know that human error is our biggest source of health care error, just like situational awareness is the biggest problem in the airline industry. Establishing mandatory retirement ages, mandatory work-hours, mandatory spontaneous drug testing would kill the industry. I have operated countless times high on antihistamines in the symptomatic treatment of seasonal URIʼs, yet such drugs would have grounded me in the airline industry. Are we willing to have our health care personnel subjected to such demanding regulation as the airline industry has done? Why not? The object is to eliminate human error, and such airline regulations would accomplish that.

4. Human systems back-up cannot compare. A pilot has not only a second backup (the copilot) always at his side, but also the capabilities of autopilot. Generally, we virtually never have a second physician (with the same expertise) simultaneously participating on a case. Auto-doctors remain to be invented.

5. Which leads to brutally serious question…why have auto-doctors not been invented yet? Autopilots work because one can “figure out” most the systems issues and expected problems in the operation of an aircraft. The “machinery” (the human body) that we work with is infinitely more complex than the machinery (the airplane) that the airline industry works with, and the expected problems vastly greater. While Dr. Guwande tends to disparage the “art” of medicine, heralding the virtues of scientific medicine, it remains without question that the complexities of medicine demand both intuitive as well as methodological decisions, and the intuitive decisions cannot be check-listed. An equivalent comparison would be to devise an airplane that is so complex, the ground support personnel never really understand how the airplane works, or exactly what the proper procedures are to repair. The pilot could never be sure whether pushing the joystick to the right would move the appropriate wings or flaps in the proper direction, and would be told that any control panel action would have only an 80% or less response rate, as well as a highly unpredictable nature of whether all the monitors or gauges on the control panel were ever monitoring the correct information. Yet, we live with this all the time in medicine.

6. The economics are different. If the airline industry is asked to institute an industry-wide change, they would raise rates to passengers to pay for that. We cannot do that any more in the health care industry. In fact, our pay would either remain stagnant or cut, in spite of elimination of error.

7. Training and retraining. We call retraining CME, yet CME only remotely pertains to our practice of medicine. A flight-simulator has never been invented for the health care industry, probably for reasons explained in #5. Our expertise comes solely from experience, coupled with the maintenance of an innovative mindset. When we increase physician educational demands and demonstration of competence through increased testing, the net result is not increased competence among physicians, but a decreased number of physicians, who drop out rather than re-test. This doesnʼt mean that we canʼt learn from the airline industry. It only means that we need to be very cautious in selecting what methodological algorithms we acquire from the airline industry, and then be highly selective in exactly which circumstances or activities would be well served by these algorithms. It is possible that some systems in medicine would actually be harmed by blindly applying the airline industry methodology of error prevention.

What about Dr. Guwandeʼs claims that checklists can significantly reduce error in medical care? Dr. Guwande discusses his thesis with unbridled enthusiasm. In a most unscientific manner, he fails to discuss multiple variables that should have been examined, especially since his thesis of the virtues of checklists are now being mandated throughout hospital systems in the USA. Which variables did Dr. Guwande follow? Survival? Costs? Turnover rates of health care personnel? Patient and family satisfaction? Days of hospitalization? His studies of checklists were limited to highly specific and controlled circumstances, such as the management of central lines. This is a relatively non-complex system compared to many systems seen in medicine. Does he propose that all operational systems will be helped by check-listing? Does he have evidence for that? Newly enacted checklists tend to eventually breed familiarity, that in turn lead to loss of effectiveness. Dr. Guwande has only short-term follow-up of his check-list system, so it is not surprising to see short-term improvements. What do you suppose we will see after ten years of checklisting and familiarity itself leads to error? I suspect it will lead to even more detailed check-lists, probably orchestrated by a computer program, rather than a human, such as the nurses that Dr. Guwande used in his catheter study. This in turn will not only drive up the costs of medical care, but also the depersonalization of medical care.

Outside of checklists, the failure to communicate has been identified as the other great sources of medical error. There is a great amount of truth to this, and check-lists certainly serve the function of forcing a brief episode of communication among the team, many of whom often donʼt even know each otherʼs name, let alone the most rudimentary facts about the other people on the team in the room. But, we donʼt dare tread on that. We must remain scientifically impersonal. Yet, when I work with a team that has known me for years, typically, minimal communication ever occurs about the patient or medical care we are rendering, save for occasional teaching points for the team (we do talk about other things!). We know how each other does things, and we expect things to be done that way. This is true for nurses and techs in the OR or recovery room, as well as experienced nurses on the wards. Sadly, regimented communication cannot fix the problem of operational harmony, something that only time and experience with each other as a team can fix. Which is why “teams” are probably more important than check-lists. Another communication issue, handwriting, was fixed thirty some years ago with computer-order entry, quite the norm in Chicago, IL where I trained, but still unknown in these parts.

