Top 5 Things Which Have Recently Blown My Mind

1. In the 1990s, the concept of repressed memory became popular among psychologists. Many therapists began attributing a patient's problems to traumatic events from the patient's past which he/she had subconsciously blocked from memory. This phenomenon eventually turned out to be much less common than was believed, and in the process many patients were unwittingly convinced that they had been the victims of abuse by their loved ones which never actually occurred.

2. Recent studies have shown that the placebo effect may not actually require a patient to be unaware the drug they are being given is a placebo. Researchers found that placebos benefited patients even when doctors explained to them that they were only taking sugar pills.

3. Renowned psychologist Daryl Bem has found that subjects do better on certain tests when they study—after the test. Bem has conjectured that the brain has a precognitive ability to travel through time and influence its past decisions when it receives a reward.

4. A story of remarkable redemption from my buddy the adventurous Mac Mitchell.

5. Shedding doubt on a few of the items in this list, scientists have observed that after repeating the same experiment over long periods of time, an effect that was observed to be very powerful in an early study will decrease in strength over time. No one knows exactly why, but the phenomenon may be affected by researchers' and scientific journals' eagerness to publish studies with conclusive results. Turns out the only problem with the scientific method is it requires humans to perform it.

Bonus thing: "The Invention of Money"—the most interesting podcast on the economy you'll probably ever listen to.

Image: jimmiehomeschoolmom

ErinScottPhotography.com 2.0!

My day job is electrical engineering, but by night I serve as webmaster for the single most creative photography company on the planet, Erin Scott Photography LLC. After working on it off and on for six months, Erin and I launched a complete overhaul of her website this past weekend.

A lot of young, modern photographers like Erin have started creating "blogsites," which eschew the traditional photographer website elements like galleries and flash slideshows in favor of blog posts. There are a lot of ideas which drew us to this approach, but the bottom line is we wanted people who experience Erin's website not only to view her work, but get to know her a little bit as well.

Anyway I'd encourage you to hop over and check it out, and if you like what you see subscribe to the feed. I've seen a few of the posts which are coming down the line and lemme tell you, they're awesome. I'm  incredibly excited about how this site will enable people to see more of Erin's beautiful work.

Also, if you have any suggestions for how to make the site even better, please send me an email and let me know (link is in the sidebar). That would be fantastic.

Burdened

Dylan Roscover

Pro-Life or Anti-Sex?

A while back a friend shared a blog post with me which presents the very common argument that Pro-Life supporters are "pro-life" only when it comes to abortion, and care little about the value of life when it comes to other issues. This idea has been grating against me for some time.

Here's an excerpt from the post:

Pro-Life advocacy, then, is often (consciously or unconsciously) really a way to get sexually promiscuous people to face the "consequences" of sexual activity. The focus on life is often cover for Puritanical worries about sexuality in modern America. Why do I draw this conclusion? Because most Pro-Life people I know are only Pro-Life in this one area, and only in this one area. They are not, generally speaking, consistently Pro-Life. For example, most Pro-Life people are...

...not Pro-Life when it comes to gun control.
...not Pro-Life when it comes to preemptive war.
...not Pro-Life when it comes to capital punishment.
...not Pro-Life when it comes to global malnourishment.
...not Pro-Life when it comes to universal health care.
...not Pro-Life when it comes to entitlement programs for the women and children of the working poor (to remove the economic incentives for abortion).
...not Pro-Life in promoting condom usage to prevent teenage pregnancy or AIDS in developing nations.

There are several well-worn straw men here. Let me break them down:

Gun Control: I think most Pro-Life, anti-gun-control folks feel that carrying a gun is a matter of a defense, to protect lives from homicidal criminals. It's certainly not a perfect argument, I'm personally in favor of stricter gun-control laws in most cases, but it's not inconsistent.

Preemptive War: This must refer to the Iraq war, and I think saddling Pro-Life supporters with it is incorrect. Accepting the imperfect generalization that most Pro-Lifers are on the right, the Iraq war had bipartisan support when it began and bipartisan opposition a few years later. The issue was key to Obama capturing the votes of right-leaning folks which helped him win the '08 election.

