In a recent article in the Austin Chronicle, Michael Ventura predicts the impact that rising oil prices will have on American society and America’s relations with other countries. Ventura’s predictions for changes in American society are as controversial as James Howard Kunstler’s, but I think Ventura’s view of how our international relations will change is right on target:

Gas prices can only go up. Oil production is at or near peak capacity. The U.S. must compete for oil with China, the fastest-growing colossus in history. But the U.S. also must borrow $2 billion a day to remain solvent, nearly half of that from China and her neighbors, while they supply most of our manufacturing (“Benson’s Economic and Market Trends,” quoted in Asia Times Online) – so we have no cards to play with China, even militarily. (You can’t war with the bankers who finance your army and the factories that supply your stores.) China now determines oil demand, and the U.S. has no long-term way to influence prices.
…
There’s only one section of our economy that has [the] kind of money [to invest heavily in mass transit and other infrastructure changes]: the military budget. The U.S. now spends more on its military than all other nations combined. A sane transit to a post-automobile America will require a massive shift from military to infrastructure spending. That shift would be supported by our bankers in China and Europe (that is, they would continue to finance our debt) because it’s in their interests that we regain economic viability. What’s not in their interests is that we remain a military superpower.

Ventura recognizes that China (and, to a lesser degree, Japan, South Korea and the larger European countries) hold our future in their hands. So far, it’s been in their best interest to finance our over-extended lifestyle: we fuel their economic growth as the biggest market for their goods. But if something beyond the lenders’ control affects America’s ability to buy their goods–say a serious U.S. economic downturn caused by high oil prices–then at some point, it may no longer be worth their while to continue to finance our debt. At that point, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.
I’m convinced that it will happen sometime. The current situation is just not sustainable indefinitely. It’s just a matter of when, how quickly and how severely it reduces our American lifestyles.

The other day, Fred Clark wrote an insightful entry about religious persecution. The thesis of Fred’s post was:

When protected, privileged and pampered American Christians claim to be facing persecution they spit on the wounds of their brothers and sisters elsewhere in the world and in history who have known firsthand what religious persecution really is. They mock not only their fellow Christians in this great cloud of witnesses, but also those of other faiths who have suffered or are, now, today, suffering genuine persecution.

I wanted to blog about Fred’s post, but I really didn’t have anything to add to it. But today, my cousin sent me the following email (redacted for length, emphasis added), and it immediately reminded me of Fred’s post:

DID YOU KNOW? As you walk up the steps to the building which houses the U.S. Supreme Court you can see near the top of the building a row of the world’s law givers and each one is facing one in the middle who is facing forward with a full frontal view: it is Moses and he is holding the Ten Commandments!
DID YOU KNOW? As you enter the Supreme Court courtroom, the two huge oak doors have the Ten Commandments engraved on each lower portion of each door.
DID YOU KNOW? As you sit inside the courtroom, you can see the wall, right above where the Supreme Court judges sit, a display of the Ten Commandments!
DID YOU KNOW? There are Bible verses etched in stone all over the Federal Buildings and Monuments in Washington, D.C.
…
How, then, have we gotten to the point that everything we have done for 220 years in this country is now suddenly wrong and unconstitutional?
…
I was asked to send this on if I agreed or delete if I didn’t. Now it is your turn… It is said that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore, it is very hard to understand why there is such a mess about having the Ten Commandments on display or “In God We Trust” on our money and having God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Why don’t we just tell the other 14% to Sit Down and SHUT UP!!!
If you agree, pass this on.

Talk about tyranny of the persecuted (supposed) majority!
UPDATE: As usual, Snopes.com has a good debunking of the email that my cousin sent.

One of my favorite bloggers, Gordon Atkinson, has returned from a one-month blog hiatus with some nice reminiscences about children collecting the offering at his church.
His stories remind me of a recent incident with Samuel. A few minutes into the service, the younger children leave the sanctuary to attend ‘Godly play’ with Miss Bess for much of the service. They return later, usually during the offering.
On their way out of the sanctuary, Brother Odell, a 99-year-old former minister who worships with us, often gives each child a quarter to put into the offering plate.
One Sunday, Samuel returned from Godly play and sat down with Hannah near the choir loft where Katie and I were sitting and from where we have a good view of the entire congregation. When Samuel got to his seat, he remembered his quarter, but the offering plate had already been passed through his row.
We motioned to Samuel to get up and find one of the ushers who was standing at the ends of the rows to manage the passing of the plate.
Samuel got up and started toward one of the ushers. But he was determined to put his quarter into the collection plate himself, not just hand it to an usher. As he got closer to the usher, the usher started the plate down a row. Samuel stopped, hesitated, and then headed toward the other end of the row. By the time he got there, the usher on that end had already started the plate back down the next row.
By this time, the entire choir and many parishoners were watching the unfolding drama. Samuel hesitated again, and then started back toward his seat. Apparently, he had decided to give up. But when he turned around to go back to his seat, he saw Katie and me frantically, but (hopefully) discreetly, motioning for him to head back to an usher.
Finally, he turned around, spied an usher and ran over to him, arriving just in time to drop his quarter in the plate. His mission finally accomplished, he went back to his seat. I thought the choir was going to break into applause at that point.