Dr. Bigshot comments that resistance to checklists is an “ego” issue. I doubt it. True, there are ego issues when one has a nurse policing the doctor. Not even the airline industry has stooped that low, having a stewardess tell the pilot to push the rudder right rather than left when the airplane is going down. But that is exactly what is happening in medicine. You can escape hierarchical disorientation by being independent, which is exactly what Dr. Bigshot has done. Hospital bound doctors like surgeons and intensivists donʼt have that luxury. Is it ego-istic to ask questions pertaining to the efficacy of checklists? I donʼt think so. Many of us could have easily gone into research rather than clinical medicine. Our training teaches us to ask questions, look for alternative solutions, explore the unthinkable, to agonize over a solution that doesnʼt exist in a textbook, journal article, or on a check-list. Yesteryear, that made you a good physician. Now-days, it makes you a non-team-player, radical, disruptive, or perhaps, worst of all, egoistic.

We will turn to checklists. We will love them with religious devotion. The Joint demands it. We will comply. Yet, it feels like we are driving just another stake into our coffin. R.I.P.

This book was recommended to me by Dr. Fred Leitz, since he knew that I enjoyed Bach. It was an excellent read. This is the first book of Siblin, who writes music critics for a major Canadian magazine. The book is the entwined stories of J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, as well as Siblin’s own investigation as to the origin of the cello suites. It is quite cleverly written to hold the reader’s attention, while bringing to mind the lives of two great musicians. My greatest criticism of the book is the unduly high regard given to Casals, who, while he single-handedly resurrected and popularized the Bach Cello Suites, also was a radical socialist revolutionary with a not-so-desireable lifestyle. In contrast, J.S. Bach lived an impeccable, though also somewhat revolutionary lifestyle, fighting more for advanced artistic expression than for any political-social agenda. I would highly recommend this book to any music lover.

This movie is NOT a faithful reproduction of the Lewis Carroll narrative, but rather is a fanciful political statement based roughly on the Alice in Wonderland story. It is definitely British, and definitely 1960′ish, even with the background music of Ravi Shankar. The movie is in black and white, and very choppy in its movement from scene to scene. Apparently, it was made by the BBC as a low-budget Christmas film. The Alice actor is rather bland, though most of the other characters are quite humorous in their bizarreness. The film holds a surrealistic vision of upper-class England, yet treats the Queen as quite tawdry. Perhaps the producer caught the spirit of Lewis Carroll in this rendering, yet it is a little too bizarre for modern viewing.

This is an excellent though advanced text on Photoshopping. I remain with the continued quest to produce a perfect photograph. Unfortunately, not only must one have the right tools, they also need the skills. Regardless of one’s skill with Photoshop, obtaining a properly taken photo in the field remains the most important, and requires the most practice. Unfortunately, one often wishes to obtain a photograph at a given setting, when the light isn’t right, and it simply isn’t possible to remedy the photographic technique to make a classy photograph. Unfortunately, it is those situations where Photoshop isn’t able make up for field problems in order to help one get a prize-winning photo. Yet, the quest remains. Lynch takes Photoshop to another level. Having now read several intermediate to advanced technique books on Photoshop, I’m realizing the multiplicity of techniques to obtain a quality product. Lynch’s system uses multiple baby-steps, each step forming another layer in the photo-editing process. This can become quite cumbersome, but allows a person to safely retreat when the outcome seems to be going the wrong direction. Sometimes, the steps are quite numerous in order to achieve a given effect, yet he repeats the technique enough times that one figures out what he is doing, and is able to duplicate his process. This is not an easy book, and would be best read more than once to grasp the techniques he is pointing out. Sometimes, he carries editing a little too far, in that much of his portrait works ends up slightly artificial, yet, it is probably the technique of most magazines. I had wishes for more landscape and other forms of photography in the book. All in all, this is a valuable book to grasp. My last few Photoshop books will be a Channels and Masks book, and then yet one more Layers text. Hopefully, my photographic output will improve through all this effort.

This film was watched at brother Dennis’ request. It was a film that Betsy actually enjoyed watching, and laughed most of the way through. It is a tremendous spoof on sci-fi films and movies, especially the  Star Trek series.It starts at a Star Trek groupie-like convention, where the main actors did not get along with each other, nor take serious their roles. That is, until real space aliens, the Thermians, take them away, to help save them from the enemy, General Sarris. The subsequent adventures are hilarious as they save themselves and their alien friends. I won’t give the movie away, as you need to watch it and enjoy it.