Capital Punishment: Regardless of the powerful arguments on both sides of this issue, it is untenable to unequivocally equate taking the life of what many believe to be an unborn child with taking the life of someone who has been convicted of killing another human being.

Global Mal-Nourishment: How you figure? I think many Pro-Life folks, including the ones I know, are very concerned about global poverty and in most cases put their money where their mouth is, sponsoring children in poverty-stricken nations, donating food and clothes, and giving to such causes regularly.

Universal Health Care: It may be true that there is a link between universal health care and life expectancy. But determining that this is true in every case possible would be so difficult that I don't find it inconsistent for someone to be Pro-Life and favor a private health system.

Entitlement Programs for the Poor: Many Pro-Lifers care very much about the women and children of the working poor, so much so that they fund and foster organizations which reach out to these individuals. I understand the disagreements about whether these things should primarily be the work of churches and NGOs or the federal government, but neither position is anti-life.

Condom Use: I understand many Pro-Lifers are anti-birth-control for religious reasons, but many are not, including the vast majority of religious Pro-Life folks I know. I doubt characterizing "most" Pro-Life supporters this way is correct.

Cover for Puritanical worries about sexuality in modern America: In light of what I've written here, if you listen to any major Pro-Life group, I think you'll find that protecting the lives of who they consider unborn children is central to their message, not preventing sexual promiscuity.

If you're looking for an incredibly well-written piece about the Pro-Life position and the paradoxes of abortion in America, the same friend who shared the above blog post with me also shared this oped from the New York Times, which I highly recommend.

Image: used with permission from Florida Fruit & Citrus Crate Labels

How Long? Not Long!

Because no lie can live forever. (Thanks, Emily P.)

The Death of Customer Support

Much has been written about the raging war between Apple and Google and its similarity to the war between Apple and Microsoft in the nineties. Back then, Apple chose a closed approach, writing software that only ran on Apple computers and producing computers that only ran Apple software. Microsoft won this war by writing software which ran on any number of machines already being produced by industry giants like IBM. In the long run however, Apple was able to create such innovative products that a few years ago they became the biggest tech company in the world. Now Google is fighting Apple over the mobile phone market with its Android phone operating system, which runs on phones from many different manufacturers, while Apple sells a phone which exclusively runs its own dedicated operating system. History is repeating itself.

Of course the difference is while Microsoft made bank selling copies of Windows, Google doesn't make a dime off of Android. They give it away for free, in hopes it will encourage users to become locked into the Google software world (Gmail, Maps, Search, Reader, Picasa, and so on) and consequently view more of Google's money-making ads.

One of the many, many differences between these approaches (selling software directly vs. using it as a loss leader for your ad network) is customer support. Apple has a huge incentive to help its customers because customer support is directly related to how many products Apple sells. The support offered at Apple stores is one of the many things which set Apple apart from Microsoft, Dell, and the rest. For Google, the relationship between any one customer's satisfaction and Google's bottom line is much more abstract and indirect. If a problem is found with one of Apple's products that affects two hundred customers, I'd wager that's a decent-sized problem for Apple. For Google, not so much.

Here is an example. In the sidebar of this blog there is a search box, which is a standard feature for any blogging tool. This tool has been broken for over a year and a half now. It returns incomplete results. If you search this blog for "Ray Charles," you won't find this post, or this one, which includes those words. It affects other blogs as well. My guess is it actually affects every Blogger blog, but most users aren't aware of it.

If you need support for a Google product, your only recourse is the Blogger help forums, where this issue has been brought up many times. Google employees have occasionally popped in over the last eighteen months to ask questions and promise results. But the problem remains unfixed. It has become obvious that the issue affects a small enough number of users (those who both know and care that it exists) that it's just not worth it to Google to fix it.

I'm tempted to insert a bunch of whiny ranting here about how Google doesn't care about their customers, tinged with a bunch of ironic sarcasm about how the world's number one internet search company can't index its own blogs properly—but I'm forced to acknowledge that according to its business model its behavior makes perfect sense. If you make money from ads, you have to create products which are like ads: new, innovative, enticing, sticky, immersive; but not necessarily well-supported or bug-free.

