Tagged: men

My Review of Oppenheimer, by Christopher Nolan

I’ve always heard that the newspaper USA Today was written at a third grade reading level. A reading level is an interesting concept. Try this sentence from USA Today’s The Weather Book by Jack Williams, “A fusion reaction fuses atoms together, creating other kinds of atoms and giving off energy.”

No third grader on earth could understand whatever that means. A few savants may sound smart trying, but keep in mind that they would never actually be explaining that sentence to us.

I also remember that in the 1950s children encyclopedia, so-called The Book of Knowledge, the author of the chapter on “atoms” began by having a child imagine cutting up a candle into smaller parts. And then smaller parts. And then smaller parts. Even then, you could still reform the candle parts back into shape. But, the author went on, there are even smaller parts, which when the candle is cut down to these teeny sizes, it wouldn’t matter what happened, they could not reassemble to build a candle.

Can anyone explain that concept? I feel like I get it. But it’s basically saying that there is something besides the obvious ingredients comprising the obvious objects. And that fact is something I can repeat, but I do not understand it.

The problem, so far as I can tell, is essentially one of “barrier to entry”. Atoms and Fusion Reactions require knowledge of such things as very few of us will ever think it worthwhile to learn and master.

Therefore, allow me to state the obvious: if you leave the theater believing that you now know something about atom bombs, you’re fooling yourself.

Mr. Nolan doesn’t abstain from attempting a layman’s explanation, but he also doesn’t belabor the point. Perhaps he doesn’t get it either.

The reason I open the review with this lengthy aside is because I, as I suspect you, had nursed the idea that maybe Nolan could succeed where others failed when I first heard he was making this movie. But he didn’t really even try. And I was a fool for thinking he might. The film is called, “Oppenheimer,” not, “Atom Bomb.”

Moving to my next hope for the movie.

Does Mr. Nolan satisfy my curiosity about the man Oppenheimer, which is bracketed by the following two questions:

1. What exactly was his role in the “invention”?

2. How would some nerdy academic handle being responsible for such death then and forevermore?

Yes. And no.

The way he accomplishes this paradox is by sticking to purely emotional storytelling where paradox is not forbidden. While there are many moments which caused me to wonder, “Did that really happen?,” there were many more which unexpectedly evoked near tears and kept me deep in contemplation about implications of what Nolan seemed to be trying to say rather than poised to fact check every seeming “they must have a record of this” moment.

On the whole, everything about the movie works. The chosen vessel for storytelling works. The casting works. The psycho-sapio sex scene works. The conveyance of palpable stress works. And, most importantly, the a-bomb test works.

Today’s My Birthday

My mother-in-law is currently living with us. Five days in. Hasn’t been terrible. I have chosen the strategy of pointing out every time I do something that husbands/men/fathers typically don’t do. (She doesn’t speak English, so my wife has to translate. It’s fun.)

Just now I started to wash my favorite La Creuset pan, their 11×13 attempt. I told my wife to tell her mom that on my birthday I still do the dishes. My wife responded that she had already told her mom that this was my favorite dish and that’s why she used it to make breakfast.

I said, “Ha. Probably shouldn’t tell her the real truth. The truth that I trust no one with my stuff. The truth that I have been hurt before, and so I wash my own dishes.”

I have been hurt before, and so I wash my own dishes.

Sounds like a pretty great opening line to a novel, if you ask me.

Commentary on the SCOTUS Affirmative Action dissent by Sotomayor

“The result of today’s decision is that a person’s skin color may play a role in assessing individualized suspicion, but it cannot play a role in assessing that person’s individualized contributions to a diverse learning environment. That indefensible reading of the Constitution is not grounded in law and subverts the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection,” dissents Justice Sotomayor (italics mine).

To what is she dissenting?

“In the wake of the Civil War, Congress proposed and the States ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, providing that no State shall ‘deny to any person … the equal protection of the laws.’ Amdt. 14, §1,” as opined by Justice Roberts (the Court).

Can you see the disagreement?

To help, let’s consider another document’s claim regarding race.