These are two series which illustrate that too much of a good thing usually goes bad. Unfortunately, in this case, it was a lot of a mediocre theme. Both series can be criticized for very poor character development, characters being more trivial and immature than super-heroes or super-villians. The first Batman film is excellent only in that the Joker with Jack Nicholson was superb. Nothing else about the film was praise-worthy. The remaining Michael Keaton series attempted to wow the audience with high tech graphics while forgetting about story lines that are meaningful or consistent. Unfortunately, the films often made the worst of good actors, like Arnold Schwarznegger playing Mr. Freeze. It was especially unnerving when the immature and irresponsible characters of Robin, and then Batwoman come on the scene. There were more than a few ipecac moments. The second series lapsed into its own problems, the first film attempting to offer a realistic start for Batman, where he goes off to the East to learn the disciplines of the Buddhist Kung-fu experts, only to discover that they were the ultimate enemies of Gotham City. All in all, the story line was simply stupid and inane, not really worth watching. Again, both films of this second series show an inability to maintain a quasi-realistic story line, or develop real characters. The second series did flow better, especially the Dark Knight, which is why it received three rather than two stars.

I ordered this set from the Teaching Company, hoping to receive a non-biased, educated assessment of the life, thinking, and times of Albert Einstein. The series started as a modestly historical narrative of the early Einstein, and included discussion of his thinking in physics, but also in philosophy and politics. Einstein apparently felt modestly prejudiced against, owing to the fact that he was a Jew, surviving in a primarily non-Jewish culture. His success in physics came with shaky fits, having problems with the higher institutes of learning in Switzerland, but eventually ending in the pinnacle of his career while in Berlin, before moving to America in 1933 at the time of the rise of Hitler. Howard is willing to admit that the social life of Einstein left much to be desired, mistreating several wives, and essentially abandoning his children. Howard excuses Einstein, noting that he was a great socialist and humanitarian, thus making up for his otherwise despicable lifestyle. Though a number of the early lectures discusses the innovations of physics by Einstein, you are also left with the notion that Einstein burned out early, vacillating frequently when theories didn’t fit his personal philosophy. His greatest despair was his development of the science of quantum mechanics, only to later disown it as it didn’t fit his personal world view. He is like Napoleon-a brilliant youth followed by a not so brilliant middle and older age. By the 10th lecture, this series became quite worrisome, in that the lectures became a dummy pulpit for Howard to expound his own socialist belief system. Howard fails miserably to discuss the various ramifications of Einstein’s political and philosophic stances, arguing both the pro’s and con’s of the various social solutions Einstein offers. Thus, Howard betrays his own calling as an academician, forfeiting his claim as an intellectual, in order to push a social agenda that Einstein supposedly espoused. By the end of the lecture series, you are left wondering how accurate Howard remained to the true thinking of Einstein. You are left with multiple holes. I would have loved more discussion of Einstein at Princeton, yet you hear nothing save for his involvement with socialist issues, anti-war issues, and government interactions during the second world war. Oddly, Howard barely takes Einstein to task for his horrid inconsistency for advocating the development of the atom bomb, only since he presumed it would be used against the German state that mistreated him. Howard unnecessarily idolizes Einstein to the point of losing an objective focus for discussion of the man, making the entire series very wearisome to listen to. I simply could not recommend this series to anybody for a serious discussion of the thought and life of Albert E.

Having worked through the similar textbook on Dreamweaver and liking it, I decided to run through this text, hoping to improve my Photoshop skills. I certainly learned a few things from the book, in that no instruction book could be completely comprehensive, unless it was a meter thick. This text had a companion DVD which provided the images for the projects in the book, as well as videos by J Smith explaining portions of the text. The book was simply too simple for me, and my only benefit was to learn some functionality, like 3D rendering, which is usually not included in regular photographer’s texts on Photoshop, since they are interested in the image, and not in the fact that you can paste your beautiful scene from Yosemite on a pop can. All the same, the text is simple, easy to follow, so I could not downgrade the stars for the book’s simplicity. It is not as comprehensive as Photoshop Classroom in a Book, and the presentation is a little sloppier, but it has a very easy style to it, making it a reasonable first textbook for the total novice on Photoshop.

Roger Ramjet ran as a short series many years ago, and remembered well by me, as actually being an adult cartoon, with many insinuations that only could be understood by an adult. Unfortunately there are only 120 of the 156 episodes here in this collection, but, that’s better than nothing. It is a bit challenging, having to tolerate the lengthy initial theme song and ending song, which occupied nearly 1/2 of each 5-10 minute episode. Yet, it’s worth watching. Roger is the hero who saves America from the bad guys, like Noodles Romanoff. In the meantime, multiple jokes are made about American culture and ideology, making it a most enjoyable series to watch. If only somebody would edit out all the intro and ending pieces. This is a wonderful piece of nostalgia from the 1960′s, but still understood with jokes that would stand today.