Not that Apple's approach is perfect; a glance at its market share in PCs will tell you that. But if Google is to win this time around (and there is evidence that Android is outpacing iPhone), there's a good chance you can say goodbye to a little help.

Image: Used with permission from Daniel Adel

The Violent and the Virulent

I have been reluctant to write about the tragedy in Tucson this week because I'm not sure I have much to add to the important public discussion already taking place, but I have spoken so many times here about the bitter political climate we live in that I feel I should address the elephant in the room.

I know I've written a lot about my distaste for Beck and Palin and Fox News and the Tea Party and the rest, but from what I have read, I can see absolutely no connection between them and Jared Loughner's actions, which were those of a deranged killer, not a political agent. I found Sunday's NYT oped on the shooting appalling and feckless in its attempt to draw connections between Loughner and Republicans.

Real life terrors like the one we experienced Saturday do give us pause, however, when we consider items like Sarah Palin's infamous map in light of them. When faced with actual horrendous violence, surely we can agree that suggestions of violence against those we disagree with in the political arena must stop if we aspire to achieve a truly peaceful and democratic society.

David Brooks' column and the transcript of President Obama's memorial speech are the two best pieces I've read on the tragedy so far. I hope you'll read them.

Image: .Bala

Conviction, Humility, and a Doubting Faith

"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties." Sir Francis Bacon

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." Rene Descartes

"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it." Andre Gide

I am addicted to conviction. My mind has a chemical dependency on it. In my search for truth I am constantly tempted to form opinions before I understand issues. I am drawn to people who have simple and strongly-held beliefs. I want so very badly to be right. Much of this desire is pride, but some of it is fear. Not knowing what to believe, not being sure, has an instability to it which scares me.

By the grace of God, I am better now than I once was. I have learned a life-changing lesson that being right is not a virtue. I have learned more about the world and the people in it, and the more I learn the more I realize Edison was right, we don't know a millionth of one percent about anything. I am less likely than I once was to place my opinion above others', less likely to exclude others for opinions I disagree with.

I have a friend who despises overconfidence. She says, "The more sure you are you're right, the less I want to hear about it." I understand what she means now.

As this transformation occurs, I am perplexed by the inter-working of conviction, doubt, and humility, particularly regarding faith. As my dear friend Winn Collier explored in his first book, Restless Faith, there is no question that God is able to handle our doubt. The Bible is full of folks who doubted God in all sorts of ways, and God still loved them, cared for them, and used them mightily. I doubt God often. I do not condemn others for their doubt. I believe freedom to doubt is a part of the Christian life.

But I can't help admire conviction. I can't help long for it. Here is a passage from a blog post a friend shared with me last week:

When you yourselves struggle with what you believe, it makes you no less people of faith. About nine months after this church got going, someone asked if I would go for a walk because there was something they wanted to talk to me about. We circled City Park as they proceeded to tell me with some hesitation that they didn't have the same theology of baptism than I did. They had different beliefs. After cautiously and painstakingly informing me of this fact, I looked at them and said "I'm so glad you told me because now I know you better. But please don't take it personally when I say … I don’t actually care."  I don’t really care what you believe. I care what you hear. Beliefs are fluid and go up and go down. People in this church believe all sorts of stuff. Trust me on that. But we aren't responsible for making sure we have pure doctrine and right belief about everything … we're just responsible for hearing the story and telling the story. That’s what we do as the church.

I felt deeply conflicted when I read this. I still do. The first line is so true; the Christian life is struggle, whether it's loving your neighbor or finding the truth. But to say "I don't care what you believe?" Certainly I couldn't care less about someone's beliefs about baptism, but surely somewhere, at some point, beliefs must matter. Without belief, of what consequence is this story we must tell as a church? The post this passage comes from begins with the story of John the Baptist doubting whether Jesus was "the one who is to come," and encourages the reader to "embrace a doubting faith." I want to yell, "Yes!" but this question keeps nagging me... If we look at the whole of John the Baptist's story, would we categorize him generally as a man of conviction, or a man who embraced a doubting faith? My suspicion is the former.