St. Paul wrote, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Forget, if you must, that the claim comes from an exclusive Christian teaching. No proselytizing here. But I want you to ask yourself if you can understand how Paul can list sets of two very real groups and then suggest that the very distinctions are abolished/overcome. Can you understand this concept of Paul’s/Christianity’s?

Good.

Justice Sotomayor cannot.

Justice Roberts can. But Justice Sotomayor cannot.

Justice Sotomayor writes over and over that because the constitution and its amendments and other SCOTUS opinions use words like “white” and “Mexican” that the law of the land is “race conscious”. This belief of hers is over and against the concept that the law is colorblind.

But I return again to the question I have posed. Is the simple use of words which delineate some people from others enough to transcend the otherwise transcendent belief that under some higher perspective, the delineations do not exist? Put another way, can the forest be lost for the leaves? Can the bigger point be missed? Or even, should the country have federal laws at all? Or should each dispute be brought before some local judge and the judge decide whatever they please?

The point Justice Sotomayor is pressing isn’t semantic.

When the border patrol is allowed to observe that some man around the border between the US and Mexico is Mexican-looking and subsequently act with suspicion towards him that they wouldn’t use with a “white” man, real people are involved. And when Harvard admissions folks are not allowed to ask, “Brown?”, real people are likewise involved.

The question, then, is are the two situations meaningfully the same situation when viewed from the perspective of “the Law”?

The answer is, “No.”

The reason for “no”, the reason they are distinct (despite both being similar in “gaining entrance” theme) is the constitution applies to US Citizens, not to any person, which is the very question the Border Patrol is tasked with helping to sort out in the first place.

Finally, as probably all of you know, the only question on my mind when I read Justice Sotomayor is, “Is she serious?”

If she were serious (and honest), then her sentences would read, “The result of today’s decision is that [all persons-of-earth-regardless-of-national-citizenship’s] skin color may play a role in assessing individualized suspicion by the US Border Patrol, but it cannot play a role in assessing that person’s individualized contributions to a diverse learning environment. That indefensible reading of the Constitution is not grounded in law and subverts the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection” (italics mine).

For that is her argument. And it is a serious argument, despite being flatly wrong as the 14th Amendment does not apply to every swinging dick which finds itself within the borders of this great country.

Great Comebacks, Too Late

I sometimes come up with amazing comebacks, too late to use. Oh well.

The first that comes to mind was once a scammer left a voicemail about legal action blah blah blah. Since I was divorced and always fearing some new bullshit from my ex, I called the number back. The dude proceeded to deliver the scam flawlessly but something just wasn’t right. Again, since I was divorced, I knew legal things didn’t happen quickly, or need to. So I finally just told him that I didn’t believe him. He seemed to have enjoyed being called out, just concluding, “Okay, Mr. Smart Guy, take your chances,” or some such thing.

Only later did I wish I said, “You sound black.” (He did. And I’m certain he was. But even if I’m wrong, it would’ve been hilarious.)

Tonight, another zinger came to mind only too late.

I have been sharing with folks at work (healthcare) that I am enjoying, if three years after the trend, cold showers. Well, this elicits all sorts of responses, mostly enjoyable to engage. One such response was, “I bet it opens your pores.”

My too little, too late response is, “‘Pores open?’ I was only aware of five senses.”

So funny. Or would’ve been.

With Great Books, It Happens Every Time

February 2, 2023 CE I began the fourth reading from the third volume of The Great Ideas Program, which, as longtime readers know, is intended to be used alongside the voluminous Great Books of the Western World sets. This fourth reading was the introductory salvo of Nichomachus of Gerasa’s Introduction to Arithmetic, written sometime around 100 AD.

Today, just now, after four long months and many fits and starts—not to mention giving serious consideration to giving up the reading of such dry and pointless prose in favor of books that align with my intellectual habits—I concluded the reading.

And I feel great. I feel like I have a new lease on life.

Before we address whether it is the coffee, which I confess I am running high on or not, I want to clarify that I actually have a new understanding of early math and this new understanding is actually useful to me. (As it would be to anyone.)