The BBC has a slide show of an Iraqi sandstorm. Amazing:

If I weren’t so damn cheap, I’d get me one of these bracelets.

Seen here:

Yesterday I told the kids that I was sounding like a broken record. Then I had to explain what I meant, since they have absolutely no idea:

• what a record is,
• how it works, or
• how it can still work when broken, and thus
• why it then sounds like it does.

Sigh. I’m not just their Dad, I’m now officially an old fogey.

I ran across a link today to one of my favorite essays of all time Malcolm Gladwell’s Big and Bad: How the S.U.V. ran over automotive safety. I hadn’t read it in a while, and took the time today to re-read it.
We know someone who typifies the mindset that Gladwell profiles. She drives a bright red Chevrolet Tahoe, and she says she would not be caught dead driving a minivan. I sent her a link to this essay and others, and have repeatedly tried to point out the fallacious nature of her reasons for driving a large SUV–all to no avail. It’s crazy. For her, the feelings associated with driving an SUV–perceived dominance on the roads, perceived safety–trump all reason.

A couple of months ago, I did some research and polling of my fellow geeks, and decided that it was finally time to move to broadband telephone service for our home. With AT&T providing our local, toll and long distance service, our monthly phone bills were $80-100.
I signed up for a VoIP account with Vonage–unlimited calling for $25/month. Vonage promptly sent me a LinkSys router, assigned me a temporary telephone number, set up my 911 emergency service, and started the process of having our existing home telephone number moved from AT&T to Vonage.
Well, after dragging their feet for two months, AT&T finally came through a few days ago on the number transfer. When I got home from work that day, I went outside and took the very satisfying action of unplugging our house from the telephone grid. Then I went back in, plugged the router into the phone jack in the study, and voila, it was done.
Katie is our primary telephone user (as in 99%! I hate talking on the telephone), and I was concerned that she would be displeased with some unforeseen differences in our service, but so far, she hasn’t detected any changes at all.
We’re saving a lot of money and we no longer have to have uncomfortable conversations about the amount of time/money Katie spends on long-distance calls with her mother. I call that a win-win situation!

In this short New Yorker article, James Surowiecki explains why rising oil prices have not thrown the U.S. into recession, and more generally, why oil prices do not necessarily have as big an impact on the economy as people tend to think.
I can follow his reasoning, and on a macroeconomic level, I buy it. But then I look at the effect that rising oil prices has on an average family. In our two-car family, our monthly expenditure on gasoline has gone up by at least $50 in the recently, probably closer to $100. Our income hasn’t risen, so that’s $50-100 that we do not have to save or spend on other things. Considering that every family in the nation is experiencing the same thing, I can’t help but think that this must have some sort of effect on the overall economy.
If it truly isn’t having much of an effect, then it reveals what a load of bull is spewed about tax cuts. I remember when the federal government sent $400/child pre-emptive tax refund checks to families a couple of years ago. This mail-out was heralded as a big stimulant to the economy. If significantly increased gasoline prices doesn’t have much of a negative effect on the economy, then this one-time payout can’t have had much of a positive effect either.

On Friday, the mother of one of Hannah’s school friends called to ask whether we were coming to the party at her house on Saturday.
After the call, Katie told me that she vaguely remembered an email invitation earlier in the week, but had forgotten about it. We were planning to have several good friends over a little earlier on Saturday.
Katie said that she had agreed to go because she thought that these parents were making an effort to get to know us better, since our daughters are friends and we just live a few blocks apart. Katie had told the mother that we would come over as soon as our friends left.
So, as soon as our last friends got in their car on Saturday evening, the four us of ran over to these people’s house. A woman whom we didn’t know answered the door; she was wearing a name tag and holding a role of raffle/game type tickets. I immediately knew what was going on. We walked in, and my suspicions were confirmed: a group of women was sitting around a table with a bunch of candles on it. The mother of Hannah’s friend said that her husband and kids were not at home, and tried to hint that the invitation was only for Katie.
Turns out, it was a Party Lite, which is apparently the current trend in home sales parties.
The kids and I high-tailed it back home, leaving Katie stranded. I felt really bad for her. When she got home a little later, I asked her the damage: the said she had bought the cheapest item, $15, and had refused to get on the mailing list or host her own party. Actually, I was proud of her. I know it’s tough for her to say no under such circumstances.
If Katie had realized the nature of the party earlier in the week, I’m sure she would have not gone.