Come to think of it, doesn't Hebrews equate faith with certainty?

On this point, I am at no loss for great thinkers who agree. Here are a couple of my very favorite paragraphs from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy:

But what we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert: himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt—the Divine reason. [..] For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern skeptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance.

I am intensely drawn to these words. Here is a blog post from 2005 where I even echoed something similar (much less insightfully and eloquently, of course). Along these lines, how about this viral video which made the rounds in 2010:

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

Tempting stuff, isn't it? Well at least it is for me.

Where have I landed in this turmoil between those who challenge us to speak with conviction and those who challenge us to embrace a doubting faith? Well as I said, it's a constant conundrum. The best I have right now is this:

First, have few beliefs. Second, hold these few beliefs dearly, passionately, and with as much conviction as you can muster. Choosing these beliefs is mighty difficult. I know Christ died and was resurrected to free us from sin. I know we must love our neighbor. There are a few others. I used to cast this net wider, but the humility I hope God is teaching me has shrunk it. Thank God for that. For those beliefs which I have given holding up as unquestionable, perhaps the fear I feel at the instability of doubt will move me to rely on him.

Image: uglyagnes

Diary of a Heroine

photo credit: Erin Scott Photography

As is obvious from my last post, my sister Jessica's experience as a nurse in Haiti over the last six months has been consuming my thoughts lately.

I have been following her blog along the way, and certain posts have haunted me. Jessica is one of the most direct people I know. I wonder how many sentences she has said in her life that she didn't mean. Consequently her writing is completely visceral. Her compassion and anger and pain leap from the page and cause me to look up from my head-down, closed-minded, heart-buried life.

I thought I'd present a few of her posts here which I recommend if you are looking for this kind of awakening, or you're simply interested in hearing the story of a 25-year-old girl who took the pain of a nation and made it her own for half a year.

Right This Minute – Jessica's first post from Haiti. She is quickly thrown into the mixture of feelings that will follow her each day: being overwhelmed by how much there is to do, how few resources she has to accomplish it, how she must make peace with what she cannot do, and how she must rely on God.

"I love the rain, but I hate it for them." – Jessica experiences real sadness for the first time, considering the unsurmountable difficulties which prevent Haitians from escaping poverty. She wrestles through the guilt of seeing a patient die when you feel you could have done something to prevent it.

This is for Shelby and Nurses in General – A gripping story about Jessica's struggle to find blood for one of her patients with the help of Big Paul.

Alice Bezil – The story of an old woman everyone in the hospital believed had no home, until she proved them wrong.

My Jesus Revelation – Jessica struggles to find patience and take the very nature of a servant in dealing with the attitude of entitlement many Haitians have.

Plenty of Mess without a Hurricane – Darkness sets in as Jessica sees the end of her time coming with so much left to do.

Cholera – It gets darker. Jessica spends the hardest five days of her stay working at a Cholera clinic, fighting to keep people alive. She cries out at the injustice that no one seems to care about their lives. In her next post she finds some hope in "the God of messy places."

Peace on Earth – In one of the most darkly moving pieces I have ever read, Jessica walks through Christmas and New Years celebrations with the suffering of the Haitian people in her thoughts and heart. She prays the words of an ancient hymn that no more will sins and sorrows grow, but he will come and make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.

Two Men Called Paul

"Little Paul" Waggoner

Cholera is a disgusting disease. Those who contract it experience an overwhelming tide of diarrhea and vomiting that without treatment dehydrates them to the point of death.

My sister Jessica the heroine recently returned from Haiti, where she has been serving as a nurse for the last six months. During her stay she got a call from a man named Paul Sebring, who asked her to come help at a Cholera clinic in St-Louis-du-Nord, a city that was badly affected by the recent Cholera outbreak. She said she would if Paul could square it with her boss. Paul did. She went.

Which is what Paul does most of the time in Haiti—he gets shit done. Paul was a fashion photographer in LA when the earthquake hit Haiti a year ago this month. Moved by the scenes he saw in the news, he called up some national aide organizations to volunteer. They told him to stay home and send money. He bought a plane ticket to Haiti. There he met another Paul with the same unstoppable desire to help. Paul Sebring's imposing 6'4", 250lb figure quickly garnered them the names "Big Paul" and "Little Paul" and together they drive through the Haitian landscape in a bent-up blue pickup doing whatever needs to be done. They are social justice vigilantes. Cowboy EMTs.