The understanding and its usefulness goes like this, “Life is huge.” Followed immediately by, “It cannot be exhausted, used up, depleted, drained, found out, solved, or emptied.”

But you, the driver, have to challenge yourself. You have to read books. And I say, “Start with good books. No, start with the Great Books of the Western World. You will not be disappointed.”

I have lived with the rule-of-thumb that I’m “not gonna read any book that’s newer than 100 years old until I have caught up” for nearly 20 years. I haven’t adhered to it perfectly, but it has served me well and I heartily recommend it.

Best wishes.

I Had It All Wrong

I used to think of emotions, instincts, logic, reason, and other types of decision making as choices. I had it all wrong.

Now, I don’t know if there is a hierarchy, as in, “Reason is better than emotion,” for example. I don’t know if there is ultimate worth, as in, “At least I can say that reason guided my life.” I cannot say for sure that these traits are building blocks, as in, “Only after mastering emotion can you learn to reason.”

What I do know now, and know for certain, is that for those who do not act upon reason, it is not because they are avoiding reason. It is because they cannot reason. For these folks, using reason is as unavailable as flight is to a jack rabbit. Sure, they might end up “reasoning”, but they certainly didn’t flap their wings.

This is unfortunate.

But it is not the end of the story.

Life goes on. That’s the end of the story.

What shall be done in the time remaining? How should one communicate with those without reason? How should one live with them?

It calls to mind a line from Tolstoy. He wrote something like, “I could not follow any of the two women’s conversation. But I knew it had to be about something because it was unending.”

Next blog: What to do if your wife is happy everywhere but at home, and then invites her non-English speaking mother to stay at said home with no departure date?

I Hate That

Click bait, surely. But I don’t know how else to describe what happened.

I have two babies right now. A- is 2.5 and J- is 11 months. When A- was younger, I wanted to get her the classic shape sorter game/activity.

If you don’t know, they have many versions these days. The old red and blue one with yellow pieces is retro.

The one I decided upon is a blue dome with a knob or button thing on top that rotates the top half. So the shapes change each time the knob is depressed. A square/cube area becomes a top half triangle, bottom half cube. And the oval piece changes to top half concave thing, bottom half oval. You get the picture.

Anyhow, my wife and I have been embattled for some time now. (Not ever going to go into details here, sorry.) Almost every conversation becomes an argument. Well, I get on the floor with the babies tonight and start to play. I have been working a ton of late and this is a rare event these days.

I see my wife helping J- to put the cube in the cube space.

Good, I think.

Then I see her encouraging him to put in a wrong piece that happens to fit sideways into that same hole, but is clearly (by markings on the pieces themselves) not meant for that spot.

“That doesn’t fit there,” I exclaim, as if I believed the LORD could actually prevent J- from becoming Special Needs at this point.

“Yes it does,” my wife responds.

“What?” I ask, dumbfounded. “It may fit, but you don’t train the baby to put it there. The entire point is the right piece to the right spot.”

“I know.”

“Are you sure?? Because it seems like you just told me that ‘it fits’, even though it doesn’t?”

****

With Metallica’s new album and tour announcements, I have been mentioning to a coworker that I may text him some songs as he is uninitiated. I haven’t yet. It’s actually a daunting task to share something so intimate.

As I wait and consider songs, I found myself listening to the radio today, and a perfectly poetic—in the “eternally powerful” sense of the word—rock song came on. It’s main lyric is, “I hate everything about you/why do I love you?”

This got me thinking. I know exactly what he means. Not because I hate everything about my wife, but because it’s a killer lyric. Here’s my attempt at a killer lyric.

I want my wife to think/She never thinks anymore

I hate that my wife won’t think/When she does think, I have seen good results—like with most people/I think

Why won’t she think?

Teaching our son the wrong way to do the game is tantamount to abuse

Abuse/Not because the game matters—though it does

Abuse/But because other kids (her son for example) didn’t or don’t have games

Abuse/Because it’s a complete waste of an opportunity

Abuse/And I hate that

3 Reasons Youth Basketball Is Better Than Church

I am kinda the last Boy Scout. I am definitely one of the last pilots of the last male-only squadron of the USAF. And I think my generation was the last one which didn’t turn youth sports into the all-consuming beast that it is.