What needed to be done then was sterilizing the tiny Cholera clinic in St-Louis-du-Nord, where people were dying daily from the disease. While she was there, Jessica felt like she was fighting a daily battle against death and losing most of the time. Big and Little Paul brought in rags, water, and bleach, and spent the week cleaning up feces and vomit. Wiping down the walls and the floors, trying to exterminate the deadly bacteria. One day Big Paul asked one of the translators to go fill up a cooler of water while Jessica was nearby. The translator looked at the cooler with disgust and said no. "There are people dying here. We are all in this together, trying to help. Please go fill this cooler." The translator said no. Jessica lost it.

"Are you f***ing kidding me?! Paul and I are here risking our lives to save your people and you can't fill up a damn cooler?! I'll do it," she shouted, grabbed the cooler, and stormed out the door. Paul caught up to her and took the cooler. "Go back inside and help your patients. I'll do this."

Then there was the time Jessica needed blood for one of her patients. Despite the billions of dollars given the Red Cross for Haiti relief, there is very little blood available in the country. Much of what is available is hidden from poor patients who can't pay for it so it can be given to wealthy ones who can. This is how Jessica first met Big Paul. She was out of options and out of time finding blood for one of her patients. His family had waited two days at the General Hospital for blood and been told there was none by The Red Cross. She had called everyone she knew.

"Have you called Big Paul?" a fellow nurse asked her.

"No." She had heard of Big Paul. "A crazy American. Been here since ten days after. No medical training. Just gets shit done."

She called. "Paul? Hi, you don't know me, but I'm an RN in Carrefour. I need blood. I have a patient who will die soon without it. I heard you can help me."

Thirty minutes later Paul texted back. "Be at the General at 7. Two units."

And so it went for months. While the American news moved on from the Haitian earthquake to the BP oil spill to the World Cup to the Chilean miners to the November election, Big Paul and Little Paul drove around Haiti, putting out fires. Until December 12th, when "Little Paul" Waggoner was jailed for kidnapping.

A father had brought his sick infant to a hospital where Little Paul was volunteering. The baby died. The hospital workers asked the father if he could take the body. The father said he had no money for a burial, and told the hospital to cremate it. Then he set his sights on Little Paul, perhaps assuming an American aide worker would have money. He claimed Paul had kidnapped the baby, that he had used voodoo to steal its spirit and sold its organs for money. For months the father tried to find a judge who would listen to him, and finally, in early December, he did. For weeks it looked like Paul would be suffering in a Haitian jail while an investigative judge took up to three months to look into the non-existent evidence in the case. But this week an American grassroots support group helped free Paul. The judge received a signed affidavit by the American doctor who had worked at the hospital saying that the baby had died and the father had been allowed to view the body. Paul is now recovering from eighteen days spent in one of the world's worst prisons.

Jessica hopes that this story won't spell the end for Big and Little Paul's work in Haiti. Little Paul has said he wants to stay in Haiti, that he has no life to return to in the US, but a statement released on his and Big Paul's website is indecisive. If Little Paul does return to the US, it will be one more loss for a nation which suffers constant tragedy. But the Pauls have hope. Little Paul's statement shares his strong belief that Haiti can triumph over the despair it faces, and his stronger belief that America must reach out to its neighbor and enable that triumph. With politicians holding up billions in funding in Washington and giant NGOs leaving tons of supplies rotting in Haitian ports with no workable plan for distribution, it is hard at times to see the vision he sees. But I hope we do see it. I hope more muscle-bound fashion photographers turn on their television sets and feel so overwhelmed by what they see that they buy a plane ticket and don't look back. I hope more recent nursing grads read stories on the internet and decide that spending six months living and working in a Haitian hospital, saving lives and training Haitian nurses, is what Jesus would do. I hope I find it in myself to do as they have done.

More on the Pauls:
facebook.com/freelittlepaul
mmrcglobal.org