I’ve mentioned how easily my own 12 year old went from 2 practices a week and five tournaments in 12 weeks, to Mon-Fri practices/games, in addition to the 5 weekend tournaments. It’s been crazy.

I’ve also mentioned how my attempts to join a church have been actively rebuffed. One church’s staff member actually told me I could watch but not speak at their Wednesday night youth service. Another church’s head deacon invited me to coffee to suggest now isn’t the time to join his church.

Keep in mind that I have a “Graduate Certificate In Biblical Studies” which means that I certainly care and also that I certainly have studied the Bible and Christian History (history and philosophy in general too) more than any rural Christian member (or Pastor) ever could dream to have. (Only slight hyperbole.)

I have done light internet research into the topic, “Youth Sports are better than church” and the only or main results are articles written by Christians which offer tips on how to navigate the two worlds.

That said, it’s time someone tell the truth.

Here are three reasons youth basketball is better than church.

1. Basketball is fun.

Attend any youth or children’s activity at a protestant Christian church and you’ll find adults trying to make said activity fun. Well, with basketball, it is fun.

2. Basketball, win or lose, instills youths with desirable life skills.

Attend any youth or children’s activity at a protestant Christian church and you’ll find adults trying to persuade kids that the Bible has eternal life skills within it. Well, with basketball, life skills (perseverance, growth, not to mention hand-eye coordination) appear like wetness with water. No advocate needed.

3. Basketball games provide a perfectly indirect (safe) way to make new friends, both for kids and parents (me).

Attend any youth or children’s activity at a protestant church and you will not find parents. If any parents are there, they are too occupied to talk, what with making speeches to kids that church is fun, and that church will endow them with life skills.

Put simply, as a Christian man and parent, now that I’m involved, honestly, I am not afraid to report that youth basketball is better than church. Sometimes the games are on Sundays. Sometimes not. I’m not recanting my faith; Jesus Christ is Lord forever and ever and ever. Glory. Hallelujah. Amen.

But I won’t ever feel guilty for recognizing that basketball is the better activity for my kids and I and skipping church.

Our Little Exvangelical

Of all the annoying words that unfortunately carry usefully definite meaning, I have to say “exvangelical” is my least favorite. But I just listened to the “Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” podcast and so it is now in my lexicon.

In any case, this is a word which upon one hearing the meaning is clear. Or rather, in one use we can tell what it does not mean. It isn’t denoting apostasy from Christianity, it is just expressing that the tenets of evangelical Christianity are too much too bear.

Well, tonight I discovered the exvangelical roll has an additional name.

My step-son, A-, is twelve, as I have mentioned. That’s seventh grade.

He is playing traveling basketball, which here in rural Minnesota is not quite insane or indicative of his abilities or desires. It’s just what they call the most base level of youth basketball. Two practices a week. A few three-game tournaments.

Traveling basketball as a term is also useful because, we have learned, there is another kind of youth basketball being played in the winter months—school ball.

Long story short, since hearing that there is such a thing as school ball, A- is now practicing or playing basketball 6 days a week. What can I say? Basketball is something A- enjoys. I’d rather see him do something he enjoys than yell at him for being (fill in the blank with undesirable qualities) all day and night.

For my part, too, I have been fascinated at comparing my youth basketball experience with my local church experience.

Remember my, “Guests cannot speak. Not even me.” post? That was church world. Now, in youth sports, as of a few weeks ago, I am coach of the B Team.

Why did they let me? What are my qualifications? Did I go to the equivalent of seminary for basketball, you may ask?

I simply had to display interest and availability.

Next thing I knew, I was choosing tournaments and directing where the money should be sent.

Back to our little (and new) exvangelical.

Tonight at dinner, keep in mind it is Wednesday night, I said to A-, are we still aiming to make YTH tonight? (Out loud you would’ve heard “youth”, but the trendy multi-site Assemblies church calls it YTH.)

“Oh,” he says sheepishly. “I kinda forgot about that.”

I then said, chuckling, “Well, now you know what it feels like for every other Christian in America.”